Two big factors plagued last nights event. The Rift Beta (Most of the big destro crews are moving to rift. All out Assault, Acolytes, Knights of the White Wolf, Agony, and a few others all confirmed). And the Superbowl. I know many have already cancelled their accounts in preparation for RIFT's launch.
I know a lot of players are trying to make RIFT out to be another Aion, however the big difference here is the game isn't build to make arseholes Gods. People wont have the same negative feeling with it. The other thing is the game is designed to be released in chapters. Theres going to be major content / story packs every 3 months (think LoTR or DDO). So every 3 months there'll be something new to play with. Aion was overly grindy. RIFT is not. I've leveled up my character to 25 playing a couple hours a week just PvPing. It's super easy to level up. We had our first 50's in the family on Alpha just a few days after getting in the alpha. Rumor has it you can pull off 1 to 50 in 56 hours. The PvP content is quite fun and should be amplified with the launch of Port Scion (The Zone).
The bottom line is, Rift is not a fail product like Aion. People aren't going to bounce over there and bounce right back. And the Damage that war suffers in that time is going to be unrepairable. I was hoping Mythic would do something to make us stay but that simply doesn't look like its going to happen. I think there are darker times on the horizon to come. We will do our best to stick it out and hopefully find a good fight somewhere. But I think nights like last night are going to become the norm.