if it was 40,000 then everyone would be riding around on horses and heavy armor and a bunch of craziness.
On their STF random "lets try a build" chars? Am I the only one who don't see an issue in someone trying out a build requiring expensive equipment for a few days?
BTW: I make a new STF once a week, and for me, being high level but having to grind is even worse than the low level fun, on my current STF I spent a few hours naked with an Italian Falchion, saving up for a warspear, some cheap body armor (the white surcoat over mail), and a hounskull bascinet, grinding with a high level char is 100 times more frustrating than playing on my level 12 alt with a leather jacket, a longsword, and a black hood, heck I even enjoyed playing without yet distributing stats getting (three in total on this char with 0 stats) kills with my khyber knife on the same alt, but on my stfs by the time I'm done grinding them I just feel so damn tired of them I don't play them no more... (on my dueling twohander stfs I even only grind my slightly above medium armor and just spawn with a sickle and loot, and even doing this small grinding on a high level char leaves a sick taste in my mouth)
I say give STFs 100k... (if upkeep is the issue then remove all but 5k of their cash three hours after STF creation so we don't get upkeep escapists) I don't wanna grind when I'm trying out a new build...
And the only STF grinding didn't make me so sick of that I never used the build on an alt or my main, a level 25 alt, with gold, respec'd and STF'd it, that alt was Serpeant_Zlisch_The_Slippery, AKA, my first horse thrower.