I think a few things are attributing to the lack of players.
Bad Lore: Players have been complaining about bad lore across the forum and being ignored. I can see you're trying to fix it with the thread you made. Hopefully players will use it
Map: Headattack city was awful. The lore that changed us to it was awful. All the other maps keep crashing. Still waiting to see if City 8 edit works, not sure if you switched to that uet.
Being Ignored: A lot of people left/became inactive because of constantly being ignored when they made suggestions or complained. Those people were swept under the rug because of the sudden boost in population but, as I stated a week or so ago, changing maps boosts a servers population temporarily. It causes a few people to join permanently, a few people to leave, and then stabilizes. Kurogane, in a thread, stated he never saw anyone actually leave, but that's because not a lot of people are going to announce their leave.
Now it's pretty obvious that people did leave.
Lack of events: Admins have a /event function for a reason. Be creative, think of stuff to do. I had a blast whenever Chancer did events. Either discuss with other admins possible events or hire event managers who's job is to come up with stuff.
Lack of Conflict/White knighting: Lot of players who play antagonist complain about this. They'll do something then suddenly be swarmed with a butt-load of white-knights. There's no constant tension or conflict because of this, and also because there is no constant threat. When FEAR was around, Fables and FEAr were constantly at each others throats, resulting in good conflict. Now everyone gets along and, if they don't, get immediately shot down for trying to cause conflict.
Low Population means no one joins: Sort of a paradox. If the server population is low, people aren't going to join, but the server population won't grow unless people join. Just means you need to give people a reason to join (events) or have your admins/ devoted players get on the server and just idle, or whatever.
Lack of Jobs/No economy: Stated this was a problem when I joined. There's no money flow, no items to buy, nothing. It's a small thing, but it can create rp. If you also make certain things, such as big guns that murder everything, it would create a black market and also somewhat fix the white-knight problems. White knights only tend to happen when they think they can handle a situation. Take some of their fire-power away and a lot of them will stop.
Bad Lore: Players have been complaining about bad lore across the forum and being ignored. I can see you're trying to fix it with the thread you made. Hopefully players will use it
Map: Headattack city was awful. The lore that changed us to it was awful. All the other maps keep crashing. Still waiting to see if City 8 edit works, not sure if you switched to that uet.
Being Ignored: A lot of people left/became inactive because of constantly being ignored when they made suggestions or complained. Those people were swept under the rug because of the sudden boost in population but, as I stated a week or so ago, changing maps boosts a servers population temporarily. It causes a few people to join permanently, a few people to leave, and then stabilizes. Kurogane, in a thread, stated he never saw anyone actually leave, but that's because not a lot of people are going to announce their leave.
Now it's pretty obvious that people did leave.
Lack of events: Admins have a /event function for a reason. Be creative, think of stuff to do. I had a blast whenever Chancer did events. Either discuss with other admins possible events or hire event managers who's job is to come up with stuff.
Lack of Conflict/White knighting: Lot of players who play antagonist complain about this. They'll do something then suddenly be swarmed with a butt-load of white-knights. There's no constant tension or conflict because of this, and also because there is no constant threat. When FEAR was around, Fables and FEAr were constantly at each others throats, resulting in good conflict. Now everyone gets along and, if they don't, get immediately shot down for trying to cause conflict.
Low Population means no one joins: Sort of a paradox. If the server population is low, people aren't going to join, but the server population won't grow unless people join. Just means you need to give people a reason to join (events) or have your admins/ devoted players get on the server and just idle, or whatever.
Lack of Jobs/No economy: Stated this was a problem when I joined. There's no money flow, no items to buy, nothing. It's a small thing, but it can create rp. If you also make certain things, such as big guns that murder everything, it would create a black market and also somewhat fix the white-knight problems. White knights only tend to happen when they think they can handle a situation. Take some of their fire-power away and a lot of them will stop.