There are a few reasons why there was never many players...
First of all the exp rate felt like real tibia for me; if I wanted something that slow I would play real tibia instead. I'm sure this applies to others.
You can even look on the first couple of pages on this thread and you will see almost EVERYONE is complaining about the 1-2x exp rate, which as you can see proved to be a problem.
Here's a good response that was never even addressed:
There are people in tibia who actually don't use bots or ones who enjoy exploring but spend little time in front of the computer. With 2x rates they won't even bother with server where they have to grind for hours to achieve something. 1x-2x will only force people to bot.
Then again if the exp is to high, people will roll through the content faster than intended which I'm sure isn't what the staff want. I read that before it was x4 exp which led to people being 200 in 2 weeks which does sound too fast, so why not compromise on a middle ground? I'll be honest here: I tried this again a month or 2 ago, killed a few rates and noticed it was as slow as real tibia, got off and never played it again, sorry not sorry. If it was 2.5-3 rates, or some set of exp stages; to give a huge boost at low levels so players can fly past the boring stuff and get to the more exciting and adventurous part then I feel like that would help a lot.
Second is the lack of custom. I know that you have a lot of custom features such as boss battles, arena, mounts/addons, and weapon enchantments but you are missing the basics. There is only a small community of people who play
custom RPG's: you can't except to have hundreds of players, since the majority of people are those who enjoy real map, evolutions, or super high exp servers. I can't speak for everyone but I know that I can only play custom RPG's if there is enough custom to give me a feeling of excitement and adventure. I'm not talking about this server specifically but I hate when people release a "custom server" and all it has is a custom map. Like no, that is not a custom server, it's just a custom map. If I wanted to see all the same old boring monsters, items, spells, vocations, etc.. that have been around for years I'd go play Tibia instead of an OT. With that said you don't have custom items which is a huge disappointment: yes I know you have weapon modification which looked pretty awesome from what I saw on the website, but the items themselves aren't custom which is lame. I never got farther on here so I'm not sure if there are any custom monsters. I know there are bosses and some rare creatures that can spawn which of course is nice, but I don't think there are any custom monsters aside from those (I could be wrong since I haven't got far) and if that is the case then it's boring. You know what items every monster can drop, how hard they are, the exp they wield, etc..
The server looks fantastic but I just can't bring myself to play a server still using Cipsofts cliche 4 vocations :/
With the low rate and same vocations, I feel like it's going to be much too similar to RL tib.
Another good point. I don't mind low rate as long as there is a ton of custom to make up for the lack of excitement, but not having custom vocations, or at least custom spells makes hunting very lackluster and gives you that real tibia feeling.
Lastly is the botters. I've heard so many people complain about botters and I don't blame them: I have a HUGE hatred towards botters and despise them. In a sense I don't blame the botters either because of how low rate the exp is so of course people will bot. The reason most people bot is because it's something repetitive or boring, that's why you need to give them something exciting to do, or make manual advantages to encourage them to not bot. You also need to be more serious about botters.
If the owners reset, increased the rates slightly and implemented strict anti bot rules(7 day ban first offense, account deletion second). The players would come.
This sounds more than fair. From reading previous posts I saw that the staff took a break for a while without informing the players which led to the rise of botters which created the effect of normal players quitting since they couldn't keep up or got power abused. If the server does get reset please don't let this happen again.
Not here to bash on the server or put negativeness towards it, but instead give some feedback and opinions. This server could have a lot of potential if a few things were changed and or managed differently.
I'm not sure if the owners are still around, but if they are, and are willing to give the server another shot then a few things need to happen. The server should be taken down and reset. After that's done take a look at
the server, see what you could add or improve:
an exp raise is a must. You have 0 players right now, what do you have to lose? Even if players reach a high level after a month it's still better than the no players you have right now.
Botting will also need to be taken more seriously: don't be scared to punish people, you have to be ruthless when it comes to this. The last thing I have left to say is that if you do decide to reset the server and release it again you should delete this thread and start a new one with a few days notice so people have time to get ready, gather their friends, and build up for the release. Seeing an old thread makes the server less attractive.