Seto
The owners are not just doing this to give us a game to play they are doing it to also make money. And truth of the matter is they are operating on a shoe string budget. They have employees etc. Again even if it only cots them a 100 a month to host the server theres still their employees pay checks. If and i sure they do have a 3d art team in the us the starting slary is 40k usd for a 3d artist out of colledge. Thats what they should make most will work for way less just for their portfolio. But the point is they have programers artists admins who keep the servers going likely a on call contracted tech to fix the hardware or a service plan to next day deliver parts/full servers etc. Break all this down by the month and you got minimally a few grand per month not 100...
What they are doing with this idea is working to increase profits so they can do more for ryzom when it comes to content bug squashing etc.
CSRs= Volunteers
Ryzom Forge (where the only new art and other content is coming from)= Volunteers
Event Team= Volunteers
Devs are probably the same former Nervax employess that formed Winchgate- so owners get paid depending on their partnership agreement.
Either way, WG is a private partnership so no point in arguing about their finances since we will never see them :P
I really doubt that allowing formerly subbed players return to f2p will increase profits. Maybe if they split the current sub between a payment for more storage and a payment for max levels/catz then a player low on cash could just pay to have their levels active, but not access their storage for that month- or you could pay just for more storage if you don't want to level another toon. However, just creating a whole new class of character, SuperMinimaster, just because some trolls on Steam have a different definition of f2p seems like a waste.