*Trying-to-stay-on-topic* Right. There are a couple avenues to increased profit without lower population; driving in new traffic (with ads and an updated frontpage, with custom frontends for playerworlds so they can bring in their own subscribers, with an official newbie-friendly world/hub, a global quest), or selling new products (expansion packs for maybe $5 a pop...just because the Neverwinter people decided this or that had to be on CD rather than downloaded as a patch doesn't make it any different, Graal could sell pre-download packages and unlock Optional dungeons. Ideally even give the developers a tiny slice of the profits, and/or a discount on the next server fee).
Another idea in the New Traffic direction:
What about a Hub World?
Either do away with the server list, or put a single basic server at the top. Set it up like Graalympus was, with support for different ganitypes from different servers...a bunch of different warp gates (a different style for different servers...start out with just one or two basic ones, let the servers submit "better" ones)...then use global strings to pass their appearance in when people warp off their server to the Hubworld.
Example: Tyhm jumps to the Hubworld from Kingdoms (pressing F8, or maybe Pressing F8 and choosing Hubworld). He steps out of the warpgate as a Kingdoms character, using the Kingdoms ganis. He walks around, trades in some Global Gralats for a beer, advises a class of newbies on running-away strategies, hops through the Classic gate. Loads up his Classic character, plays through a few dungeons, hops back on Hubworld - now he's a Classic character. Plays a few flash games, plays checkers against a guy from Korea who doesn't have an english keyboard so they have to communicate via pictographs ("pawn?" "
" "-> chair!" "
" "black/white?" "white." "white first" *move move move move* "white king!! (check)" *move* "white king falls" "
" "handshake"), then he goes to the Zone Transporter Room, where he teleports out all Star Trekky. On Zone he teleports in looking like a Zone character, holds a fort or something...jumps back to the Hub looking like a Zone character still...