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Original post by Robert-Glen The idea behind this business model was to try and lure players who only targeted free2play games because $15 per/month was too much for them or spending $15 continually on a game they have already purchased seemed ridiculous.

Those players generally wont or in the case of many minors cant pay any fee, so you really aren't expanding your market by much, but you are cutting back on revenue (because lets face it, charging players for wasted time is free money - and it's even less for you to maintain!). Gimicks are a poor way to get players to join your game, and a special payment plan really boils down to a gimick. People will pay for what they consider quality - give them good enough quality, and they'll pay for it. Think about the tickle-me-elmo: it was essentially an electronic baby drool sponge, but people wanted it and were willing to pay $500 a pop for it. Make people want your game (by making them see quality in it) and you can charge whatever you want.

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a paying player who simply wins because all his gear is 10x better by spending real money for it.

I quit those games almost immediately.

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I guess it will simply take testing with each game to find which source for revenue will best suit.

Fair enough, but I don't see the pay per month plan going anywhere anytime soon. I will say that in game markets are proving quite successful, however.

As "many people only stand in town chatting" has been said a couple of times in this thread, it should be noted that these people are the most expensive ones to maintain, and thus it would be unwise to make the game free for them.

Many people standing in one area considerably increases CPU load and network traffic (or, as a treadeoff, responsiveness). It is an issue even with a sophisticated update system, and with a naive implementation it's a catastrophe.
Therefore, a lot of people standing in town chatting, is not something you would want to further by making it free as opposed to going out of town.