OurWorld, and other subscription based online "games"

I've been on OurWorld for almost a week now. And for the most part I enjoy being able to play a lot of games on one site where I can feel like I'm earning coins. Yet, more than ever before, I feel pushed to become a resident in OurWorld, and pay a monthly fee. I've never felt that I should pay for a subscription to a game or site (why I play Wii and PS3), I believe that if I pay 50 dollars for a game, I should be able to experience all of it's features without having to pay extra. For OurWorld though, I paid nothing to start the game, so it's a little different. Do I want to continue to be frustrated taking forever to advance, or pay a little to get some more features and level-up quicker...on my budget, I'm going the free route, after all I play for the games on the site.

It amazed me to find out how many people pay a monthly subscription to sites (OurWorld for example, but also Xbox Live completely amazes me, same as WoW), but at the same time was surprised to find out 95% of OurWorld is non-subscription play.

So what drives those 5% to shell over that monthly fee, what about OurWorld makes it so appealing they are willing to pay every month to use it. It could be that those 5% are those that the "game" just connects to, or something else. I think if we could figure this out, whatever game utilizes this information correctly could make a lot of money. Paying a monthly subscription puts more pressure on a company or developer to put out a better product, if I were to pay a subscription I would want new and improved features that make the game better all the time.