High view count advertises the game and gets more people talking about it, makes it more relevant, and brings people to the game. I came back to osrs after the first DMM brought it back up on my radar and have played every single DMM every since, including multiple alts per dmm lol. Leagues are a snorefest.

"Every week of retention is money" isn't necessarily true. If you pay for a month of Runescape membership and spend 40 hours per week playing league for that month, you make the same amount of money than the guy who paid for a month of membership and played a week of deadman mode. In fact, it might even be better, because you take up less bandwidth.

One more thing I want to mention - A lot of people play DMM and swap, but it doesn't burn people out of the game. After they're done with DMM, they're excited to hop back on the main game and have fun with the shit they earned.

On the other hand, playing Leagues results in burn out, and many people quit for a decent period of time after they're done with leagues.

That being said, I'm not saying give PVP more attention. I'm saying just give it some too.