Why is Yoshi P turning his back on the playerbase that loves this game the most?

[Shai]

I'm not sure that even if every Legacy player actually liked the game, we'd have been enough to keep it alive.

No, definitely not. The poll basically asked "should I fix this game" or "should I make a new game."
I voted "fix the game" and most of my friends (less than 1% of the player base, I'm sure) voted "fix the game."
Then results were posted and "Make a new game" won by an alleged landslide - according to Yoshida.

It was weird to me - like voting for Al Gore and him winning the popular vote but waking up the next day and George Bush is President!

No, speaking seriously - I realize that I was in the minority but I also realized in that moment - Who looked at the poll results? Who tallied them? Who is reporting on them? There's a reason elections (outside of China) aren't run this way. The person running the poll controls all the information and thus can present any results that suit his agenda. Maybe his agenda all along was to build ARR, and the poll was just to make us feel like it was our grand idea. Maybe. Who knows? You don't know. I don't know. That's the inherent flaw of a secret ballot without any checks or balances in place. The results are subject to the whims of the poll taker.

Again, I restate, I'm not saying it was a good or bad decision to take 1.0 in a new direction and make ARR. Obviously, it was financially successful, and obviously -subjectively- to SE that's "a good direction" but is it what fans wanted? Who can really say? I can't and neither can Fizzle.