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The $50 price tag to purchase the game serves the same purpose as a big download does (Note that you can download the earlier Everquest stuff for free now I believe): It pre-qualifies the customer as someone willing to jump through a hoop in order to play your game. A box is arguably better, of course, as it indicates a willingness to pay for the game as well. I agree they are branching out a bit more, but the only high-profile Western mud that has done much interesting business-model-wise was Project Entropia, which had the misfortune to be developed by people who are either incredibly naive about their model or who are smoking so much crack they can't tell the difference between "risky' and 'stupid.'
That comparison alone wouldn't tell us all that much. EQ has been around for less time, and since people who do subscribe eventually stop subscribing, Gemstone's ratio of existing paying players to total free trialers will be MUCH lower. They've also, I believe, suffered a significant net loss in players over the last 5-7 years which would distort the figures more.
If you were just looking at the conversion aspect of the two business models, you'd want to compare the ratio of people who purchased EQ or tried free Gemstone trial vs the # of those people who subscribed for at least one month.
In any case, it's pretty tough to meaningfully compare those as there are so many different factors at work. Text is an inherently unfriendly medium to newbies, for one, as compared to graphics, so there's that additional hoop for people to jump over.
--matt
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