In your war upon cred balance/ getting creds out of the game. S10 war. You did exactly what you usually do, cater to a few set of people and screw everyone else.
After returning from 6 months training to find myself trying ot pay for my city buy doing something I can do semi afk. Usually this would be going to s10 with my very pricy twink, now i have nothing to do and I need to make creds, without wasting to much time. I went from a addict to a casual gamer.
As Far as i can see the s10 nerf did nothing but drop AO population more than 50%.
The only reason i got expansion was because I saw that s10 was a sure way to make creds being paid without having to depend on anyone, wait on anyone and pretty much is the result of your skill to stay alive.
Ao is about choice, bring back the choices, you don't have choices in weapons anymore cause almost all rk and dungeon ones are dreadful.
It may not be a perfect solution, but you need a way for casual gamers to make creds without spending to much time. With s10, it was someplace where you could see actually progress.
Even though the engine and graphics update will bring back alot of people, if the known problems aren't fixed people will just leave again. Ao didnt survive long because it was a beautiful game, it lasted cause of its content.