3.5 months... 4 months... 4.5 months... 5 months...

[sharknado]

Take a break is just an excuse for poor development cycle. Why this is sub based mmo then?

Many "gamers" are adults with a job, often a family, and kids, and don't have the time nor interest to invest a lot of time into a video game. That's one of the reasons why the game is getting full solo support as well. Some are crafting and pentamelding their Indagators sets (which takes around 10 000 years) while some show the middle popoto to it and will just get the scrip set at 6.4 that will work similarly (yet slightly weaker) at a fraction of the time needed to acquire. Not to mention "plot watchers" that show up for expansion launch and then some major patches and after that, they are gone. Thus as in any game, the number of people at the very top will be small while the number of people close to the bottom will be the highest and so it's not really feasible to constantly dump more hardcore content for 24/7 players while most of your player base (income sources) is slotted way lower.