We understand how you feel as a couple of us have expressed those exact same feelings on behalf of the players. But we recently decided that closing would be best suited due to how things have seemed. And we returned to that conclusion that we expressed earlier when we found the decreased involvement of our players and do not wish to go out a slow and painful death.
Unless we see a great difference in the near future that returns us to the time when people were more active, involved and creating plots on their own, we cannot maintain this community all on our own. There's a limit to what any mod can do to keep a game alive and kicking. This game has cycled through a handful of mods but we all feel it's more responsible to offer everyone a chance to wrap up and move on to freeplay with some ending than, for lack of a better phrase, beating a dead horse.
If our players have some serious and dedicated plans, we are more than willing to hear them out and we will put our whole effort into trying to work out something. But we do need to see players giving it their all to do so.