One of the major costs of LU is the moderation. Sadly, this cost was drastically above their projections. Some of that was legitimate, but a LOT of money was wasted by people trying to get mods to show up, or going out of bounds and getting stuck, exploiting glitches which then had to be closed, reporting things that didn't work and expecting instant fixes, asking the online mods questions that could have been handled via email, and calling for help when none was needed just to see a mythran show up in game. I don't think some of the players understood or cared about the concept of "man hours" and what they could mean to the bottom line. They cost delays of updates, and new features as well, which diminished the sellability of subs. I can clearly remember a huge debate about thin on LEGOUni before it closed... and some players insistence that they weren't hurting anything. Now I cannot help but wonder how much they "didn't" hurt...
While I agree, I also feel that to a degree everything was a bit
over-moderated. I would have preferred a stance along the lines of, "If you go out of bounds, it's your own fault, we won't get you out." If several people ended up OOB from a glitch or something, fine, they'd respond, but if you got yourself stuck, you'd have to wait for them to fix the problem when they chose to. Repeat offenders could be left back there for a few days to teach them a lesson. Likewise for hacking/etc; if you hack your game, not only do you get banned for X amount of time, they are no longer responsible to fix your game. There's contracts that allow you to do that, and IMO LU would have been MUCH easier to police with a firmer stance this way.
I also think that a "hidden" reputation system would have been helpful; kind of like MLNO forum rep, but invisible except to Mythrans. People who behave well are rewarded, and their Lego.com I.D. gets moved up on the automatic priority list; those who break the rules and whom players complain about get shunted to the lower end of the priority list, and have to wait for everyone else's problems to get solved before they can get time with the Mythrans.
(Also, a slightly more visible Mythran presence could have been useful--we know they were there, but invisible, but I think a visible Mythran every few minutes would have deterred some of the worst behavior, as well as clearing a little of the mystique around them so they aren't bombarded with stupid questions all the time. Just IMO.)
EDIT: You know, when I was writing Mines of Doom, I had this idea for a "Community Helper" system, where the most mature users (based on behavior) would be asked to be informal moderators; they wouldn't get any special powers or anything, except for one thing: their reports would have maximum priority, and generally their recommendations would be acted on without more than a cursory review. This would increase the number of eyes on the ground, without having to pay as many people for constant monitoring.