At the moment it's nothing to do with casual/lame full time gamers. It's more to do with the people who have played crpg LONG before upkeep was ever implemented. Bearing in mind, upkeep is a relatively new implementation. Before you could save up gold and the only thing that would matter was buying equipment. As a result the older players, many of them on ridiculous numbers of gens, have huge reserves of gold. I don't think it's fair to punish them for it. But it does make the upkeep system a little bit more redundant.
At the moment upkeep is to high. It's nigh impossible to earn a decent amount of gold unless you grind as a peasant, or in very very low level gear. This would certainly put me off if I was a new players, seeing as you have to save up for something by grinding, only to buy it and then have to save up again to use it. It means by the time you get to use your shiny new piece of equipment, you've probably played a good few hours of nothing.
I think upkeep pre-patch was fine. I don't know what they did to it, and there are those that claim you should still be able to support a high level of equipment, but from person after person posting, and general conversations with people in game/ts ect. Everyone agrees that it's a bit daft the way it is at the moment.