Nexon's decline in traffic

On another note - isn't it true that until a player enters a particular map in a particular channel in a particular world for the first time that map does not hog any resources? I was under the impression that the maps/mobs aren't actually initialized until first entry past a server reboot. Afterwards, they remain alive till the next restart. If this is the case, things like Coke Town would not impact the server operation, seeing as no one can get into those maps.

That may be true in private servers but I doubt it on the live game, at least not to the extent you've said.

Mob life and props won't spawn until a player has entered for the first time, but the map itself has to be preloaded for them to be able to enter in the first place without excessive delay, and once a player has entered and initialized the map it never despawns it so that map on that channel has become permanent overhead until the next SC, even if no one ever enters it again.

They could do garbage collection to tick off how long a map's been empty and start deallocating it after a certain threshold but that means more CPU to unload it and reload it, and more potential memory leaks for an area that gets passed through regularly but not too regularly.