So...

Not only have a bunch of servers disappeared, but now even the defrag server is empty (is it even still there?)

What's happening? I know I didn't keep up my pledge...school got in the way...but now numbers are dying...

I know dev'ing is happening, you see it on irc, but player numbers are getting worse.

Shitty GPU atm so thats my reason for not playing.

somehow, some pickup players (which represent a non negligeable fraction of overall xonotic player base) prefer not to play, instead of playing on (desert) public servers.

Next time I wait for a pickup match to happen I'll just connect to a public server and see what happens.

I think the main problem is people not wanting to connect to empty servers.

I think that empty servers are indeed the main problem. Nobody starts playing if there is no-one else. I really much see that, if I am with 1 other people online, most of time there will join more and pretty fast. Just like the snowball effect. But if there is nobody online, the number of players will stay zero.

of course, noone likes to join an empty server. And if one does, it's of course incentive.

But I hardly catch the following situation: in one hand, 9 players are waiting for a 5v5 ctf game to start (and, quite often it seems, this game won't ever start), and in other hand, all public servers are desert.

That indeed is really strange, why not warming up in a public server? Waiting on irc is boring like hell.

But there's one other thing, the number of fine and well balanced ctf servers is zero. All XWIT servers are out of air, and also the Git Developers Server is. There is not one European good server left!

The next major release needs a really decent PR push next time, with video's of gameplay, movement etc etc, now that the physics and balance are virtually set in concrete, I would say it is time to actually start to make a proper push in this regards because 0.1's was not very good at all..mainly just small linux sites informed but it probably worked out for the best considering the balance mess back then.

I agree it makes more sense to play on publics as well at times, I even tried a few nights ago but only one person came along, definitely won't see more players on the servers anyway until there is the next release and people start playing it..and again it needs to be a big release over big/huge sites otherwise (not just linux sites but esport sites, gaming sites etc) or it's going to end the same way.

Quality gameplay content as well for video's and decent production value, have you ever seen the old nexuiz promo vids? Virtually everyone looks boring and no real editing value in them.

Right now it's in a way kinda good that we don't have a ton of people online, mainly because in it's current state Xonotic isn't even close to being a complete game. I think when the beta (or whatever the immediate release before 1.0 is) hits, that's when we need to start populating the hell out of everything as the game will have most of what it needs to feel complete, with the possibility of a little more coming in the near future keeping the player base excited about the game.

I've seen a lot of new players, who never saw Nexuiz before, coming to Xonotic. I think I've seen about hundred, but there most be thousands of them. They just come new here, sometimes say hello, take a look around, and disconnect. You know why?
Nearly nobody online. And the people who were online, were racing, and all new players think that is boring (and I agree with them ). But now the raceserver is gone most of the time Xonotic is totally empty.
It was not handy to make a 0.1 release, you should have started with the 1.0. And every day you guys wait longer with that 1.0 release, you waste players. If 1.0 zero would just be released in a few weeks, a lot of players and servers would move from Nexuiz to Xonotic, and there would be a lot of players online every single minute. And they would not just be racing. So all that new players that find Xonotic, which are a lot, will see a more crowded game, and will have a lot more fun playing it, and will stay. Most people here totally underestimate the number of players that already find this game, because you don't find them if you look in the server list. Of course you don't find big numbers of new players if they disconnect after one minute, or not connect at all because they see no-one.
I don't care about all this balance shit. Samuals balance is just good for me, so why waiting another year before the release? If everyone would just get out the bugs of the last release, and make everything Samuals balance, and just scream out that Xonotic 1.0 has been released, the servers and players would move. And Xonotic would get a lot of new players.
If you want more changes, well, wasn't it the meaning that Xonotic had more frequent releases than Nexuiz?

Why waiting with this new release?

Mepper: this 0.1 stage is not optional so as to get to 1.0.

Kind of half agree with mepper..physics and balance are virtually set in stone, but I think releasing 1.0 could be misleading..it sounds complete and xonotic is far from it, maps, editing etc etc.

I do agree that we need a proper 'stable' release though, sooner rather than later..surely we must have enough maps now for a new release, and polished stuff for say 0.2?

I do agree the game is not finished yet, but if you make a 0.2 release, that won't make the servers and players move, you see?

Then we will stay wasting new players

I can understand all the viewpoints presented here. I do however think another release needs to happen soon, if to do nothing else but to spark some interest in what's new, and make sure the "outside world" know's that Xonotic is still alive and kicking.

Most of the servers (the few that there are) are hosted by devs or at least people who lurk around here and stay up to date, no? So the servers would likely update to the new version quickly, and there would be some more players at least for a short period of time. Your casual Xonotic first-timer probably isn't playing the latest git, and 0.1 is... obviously lacking.

I'd go for a 0.2 release, or even jump straight to something like 0.5 beta once bugs are ironed out. Alternatively, you could do the sauerbraten style codename releases, so as to avoid potentially misleading version numbers.

About empty servers. It's true that there might actually be quite a number of people online, yet nobody plays because no one wants to join an empty server.
I think there should be some lightweight communication service in the game, which will show people who is online (read: who have launched Xonotic) and provide users with simple messaging abilities. This may be infancy of some full-fledged player network (similar to Steam, for example), or it may not. Yet the basic functions of finding players and letting them cooperate to play together should increase server online a lot and make it more stable. I'm aware of IRC, but not all potential Xonotic players use it / know how to use it / even know about it.
I'm not that much of a C coder (yet I can call myself experienced in Java SE programming) and don't know how hard it can be to implement this idea in the game. Any opinions on this?

I think there should be some lightweight communication service in the game, which will show people who are online (read: who have launched Xonotic) and provide users with simple messaging abilities.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't someone impliment some kind of IRC client into the game (at least in code, as a proof of concept)? Wouldn't it be possible to make an IRC channel (like #xonotic-ingame or something) and have a chat interface to that channel built into say, the server list window? So that people could chat while looking at the server list? I think that would be great.

Yeah, Akira did, if my memory is still intact. Using IRC as the base for player communication is fine. I just think that this needs intuitive graphical interface, so that newcomers won't have to open console and poke around for commands, figuring out how text interface works.