The current low player counts are the result of a mixture of different things: - Fatigue with the repetitive Seasonal/Episodic content model. - The decision to drop all of each Act's content on release (people just log in for a couple of hours to play the new stuff and then dip until the next Act releases.) - The game's story feeling kind of directionless right now since the Witness is dead and the next major story thread hasn't been revealed yet. - The removal of crafting for this Episode's weapons and tonics being bugged/generally unreliable. - The Dawning releasing in an incredibly buggy and broken state (as well as just being a fairly boring grindy event that's light on actual content compared to the other events we have.) - The game being generally unapproachable to new players due to lack of guidance, vaulted content, and high buy-in cost if you want access to everything. - The release of other big games (Marvel Rivals, Path of Exile 2, etc.) drawing peoples' attentions away. - The fact that the game is 10 years old and people are just naturally slowly going to lose interest after that long.