I don't believed in business method that milking few rich players and ignore the mess I never saw any good company doing that.
Gameforge are one of the most successful EU publishers of many games and have been especially successful with their added gambling components they add to their games. There is no question that only a small percentage of richer players support the majority in F2P gamers.
You can say that makes them a bad company along with many others, except we should be aware that they are doing it to make as much profit as possible and more and more online gaming companies will become under more strict future regulations to protect the younger unsuspecting public.
I love your analysis that we will find out if Aion will close when they report their earnings, there are signs that it is becoming less viable to support and maintain but I still believe it's in better shape than 5.0 so some change was absolutely necessary.
There has been speculation and doomers for years almost from beta saying it's finished but it has not happened yet.
Aion has been one of the more successful large mmorpg's which have been mostly superseded by mobile games but there is still a place for them in the future.
By the way I do very much agree with you if they kept some of the good things like luna recipes and older skins it would improve the game.
Where things could also be improved if they took a close look at some of the players input that Galeas forwarded and provided some updates or feedback to show that they really do care about what players want with requested features that won't effect their income..it would make a huge difference!