Exactly like I said, it's similar to smartphone gamers who prefer to play F2P games and will never buy a console game, even GTA, because they don't want to pay for it. They just don't understand or agree with the value. 

Don't worry, SE knows that it doesn't attract everyone, and they don't care. They chose the paid high quality, and it works well, it's one of their most successful games and the second most successful MMO after WoW (once again, a MMO with a fee, how strange). A lot of people prefer to pay for a better experience, so they should survive without your money. And like outlawauron said, I think I played 1000 hours in the first year, for maybe the price of 3 games if you include everything in it (and I still didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted to). It's worth it. 

That's a nice box art.

Sometimes ppl dont know if they actually have time to play the game in that small frame of time. That 10$/month could give you hundreds of playtime, but it could also just give you a couple hours of playtime. All of this uncertainty after you pay a full game price on top of it. I believe this is the main reason why ppl (including me) are reluctant to spend money on sub model.

I don't really get the analogy. In neither scenario you've proposed you have to pay again for the product you've acquired. The F2P game is Free to Play, minus microtransactions. The console game is bought once, and never paid for it again (minus the console's online fee in itself, which I don't pay either). There's not a single instance here where you have to pay for the game over and over and over and over.

Funny that you say "The second most successful MMO after WoW", especially considering League of Legend, Heartsone, and probably Dota 2 are probably far more successful than both games you've mentioned. I can give my money to Square happily to their games where I only have to play once. People is free to spend their money how they want; Square's business model with XIV doesn't have value for me due to its restrictive fee nature.

You don't get my analogy, but then compare MMOs to Dota and LoL. Apples and oranges... 

My analogy is really easy to understand though. You don't see the value in a paid MMO, just like others don't see a value in a paid game. Different senses of value, that's all. You don't see the value, we get it. Don't buy it then, like I said SE doesn't care and will survive anyway, because a lot of other people do. 

Aren't MOBAs a breed of MMO?

And different senses of value doesn't deter me from saying how enticing a game is but how dumb the fee is for me, in either case.

Can't find anything about XIV being the second most successful MMORPG, by the way. It's the second most popular in terms of players, but not revenue.

Of course, if you don't know how much you'll play it, then the sub model is very bad. For very engaged players who come back several times every week, it's a no brainer.

@ Wright

WOW is the only MMO that's top 10 in PC revenue.

I guessed as much, but I still don't know if League of Legends and Dota can be considered MMO, based on Faelco's response.

No, I wouldn't consider either of them a MMO. While you play with other people, it's not a real comparison to an open-world game with thousands of players playing in the same fields at the same time.

Fair enough if you put it that way.