After a couple of years of the same crowd, most will naturally get the urge to spread their proverbial wings and scan the horizon for something new. Having said that, the main cause of our depleted population has been those who have completely turned their backs on the server. Many have fled to Recursion, and only log-on to Vector when there's an event.
Another factor is the attitude of a significant percentage of the server. New players go to Syntax or Recursion and see people from all org's stood around conversing, at multiple hard-lines. There may be some idle trash going on, but it's mostly everyday chat. New player 'Bob' comes to Vector to find themselves in the middle of a torrent of abusive 'poppycock', and bad attitudes towards newcomers. Almost anything, anyone does on Vector makes you a 'noob', or incites faux-gangsta (yo) trash. I'm not saying they don't have that on other servers, we just house the more rabid of the wolf-pack. 'Bob' comes back to Mara the next day to give it another shot, and finds it empty. Bob thinks "Screw this" to himself and either migrates to another server, or worse yet leaves the game altogether. (Scenario three, which I witnessed, involved 'Bob' asking someone idling in Mara for something to be coded for him, resulting in him promptly being told to **** off)
Things we can do to increase the population are fairly simple to execute. Whether they work or not is another matter, but here are a few simple things which give it a chance:
- When you stumble across a new player, tuck your e-peen in and ask them if they need help rather than hitting them with "Yo level up, son, 'GG'"
- Along the same lines, don't leave your new recruits hanging after giving them the "We 'pwn' so hard, everyone's scared of us, you should join" Make sure they have the tools they need to help themselves. I find it amazing that no faction on any server offers levelling/aid with clothes etc. It's always a mission here and there instead. Fifties have better things to do, but if you're part of a faction, it's only right that you do what you can. Personally, I believe new players should get themselves to perhaps level 10 to experience the city/combat system etc. Then the faction should take over and get that player to 25, and Hyper Speed. Then there's no excuse for the recruit not to roll their sleeves up and hammer out some missions, with occasional help from their factionmates.
- Trimming the fat off of the plump, glistening leg of spam. Half of the threads on Vector are born of boredom/anger/hunger/cos they just 'pwned' someone so liek hard that they had to show everyone, and predominantly consist of pointless, formless single words or makeshift emoticons. You pay your money so write whatever you like, but at some point a potential Vectorian will read it and see it for the waste of time it is, and attribute that impression to Vector as a whole.
I stayed on Enumerator back in the day because I stumbled across a few people who went out their way to help me out. As long as we give a new player an experience we'd expect for ourselves, our numbers will surely increase.