I see many reasons behind this crisis, some of them are know for any DEDICATE player and I'll dont write about that here, but one that few in our community point it is:
the excesive growth number of player type I'M-ONLY-ENTER-IF-EVENT-GIVE-ME-SOMETHING
That type of player is not the one that any Massive Game must feed, but SDE is doing excessive.
Are you lossing players? First you must found and fix the reason, no trying to reinsert them blindly. Is like a boat with a hole and we try first at all to throw out water before closing the hole...
Instead we need a solid and regular mass of players, making the game a pleasure to play and in that issue all we are things to do: SDE debuggin the numerous tech obstacles to new and old players, and Players being better as community so all want to play with good and well maned people. I see too many bad traits to new players in this game, acting like we have players in excese when is that our worst issue here.