Once upon a time I was very much of the same view as one of the previous posters.. i.e. I have paid full retail price for a game and ill be damned if im going to pay a monthly fee in order to play it with other people (many of whom need a serious THWACKING with a large stick).
But I have to say, my opinion has mellowed somewhat over recent years. There are in my opinion some MMO's out there that "ARE" worth a monthly subscription fee, that put out regular and interesting additions and expansion fairly regulalry and have good support, a cadre of decent players etc.. but shopping for an MMO is a lot like buying a pair of shoes, you may need to try on a whole bunch before you find one that fits and you like, and even then it will no doubt chafe in some way for a time, but eventually it will become comfortable and familiar to you.
I've tried lots of MMO's in recent years and they all have pro's and con's but its a matter of determining what you want from a game and hunting one down that as closely fits those criteria as you can find. For me the criteria have always been.
1) Decent regular support and expansions
2) Predominantly Pve content over Pvp
3) Interesting character creation/development
4) Equal capacity for solo and group play
5) A decent interface/control system
You'll note im sure that a do not list "a decent community" among my own criteria as one thing my many MMO game, trials, beta and subscriptions over the recent years have shown me is that no matter the game there will "ALWAYS" be a muppet contingent find its way onto them, you'll most often see them griefing or duelling in town/city centres of whichever game, talking crap over the OOC or Global channels and generally being as annoying and inane as humanly possible. fortunately channel controls and filters and block lists are pretty much standard fare on MMO's these days so you can quite easily remove these fools from your attention with a few clicks of a mouse. And while it may be true that most of the muppet contingent tend to be the younger more immature players, the stu[pidity and annoyance factor is by no means exclusive to the young
NO, for me so long as the game is good the community isnt so much of a priority issue. World of Warcraft for example being one of the most well known and populous games, is an MMO I have personally had only a few issue with, though the predominant detriment of that game is undoubtedly the muppet contingent that can be found living on almost every server.
The long and short of this all being that so long as you know what you want from a game, with a little shopping around (heaps of free 10 days trials available) you can find something to suit and within this time youll often find enough reason to justify the subscription price, which in the ends seems like such a minor concern in the end.
This game is is going to be like God of War the MMORPG, and not some clean family friendly game like Evercrack.