The monthly fee is kind of daunting but think of it this way. How much time do you send on the typical $50 game? A month or two? Two months of FFXI is $26. You can likely find the current version of the game with all expansions online for $20 or less. So that's two months of a game (3 if you count the free month if they still do that) for the same price as any other game.

I played FFXI for about 2 years and it was well worth it.