This has been stated several times before with hundreds of threads collecting dust revolving around the same thing, but might as well add my perspective since I rarely post anything in forums anymore. The game is not dying, but as others have said it's in a state of limbo. GH is a game museum company that preserves the servers to keep them up and running so I assume in my part they're just ensuring the game stays running, so I don't expect any major content updates or such. Who knows though, I don't know much on how these museum companies work since we did receive a bit of content under them such as Gunner Update and the later story missions iirc.

I enjoy playing this game as well, but because of no new level content for some time (new stages, bosses, story expansion, DLC's like OCH, etc.) it keeps me from actually playing the game long term. I will come back at times to run prestige missions and some of the event ones, but because I played this game for a decade now it becomes very repetitive; stuff like Tortodrones and Apocrea to annual things like Winterfest become dull after a while. I've already got what I needed from those events and since nothing new comes out from them, it's usually just mission running but even then as stated that gets repetitive. Though some may ask: Why not just farm the events to sell the unbinded things that come with it? Well for that I won't spend thousands of hours playing the same thing again and again when I know it'll come out again with not much change. It's true with the 10th anniversary as well and I wasn't surprised when they released the same thing as usual, though the surprise would've been for most people that one thread that almost everyone talked about but I won't dive into it.

Playerbase is low. Before Steam release it had a moderate amount but not enough like the major games out there, and once it was released on Steam did it go up. Eventually though after time it started dwindling due to, you guessed it, lack of content. Whatever remaining players that are left I would say with almost 90% of the players can speed run FSC proficiently (not gonna bother with the other three bosses since it's probably cakewalk already), can do DaN without Shivermist or any CC weapon, has at least one BK piece (helm and/or armor), has ungodly UV's on their items, and most likely already have almost every meta item in the game that isn't a Somnambulist Totem or Mixer/Orbitgun (I apologize for the confusing syntax for the first part of of the sentence but this is assuming the majority of players). They can up the game and do SL's but at that point I can assume that even after the slight nerf it is soloable now, but I won't say more than half of the players can solo because I would assume their tactics are hardlocked onto the levels they normally do everyday which doesn't transition to SL's.

On my part, I've had up's and down's when it came to getting to know the playerbase in which at the end I lost almost all my friends due to bad habits/inactivity, but for me it's fine since we all must go our separate ways. I'm also assuming I have a bad reputation going on right now because of several reasons I won't state, but considering how low the playerbase is and that I don't play it much anymore, it doesn't affect me much. Away from that, the amount of players unless you have tons of friends in there does correlate to whether you have a great experience playing the game repetitively or not. Doing the same levels again and again with people you know may up the enjoyment a bit but in the end, it's the same thing everyday. Finally it's been said several times before, but most of the community is pretty toxic as well but I won't go into that.

Communication between the devs and players is iffy right now as many can tell. No good communication means we're all lost in the woods trying to figure out whether they'll be doing anything or not. Even if we volunteer our services to them it wouldn't work because they're not accepting anyone to which in turn causes more players to leave or boycott the game. I'm not fully informed on what's going on recently but from prior experience I have seen this happen in several posts. Also to add towards the third paragraph, I'm also barely seeing any LD/BN matches happening anymore as well.

So it all leads to that question of "so now what?". Well in my POV, you're basically free to do whatever you want. Keep playing the game, sell things, make new friends, run levels, etc. No one's asking to keep playing the game because in the end, it's just something to keep us entertained. I'm in the same boat as well as I'm playing several others games and while SK does bring me back at times, the spark that I have with it is dwindling more as time passes on. For me, if the game goes then the games goes; I have spent a decade playing it and I enjoyed every moment that I did in it. I don't plan on selling/giving my stuff but when that time comes where the servers are shut down, then it was a pleasure playing it. That's my response to that question, and for others it'll be different to which I respect.

For the following questions:

1.) It'll sometimes break out of the loop but yes, people will spend absurd amounts just to keep themselves entertained with the latest accessories and whatnot. It's their money so there's no reason to ask them not to and if it doesn't help in updating the game with new things then it is what it is.

2.) Depends on how you see it. If the servers shut down then yes, everything is lost (unless they restart it or save a backup), otherwise the playerbase will just focus on whatever new thing occurs until that new thing either leaves or becomes dull and repetitive.

3.) Sometimes the devs do listen to the community, but it's very rare for what has been observed recently and in my perspective it's usually because of some issue going on. Can't give a good guess why but it's rare and is expected when the team is pretty small but who knows.

4.) When that happens, well it's pretty much done. Either GH makes a new game (doubt it since it's a museum company from what I know), releases the code to the public for general use (also doubt this), or does nothing.

5.) There's a ton of MMO's out there are either on par or better. Just depends where to look and what their interests are.

6.) Yeah I know about that mystery fact, but it's been a while so who knows. They could've released or teased it during the 10th anniversary but alas, nothing happened.

7.) Again if it dies, it dies. Those that played the game for a long time will keep it as a memory, but it will depend whether or not they were good or bad to which it'll correlate whether or not they even want to remember their experience playing the game.

Again there's been hundreds of threads about this so it's nothing new. If the game goes on then it goes on but if it doesn't, it doesn't. Some people are that attached to the game that they don't want to see it go and on my end, I'm a bit impressed that it even lasted a decade considering not much has happened. But yes for those that are really attached to the game, once that day comes and it shuts down they will have to face reality and find a new game to play. It'll stick with them sure but that doesn't mean one can't stop being inspired by it to do several things related such as fanart, fanfiction, roleplay, etc. So yeah, that's my two cents and I apologize if it is long and although I may have left out a couple of things, I don't plan on making this very long. Again this is coming from someone that played it two weeks after public release and I grew up playing this game, so my perspective may be taken seriously or not, but in the end it's just a game with pixels. ouob