$10 a month to store character data in your little 4 player at a time world is ridiculous. Hard drives are cheap, bandwidth is cheap. A character will take up what, 256K?
The other reason commonly cited for monthly fees is development work, but the amount of development work Sega has done on PSO is (historically) a fraction of what Blizzard and SOE have done. It's a lame justification to gouge you, and $10 a month for so little value is gouging.

