When you get a generation that started playing this game at a certain age, and they grow up and find new interest and hobbies. That's when you get a real problem. Most of the players that came to World, used to play in Scape. One thing is recruiting new players. Another thing is to maintain the playerbase and keep them saticfied so they will keep on playing.
For me, it appears like the reason the playerbase is shrinking day by day is because the players that have always been here, quit playing without Emps being able to recruit new players. Is there a market to recruit new players? Can emps-world compare to games kids start playing now?
When i started playing Emps back in 2008, there were 3 big games that kids on my age played.
1. Runescape
2. Habbo Hotel
3. Counter-Strike
These were the 3 games that people i interacted with irl at school, sports and etcetera was interested in.
Runescape took big actions to maintain the playerbase they have by releasing EOC and probably some other stupid stuff.
Habbo in the Nordic countries was all cut out, but they kept their UK server.
CS got a huge boost in releasing the competetive scene in CS;GO.
What innovative have Emps-World done? What can one man innovate a private server to be? How on earth, will Thomy get a random 8 year old kid to start play Emps-World over Fortnite? Runescape was big when i grew up, and thats why the transaction to Emps was fun and easy.
But if i go to ask a younger kid today about what games he likes to play. He will most likely say Fortnite. If i ask him what Runescape is, he wont know.
All credit to Thomy, for what he have done and accomplished over the years. All the knowledge he have learned by programming this game will be a good asset for his future jobs, and i am sure he will do well anywhere he decide to go. I just dont see any hope to grow this server with the current video-game market available for the new generation.
Either he needs to hire some innovative executives from Netflix or Apple and get a bigger development team and reinvent runescape private servers. Or just lay it dead, and realise that now its's time to put Emps to rest. Cash out while you can.