Pros and Cons of Making the game Pay-to-Play

Because the Pay to Play charge is bad for pulling players in. It turns a lot of people away. The people it keeps, they are less likely to spend because they're already spending to play in the first place. To top it off, there's no excuse for the Pay to Win scheme they have now if they're going to force a Pay to Play scenario. It's insulting to the players. It's essentially saying,
"Hey, want to play the game? Pay monthly. Oh, you want to actually DO something in the game now? Pay more."

There's a reason the majority of games besides WoW have shifted off of a Pay to Play subscription fee.

But let's add a wrinkle to it where after 6 months (30 bucks), you get the perks of, say, 40% off cubes or 50% off ...whatever. So in the long run you'd actually save the money to be used on stuff like cubes.

I guess you're absolutely right about pulling completely new people in though.