After talking to Karl, we think the game probably only has two years more of the over-arching plot, max, and a year whizzes by pretty quickly. We have a playerbase of around 100 people. The game was still chugging forward perfectly fine back when it only had 30-40 people. We'd have to lose more than half the playerbase to really push us below a number where it wouldn't continue moving forward, and that could happen over a significant length of time, but probably won't happen in just a year or two.

I know a lot of people are off the opinion that the game would die if we didn't keep a certain number of players, but we had no problems when the game was half the size and not many new appers were coming in. If we only have a year or two left, we'll probably be fine with the mods choosing a compromise option like they have.