I personally think that with the decline in active users over the past years, Eric should make Blockland Free To Play for a month and see if the community will spike in a positive change.
I personally understand that Blockland is a good source of income for Eric, but for a month it might be worth seeing what the community can gain from it. Sure, there will be an obvious dramatic increase of the *ahem* younger generation, but even then, players are players. It will bump up the servers and with the game being as good as it actually is, people will be more prone to actually give the game a proper try instead of getting overwhelmed in the two hour refund window and just giving up the game.
Here are the overall pros and cons I can think of. Keep in mind, I just woke up so my thought processes be lackin'.
Pros :- More than likely, an increase in Player Count.
- Additional "free" marketing as people are always looking for good free games.
- A potentially more active forum.
- Possibilities of newer people wanting to learn to mod and script. Thus increasing the overall game and forum activity.
- An already helpful community will help new players feel more comfortable.
- probably more but i'm too tired to think of them
Cons :- For the month that the game is F2P, Eric won't get income.
- High chance of too many young kids coming into the game.*
- Potentially overall cancerous community. But since the community already is, I don't think it'll be a problem. ;)
* I think that with this, it'll give those kids the opportunity many of us had where we got to grow up with Blockland and learn to love it. So it could be a win-win.
I don't loving know, let me know your thoughts too. It'll obviously never happen but I just got thinking about it.