Should MUDs evolve to attract new players, or stick to their past to keep the current ones?

I have played Armageddon MUD for over a decade and have noticed a rising sentiment within the community that can only be described as reactionary. Whenever a change to the game is proposed, a change that would in theory address the game's balancing issues or make the game more fair for newer players, a group of old players rise up to not only pooh-pooh the idea but sometimes even suggest a change in the opposite direction.

For example, Armageddon rolls stats randomly, within a range for each stat, dependent on your character's race and class. For a roleplaying-focused game, it's easy to imagine why completely random rolls are inconvenient: they throw a curveball at the player and prevent them from making the character they actually want to make. But when a point-buy system is suggested, the old guard rises up to explain how the game is "intentionally unbalanced" and that it's always been the case that some characters are simply superior to others.

A tweak to the system - say, to ensure all stats add up at least to a certain number - would be minor, mostly keep the current system in place, but even something like that is disagreeable to those who never want their game to change. Even as the game measurably loses a dozen players a year permanently, every year for the past 7 years, there is never a single thought spared to the possibility that perhaps the game is losing players because it is designed poorly.

This is to say nothing about the aggressive culture of the game itself, something which proponents of new player recruitment want to reign in so they can try to build a more story-focused game, whereas old vets want to keep the game as basically a PvP arena with some roleplaying features. It feels like older games in particular suffer from a lack of clear direction on what their game should be.

How has your game handled the winds of change? Does it adapt to grow, or does it primarily exist to entertain the players that have stuck it out?