The servers are dead because the thread is dead too.
Allow me to clarify:
This thread didn't really serve to discuss the game. People did that on OOC. They even did it on the other two boards.
No, this thread was the face of our comunity. Not of a specific server since we had many, but of the comunity we created.
When that face looks fun, strange and relaxed, lurkers will open it, read a few posts. Not all of them will go byond that, but a few will pick up the game. Some of those will even stay for a few months. But they all leave after a while. We all did.
Which is okay, since the thread was always atracting new players. You could stop playing for a month or two, come back and find 20+ players.
Now, everyone has their own ideas about why the servers died. Some will blame the admins. Some will blame the players. Some will blame FGNY. Even goons and SJW's or TG infiltrators and other bogeymans periodically came up.
In my opinion? Shitposters.
That easy. It wasn't a concerted effort by some third party. It wasn't admins busing every round or players being griefing assholes. Admins fucked a lot (as expected since they were picked from Holla Forums and we're all faggots) and the players griefed their share (because surprise, they come from Holla Forums aswell).
No matter how much the admins fucked up, or how much the players griefed, the servers remained online with 20 players at night.
What changed was the thread. And it was subtle. And let's be frank, Holla Forums already has a problem with rampant shitposting. Nobody would notice our thread getting filled with it too.
Someone can search the archives, but I recall one thread that had nothing more than admins and players shitflinging each other with maybe 3-4 players asking "Can we please talk about the game?"
What the admins AND players should have done was take that shit to /nt/ or /ss13/. Those are our problems from our comunity. Should have been handled there. Not on the thread were potential new players would consider playing or not.
It's just the normal cancer and faggotry of chans. Most of the people shitposting didn't even care about the game. Hell, Mark didn't care either. From Pizzastation to Newstation, you could jump in the game and the OOC would have people chilling and being friendly 90% of the time with the occasional salt.
Only the thread had that perpetual shitposting storm.
Which makes the obvious even more obvious: shitposters don't care about nothing else besides shitposting.
Admins started trying to cater to shitposting. That went as well as catering to SJW.
Then players catered to shitposters as well with similar results.
I warned Bigslice when he started Newstation.
Those 20 players he had? They were just people joining in to shitpost on the thread with screencaps of the playercounter. A week later they were gone. They had their fill and moved on.
Gitgud and his gang disappeared from the threads. Since they don't come anymore, the shitposters don't have eazy targets anymore and they don't post either.
So the first thing that died was the Servers.
Next, this thread will slowly die when it slides off the board with 7 posts and 2 images, 3 of which asking "Anyone online?"
The third thing to die will be the comunity. Because we're all spess man, and we will always remember what we had. And that will take a great deal of time to let go.
t. Koriath :^)