I attribute the slight decline in population to 2 things.
First, its the beginning of summer. People's schedules change drastically. For me, I went from having a set play time because I was in school and so were most of my friends. Now that school is over, some of my friends have a lot more time to do other stuff than p99. I personally have less time because I'm working and as since it is a temporary position, my schedule fluctuates pretty wildly from week to week depending on what's going on. Its also nice enough to go to the beach, to the pool, go play some basketball outside or just generally hanging out away from a computer. A few months ago the weather was shitty and none of us really wanted to go outside to do much of anything.
Second is burnout. People worked so damn hard to grind to 60 that they severely burned themselves out. Getting to 60 is a HUGE time sink. But it is also the absolute best way to improve your character. No amount of gear can make up for those 10 levels. The increase in overall power is just huge. So you grind and grind and grind and grind, and congratz, you're now 60!.......but now what to do?
Before, people just rolled an alt to mess around with. But the thought of leveling anything after the grind to 60 is just horrifying. If you're a solo class, you can farm up some plat.........but kunark didn't add too many new "solo" cash areas. Seb can be great cash solo, but it can be somewhat difficult solo even for a skilled necro. Few ill-timed FDs and a few lucky ice-comets and you're toast. So you have to group and not everyone is up for that, unless you want to go back and farm furies and get KS'd by a mage or see a druid or bard quad 4 furies for a half hour for the millionth time....ugh.
And then, as many people have accurately stated, the raid scene is pretty well locked up at this point. TR has a strangle-hold on all the bosses, and many people have no desire to raid PoSky (ugh) or Fear/Hate for trash drops. So there isn't a ton to do raid wise at the moment. This will probably change when VP is released and TR will be spending most of their time in that zone. But that is a ways off yet.
TL;DR - burnout + other RL shit to do = people don't have the same desire to log on at the moment
|