This is less of a suggestion but more of a conversation intended to spark ideas. The following is my answer to, "should CK devote more time to this game?" My immediate answer is: we need to figure out why the website activity dropped off. This topic is to discuss that question and determine ways of intervention.

 I've said it before but I still think the super high levels achieved by the top players discourage anyone new coming in. Attacking is f*ing boring as hell and repet*tive. To get people doing that over and over for months to become a little compet*tive needs something more. Especially when you really think about how far a new player is away from the leaders. I'm at level 153 with 35.5 million exp. To get to a measly level 200 I need about 80 million. The top spot right now is 552 million which means I'm <b>0.064%</b> of the way there. Jesus, even if you gave new players level 150 I'm not sure they'd stay, let alone starting at zero.

 Many people parrot the a**umption that the lack of activity is because of the lack of updates. I call bulls***. How many people have joined in the last 18 months, when much of the world was locked in? How many of those even made it to level 30? Is there <i>anyone</i> that's joined within that time frame and remained active and isn't a duplicate? The answer is no. A telling statistic is that the account id of around 30000 joined over two and a half years ago yet the newest players are getting an id in the 37000 range.

 Look at the records. Between peak activity and now, what changed? Why did it drop off? Maybe contact old players and ask them why they stopped to get some feedback. I expect most of them stopped playing because I went AFK and for that, I apologize   (kidding). That being said, if you were going to work on the game more to attract players, your opportunity was last year when everyone was in lock-down.

 I think the biggest part of this game is the community aspect so naturally when people are inactive we'll have fewer people staying on. If the casino could include poker and blackjack while letting players gamble against each other, I think that would be a HUGE draw. I wanted to type more but something just came up, I'll be back.

Agreed. My main concerns are:

• Lack of tutorial flow for new players
• Need for more items

Even if you perfect everything so that nobody still active leaves, it won't help if we can't get new players to join and stay. Maybe consider starting them off at a higher level such as 30 and adjust it so they can more easily reach level 150. I would also create a decent starter set of equipment. Not as good as the mining set (level 35?) but something so they have a boost. Also completely terminate the higher level players that have been using automation - or set them back to level 30. This will both give new players a boost and remove the unrealistic standard set by cheaters.

Another good idea would be to encourage community interaction via the forums or chat rooms. Obviously blessing doesn't have the desired effect (CK, who started blessing active users semi-frequently on chat years ago? I forget but I want to say it was you) but maybe adding chat activity and forum activity to the objectives with some kind of reward.

I also think it would be nice if we could somehow widen the gap for attacking. A successful attack on someone just a dozen levels higher has a very low chance of winning. While this makes sense, it would be cool if there could be some kind of skill involved only for attacking higher level players. I'm thinking of something like using the W A S D keys where you get prompted for "Forward" "Left" "Back" and "Right" and the faster your reaction time the more likely the attack is to succeed. What would be REALLY cool is if defending players are online, they get ten seconds to respond to an attack. So even if the attacker does decent, if the defender who's a higher level does about the same it ends up being the same odds we get now. This would add a community aspect to the game and increase interactivity. It would also allow lower level players to have some input in their defense. This may be asking for the moon, but I think it would really help out the game. I'm interested in what others think.

So i have only been semi / semi active for the past year-ish, and i will just give my Thoughts, opinions & suggestions, so take what i say with a grain of salt and yes i don't know everything and yes i know i don't have to play.

To start off i like the concept of the game, layouts cool, like some features as in Abandoned Items...etc.

#1 - There is nothing that this game offers that really makes me want to login and get my friends to play. Plain and simple.

- Ive noticed everyone is disgruntled of lack of updates, i get it. 1 guy working on it. Its understandable. Literally everyone has commented that. Every post is about lack of activity and no updates.

 - The updates that i have noticed the past year, have 0 game play for the user. If there was something new, i missed it & a**ume any new members missed it to. The chat at the bottom of screen is the only thing, but i don't consider that game play for the user. ( That's just lipstick for the site)

- Never have i logged in ( reminder i went 84 days streak just up til yesterday) and i haven't seen more than 5 people on the chat ( i a**ume users are added once logged in????) the previous chats are from the same people. (Thank you to those who are active)

OK that was my ranting thoughts / opinion....

As you all know Browser based games are just hard to get people active and stay active with all other gaming out there, so you cant waste time dilly dallying around.

I suggest in order to get more players active you need to implement something that will attract people. Now the World is cool, hunting for items, clicking around all day, its just boring, ( just like the other game ) and as everyone who played it, noticed A LOT of people dropped after it was all based around The World concept.

- PvP is the answer! You need to get users vs users. Who doesn't like wars? getting people mad and being compet*tive, give them a reason to login. I know i can say, id spend an hour or 2 extra a day to see that! Crew wars with money. crews can buy upgrades for crew members with that money. get compet*tive.

I know our player base is small. Duh! 3 crews and that's all of us basically. BUT you have to start somewhere with something to do in the game OR you will never get any users.

lower leveling people have to get some more items to do anything. Maybe items that last until lvl 40 or something of that nature. Maybe lvl 1-10 something 11-31 something 32-51 something.......so on and so on... til level cap

last thing on my mind is the larger players..... my god. can we cap somewhere or reset after lvl 100 and have a prestige with some added benefits.... extra attack/defense/turns per hour/ special item that will last even after prestige..???

NOW don't go all negative on me with the above... i said to take it with a grain of salt.

TL;DR down below.

Dekcah, you said something about starting off at level 30.  I think that would not be the greatest, because that would completely bypa** the noobsphere.  Then what?  All newer players would have is grinding.  The lack of sets I think doesn't seem to be a problem to me, but I am not all that opposed to it either, I mean who wouldn't want more items in the game?

I think though that community is always a great thing to have in any video game.  A lot of times when people are asked "why keep playing" it's more often than not because of the community, and having players to chat with.  I know one person I asked specifically in this game(gale) said that the reason she stayed was because of all the encouragement the veteran players were giving her and all the milestones that people were trying to get her to achieve.  But, I think now people that join probably don't see a whole lot of encouragement.  I know there is an option to see newer players, but people do not often respond to messages sent to do so.  What can engage people more in this game?  Not really sure, but finding out that the grind is so big after level 20 leaving one of the very few worlds with quests and storylines, and then seeing that it takes so long to level up as well as seeing people with 300+ level without any more quests to help probably is a turn off.

I know all the people who have grinded up to level 200+ like the grind, but probably after a certain point give up due to lack of updates.  I will say that I've got art for 2 new sets ready to go, but want to wait to see if we can make sets higher than 150, because it seems like we already have enough 150 sets that any more would not be usefull.

I do appreciate CK fixing the NPC cloning bug, and that has helped quite a bit already.  I will try to hold back my requests for a while, just to try to lessen the stress of adding on to everyone else's complaints(I know there are a lot of constructive criticism and some of the complaining was done by me), but I do want to try to stay more positive.

The whole idea of ascending and restarting does not appeal to me, because for one, I think that will only widen the gap between new and old players.  There has to be a balance while also not cheapening the achievements of 200+ or 300+ levels grinded.  My idea would be to have the possibility of starting a new account in something like "hardcore mode", with something like no trading, or permadeath.  Not sure how that would work for this game because a lot of items require a guild to get, and it's nearly impossible to go without dying at least a little bit.

Other options might be to add a separate option for a different server for a "seasonal" type game that has all the same things in it but it would reset every several months.  Newer players could join that for more compet*tive play while older players might have the upper hand with all the experience in grinding.  There could also be the option of starting new permanent servers while keeping the current one going.  Each new server would last forever, including this one so as to not make people think that all their time was wasted.  Don't get me wrong I think no matter what updates are added, the achievement of getting level 380 should not be removed, because that would be a TON of wasted time.

I do like the idea of making PVP more interactive like Shoebob and Dekcah said, but I might have quarrels with them about what kind and how to implement them.  I don't really understand the whole idea of moving to attack, but maybe moving to defend while having other combat abilities that have other button binds.

So let's just TL;DR:  

Community is important, 

encouraging new players, 

more quests to lessen the load of grinding, 

Don't completely reset the current levels,

Fixing bugs,

seasonal resetting servers/new permanent servers,

Updates to PVP.