I'd be interested to see what percentage of income is from lvl and xp scrolls, I imagine it's below half. We know the grind is the problem, we also know that without it NGD will potentially become profitless. There *might* be a solution though!
All new players start with a level 50 of their choice (maybe throw in a special lucky box that's guaranteed ro give something useful (from a small list of items - not fantastic but targeted to the players sub class eg. Cs gloves for conj, attack speed legs for archer etc.)). Then if they want a second character they have to buy scrolls or boost to avoid the long grind. This would require NGD to ban more than 1 account per machine/IP etc, which would in turn ban multirealming, which is good in my eyes.
Lets be honest lvl 50 - 60 is what? 75% of the total xp? So chances are people will still buy xp scrolls for these levels anyway.
So NGD, new business model for you. Get many more people playing, have higher player retention, make marginally less money per player. Frosk|Adrian any chance you'll respond to this?