[Tyhm]

So what makes good community?
A steady inflow of newbies, a steady inflow of oldbies, good player retention?
My theory is and was the evolution of newbies to oldbies, though admittedly I've never been good at retention. That was the whole point of quests - newbies go OO SOMETHING TO DO!, they do it, they get stuff, then they go "Huh, bored now. I think I'll go back to ___", and lo, there are more people there. Some newbies that need help with quests, some newbies who abandoned their questing status and need to be pwned.
Trouble is, on Classic, the crux was that the oldbies were only there to pick on the newbies. Well, not all of them were only there for that, but most of them were mostly there to PK newbies. Which means less newbies want to stay, particularly when there are other server options. Which means for each oldbie that leaves, there's one less total of the playercount. Which means eventually we wind up with like 10 people total. So we can crack down on PKing (more newbies, less oldbies), or we can encourage it (less newbies, more oldbies). Or you can work around it, which other servers have done to greater effect.