I'm not too surprised that the typical game forum community treats anyone that leaves as a traitor. What surprised me is I know the OP. I played a few times with him and he's a skilled player.

I feel there's something fundamentally wrong with this patch's ability to retain players. It could be just my server, however I see a lot less active players. The population decrease is sort of masked by the removal of the 30 minute logout feature.

In my opinion if the current quality continues all there will be left is a niche group like 1.0 and FFXI.