what a game! ... and hi!

hats off to the devs and the community for making a very cool and polished game - impressive
coming from CS, and being in my 50s, the pace is lightening fast and movement takes a lot of practice - that grappling hook thingy is pretty awesome
i have a lot of practice to do, but i jumped on a server last night and got some great tips from a more seasoned player - would like to thank the dude but i don't remember his game name
one thing that was a little disappointing was to see so many empty servers - is the popularity of Xonotic declining?

Hi and welcome to Xonotic! The popularity is not exactly declining, it's just that we have a relatively small but steady player base. Xonotic is a quite polished game that offers quite some gameplay depth beyond the hectic aim shoot die cycle, especially if you try out the vanilla game modes (which do not offer hook though). But the key selling factor (if you can say so in a FOSS game) is the awesome and friendly community - you will very often find experienced players on the servers that are willing to take their time to show newbies the ropes.
Also, if you like to dive a little deeper into vanilla gameplay, have a look at the official guide: http://www.xonotic.org/guide/
Have fun, a pleasant stay and cu online!

Hi and welcome.
I also would suggest you to play vanilla games. Most of time players will join a empty server in no time. That's at least my experience (Europe). Userbase is kinda steady. New players come and go, It actually took me quite a while to finally "stay" as well. Also Halogenes Guide helped me a lot (although already had AFPS experience). If you are not familiar with Arena FPS i suggest you to read through it.