actually 50,000 is perfectly reasonable... dude Undertale was funded by $50,000 and it's a small pixel rpg.
Literally just the software alone for professional game design can cost thousands. I know Maya is expensive af, so is Unity Pro as well as the full version of Unreal, Cryengine, etc. That stuff isn't all cheap.
Not to mention they have to pay their programmers, which can be very expensive- a single 3d model alone can cost $300+, imagine the programming for an entire game.(Some programmers may work free or cheap, yes, but those are very few and hard to find. I was pretty lucky to find Goss for MR.)
There's also the matter of server costs- they literally have to pay for server space. MMORPGs are really expensive to keep up unless it's something really small-scale and already programmed like IT servers.
Isles of Eventide is not an IT server, it is a full-scale MMORPG, of higher quality than World of Warcraft. It's going to need a lot of funding for its goals if it's going to come out anytime in the next decade. Now, I don't know much about IoE itself besides that, but to simply assume it's "robbing you of your money" just because it's asking for donations, with a high funding goal, is very ignorant and honestly insulting to the developers.
tl;dr MMORPGs aren't cheap to make. 50,000 is a perfectly reasonable goal if you consider equipment, server costs, programming costs, backer rewards, etc.
Have a little consideration.
