You obviously dont know alot about the subscriptions of MMOs do you?

Link to Subscriptions on the MMORPG world

The thing is FFs are all different in their own way, this one is online and is an MMORPG, so you have to compare it MMORPG standards, comparing online and offline games are red and blue, its not comparable because they are different genres despite both having RPG in it.

Has Square remained true? If its giving you a game that blows other MMOs out of the picture with a REAL storyline and cutscences and numerous things to do, then yes they have. If its updating and fixing bugs that appear then yes they do(this is major, EQ never does it).

Is this game the same as other FFs in similarity? Some ways yes, with spell names and all, but again this is primarily an MMORPG, not RPG so this is completely different in terms of gameplay and things that go on in it. Again do not compare it to other FFs because its simply not capable to be. Comparing it to other MMOs like Ragnarok Online or any of the games that are listed on the chart i gave you would be the correct thing to do.

Have they held their standards? Yes they produced a game that people, especially in the MMO world would love. Its a top notch game.It hasnt let me down and i played almost all previous FFs. But on the same note its not for everyone because MMOs(as well as any type of game) isnt for everyone's tastes. But they do a damn good job at the moment and i see no other game with this much depth.(and again in MMO terms).

500,000 users out of about 300,000,000 isn't much.
Again you have no idea how much this means, no other MMORPG made it thus far.

Give me ten thousand dollars and I can have an addicitve game of crap made and put on the internet, and I'd have 1M players by the end of the week.
Again they spent Millions on this game, research it. They need 200,000 people in order to break even. THeir fees are into alot of money by keepin server, bandwidth, electricity, tech team, GM team, and other misc expenses(along with 20 other servers to boot). I doubt you can do such a thing. Please research the thing before you really say it. A game of this magnitude on 20 servers with the matience isnt possible for you and certainlety 10000 bucks is chump change to their costs.

Is it addictive, or is it good?
BOTH! XD But to each their own jus tlike FFX-2.

are most of these 500,000 honored square clientele, or did they scrape up half a million bums off the street?
These are active subscriptions. Theres also 1,000,000 characters made total. These arent just bums. This question makes no sense whatsoever.

Is this a break of tradition or are they upholding their standards
They are upholding alot mroe than standards with their service. And is it breaking the traditional offline type game? Yes. But is it breaking the MMORPG tradition in the most part? Nope it remains true to them. But it also borrows many counterparts of offline FFs with the way things are done like potions, Cure spells, the way people are. It does give an FF feeling unlike some D&D feeling.

EDIT: If the link dont work heres the pic for you even.