New Accounts and Losing Veterans Over Time.

You could be losing random accounts that were older, of people who rarely if ever played in the first place, and were never "veterans" at all, except for the fact of their starting date.

Someone who plays a couple hours every month, who's basically a weekend warrior, never gets involved in anything, has no karma, stays under the radar, doesn't post on the GDB, has no "fans" or kudoses, has nothing of note in their account notes, has no players on his buddy list, doesn't have "the map" or any other files that get passed around, and doesn't really give a shit - isn't a "veteran."

But we have no way of knowing whether these types exist, or how many of them there might be. You are concluding that there's something nefarious going on, when in fact nothing nefarious might be going on at all. Also, some people get older and simply stop being interested in muds. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with Armageddon. It means some people grow out of mudding.

It also could include people who used to play Arm back when it was a H&S, who never really intended to play an RPI but got caught up in it for awhile, played sometimes while it was an RPI, and eventually went back to their H&S roots. Or maybe it was people who were big fans of Halaster, and now that he's long gone, it just isn't the same for them anymore. Or maybe they were pals with Sanvean and only started playing because of her, and now that she's gone, they have no reason to stick around.

Fact remains, you have no idea why people leave, or how many of them were "veterans" and how many were just people who created accounts and poked around and left without ever learning anything about the game at all.