[Drakaris]

Well versed response. Unfortunately Empire deems the few leaders that step up from time to time as 'toxic for the box' and abuses their number and gear advantage to grief the other guilds into either collapse or submission, which is what happened with Good Guys and to a lesser extent TMO.

One thing I would like to point out is that any new guild leader that has tried to step up has been bashed on the forums by elements within Empire. For example, look at the up and coming guild leader Gardur, who has recently formed 'Casual Scum'. He made a plea for his friends that went to Empire to come join his guild for fun and was bashed in his thread and is still being bashed in his guild recruitment thread.

A similar thing happened to TMO and Tiggles / Zeelot, however the straw that broke the camels back came from Apps that were swayed by <Friends> free-styled pvp-focused leadership that worked towards the easiest achievable gains with minimal PvE commitment compared to TMO's ambitious feats.

If the Red server pop is to increase, the #1 guild needs to improve their culture on the forums and in game since no one actually wants to lead with the amount of harassment that has been going on.

The only guild leader that is resilient to that kind of treatment and has persevered through every challenge faced was Nizzar, but he is permanently IP banned for leading a guild (or disrespecting staff).

As it stands the majority of players that join R99 will eventually feed into Empire, which is why the population has been steadily dropping. If players have a variety of guilds that operate at different timezones and different guild culture, they can pick and choose which guild suits their play styles. Unfortunately Red server's peak numbers generally consists of Empire's raid days where people generally only log on for raid gear, never to participate in the community until the next raid.

Empire has actively recruited ex leaders from a number of former guilds, going back to Smoke Break/Blaze , Azrael, Good Guys, Fresh and even TMO with Fael being the latest addition.

In my honest opinion if the population is to increase again, Empire, being the #1 guild that is bumping this post and attempting to appeal for people to join needs to address why people quit R99 and discourage behaviour that is sending people off the box; lets look at Eccezan and Jinger from TMO as a case study.

I'm always interested in improving R99 server population, however any action taken needs to be a 2 prong approach. Find out what is making people leave and address the issue, I guarantee once the underlying issues are resolved, you will find that R99 server population will increase on its own. Let's face it, Red just a more fun place to be than blue when people aren't being griefed off the box! You want an item camp? Fight for it and the loser can call LNS and do something else.