Woo another discussion thread :D. I got moaned at by my girlfriend for spending too much time reading the replies and conjuring up a decent response to this, but I'll give it a go.
Personally, Silkroad in it's entirety died sometime between 2012-14. And since, it's been on a slow decline downhill. Servers aren't populated anymore, developers are complete frauds that have no intention to entertain a community, just to figure out ways to make the quickest money, shut down the project, then release V2 / Part 2 / Reborn a few months later, only to continue the same cycle.
I dislike the jobbing system. I really, really fucking dislike having to earn "Iron" "Gold" coins through features and systems which are
completely designed to benefit P2W players solely, and as somebody mentioned before, this then leaves non donators to pick one trade (typically trader) and just hope that you don't encounter P2W players. This isn't what Silkroad should be like. Back when I was playing in 2007-10 on iSRO, yes, you had donators, heavy ones, but they rarely gained ANY other benefit besides being able to insta-login on the server, and some very slight XP increases. Nowadays, this isn't the case.
It's been years now that I've actually devoted a lot of time into a server, and obviously life has taken it's course since which has caused me to lose a lot of free time (birth of my daughter, work, etc) but I'm still heavily invested in the game. I do still interact with the community often, I do still come back to elitepvpers, because the nostalgia is simply too strong to ignore. But everytime I come back to Private SRO*Advertising, I'm reminded of why I left.
Last point, I completely agree with the guy that said donations should be for their HARD WORK, and not to receive any in-game benefit. Make this mandatory and watch how 90% of the developers disappear into thin air.
TL: DR
We're all living off of past memories. Memories which're fueled by nostalgia, which keeps us still playing this game. The sad truth is it died ages ago, and the only thing left at the moment are people leeching the last few people that're dedicated enough to stay. I don't see anything changing this anytime soon. I'm almost 24 now, I started this game at 11 years old. I think It's time to move on :(