Population decline since velious release?

[Rooj]

I've been wanting to make this post myself. Earlier this year I think I saw the server get up to over 2000, maybe it was even closer to 2100. I was expecting even higher numbers once Velious launched, but like you, I'm seeing the opposite. I am sort of wondering if it has anything to do with SOE publicly acknowledging P99 a while back and giving us positive press, so a bunch of folks from Live came over to play who wanted to experience the olden days. But then they saw the forums and logged in to the game and saw how some players and even some staff behave (not bashing on the staff, you do what you do and how you want to, but a lot of the EQ type folk aren't into it - feels like there's a loss of forum activity as well :\) and were too turned off by it. It's certainly a shame because I'd love to see the population rise even higher, otherwise I'm afraid with the landmass having grown for us and the population spreading out, some older zones will have less activity and may become difficult to keep new players interested - just like what happened on Live.

And I certainly wouldn't mind if there were more people playing at 4 AM with me ;D