Not sure how much longer this can go on. Warning: Speculation to follow.
With 8,000-10000 subscribers back in the day, gross monthly income would have been on the order of $120k or an an estimated 1.4 mil annually. After taxes and facility/server schtuff you'd be looking at perhaps 1 million net if you were lucky and splitting that at least 10 ways. Those were the good days. Not sure what current subscriber numbers are looking like now, but if the player base has dropped by 2/3, so has revenue. That would also indicate an avg employee paycheck dropping from 100k/yr to a little over 30k. That is a pretty devastating cut. There are multiple reasons to resist change. (More speculation)
1. You're stubborn. The way you'll do it is the way you've done it. <-Period.
2. You don't need the money. Make the game better when you feel like it, if you feel like it. Some small businesses/LLCs can actually experience a net benefit by being at the top of one tax bracket vs being on the low end of a higher tax bracket.
3. You've done the maths and you can't see a way to change your business model without making things worse. F2P usually fails.
4. Organizational panic and paralysis. The need to "do something now" on multiple fronts leads to little or no action on any front.
Pure speculation. None of the above theories appears to be particularly preferable from a game/player standpoint. Hate to see that the game has continued a slow death
