How many people are REALLY still playing Maplestory?

I'm venturing a little off topic here, but I will never understand why this game goes through so much trouble to stop its players from having fun. Like, just look at all the limitations maplestory imposes upon its few remaining players. Everything's "one entry per day, two entries per day," and pqs are all "ten entries per day." Why can't I just go in however often I want? Are they worried I'll level too much? Who cares? After a certain point, there's NOTHING to do anyway; might as well let me zak nonstop. And then you have bosses with pre-quests out the ass, like Gollux -- jesus christ, over seven hours of fetchquests and uninspired kill quests to face a boss that I can only do once a day. Then you've got tomorrow's hot time, which might as well be nothing, and it's just -- I don't know. Do they want us to quit? I really think they want people to just stop playing. I want to enjoy this game, but there's something stopping me at every turn. Even when I start to have a little fun, the client crashes because of memory leaks.

I would say multiple reasons.

1) They actually don't want you to level too fast.
2) "This is why we can't have nice things" (ie., abuse)
3) Keep players engaged
4) Artificially boost numbers; explanation: Part of the reason we (probably) still have Hot Days/Times, 2x EXP/Drop events, and Attendance Events is so Nexon can be like "look how many people are playing". This kind of ties back to #3.