There is to be expected some benefit from playing the game more than others, and I think the beginning and mid game elements support this within reasonable bounds.
But, having played with people who have the time to play 16+ hrs a day, I can tell you there is a huge runaway winner effect in the end game.
The massive impact of the luck (chest and gathering) trophies creates this imbalance. First ppl who had time (or were just lucky) to get rare mining drops make lots of money. These ppl are the only ones who can afford the handful of higher tier trophy drops which then provides exponentially more money, which they use to buy other trophies (like major luck) which provides them with almost all future drops of rare items - super rare recipe drops and mats for more major trophies.
The impact of just one major trophy, say for mining, results in more rare drops in an hour than someone with just minor trophies will see in 40 hours of doing the same thing. This is not an exaggeration - I know first hand how much of a difference this makes and it is laughable.
So there are ppl who legitimately played the game (no dupes or exploits), decked out with multiple sets of 600 gs gear, 3x major luck trophies, 3x major gathering trophies, and stacks of rare resources - and can acquire more with relatively little effort.
Given enough time, everyone would eventually catch up, but only if no new rarer content drops were added. But this is an MMO, it will only survrive by adding more and more content.
I am not complaining, these are just the rules of the game. But, I think a large percentage of the ppl who left (and those who are thinking of leaving), realize how insanely far behind they will always be because of this mechanic (or other similar mechanics) and they don’t have the kind of time to keep up with this.
Obviously not everyone cares about these kinds of imbalances (at least at the conscious level), but I have played hundreds of board games with my friends, and I can tell you we never end up replaying any of them that turn out to have this level of runaway effect in them. We enjoy it for what it is worth for the one play through, but then laugh at it and move on. I am worried that a lot of your playerbase is going to do the same.
My feedback would be to reduce the impact the higher level trophies have - additive luck instead of multiplicative luck.