Wolfram: Who is losing their progress here - the 10 people online? Should we just wait till that's 5? 0?
This server failed, hard - can we admit that? Good. It went from 700 to 10. It's done. Show's over.
Players like to start new/fresh (source: I ran VZTZ during its peak, have actually played previous red servers). If you launched with other features (adjusted exp) and an actual timeline, then players would want to start up here again. You label the past eight months as extended beta, which is what it has been, and write this off as a one-time only thing. Player trust isn't impacted because, again, no one is playing right now.
Still wouldn't work without active devs who care though. LoZ shitbox has that. This one doesn't. And since I don't have a brilliant solution for getting people to actually care:
http://www.eqpvp.com/