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I tried my hand at advertising as well, managed to get a few pages in. Sadly, no takers, except for one girl that seemed interested but never really showed up.

I think at this point, people just aren't interested. Especially with guilds. I've noticed guild role plays don't have much life in them as it is. People have been taking about "bringing in new blood" for a long while now. Problem is, 'new blood' just don't seem all that into what we do. Maybe it's our format, maybe it's how new people are treated here. Maybe we repel potential new comers.

But who knows.

Just speaking from personal advertising experience.

No one's giving up after a "few bumps."

People are giving up after nearly half a decade of this community struggling to keep everyone interested, and I don't just mean with all the juicy drama. How many times do we have to watch guilds die off and "revive" them for 1-2 cards? How many times do we have to watch the same idiots argue over the same s**t? How many times do we have to come up with solutions to keep this place interesting?

My answer? None.

You want to recruit and try to pump some new blood into the community though? Okay, let's break this down, and let's take the whole "Gaia dying as a whole" bit out of the equation, let's pretend Gaia is still getting 100k people online at peak hours. How do we as a community appeal to those people? Let's look at what Dallas said about this.

"Maybe it's how new people are treated here. Maybe we repel potential newcomers."

That statement alone tells you why recruiting won't work, aside from the fact that what we do is pretty far off from the standard RP atmosphere. As a community, we are toxic as ********. Before anyone goes pointing fingers at this guy or that guy, no single person is the direct cause of the toxicity around here; it's been toxic since the very start. I've read the Blacklist enough to know that this community has been a pile of s**t for a very, very long time. The difference was that back then, Gaia had so many people flooding onto the site that we could afford to be toxic. If King and Landry got into a pissing contest? It wouldn't have affected everyone; hell, half the community probably wouldn't have heard of it. Chrono takes a shot at Angel? The community wouldn't have divided itself, because who cares? There were tons of active guilds at once that people were focused more on the RP, not on the drama going down in the social guild.

Yet, as the community began to lose members and everyone started getting familiar with their fellow RPers, it became all about the drama (and achievements, but that's not relevant at the moment). It was suddenly all about who you were friends with, and who you weren't. The littlest amount of drama could affect the whole scene, and that's not exactly very welcoming to newbies. Who wants to join a community in the middle of the ******** vs Dipshit War? Who wants to join when they're gonna be ripped apart in their first month of RPing and expected to pull their s**t together?

We used to be able to hide the toxicity of the community with a veil of endless RP and storylines. That veil is looooooooooooong gone, and isn't coming back. You can't fix it, because that's how it's been from the start.

Also, Skype is a massive problem. ******** whoever decided we should all start talking in Skype. That program alone has been the source of more drama than the Blacklist.

tl;dr: Community isn't gonna change, we're all out of the type of blood we need, and there's no Red Cross in sight. Just let it bleed out; but I'm a cynic.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd back to lurking, sorry for showing up.

Here's the problem: not many on Gaia are interested in guild RP. On top of that, of those that are, not many would flock here only to be thrown to the wolves first chance they get.

The only way we can attract anyone is a shovel to the face, because we're ugly as ********.

Start stopping with the whole giving a s**t.

Lost cause.