I used to have fun in World of Warcraft by telling people to type /played and then multiply that by the minimum wage.
If you look at the cost of labor involved involved (assuming real world wages for the time spent) in building a Titan the cost would be absolutely massive, even discounting the huge infrastructure requirements.
Good point, although as I understood it a lot of the actual time it takes to build the titan, is time spent waiting, and you do not have to be logged 8 hours per day for months at a time. This is at least very true for the "training" system in the game. You purchase a skill book, start training, and based on your characters stats the training will take a certain amount of time, no matter whether you are logged on or not.
Of course, as I believe someone else pointed out, you (or your alliance more like) need to guard the construction site while the Titan is being built -- so the cost of building one of these is definitely huge. I guess $1500 is a bargain, all things considered?
If you look at the cost of labor involved involved (assuming real world wages for the time spent) in building a Titan the cost would be absolutely massive, even discounting the huge infrastructure requirements.