You keep bringing this up like it means anything. People do not continue to play MMOs when they've exhausted all the content that is currently available. They never intended to keep the server running post 2.0, they only offered to keep the server up to hold people over in the mean time between the end of 1.0 and beta/alpha tests for 2.0. If SE announced that the next expansion was going to require the same steps that were taken between 1.23b and 2.0, no one would play past the cut off date either. I am quite confident that if 1.0 players knew that what they were getting was a by the numbers tomestone grind simulator there would have been quite a bit of push back, and if given the option of playing a classic server (maybe in the way that Runescape Classic operates) they would be rather happy to play that.
