AA rtw desk? Must be a new rule - I booked space for an unticketed segment a couple of weeks ago without any charge; agent told me to call back (with additional routing changes) when I was ready, and she'd set up the reissue.

OTOH if you book an unticketed segment, the carrier doesn't really like to hold the space forever (although a good agent can easily handle that for you), and paying the fee will lock it in the official way. Looking at it that way, it's to the pax' advantage to be able to make a change, pay the fee, and have a month to make additional changes for the same fee, if I understood OP correctly.

BTW there's certainly no concensus that e-tickets are better than paper. Even the knowledgeable guys who were at first the most positive have recognized some important shortcomings as they surfaced through more use of the e-ticket.

Personally the only advantage I see is that they're theoretically easier to re-issue (because the airline actually keeps the details on-line, which their antiquated software can't do for paper). But even that premise has been poked at by recent postings suggesting iirc that e-ticket reissues work okay with the airline that issued them, while other carriers can't always access the details they need.