The reasons are many and varied.
This is stated and restated often. IF this is true, why are other game companies who have been around a long time, maybe not as long as HTC, but close on 10 years now, thriving and increasing their player base, while HTC has been down arrow for the last 4 years in that department? You can't blame it on the "multitudes" of reasons and lay no blame at the feet of HTC - as everyone fondly says, it's THEIR company. Their choice to make NO changes in the last 4 years in terms of gameplay mechanics. THEIR numbers that continually have declined. These "many varied reasons" must not apply to other companies who have increased their numbers consistently, to the point of having hundreds of thousands, because many of them seem immune to these "many varied" reasons for player numbers declining. Why is that? No change + no significant improvement = stagnation, and that is the largest reason players have drifted away IMO.
Again, other online games of similar monthly cost are able to keep people constantly interested by constant innovation and positive attitude towards their customers, even, no especially towards the squeeky wheels. This IMO is the other reason that greatly contributes to the decline in members in the last 1/4 of the lifespan of the HTC company.
One thing I will say is that all this stuff around 12 hour rules, player numbers, and such, probably have simple explanations. HT has been quoted from these pages as saying long term players aren't nearly as important to the business model as newly acquired players, especially for their 1st year of playing. This is understandable, as new players are more dedicated, excited, and more likely to bring in other friends to the revenue stream, where as long term players are more likely to cause problems. This also makes long term players less valuable - in all respects. Based on this I don't think HT or Skuzzy lose a wink of sleep over PNGing a long term player, or having him leave the game. Unfortunately the ripple effects of this happening are hard to predict IMO, as many friends and squadmates tend to form and hold a grudge after events like this.
Here is a very interesting, and telling post HT made a while back:
Profit is the only goal and the equation Profit = Total Recipe - Total Cost is really the only equation. There is in reality NOTHING else to consider.
But understanding the equation above is more complex than can be described in a book. Cost is not just a $ amount, you must also consider the time frame of of the profit. I.E. What is your profit over many years vs just this year. This adds the complexity when you start asking, can I sustain a profit when just looking at the short term vs long term effects of lower $ cost. It may be that you are saving a $ but the productivity and training cost increase down the road more then the original savings.
There are also times when nothing is more important then short term profit because in business cash is king. If you run out of cash the company will most likely fold very quickly. Hence thinking long term can also explode the company.
Personal satisfaction also ends up in the same basic equation, because with out it , the drive to make the profit larger is liking to leave very soon.
HiTech
That last sentence tells it all IMO. Personal satisfaction. It's my guess, and only a guess, that this feature of the company probably changed for HTC over time. Less satisfaction = less changes and improvements. Combined with real life, adding wife, children, and the usual stuff that happens over time, satisfaction starts arriving from other sources. Then the place where some of that came from (AH) originally starts to suffer for it. It's normal and common. Still, it doesn't make the customers all that happy.
That said, I think HTC is back on the "good old days" track, and we'll see it sooner than later. I hope. Perhaps the low numbers created enough urgency for the new update to come along, perhaps HTC sought some of that personal satisfaction with AH back, perhaps a number of things. Whatever the case may be, I think that the new update will bring in more numbers, and that alone will improve things a great deal, in the short term especially.
edit- This post is from years ago from HT, I keep most of the interesting ones over the years. It's funny because it's true (imo). Just to give a bit of the other side of the argument.
Believe me when I say been there done that got the tee shirt on pre anouncing contriverial changes. JB88, remember I have been CEO of an online flight sim company since 1995 (- 2 years of wild bill hell).
Have built 2 of them starting from scratch. And while I'm always looking for better ways of doing things.
I have learned a hell of a lot what does and does not work. And also I am constantly reavaluating that knowledge.
One of the things I have learned is that , a pure marketing type person interacting with the community is an absolute night mare . W
They typically do far more damage than you could ever imagine. There problem is that a marketing / sales type personality is very much driven by telling people what they want to hear. While this works for a short time, in the end it really breaks down the trust of gamer vs game maker. And from then on anything the marketing person saises is just viewed as pure hype, and ignored. Go look at WB as a classic example of how to destroy player relations.
When you have a product that all of your customers communicate with each other on a daily basses, it creates an entirely different beast than other type industries.
HiTech