My humble opinion on Nexon's path.

Well, do you count all the gold farmers or not? They probably contribute to half the online characters at any time, maybe more.

I can't figure out who buys from gold farmers though. Is it the same people who bought hacked VSSes and Raccoon Masks? People who just don't think about the consequences of giving their money to hackers? (ie. that more hackers flock to the game to sell hacked pomegranate to them and generally wreck up the game)

Well playerbase =/= accounts. But yes, as you pointed out the number of active accounts that are involved in hacking should definitely be more than half.