As Blondie alluded to, the main point now is that it is not about 'replacements' for anointed ones who have fallen away. The rather dramatic and surprising increase of those partaking in the last 2 years has been about 600 or so from 2005. Those are not 'replacements', they are brand new ones being added! According to JW theology, theoretically the number should always be decreasing (with the decrease only being slowed down a bit by 'replacements'), not making big increases by 300 annually. So much for the anointed decreasing and the great crowd increasing, something the Watchtower Society has harped on about for decades.
The Society boasted in a Watchtower study article in the late 1990's that the ongoing decrease in the number of partakers was one of a bunch of core proofs that the end of this system is close. This should be a real embarrassment to the Society. But of course most JW's are just too afraid or uninterested to ponder about the ramifications of such things.