It’s a f2p game, and like many f2p games it had a really big spike at the first month. People tried the game and didn’t like it therefore left it for good. It has nothing to do with skins or anything related with how game is managed. Those “millions of people” you mention didn’t even hit level50. So no they are not missing out on that money.
There has been some posts about skins and people wanting to buy skins. But you know those people who are posting on this forum are actually the minority of this game’s playerbase. Most people are content and they never visit forums.
Regardless whatever I say will be swayed by you with a witty remark like “your logic is faulty because you don’t share my view on the game” I’m sorry but the these are the facts you are overseeing and you’ll likely accept or quit at some point.
Because I have a lot of money and not much left in real life to spend it on. If I sit down to play a game and it has a cash shop and if there is anything I like it in, I buy it. I don’t care about the money. I’ve got the feeling when it comes to online game thats it doesn’t matter what you do if you don’t look good doing it lol. And when I see the multitude of skins in other regions, and then realize the skin I bought here for this new class when it releases is totally useless due to their inept planners/dev’s, well I have no problem voicing my displeasure and taking my money and time elsewhere.
You are outright wrong on every level and thats a fact. I own several businesses. You never fail to capitalize when you have the most eyes, foot traffic, attention etc. You don’t sit there and say to yourself, “no we won’t give maximum effort while the peak amount of people are interested in us, we’ll wait until we lose 90% of them THEN rollout our best of the best so that 1/100 of the people who would have originally spent money finally do” lol. Good god I seriously hope you never own or run a business in your life. And no business I have started or ever owned has ever lost 80-90% of its client base within 3 months of opening the doors or flicking the on switch. If it did I would have closed the doors because it would have meant the business was a failure and likely so was I for not doing the right things at the right times.
True ppl with who I am still playing Albion Online got to maybe 36-40 lvl and quitted or just started botting, thats how it looks like xd. Those millions will never return, no matter what they do or add.
Lost Ark lost more than 90% playerbase since start already, nobody will comeback deal with it. It was hype, hype gone for MMORPG is very good if it has 40k players in peak. Now we have 150-170k real players so its fantastic.
Clearly running a gaming company is different then running whatever business you do
for sure they dont care as money keep flowing and they give basicaly minimum effort 
ppls will keep in it as they spent serious moneys/amount of time already (specific case of stockholm syndrome), but taking advantage of it dosent mean buisnes model is good (for clients) beside that its working for money grabing as gaming industry is rather specific case generally
yea sure m8 
by this logic we can say wow is grate success as it have around 600-800k of players down from 10mln initially and ~2-4 milions in mid expensions till last “success” 
This is true, you can check it everytime after patch. 75% of peak are bots.
i know but i have problem with so its fantastic. part
assuming its not an an sarcazm i havent catch
Why ? 150k peak is great state why for you is bad ? 150k*24/4 ( lets say 4h is average daily play time) it means we have around 900k active players all over the world.
Destroyer didnt exist when Lawmaker first released. The skin wasnt designed within the timeline of Destroyer being a playable class at the time.
Some skins released are going to be older KR skins that didnt have a certain class at the time, so they wont be inclusive.
thats brave estimation
i find that hard to belive somehow
if we go by that logic its drop from 1,3 mln x 6 = ~8 mln on launch to ~900k now in 3 months
wow did it in 17 years and couple bad decision on the way, not mentioning couple scandals
btw there is plenty of things wrong with this game and thats meritum of the problem
- MM can throw you with 4 supports or none
- honing is pure gamble.
- suports strugle in solo content (that is 80% of the game) but they are godlike tier in group content.
- bots are going rampart.
- geting dc in argos/valtan, while your group take a kill, lock you out from loot for a week
- you cant get in second time, without loot, to help friends for instance.
and so one there is just plenty of QOL things everywhere + montisation is plain bad
Like I said NEVER start or manage a business in your life. There are certain things that are universal to ALL businesses. And that is losing 80-90% of your customer base in 3 months is never a good thing. And saving your “best” for AFTER when 80-90% of your customers leave in hopes of getting them back or that you’ll make as much as you would have with 1/10th the customers is total and complete failure to maximize your revenue. You’re wrong and just give up trying to argue it, and again never run start or run a business. You’ll doom it, your investors, your employees and fail you customers.
Ok that is the first tidbit of info I have heard that makes sense. So even in Korea the Lawmaker set for instance was released before the Destroyer class was? Makes slightly more sense now but you’d still think they’d update for future region releases.
No brave it has sense steam achv. counts everyone who has been at least online once so: 8,3% playerbase played more than 50 H it means that 91,7% quitted before, 3% reached 1300 GS … Do you really think a players who played less than 50h quitted due to bad managment ? When they had not even opportunity to face with anything ?
achievments are not really working good in this game (there are countles reports abut that on redit and here)
thats another thing to add to my list
i would not base my estimation on that
tbh yea, why not?
its not hard to have bad time with honing at break points without heavy reasearch done and reading that “its only getting worse at t3, better quit now” on forums is nothing rare
I from the other hand do not believe in teenagers’s conspiracy theories 
game have good gamplay, very good characters and balance, nice amount of skills to press on top of that,
rest is plain bad and in state of permanent alpha
im not sure where is conspiracy in bad designs and lack of polish all over everything that drive pls away over time
Not necessarily because Destroyer was not released on launched in our region. Not every skin is going to be inclusive of all classes if they happen to be older KR skins. It isnt worth Smilegates time and resources to update a year old skin to include all classes. Youll get plenty of other skins in the game that destroyer will be able to utilize. We are also getting region exclusive skins it seems too with the dawn skin line.
Since you fail to graps the reality I’ll make it simpler; when a f2p game gets released it gets hyped by influencers (streamers and youtubers) then tens of thousands people give it a try since its free. These f2p players usually try out the game and a hefty amount of players does NOT spend money on the first month. Anyone who is leaving the game during the first month are not their target audience.
Skins won’t help with people leaving the game because those who have left (80-90% you say) just didn’t like the game and unless you put a gun to their head you can’t make them buy anything.