I think driving away some of the newer guys who had a lot of enthusiasm for the game was the problem. Guys like Blade, who made his own nation that was mostly full of newer players. And in the end they simply got driven away because the older guys didn't like how they didn't fit into the established way of playing the game. If you can't hold new players, the game is doomed. You can't depend on the older guys to keep playing this game forever. We get older and we simply don't have the time or energy to put into this as we did 10 years ago.