EMC has a LOT of players who have moved on. I would be interested to know what happened to them all... How many moved to other servers? Other games? How many have been upset to lose their residence due to derelict? Did they just become bored? Did they lose the server IP and can't find it? Were they confused and couldn't figure out how to use the server? I think it would be worthwhile to launch an email survey and really ask. This might be able to give some ideas that could shape the future policies to potentially bring back players.
1. I cannot give you an exact number, but maybe about 60,000/84,000 members are inactive. 2. Many, however, most are okay with it when they realize that it was their fault. 3. Yes; people leave because they feel that the server is boring - this is caused by the lack of interest.. mainly because those who leave because they're bored have nothing to do when there are countless things they could be doing on the Empire. 4. This only happens if one has hundreds or thousands of servers on their server list. However, this rarely ever happens (and we don't know about it either) 5. 70% or so of new players are confused and don't understand what there is to do on the Empire. I believe that the new tutorial should fix this issue (or at least make it better).
Very nice ideas, however all of this is speculation. What I do know is there are 197,285 registered members, and only 14,431 active in the last month. This means 182,854 users haven't logged on in the past month! Over 100,000 more than your 60-80k estimate. How can you know how people feel about losing their res? Even if they believe they are at fault, it's still demotivating to lose everything. Again, you could be totally right! But you could also be totally wrong. That's why I suggest a survey. Losing a server IP is something that has happened to me over and over. It's pretty simple. You install a new Minecraft client, change the version, switch computers, move to live with someone else, etc... and don't remember old servers. My point is this information would be valuable and if it was used to recover even 1% of the inactive players, there would still be 13% more players to play with!
I just read on Microsoft's website that nearly 90% of players with purchased accounts have been active on the game in the past year. So compare that with our statistics of number of people active within the past year. And you discover that a lot of people are coming back to Minecraft but not this server... So why not? And what can we do about it? Link if curious: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/sept14/09-15news.aspx
A large chunk of players lose interest in minecraft itself in favor of other newer games. Another large chunk do stupid things like get banned. Aikar had official numbers of the amount active, but he will have to list those.
That is just turning Minecraft on for one minute every year. They could have just logged in to see 1.8 and never played until the next year. It probably is lower. But still, more people stay active on the game then on this server(which would be impossible to reverse).
Simply, got boring. Things said they would come, but other things came instead which werent always needed. The communities them selves slowly died due to the lack of new player retention creating a constant and boring community. Also, the ability to easily get things kinda ruined the game itself. It has become more about doing things for cash. Not for the enjoyment of completing something or achieving something. I've moved on to other servers which explore the more natural approach to the game. Also, if a large email based survey is to be launched, I request to not be email. You will get nothing back from it apart for becoming part of my blacklist.
There are also players that get so hooked up with the game that they need a forced break (to eat, shower and do groceries). Some even request to be banned. But I guess, many of these people return back after a while...
I think it would be neat to get some feedback from the people themselves without instantly having to jump to some sort of conclusion about their disappearance. Aikar is working on a mass-email system (for supporter changes) and perhaps something like this could be incorporated, although we don't want to appear to be spamming people.
I would think that if you offer people a free 500r for completing the survey that would be well worth their time.
You might be surprised... A lot of businesses recruit customers who may not be regular shoppers with discounts. As an example, Google AdWords launched and offered free $100 of advertising. Now you can say, why would someone who wasn't going to advertise with Google want $100 of free advertising? Indeed, many businesses who weren't even looking to advertise signed up! You assume that because someone isn't doing something, they don't want to or aren't interested. As anyone who is successful in sales or marketing knows, that's simply not the case. Steve Jobs would even say that you tell the consumer what they want. I assure you that offering rupees will motivate a higher response rate to the survey.
