BTW I was wrong about how ddosing was worse than may 2nd, I just checked blockland.online's stats and blockland's average playercount dropped by like half (this is an approximation since blockland.online only takes the playercount at 6pm cst i assume). HOWEVER, medrp's return has made me a tiny bit hopeful that blockland might push on for a gain in active players regardless if they're new or not, since medrp is back and has been consistently getting like 30-40 people. Another issue is that the game is currently at a point where there's just gaps of nothing, where there's either no servers being hosted that aren't just the same old dedicated servers that get old in like an hour, or there's a very niche server like despair fever, bcs, or merp with like 10+ people on it while other servers have 2 players. This is what blockland's server list is like 80% of the time, which also demotivates anyone from hosting because the niche people are gonna stay on the niche servers and the rest are just doing something else because they saw that nothing good had players earlier. This game thrives on servers either being interesting to play or having people to talk to, not ultra-niche servers and dev servers where the admins are afk & also you can't build. New players also are just gonna refund the game 3 days in after seeing that there have been less than 15 people online every time they've checked the game.
I do have a few things that can help blockland not have these gaps of just nothing for those willing to host stuff:
1. Create a dedicated schedule of when you're going to host so people KNOW when the good stuff is guaranteed to be hosted, since this will cause people to know when the playercount is going to increase, as well as giving other hosts knowledge on when a good opportunity exists to host. Also, like it or not Discord is literally the only place to congregate or advertise anymore that isn't just spamming "JOIN *server*" on glass chat, so just friggin make a server or advertise on Bcc so you can at least let people know when you're hosting.
2. The best kinds of dedicated servers are ones that do not get old after an hour or two of playing with ≥ 6 people. While any 24/7 dedicated server (that ISNT dev stuff) is a welcome addition since it gives more options, it's honestly best if a server is fun with both small and larger playercounts. I constantly see servers reach a peak of like 15+ and then quickly die because they weren't really made for what the player cap is, and become overcrowded. Stuff like solar apocalypse and aod (as much as i hate aod) are probably the greatest examples of this since they're rather grindy in nature, and hook people.
3. Don't not host because you think you won't get players, do so anyway, take the gamble, anything different being hosting is better than nothing. I've seen default freebuilds get like 12 people in the past few months because people were just on there and talking, so it doesn't really matter what exactly you're hosting just host SOMETHING, and also check the damn server list more than once a day if you're just looking to join a server since the playercount can radically change over the course of 5 minutes.
4. Literally ask previous hosts who don't play the game anymore if you can have their gamemode files and vice versa, I'm not joking. Despair Fever is one of blockland's last saving graces thanks to it finally being open sourced and ready to download, and there are tons of other gamemodes either are or going to be lost to obscurity. Ik there's the issue of potential backdoors if they use stuff like eval, but at least giving someone trustworthy enough the gamemode zip to at least host it would help tremendously. This also applies to saves, since most new potential hosts don't want to take the time to spend 100s of hours learning to build and event for a server that's not even guaranteed to get more than 10 people.
There are also extraneous reasons for dwindling playercount like friend groups breaking apart or no longer being interested in blockland, the fact that blockland hasn't been showcased by anyone lately (most people found blockland because of videos they saw online, and people unaware of blockland are still exposed to it without knowing what it is thanks to those two trogtor memes), ddosing, and the handicapped dismission the game immediately gets when mentioned anymore so they don't even bother (seriously, I'm so loving sick of conversations about this game immediately becoming "Yeah, too bad blockland is dead"). The things that would actually revive the game can unfortunately only be done by badspot, who does not give a stuff about this game and hasn't for almost/over a decade now, so it's best to at least try to hold this game up ourselves.
