[SDPhantom]

As far as PC component manufacturers go, all hardware should be backwards compatible. They even went great lengths to make USB keyboards and mice detectable in computer BIOS and also provide backend support for outdated OSs that didn't have USB capabilities. This is just an example, not what is the case here.

As far as outdated code causing increasing performance and incompatibility issues, that's completely bogus. All outdated code would do is continue the same exact performance grade throughout its use and not take advantage of new features that would come along. Just because hardware mode no longer requires a power of 2 dimension, it doesn't mean it's now slower than it used to be or that the card would refuse a texture that is, for example, 256x256 in size.

When you take incompatibilities into account, upgrading to a brand new feature means you're relying on something that only a handful of new equipment would handle and you practically force the entire user base to either upgrade their systems or stop playing. In an economy like this, not many people can afford to do that and would have to cancel their subscriptions. I know of a few people myself that dropped their subscriptions just because they couldn't afford the monthly fee anymore.