Just because a game doesn't have hundreds of thousands of players doesn't mean it's a failure, and they should have had plenty of money from all of their other MMOs to cover those updates they did to the game. From there, they could have moved most of the developers to another project and let it just sit and make money for them.

And if that wouldn't have worked, then frankly there was something lacking in the design.

And let me reiterate:

A successful MMO doesn't have to be measured by subscriptions. You just need to be pulling in more money than you're pushing out, just like any other business.