HTC have a limited number of staff. As with all companies, they need to make decisions as to where best to deploy those staff in order to forward the business. Right now, I'm pretty sure there's a lot more on the list of things they'd like to do than can be done with the staff available. That includes new maps. And the only way they are going to add more staff is to bring more money in the door. As far as I can see, there are three ways to do that:
1. Attract more subscribing customers to the game. If anyone has ideas on how to do that whilst keeping the marketing outlay similar to what it currently is, I'm sure HTC would love to hear (actually, that might make an interesting thread).
2. HTC can seek an investor to inject cash in to the business. The current economic climate is not particularly conducive to that and in any case, doing so would potentially open a whole can of worms that would be bad for both HTC and us as players.
3. HTC can increase monthly subscriptions. I'd be willing to pay a bit more per month, but I suspect I'm in a minority on that. Would a subscription increase actually have a negative effect by driving players away?
Out of curiosity, how long has the subscription been $15pm? I've been here 3 years now and there's been no increase in that time.