I'd hesitate to guess it's because, once again, SOE have drifted far from their original spiel to consumers.
The premise was 'lots for free, more if you'd like to pay'. It's hardly that anymore, is it.

It's amazing how they continue to let this happen on the inside, time and time again. Surely it's just one executive team constantly being short-sighted and overly ambitious with their profit forecasts.. you'd think they'd have learned by now that there's more value in long term relationships; unless of course they've decided that the entire project isn't where it was expected to be and they're making an attempt to a least pull in revenue that covers original commitments to the board.

One need only look so far back as Legends of Norrath to see this in full effect, and how many folk play that still..? Oh, yah *tumbleweed*.

Seriously SOE - you're going to run out of folk to pull the rug from under at some stage.

I too can remember pre-launch interviews in which they stated that the majority of the content would be open to all subscribers, paying and otherwise, and that as new content was added the proportion would remain the same. I don't begrudge SOE for using this business model, but in what sense is Free Realms different from the newly revamped Warhammer Online with its unlimited free trial up to level 10 or FusionFall? Instead of a Free2Play game, Free Realms is fast becoming "my first subscription MMO" for the younger set and their parents; which is fine, but the "Free" is then a deceptive misnomer.