Answer me this, Why is the best WWII air combat game ever made (Aces High) losing players to other games all the time ? Why do the numbers continue to drop? Why do new players not even finish out their free two weeks?
You say "best WWII air combat game" as if this was an objective fact, which it is not. It's a highly subjective assessment, and not few players would disagree with you and name other titles.
Individual players leaving a game is pretty much standard. Few players stick with a title for years, even in the best times AH probably had an average player subscription retention more measured in months than years, if at all. Almost everything gets boring after some time, unless a title goes great lengths of introducing new toys, challenges, gameplay options all the time.
AH went way behind the curve over the years and didn't keep up with many developments. Outdated GUI appearance, changed expectations in accessibility, new topics&themes appealing to new generation of gamers ('best WWI air combat' doesn't help that much when fewer and fewer gamers are fascinated by that topic at all), a (perceived?) lack of development and evolution, much more overall competition in online gaming, unpopular pricing model... There are lot of things that can have contributed to the decline of numbers.
As the steam release mercilessly showed, most new trials didn't even stick around for half an hour. Apparently they weren't driven away by runners or 'lame BnZ' all the time, they never even got that far to complain about the gameplay.
And that's been AH's biggest problem, I think - the lack of initial appeal to new players. I actually did greatly underestimate this myself, until AH's steam release.
