the game is 15 loving years old what do you expect
Age doesn't matter when games like Roblox and Garry's Mod are still going strong
Blockland's problem is the development gradually slowing to what is a near halt by now because Badspot stopped caring and had better things to do
Roblox and Garry's Mod are still going because of an active development team that occasionally adds new content, fixes, quality of life stuff, engine changes,
engine upgrades even
Blockland did some of that for a while, and it was great, but then that slowed up, then the game got released on Steam, to an audience entirely unfamiliar with it, how it worked, and with no way of knowing how to mod the game, that it could even be modded, and where to get those mods due to the lack of Workshop integration
Besides that, this game's engine is so old, crusty, and finicky, that it gave content creators only so much to work with, so by this point, a lot of people have just lost the patience and the drive it takes to make content for this game, especially if you're trying to make something new or revolutionary
This game could have been going still if Badspot pulled a Notch/Garry Newman way earlier on and handed development over to a group of people while there was still a lively community to pick from, but even then, due to Blockland's custom systems like the Octree and authentication keys, we would be still be stuck with this old engine anyway unless a group of people wanted to attempt to port the game to Torque 3D with it's systems intact or completely reworked
So i guess for those reasons you could say that Blockland was doomed from the get go then, but who knows, maybe if there was an actual team of developers, maybe there could have been some actual headway toward porting this game to an engine that didn't suck so bad
It's things like this that we have Brickadia to look forward to, a brick building sandbox game that runs on a competent engine being developed by a team of Blockland veterans and experienced coders who would know what's best for the game
Blockland could have been great, it had so much potential, but this is just where awful game engines and an uncaring developer gets you