This makes sense. But honestly this money they should rather invest in a new AoC MMORPG with a better graphics, similar combat, brutality, sex, great dungeon and raid mechanics as we have now and full of the good old Robert E. Howard Hyboria lore. In 5-6 years they could have a great Age of Conan 2.
And no, MMORPGs are not dead and wont die soon. They will get better because A.I. will make them better. A.I. will make conversations in MMORPGs sound natural instead of a scripted text and after you have done the quest for this NPC, it does not have to say anything else. Instead, in the future A.i. will add much more different answers and ways how to finish a quest and A.I. will be able to generate daily quests for different NPC. NPCs will have their A.O. generated daily routines instead of just standing around somewhere waiting for the player to pick up their quest like now in Age of Conan.
The future of MMORPGs is brighter than ever and Funcom could use this and will use this at some point. It is just a question if they will be among the pioneers of A.i: gaming or if they will wait 10 years till many other developers develope such games and then jump on the hype train as they did with Conan Exiles and jumped on the Survival train as survival games were already well established.