They can't be this stupid, so I think that they are intentionally letting the player base shrink to reduce server costs.
For every player who quits because of this shit, another will fall for it and spend double their sub on average for microtransactions, but they make more money because of less support staff/electricity needed.
They are also testing the limits of how many expansion features and patches are needed, they can afford to lose players if dev costs go down. Shadowlands is the first without a new race/class, has the least number of zones ever and the least number of dungeons.
I want think that this isn't sustainable and it will crash and burn soon, but people still play Everquest and that's profitable somehow.
They also already have the memberberries in all the old players (see Classic success) so they can rely on new releases still getting massive sales as people return to check things out.
This is the model of capitalism that is destroying the west, where things technically make more money but quality of life for everyone else decreases.
Certaintly no intelligent person should be taking part in this, with an established MMO in FF14 still offering a full feature set, new MMOs like New World releasing or on the horizon and good quality F2P games like Genshin Impact doing what Blizzard is moving towards already.
Never underestimate MMO players! New World seems to have stabilized around 90-100k players, at least for the last 30 days. Despite an (arguably) even more incompetent staff making awful decisions. That one lacks a sub, and the shop is garbage, not sure how they'll make $$$ but like you said, even EQ makes a profit. WoW can lose 95% of their playerbase and still keep the lights on, just by re-releasing Classic at regular intervals (this keeps the lights on at EQ2 too lol)
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