Stability ******* sucks.
So many players who are involved in high leadership positions, not just in the rp sense but even administration as a whole, seem so obsessed with this desire to provide stability, that they have traded out something that would be far more line with their larger goals which is, in truth, a little bit of chaos, at least in the sense of RP. In my first year as a new player, I entertained myself by first exploring the various different fantasy elements on the server, which has little to do with my main point, but I'm getting there. I eventually moved on to a different sect of RP, and was immediately embroiled in political chaos, conspiracy, investigation, high stakes RP. That is what has kept me on the server. That obviously won't apply to every new player out there, but the fact that I could pick and choose what felt right to me and actually had engaging, active content to immerse myself in is the main takeaway here. If I was that new player who joined purely to explore fantasy magic roleplay, and I joined today, I'd find a hell of a lot of difficulty getting behind a lot of the walls that have been put up around certain elements that are available to players by the people who believe themselves solely entitled to them. And you'd best believe I'd have a nigh-impossible task finding any of that lovely sedition roleplay.
Chaos, in the pure form of the word, is a pain in the ass. It's stressful, causes problems, but problems are fun to solve for ****'s sake. Get comfortable with losing. You can still have fun on the losing side of a war. Stop getting your panties in a twist over it all. We should be letting stories happen, letting things change, letting things grow, letting people roleplay without feeling the need to police every little thing people do in order to maintain stability. Chaos can be fun. I remember the Jackals, I remember the divorce of Adelheid of Istria and John I, I remember the Year of Four Emperors, and so much more. I could rattle on for hours, but that's obviously not the point- and, is certainly a tunnel vision point of view, but I can only speak to what I experienced personally. And I miss it. A lot. None of that would slide anymore, you'd immediately be shot down in the name of maintaining propriety. If I joined today, all of that would be lost upon me, and I would have nothing of substance to entertain myself with except for going down an LoTC wiki deep-dive. War rules and raid rules are unconducive to real roleplay grievances and issues, and need to be genuinely reworked into a more fitting system that will honor roleplay instead of hinder it. Of course, all of this is only indicative of my experience and that of several of my close friends who joined around 2014 when I did, but I do believe that there is some truth in saying that this is all indicative of a larger issue; that of stagnation. Everywhere is stagnant. Nothing is the same, and nothing ever will be, but it's time to pull ourselves out of this rut and apply what we can from the past to the present and so forth.
Another issue is this incessant grinding nonsense. Do you truly believe that having to sit around for hours mining blocks, waiting hours for them to regenerate and then doing it all again, then pasting each block in by hand is contributory in any way to an RP server? You'd have more luck trying to draw blood from stone. Bring back LC. Have players monitored. Create a team of people who are trustworthy and willing to sit there and schematica in a build quickly with LC so settlement players don't have to go through all of the mind-numbing motions of mine, wait, build, repeat. I don't care how you implement it, just make it happen.
You're concerned about player retention rates? Start listening to the people who are actually here.