Player driven stuff doesn't attract new players but it might help keep people around who decide to try. There have been several times in the last 6 months where we've had 200+ online, so why does it fall back to 100? Simple answer is people stop playing. Maybe the spikes aren't what they are appear, and it's just 50 old players coming back to plvl an alt with an exp bonus before Velious release, I dunno. But I suspect at least some of them are new to the server and they make the decision to leave after a few weeks. That's not enough time to see the end game situation so my only theory is they are bored or get shit on by PK alts.
And didn't Uthgard shut down for awhile? R99 has two major things going for it that will make it very difficult for another red server to overtake it. One, it has the Project1999 brand name, support and most importantly the code. Second, the majority of the people interested in playing PVP have a lot of time invested there and it would take a lot to get them to walk away from it.
And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you regarding a teams ruleset, but I think it would be silly to roll out another R99/FFA clone. Maybe some people are interested in a "purple" server but not red. Anything you can do to grab a few dozen more people should be done.
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