[Koden]

5.
More leaders, less followers. If someone is: Making posts in the IC forums, causing visible impact, has a group of followers or is a part of a group, and is active on most days, empower them. This can be done with hidden spells or even just direct communication/guidance, but it does more good than harm to lift someone up (within reason) who is ticking all the boxes. 

I think it is awesome that you are taking the feedback people gave into consideration, but people have been saying these exact things on this forum and on the spires forum since before the game went down. The vast majority of the players that could have been leaders and the experienced veterans that were leaders in the past don't want to give it a shot anymore because they see how impossible it is to do things/get support/get apps through if you aren't a member of the staff or someone very close to them. Or in some cases, a very cute female character.

Some people have been handed out hidden magics already, and it worked out well for them. others had to fight and scrape and claw to get what they had, and even then it wasn't really enough to go toe to toe with the people they are meant to stand against to make a grand story. I think that if your plan is to hand out things, you need people who are actually paying attention/closely monitoring the RP people are doing, and not just the group/faction that they rp with.

I walk around the game sometimes looking for scenes with the people that used to make the game really fun for me, only to realize that they are (mostly) long gone. And the ones that are still around really don't have the motivation to play a consistent character.

So my question to you, Chance, is why did it take so long for these realizations/recommendations to get taken seriously? why did we wait until so many people stepped away from the game to publicly address these issues and look for serious solutions to them? Do you honestly think that making these changes this late will bring back all of the players the game lost? Or bring in new ones, when coming into esshar as a new player is incredibly difficult?

I really hope it works out. But if it doesn't, I hope you are able to take a step back and reflect on where things went wrong by seeing the perspectives of the players who felt like they just couldn't enjoy themselves on eternia 3.