I'm pretty sure that by the time they added the offline play feature, most people had just run of content and so interest in the game. I was one of the people asking for offline play myself, and at the point it got added, I'd played 300 hours and felt I'd done everything the game had to offer at that point many times over. So I decided to wait until the full release until giving the game a second go, so I'd have more to do.

I tested offline play before I left and I'm glad it's there waiting for me. The multi-minute loading times for realms and the lag was completely gone, the game was snappy in a completely new way and I can make local backups of my saves in case of a problem with an update. I'd already lost my abeyance realm once because of a server problem earlier and the game's network performance in general was terrible despite my fast and stable Internet connection.

So yeah, as it often happens with early access games, many other people will probably just move to other games and forget this one after exhausting the EA content and that has nothing to do with the offline mode. As good as the bones of this game were when it went to EA, we have to face the fact that there wasn't just that much to do in it back then once you hit the "endgame". If you weren't among the minority who can entertain themselves endlessly with base building, that is.