Threads like these pop up every month or so, been like that since 2014~, and yet we're still here.
As of right now, if you take a look at otservlist (arguably the most popular ot serv list website), you'll see around 17k characters online, botters, afkers, trainers, etc. included, but it's 17k.
Tibia right now has
If we look at some statistics such as the ones on GuildStats,
Max amount of players on Tibia has been drastically low lately (compared to what it used to be in its "glory days"), but it's slowly recovering as you can see, and as long as Tibia is alive, OTs will not be dead. Even if Tibia died, OTs could survive on their own because they'd carry on with Tibia's legacy and provide former Tibia players with a place to experience Tibia again (if the official servers closed).
Judging by these statistics, you could argue that OTs are doing even better than Tibia. Keep in mind there are OTs that are not listed on otservlist, and that there are other ot serv lists in general that may have servers which are not on otservlist. But all of that included and afkers/botters excluded, let's say there's like 14-15k people playing OTs.
For a spin-off community off of a game that has such low numbers at the moment, I think OTs are doing pretty fine.
There are OTs that have devolved into their own genres and games as well, which are not listed on these lists, and rake in hundreds and thousands of players each month, pokemon OTs for example.
There's a whole world of brazilian OTs that we barely even here about here on OTLand which gather huge audiences from time to time as well.
So no, it's definitely not dead.
Why not develop a game similar to Tibia, with the large team and playerbase we have now? We could do it if we all banded together and tried our hardest.
There are those that have tried and those that are still trying, ambitious people are always around. It's easy to theorize and ask questions like that, but it's not that easy to make that come true. If it was, it would've been done by now.
However, that's not the point. Open Tibia did not arise to attempt and create a bigger game than Tibia then overtake it. It was never about that.
This is a platform of possibilities that lets people pour their own ideas and vision into a base game that happens to be Tibia.
Not all people share the same ideas, and you could never get everyone here to band together because what 1 person likes, the other one doesn't, thus everyone will end up trying to build their own thing - which is as it should be.
There are various kinds of people and motivations mixed up in here. Some are here to learn and share, some are here just to hang out, some are here to create their own game - a game that they'd want to play themselves, some are here to make money, etc.
If a team between several like-minded individuals here arises and they go on to do something great, that's awesome, but if not, let this be what it was meant to be - just a community where we all have the same tools to begin with, and we get to imagine and create new things with those tools.
Until there are like 500 players online on all OTs combined, and there's no more than 1 post per day on this forum, I wouldn't call it dying, so can we please stop with these pointless threads every month.
Throwing these pessimistic doubts at the community just leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.