If the monetisation is really poor I have in the past opted to play Private Servers. Especially when Aion went from being hosted by NCsoft in EU to being hosted by gameforge.
Gameforge has a history of corruption, legal gold selling, power abuse and predatory monetisation to name a few. I felt justified in playing private servers.
I do hope it becomes more acceptable when it comes to mmo's no longer online. There have been cases where an mmo community has been handed over to players so that they can host it which I very much like. There are hardcore players that want to play it and they should be able too.
If there was a Firefall Private server I would've played it. Unfortunately that game is dead and gone.