SE absolutely cares about the bottom line, and yes, I do remember the salvage bans. The difference is that they had a TON more subscribers than they have today. They even had that giant pool of RMT accounts to fall back on, these days they are barely functional by comparrison. 14 was a flop, 11 is dated and WoW is beating them both, despite being rather dated itself.

The other big difference is that salvage banned characters tried to get back in because the playstyle itself wasn't affected. Take away windower and I doubt more than maybe 5% would bother even trying to come back, because it's integral to their style as players. Optomistic view no, but realistic I think so...