Hahaha - you really do have this odd, bizarre view of this game.
The game survived - nay, flourished - long before any epic potions, long before composing, long before GE events and, let's be brutally honest, it was a MUCH better game back then ...
High player base...More challenge...Lower player base...Less challenge... HMMMM. Not that it really matters to me. If it wasn't for my guild i'd be LONG LONG LONG LONGGGG GONE.
Guess you can say i've finally boarded Mr. Doom's ship. Say we are trying to destroy the game or whatever. But at one point we were pretty passionate about this game.
Lets see, relatively new browser technology rather than 10 years behind the cutting edge; 100-200 levels of content to introduce lots of new ideas rather than 1500 levels of content where it becomes progressively harder to do anything new rather than revise what you have done before; 3000 levels of players to expect to keep growing in power without recognising that the exponential growth that requires has to stretch the levels; highly upgraded players hunting twice a year instead of thinking once a week was a big hunt...
It is rather easy to look back on the good old days with a very narrow focus, and not really try to understand the breadth of the challenge that faces HCS is continuing to develop a game like this beyond 10 years.
As I think it was Doom or Egami said in another thread, the fundamental problem is power-creep in all its forms, and this is a fact of life for long-lived games. Without power creep you will lose your player base as they get bored with players that don't even appear to develop. with power creep you have to accept that the density of challenge has to spread out, or you end up with (1) developers who simply don't have enough time to provide the amount of new content and new ideas it would take, and (2) a community where the power gap between the old and new players is simply so large that they might as well be in different (non interacting!) Universes.
If I were to be brutally honest, I would say that say that a brand new game has a huge number of advantages over a tried-and-tested game. And to be even more brutally honest (and get back to the opening quotes), the advantages a tried-and-tested game have (vastly refined player interface; vastly improved reliability; vastly faster map system; much greater range of game aspects ...) have become part of the scenery, are taken for granted, and so are no longer recognised as advantages.
Edited by rowbeth, 12 June 2016 - 13:17.