Also, the fact that they were not ready to merge servers immediately is also baffling. Why are they self sabotaging so severely? I guess we really do live in an era of pump and dump. So many players are going to leave forever because they are stuck on a dying server. This game relies heavily on a healthy, balanced population, but not too overpopulated with huge queues and no nodes to gather. It's almost impossible to thread and the only way to do it is with aggressive mergers, and even that sucks because somebody is going to lose their towns.
Had they been dropping huge patches every week like they should have been, and had mergers ready from the start, I don't think they'd have lost half of what they've already lost. And they're just going to keep losing more. You have to really love this game for some strange reason (I do still, and I have no idea why, there's just something about it, but I can see why so many don't) to stick around for all this bullshit and lack of content. Then you have to be on a good server and with a good faction. There's way too many stressers that just make you say "eh, fuck it, I'm done."
Like, they aren't even selling that much on the cash shop? What the actual fuck is going on?