according to the devs, they were bringing in a LOT more money once they switched to the hybrid model
as been said before the game itself was definitely profitable, but ncsoft was prolly putting extra strain on paragon studios with the super sekrit extra project that went nowhere plus prolly filtering off GW2 expenses on to them as well
the game had enough to support itself, but didnt have such a super huge profit margin that it could support all the extra weight