My Findings ~
No matter how many special features they have, "Coins System", "Job Area", "Alchemy Rates", "Titles", etc. They will not survive no matter how good the system is.
In the many servers i have played, the past couple of months. I have found that the servers which fail 99.8%, seemingly have either 1 or more of the below.
Failed Marketing.
It is the difference between a populated server and an empty server.
If you did not know this was important, then please do not even attempt to contemplate the idea of opening up a server.
This is by far the utmost important factor to anything... Market your server correctly and you will maintain the longevity as promised of your server.
Population does not come from the service itself(It just maintains the population.)
Population comes from marketing the server right.
Admins Offline/AFK
A server with no Game Moderators, Event Managers, ETC.
Is a failed server, this shows that the admins don't even care enough to physically be at his desk to play SRO yet alone host servers and manage an economy.
I am not saying you should be online 24/7, but you should dedicate most of your time on the maintenance of the population on the server.
Especially at the opening of the server, preferably 2-4 weeks.
I have seen many failed servers open and to leave a [BOT] handle all the events, etc. It is not bad but at the same time you need to be online along side the [BOT] and handle the human interactions in the background.
The reason players join a populated server is not because of the economy and system, but simply because it is populated and where population exists people will stay.
We are social creatures after all.
Look what i can do in a server with AFK Admins, been standing here for 3hours waiting for someone to do something. (IP LIMIT:3)
False Advertisement
Simply, a PvP server claiming to be PvE.
A good sign it is PvP.
Easy to obtain anything.
~Alchemy Rates High. (3-7Days Most Players Have +9Set Which Is Almost Max Plus)
~Drop Rates High. (So Much Item Drops That You Barely Pick Up Any Items Unless You Want It For Alchemy)
~SoX Rate High. (RARE: But Usually Coin System Which Is Super Easy. SoX in Couple Of Days.. Definitely PvP Server)
~EXP Rates High. (Is this even PvE?.. Because high EXP Rates means less monster hunting. and less monster hunting usually means more PvP..)
With the above being ticked off, i can safely say that you my kind and gentle sir.. are in a PvP server. It is usually noob mistakes that Server Administrators make.
Bad Protection/ Servers
Simply Put: People who purchase cheap protection for their servers or just cheap servers in general.
Failed Server Starts ~ Loss of players
Plenty of Disconnections ~ Loss of players
Fortress War Disconnections ~ Loss of players.
Plenty of Bugs ~ Loss of players.
The Secret To Success ~
You do not have to re-invent the wheel.
Just look at the servers that have been running well, such as:
Skalidor ~
Elite SRO ~
Marketing > BETA Phase > Marketing > Excellent Protection > Server Start > Manual Events > ETC.
Theirs a reason to why those two were so successful in launch then maintenance of population.
If you could barely read any of the texts above then you probably shouldn't open up a server nor respond. If you see anything above that you would like to debate, please so kindly respond below.
These are my findings and they are true to me as i have played on dozens of PServers to see the flow of population come and go.