Yea cause some zombie characters bring more life.. sure. You can spoof your online counter with unlimited makers as much as you want, but it won't bring anything but unlimited runes. Ironically, servers with the highest makers percentage and the poorest rules enforcement are those that die the fastest.
Higher online =/= more alive.
As for rates, this was brought up many times already, but I'll say it once again. Higher rates don't make people spend less time in the game. 1x or 2x, everyone still plays the same hence the point of having "no time to play x1" is invalid. The only difference is that on x1 levels grow significantly slower, which is much better for longevity. And slower doesn't mean "boring", cause it's RELATIVE. Go kill some demons in real tibia, where you have 1000+ levels running around and demon is long time no thrill at all. It won't feel nearly as exciting as hunting demons in old tibia lowrate. Actually, it wouldn't feel much different than hunting rotworms, as at this point both consist on repeating the same things over and over. What makes it exciting is the 'social' aspect, paving your way up in server's hierarchy or hunting the strongest monsters being able to loot stuff nobody owns yet. Otherwise people would just hunt 'for fun' on localhosted single-player, wouldn't they? When you struggle exping up, you've got to consider everyone struggles just as much. Sure it will take much longer to get up to a certain level, but will also feel more satisfying than it would on higher rates where the same level is considered merely a noobchar.
Gameplay is also much more balanced at low-mid levels than some absurd 300+ levels. Even wars are way funnier, especially when you finally come to conclusion that the highest levels fight - the more it is about gfb/ue spam.
Allowing too fast levels grow you'd then need to change the whole gameplay just as Medvia did. And I don't only mean adding new content for high levels, but mostly changing all formulas, re-balancing everything and so on. If that's what you're seeking for, you already have Medivia, then go and play! What would even be the point of creating another Medivia-like when there's already one?
Our project is aiming for the old Tibia feeling, and it cannot be achieved with higher rates today.
Not only that though, most players just left aswell cause it was to hard, players had a way to hard time to get levels or whatsoever, or not willing to grind any monsters (even though serpentine/white rose/nether spiders existed). Thats why I doubt this server will survive for anything longer then 6 months with over 100 people online, even though I hope it does, cause that means the oldschool is still alive!
As far as I remember Spectrum was doing good and was fun to play until it got flooded with bots, mostly elfbot (or whatever it was) that both war teams used massively and which made many casual players quit. Until then it was more alive than Prophecy in its time.