It's obvious that SoE wants to try to rescue this game, they are putting a lot of time and money into updates and maintenance. So I don't think they are going to close it down any time soon. I say, invest, invest, invest! Get your friends to invest. Get the game popular.

The only reason it's dying is because people are afraid that it is and are then fearful of investing their time and money in it. If all of the people who are actually interested in the game started to play it, it would be a huge boost to it's player base. After that it would just snowball.

The game certainly needs some graphical love. But I would rather play a game with good mechanics and crappy graphics over a game with good graphics and crappy mechanics.

I don't have time to really play any more games, between school and work all of my time is pretty much taken up, but if I were to casually play an MMO, Vanguard is at the top of my list.