There are a lot of reasons to it, and a complete discussion is way out of topic.
But one of the big problems of EW had been the settings. You have the same ack levels, town sizes and so on like in LW (including 17lbs AT guns on gv bases!) - but the planes & vehicles are much less capable. In fact, after the new towns were introduced in tour 126, it was as finally someone pulled the plug. - Activity in EW (measured by kills as well as played time) has dropped by about 90% during 2010. And another setting problem was the overwhelming dominance of the Hurricane II both in usage as well in K/D . It doesn't help gameplay when a single defender has to cope with a swarm of Hurricane IICs. In LW it would quickly have been perked.
IIRC there was one skwad that flew in EW, all on the same side. If the changes did anything, it cleaned the place up as well as out.
Apparently they have moved to LW, where it's still "too hard" to take a base.
If 50 cents a day for full access is too much then you are either a very casual gamer who doesn't really care anyway or you don't need to be spending the money.
Now if you are that casual gamer that is willing to pay less for less access and maybe not actually play then it's just free money in Hitech's pocket.
wrongway