I can't predict how long the casual crowd will stay. They probably will still make fanart for as long as they still like the game.
The competitive scene on the other hand, I can see them start to dwindle by like 6 months to a year after the final patch is released. By that point, we'll be see the decreasing entries and ask/answer the same "Why is SG dying" question in like five threads with no (scientific) solution.
WARNING, LONG POST, SO HERE'S A TLDR: Local crazy man is rambling about the state of SG and how it could become better after some time.
I encourage everyone who still questions that to read St1ckBuG's LOOOOOONG post about the Blazblue community (regardless of your opinions on him):
http://www.dustloop.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4292-the-bb-community-evo-netplay-and-the-fgc/
Long story short, in my opinion, we pretty much are facing in the same problem that Blazblue had/has. And will probably still face after the final patch drops...
>Some to most of the members are young, which can mean that they are either "broke college/high school students, too young to travel, or a combination of both."
>And probably don't have a car yet
>At worst, too comfortable with Netplay to care about tournaments (This is highly debatable, but I factored it here because it could be an unknown big problem)
The rest like Tournament support and others after that I can't speak for. But they aren't that important for this topic anyway IMO.
Now, you may have noticed I put "had" for Blazblue. Because after a while, I've noticed that more players started showing up to locals and majors when CP dropped (at least before this year's EVO). The reason is possibly after all its years, players have gotten decent jobs, are old/mature enough to travel, etc. So the scene kept growing because those players have stayed since they've started. If this community is still steady after the final patch, we could end up being in a time to make it bigger/better and gain a brighter future.
The point: Half to most of us are not in a position yet to (consistently) go to tournaments/locals, or even create them ourselves. But we should do as much as we can to grow/support the scene. Like, @
Lethalmind getting SG on TSB. I myself one day (somewhere within early 2015 hopefully) will try to build up a scene in my local gathering.
Anyways, encourage those curious about the game to try it out and help out some new players.