Beat me to it. A free trial is absolutely not a sign of desperation. It's a way to get people 'in the door'. There are people who will immediately ignore any game that's an MMO. I used to be that way. I'd played all the Warcrafts, Diablos, Starcraft, and loved them all, but not really looked into WoW. This was a few months after it came out. Then a couple of mates were like: you have to see World of Warcraft, it's so fun. So I watched them play for a bit, and they showed me all the stuff to do, and after watching for about 30 minutes, the whole time thinking, oh this looks awesome fun, I went straight to EB and bought it.
MMOs are typically quite addictive. 10 days is plenty enough to get hooked.