Patience Gilder, we do not simply murder people out of spite, we deliver divine retribution.
As for the subject matter at hand?
The game has always had roughly 100-200 players online at any given time, and it has been like this since the game came out one fall afternoon during a hurricane. It's not that you have to pay for the game that puts people off but rather the fact that this is a rather niche game, but that is another discussion topic altogether.
This game will never be DOTA 2, LoL, or TF2 which can subsist entirely on selling hats and etc. to think it can is quite ludicrous.