Back then, when they started the Kickstarter campaign, there were not many people who even knew the game was in the making, because there was not much of a PR to speak of.
The original backers that got the game started consisted of a bunch of fans of the original Elite games, some of which had waited years for the next title, most who didn't believe it'd ever come but yet never gave up that dream.
This demographic now consists of middle aged and elderly people with high, disposable income -> can spend huge amounts of cash on hobbies.
Let's be realistic, the older you get, the less you feel comfortable with certain things your kids like. Online is one such thing. Mobile phones would be another example.
A good amount of this demographic would not have pledged for an always-online-Elite, as much as they loved the old games, because online was not acceptable.
All those people are now ineligible for a refund and raise a stink.
Then there are people who have great internet just around the corner - but not at home, and no plans by the responsible companies to expand there. You don't have to live in Somalia to experience that. There are such areas everywhere in the world, take, for example, Australia. Heck, even countries like Germany, in the center of Europe, are still not connected 100%. No, tethering is not an option - I bought a smartphone when I was 38! Never liked the idea to be available for anyone who feels like disturbing me where ever I am with me being unable to fake to have "missed that call".
There do exist offline people, or people with severe traffic limits or really shabby connections (and by that I mean unable to retrieve emails level shabby).
Those people won't be able to play the game at all and depended on an offline mode.
I'm living in Japan, and Diablo 3 has maintenance on Wednesday, my ONLY day off, during my prime time, for 6 hours. This, among other things, like DDOS attacks like EVE experienced only lately, or other connectivity issues, can never be outruled as long as the game is online, and online-only. And I may even be lucky, because at least I CAN connect once a week to play a bit - but not much, because I gotta get out of my bed the next day early. On my days off my wife wants my attention, plus I generally do a lot of the stuff like going to the city hall for papers, or to the bank, or whatever. Would not be cool to lock me out of the game because they're applying hotfixes or doing maintenance or some bored idiot somewhere decided to flood their servers right that day. But well, a week later I might get a chance. But what about people like my dad, who worked as a cook on a ship? No offline mode means, no playing throughout the 6 months on the ship. Then he could play a while, then he'd be locked out for half a year again.
Well, he was never interested in games, let alone computers, and he's dead since 2000, but other people do experience such situations, like soldiers, or oil platform workers. Those surely will be pretty annoyed by this twist.
Then think further. 10, 15 years, when Frontier has to close because they just tripped up with a project and went bankrupt. IF they even remember the promise to release a server for the game, how many employees will even care? Or actually sit down to do it? Can we trust in Frontier to keep this promise? After all, they just broke the off line promise, right? Now, even if you play some semantics and say they didn't exactly promise offline (and I won't pursue this further here), the point stands:
There's no GUARANTEE there will be a way to play ED in 20 years.
Well, quite a lot of the original backer bunch won't live to see this day maybe, and all the now-20s will by then live our life and experience how it is to feel like Xmas the day before you have off and can sit down to play a bit - maybe. If the stars are aligned.
