In all honesty, Snuggle is speaking the truth. I never had (what it seems) to have the privilege of playing Evolution, yet i can imagine it (or so I think). The problem today is keeping the focus, originally, the idea was to build your character and fight when finished. Now that there's enough information to go around, people don't want to build a character, they're no longer interested in that, meaning there's no interest in Shaiya.. Ep4 server come and go within a month, because you get a nice group coming along, they have their fun, get bored and find something else on a new server. Server's a being thrown up here and there, people jump across them so much that nothing really lasts. Unless there's preparation (such as rumours of this new server opening), new servers generally flop in just over a month. And it's sad, some people work exceptionally hard, but there is always another server to take those players away, and that's why a clean Ep4 server will not last, because there's another server offering what the player seems to think better of.
Sure, custom gears, monsters, maps, items are cool, but there is only so much to edit.. People need to actually learn what it is to do that kinda thing (even i lack knowledge of this) instead of just taking things off epvp, changing it a little (even if it is detailed) and thinking that's good enough to keep people engaged. Hopefully something new (entirely) comes around at some point, so people wake up and realise visual edits aren't everything..