No, the game will keep losing players over time just like any other mmorpg we have out there
It´s not nearly the same situation as for all other mmorpgs out there. AIONs first turn was the same situation as for all other mmorpgs but AION classic is the second (and last) chance for AION and GAmeforge (and the natural outcome) screwed so many things:
- the enourmos bot problem they don´t handle
- the kinah income problem that is calculated by Gameforge
- the AP gain problem
- Tahabata as a second really underpopulated server
- the technical problems
- and the natural run of things that lots of people are disappointed because they check, that AION classic isn´t the old AION they new (not to blame Gameforge here).
This and more is why AION classic already lost plenty of players and why should already disappointed players invest more time and money in a new patch 2.0? Sure, you satisfy those who wanted 2.0 from start but you dissappoint those, who wanted and want 1.9 or less, so its a zero sum game for player numbers with a slight variation up or down.
mostly agree with u with one expection of bots. I think gameforge handled bots very well. They reduced world drops and kept droprate in instances which is one of the best protections against bots (unpopular opinion).
They set kinah limit nearly impossible to reach by a normal player (with real life) but against a good protection against bots.
All this makes it "too hard" for botters and they rather choose other games to bot in.
Check this video:
if u compare it to world of warcraft, aion is almost bot-less !!!
If you want to play MMORPG without bots, on an official server, then dont play mmorpg because they are totally everywhere and gameforge handles this war perfectly.