I just woke up to no notifications for literally the 7th day in a row. I don't remember this kind of inactivity happening until about a month ago. Why has my world stopped spinning?
UPDATE 11/9/2017: Enough people have now replied to this thread for me to figure out a few theories.
1. Twitch meddling with Curse: Many forum members decided to leave once they were told that they needed to create a Twitch account to use the forum. I mean, can you imagine if one day you woke up to find that you suddenly needed a Microsoft account to buy Minecraft?
2. The reverse bandwagon effect: People have noticed other people leaving, and so have considered doing the same themselves. This will lead to other people who notice that jumping ship as well, and so on.
3. Mods stuck on 1.7.10: Many notable mods stopped updating after 1.7.10 because of the internal rewrites in 1.8. This caused people who only play modded Minecraft to leave the forum, which can also lead to 2.
4. "Minecraft is dying! Minecraft is dying!": Many people have said that Minecraft Java Edition is dying, and some (former) forum members have actually fallen for it and left the forum, which also leads to 2.
The forum has been on a decline for about a couple years now and it's only really starting to kick in within the past several months.
There's a few things to consider.
The game has been out since 2009. That's 8 years ago! A lot of people have played this game for years and years on end, myself included. After such a long time, it starts to get a little... Old. It isn't as exciting to play as when we first started, since now we know almost everything about the game. There gets to a point where eventually there isn't much to really discuss.
There's also a few things here in the subforums. Mods for example. Most of you big name mods have halted at 1.7, and a lot of modders that have halted there have just flat-out quit doing modding, and in other cases MC as a whole. It's too much work to update past 1.8 for some. And, upon seeing this, some other folks may leave as well, seeing their favorite mod is dead.
I'm not sure how long ago it was, but a while back MCF changed their rules, and it became much less fun and chilled out of a place to be. You can't really be yourself here and have banter; you kinda have to be more on the robotic side. You will notice a huge change when looking at posts and the forum from, say, 2011, and now. Nowadays you have people who will sort of pressure you into falling in line with their opinions.
Some may be finally realizing that nothing from the Suggestions area is never making it into the game. Which is frankly obvious that nothing there has so much as a chance to get in the game, but it could be a culprit. The toxicity there is also... Bleh. One individual in particular lurked exclusively there and was known for being toxic like you've never seen.
Then you also have Mojang's changes as of more recent, ad their development cycle.. Apart from not using their financial assets and stepping up their game, they're beginning to cater too much to the youth crowd that itself is declining. I have nothing against young kids as long as they aren't driving me batty; but it's difficult trying to find relaxed, older or mature individuals among the seas of youngsters. That said, this also includes some changes, like no more true Minecons, Mojang not posting on their official site anymore, and the DLC/microtransaction plague.
Final nail in the coffin is Twitch/Amazon/Evil corporation merger. Being forced to create a new account ain't much fun, and it's driving some people who only considered leaving, to dropping it completely. This in turn also leaves us with the final factor. People see other people leave, and with the inactivity they leave themselves. It's a vicious cycle.
The game has been out since 2009. That's 8 years ago! A lot of people have played this game for years and years on end, myself included. After such a long time, it starts to get a little... Old. It isn't as exciting to play as when we first started, since now we know almost everything about the game. There gets to a point where eventually there isn't much to really discuss.
The only issue with this is that the game continues to gain new players; I wouldn't be surprised if the number of copies sold over the past year exceeds the total number ever sold for just the Java edition (27 million) - and there are more active players than ever (55 million as of earlier this year, which was a 37.5% increase from June 2016). It may even soon be the best-selling game of all-time; to put things into perspective, just the sales for the Java edition (which still continues to have decent sales; this edition in particular is targeted by the "Minecraft is dying crowd") would make the game the 16th best selling game of all-time - and it is the best-selling PC game by a large margin.
The forums also continue to gain new members at a healthy rate - nearly 80,000 over the past 6 months (note that all new accounts over this period were Twitch accounts; only existing ones were affected by the merger) - but they don't seem to be contributing much to activity though; for comparison, about 146,000 posts and 40,000 threads were made over the same period, which are well below the long-term averages in terms of posts+threads/member and posts/thread, especially when considering that many old members have become inactive, dragging down the long-term average.
Also, there is surprisingly little activity going on in the sections devoted to Survival or Creative; for example, almost nobody does Survival journals or mentions what they did while playing anymore and I'm the only one who has even a semi-regularly updated journal (I've considered starting a new modded world just to have at least one regularly updated thread even though I have not finished updating TMCW to version 5 yet; I do have one for my first world but I only mention significant finds or events since detailing everything I explore would be rather boring).
It's due to a variety of reasons as to why MCF is slowly dying. Main culprit is the Twitch merger (and the Twitch account requirement).
The Twitch merger occurred only last year; as I demonstrated before the forums have been declining since 2012, with a massive drop in 2013, before even Microsoft came into play (as many claimed that they would kill the game):
In fact, the drop between 2012-2013 is the single biggest year-on-year decline in terms of absolute numbers, so something pretty bad must have happened back then; there was a rebound in 2014 (only to half the 2012 average) followed by an even larger decline in 2015 (percentage-wise). Twitch only became relevant in mid-2016; the decline rate in the year since is not abnormally high compared to previous YoY declines (the years shown above started in mid-October of the previous year since I compared the latest data as of posting time to a year earlier; 2011 is actually since the time the forums started since the Wayback Machine only goes back to mid-2011 while the forums started up in mid-June 2009 so I used 2 years and 4 months/840 days to calculate the averages).
Also, as I mentioned before there are still many new members joining - hundreds per day - and the decline is far smaller than the decline in activity; the recent mandatory merging of accounts did not even have any effect on new members since all new accounts for the past year have been Twitch accounts.
Note that the numbers shown are only for Survival mode but other forums have been affected as well; for being the most popular edition by far there sure hasn't been much activity in the "Minecraft" / "Better Together" section, same for the Pocket and Console Editions, all with a combined 78% of all sales (also, this has been the case for 5+ years, as seen in this data from 2012 - already they had a majority of all sales, including a whopping 84.5% when just considering Christmas sales; in other words, in terms of percentage of all sales PC/Java has not changed much for 5+ years).
1. I don't want to say I play less to imply I've moved on. To the contrary, this is one game I keep coming back to and still play a lot at times on and off. However, it's true I don't play as much as I did in 2012 to 2014. I also play other games more. The above post mentions 2012 to 2013 as a big drop off, and that's interesting but strange. The 1.2 to 1.3 change happened then, but that wasn't THAT controversial. Maybe just because it was around five years old at that point?
2. Main reason. I can't remember when, but the forums became bogged down. Advertisements went out of control, I think maybe the forum software changed (?), but regardless the forums are very slow to use for me and it wasn't when I first joined in 2012 (made a bit worse since Firefox as of late has become much slower for me since the multi-process update a couple or few months back, to the point the browser I've used for over 13 years and since before it's first official release might be something I also stop using, much as I don't want to). It all disrupts workflow sooooo much, and one of my posts is so slow to edit/maintain now and I've all but given up.
Also just came back to see a new account was required. Not "bothered" by it but it shouldn't be needed. Probably never going to use Twitch (actually, I can't as I have FBO disabled which prevents it from working). Guess some company merger is resulting in consolidation or something so whatever.
Account merger forcing "All" current forum goers to create a Twitch account or merge an existing one. = Guarantee a ton of forum goers stopped bothering once this stuff slapped everyone across the screen. I know it annoyed me, especially since I can't recover or create my original Twitch... and like the above there's no use for twitch in my case so why should I be forced to bother with it at all?
I personally am getting fed up with Microsoft's meddling with other sites/games/systems... it's really starting to annoy me considering that microsoft openly supports adware(Windows10 and the adware program disguised as an important update that slammed every computer running win7 or newer...)
Does anyone know what happened in late 2012 or in 2013 that caused the forum to drop in activity? Was that when the rules were changed? Or was it something else, like 1.3?
Account merger forcing "All" current forum goers to create a Twitch account or merge an existing one. = Guarantee a ton of forum goers stopped bothering once this stuff slapped everyone across the screen. I know it annoyed me, especially since I can't recover or create my original Twitch... and like the above there's no use for twitch in my case so why should I be forced to bother with it at all?
I personally am getting fed up with Microsoft's meddling with other sites/games/systems... it's really starting to pịss me off considering that microsoft openly supports adware(Windows10 and the adware program disguised as an important update that slammed every computer running win7 or newer...)
Microsoft doesn't own Twitch, Amazon does.
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You know, not all threads are supposed to last forever.
Especially when you consider that this section is rarely visited, usually only when someone has a forum question or support issue. Using a slow thread in this section as proof of the forums being slow is like dipping a glass of water into the ocean and saying there are no whales in the ocean because none wound up in the glass.
Frankly, the forum is getting less activity, that can't be disputed. But the reasons for this are plentiful and varied.
1. There is always a slump of activity after the summer.
2. The game is 6 years old, or 8 if you count before official release. The fact that the forums were as popular as they were for as long as they were has always been an anomaly compared to forums for other games. This forum has been more active at times than forums for entire game publishers, which can have sections devoted to a whole stable of games rather than just one game on different platforms.
3. Before, forums and the wiki were more or less required resources because the game had no internal source of knowledge for things like crafting recipes. That was not true for console editions with the different crafting mechanic and is less true now in PC as well with the recipe book.
4. Going off of number 3 for other game knowledge that isn't explained in game, the longer people play the less they need it. I would have the wiki open every time I played back in 2011, but now I really only need it for those rare times I forget a Redstone circuit
5. Some people will tell you the merger with Twitch slowed it down but... Not really. As a curiosity I went through the news article comments and saw who was still active. After 8 pages of people who said they were absolutely never ever coming back, I saw maybe 5 users who have never been active after the merge, and the one with the highest post count was something like 400 posts spread across a couple years. None of the people who didn't merge were especially active. Most of the people who said they would never return (roughly 90%) have been active within the last 5 days. So it was never as big of a deal as they made it out to be.
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One thing I find curious is that the online user stats (at the bottom of the main forum page) show over a hundred members online during most of the day yet there is so little activity, and quite a few members seem to be on regularly but don't seem to do much (I've seen members with 0 posts who have been around for years). A hundred concurrent members online over a day potentially represents thousands of members; assuming each one spends 10 minutes online (Alexa shows less than 2 minutes for all visitors) this means that there are around 14,400 members visiting the forums every day - but based on activity only around 1% of them, if even that, actually do anything.
Also, I don't buy the "game is 8 years old" argument since the game continues to sell tens of millions of copies per year and player counts continue to increase (22 million copies were sold in 9 months between June 2016 and February 2017. Even the Java Edition, which is particularly mentioned by the "Minecraft is dying threads" continues to sell millions of copies per year. There were also 55 million active players earlier this year - 15 million more than less than a year ago - which represents 45% of all copies ever sold so the game sure seems to have a good player retention rate).
In addition, why is the Survival Mode section so dead? There were only 6 active threads with a total of 6 replies over the past day! Surely people still play Survival and want to share what they have done; I'm the only one who has had an even semi-regularly updated Survival journal recently. Likewise, Show your Creation? Creative Mode?
One thing I find curious is that the online user stats (at the bottom of the main forum page) show over a hundred members online during most of the day yet there is so little activity, and quite a few members seem to be on regularly but don't seem to do much (I've seen members with 0 posts who have been around for years). A hundred concurrent members online over a day potentially represents thousands of members; assuming each one spends 10 minutes online (Alexa shows less than 2 minutes for all visitors) this means that there are around 14,400 members visiting the forums every day - but based on activity only around 1% of them, if even that, actually do anything.
propley cause the mods ban and give you warnning points for litrary anything
That sounds like an issue on your end because I have not seen any change in the propensity for moderators to issue warnings; here are the dates of every warning that I've gotten (most of them for being off-topic), and I have never gotten a ban, which only happens if you get too many warnings in too short of a time period and/or do something bad enough (I think you need 3 points within 30 days for a ban, with more and/or subsequent bans leading to longer bans):
May 10, 2017
Sep 20, 2016
May 21, 2016
Apr 5, 2016
Jan 20, 2016
Dec 5, 2015
Sep 30, 2014
Aug 20, 2014
Apr 9, 2014
I do disagree with some of the warnings and post deletions (no warnings) since I don't think my posts were that off-topic and somebody else, even the OP, made the original post that promoted me to reply to them (I think that if the OP wants to go a bit off-topic in their own thread they should be able to and one or two semi off-topic posts here and there are not an issue, only if they turn into an ongoing discussion).
I've had warnings on May 27, July 14, and August 4 (I only got a point on the last one). I have been here for 5 1/2 months (which means I get 1 warning every 56 days on average), and it's your fault you are getting warned. My first one was for necroposting and my second one for spamming my own thread and my third one was for calling someone a noob because I thought it was cool and funny. Also I don't see this as the reason the forum has been losing activity.
I've had warnings on May 27, July 14, and August 4 (I only got a point on the last one). I have been here for 5 1/2 months (which means I get 1 warning every 56 days on average), and it's your fault you are getting warned. My first one was for necroposting and my second one for spamming my own thread and my third one was for calling someone a noob because I thought it was cool and funny. Also I don't see this as the reason the forum has been losing activity.
hasty judgements made without consideration are also a big part of why quite a few people have resorted to merely lurking instead of posting as they are afraid their actions will get them banned. This is because they aren't sure what is okay and what isn't when the rules are so heavy-handedly enforced by moderators who think it's their job to limit any and all things they deem to be against the rules even in the slightest and most obscure of ways.
hasty judgements made without consideration are also a big part of why quite a few people have resorted to merely lurking instead of posting as they are afraid their actions will get them banned. This is because they aren't sure what is okay and what isn't when the rules are so heavy-handedly enforced by moderators who think it's their job to limit any and all things they deem to be against the rules even in the slightest and most obscure of ways.
I've been here since 7/29/2012 (1929 days), and I've only ever gotten 3 formal infractions (average, one every 643 days), with my last one being in 2013 (1582 days ago). I do not believe that is actually a problem.
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I've had an experience which suggests that there are in fact still a lot of people who want to discuss the game - I recently signed up on Reddit due to how slow things had become around here (not that I'm planning on quitting the forums) and yesterday I posted a submission which just shows a couple maps of one of my worlds with a short description (on the image page) and the response is simply overwhelming compared to my experience on these forums (the Reddit post refers to the world in the second forum thread listed, which has had occasional updates regarding what I've done and is far more detailed):
Consider also there there are nearly 10 times as many registered users on these forums as subscribers to the Minecraft subreddit, which makes the response I got all the more overwhelming - the online Minecraft discussion community is still very much alive and well, just not here (you ought to see how much discussion there has been over the changes to the horse model, and related posts, or even just making the stone slabs in blacksmiths an actual anvil) - they just don't want to use these forums, even though I think they are much better in many ways; I've also had confirmation that former forum users have moved on to Reddit since they said that they remembered me from the forums and one even asked if I signed up because of the Twitch merger (which again cannot be blamed for the long-term decline).
I just woke up to no notifications for literally the 7th day in a row. I don't remember this kind of inactivity happening until about a month ago. Why has my world stopped spinning?
UPDATE 11/9/2017: Enough people have now replied to this thread for me to figure out a few theories.
1. Twitch meddling with Curse: Many forum members decided to leave once they were told that they needed to create a Twitch account to use the forum. I mean, can you imagine if one day you woke up to find that you suddenly needed a Microsoft account to buy Minecraft?
2. The reverse bandwagon effect: People have noticed other people leaving, and so have considered doing the same themselves. This will lead to other people who notice that jumping ship as well, and so on.
3. Mods stuck on 1.7.10: Many notable mods stopped updating after 1.7.10 because of the internal rewrites in 1.8. This caused people who only play modded Minecraft to leave the forum, which can also lead to 2.
4. "Minecraft is dying! Minecraft is dying!": Many people have said that Minecraft Java Edition is dying, and some (former) forum members have actually fallen for it and left the forum, which also leads to 2.
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The forum has been on a decline for about a couple years now and it's only really starting to kick in within the past several months.
There's a few things to consider.
The game has been out since 2009. That's 8 years ago! A lot of people have played this game for years and years on end, myself included. After such a long time, it starts to get a little... Old. It isn't as exciting to play as when we first started, since now we know almost everything about the game. There gets to a point where eventually there isn't much to really discuss.
There's also a few things here in the subforums. Mods for example. Most of you big name mods have halted at 1.7, and a lot of modders that have halted there have just flat-out quit doing modding, and in other cases MC as a whole. It's too much work to update past 1.8 for some. And, upon seeing this, some other folks may leave as well, seeing their favorite mod is dead.
I'm not sure how long ago it was, but a while back MCF changed their rules, and it became much less fun and chilled out of a place to be. You can't really be yourself here and have banter; you kinda have to be more on the robotic side. You will notice a huge change when looking at posts and the forum from, say, 2011, and now. Nowadays you have people who will sort of pressure you into falling in line with their opinions.
Some may be finally realizing that nothing from the Suggestions area is never making it into the game. Which is frankly obvious that nothing there has so much as a chance to get in the game, but it could be a culprit. The toxicity there is also... Bleh. One individual in particular lurked exclusively there and was known for being toxic like you've never seen.
Then you also have Mojang's changes as of more recent, ad their development cycle.. Apart from not using their financial assets and stepping up their game, they're beginning to cater too much to the youth crowd that itself is declining. I have nothing against young kids as long as they aren't driving me batty; but it's difficult trying to find relaxed, older or mature individuals among the seas of youngsters. That said, this also includes some changes, like no more true Minecons, Mojang not posting on their official site anymore, and the DLC/microtransaction plague.
Final nail in the coffin is Twitch/Amazon/Evil corporation merger. Being forced to create a new account ain't much fun, and it's driving some people who only considered leaving, to dropping it completely. This in turn also leaves us with the final factor. People see other people leave, and with the inactivity they leave themselves. It's a vicious cycle.
Figured it was time for a change.
The only issue with this is that the game continues to gain new players; I wouldn't be surprised if the number of copies sold over the past year exceeds the total number ever sold for just the Java edition (27 million) - and there are more active players than ever (55 million as of earlier this year, which was a 37.5% increase from June 2016). It may even soon be the best-selling game of all-time; to put things into perspective, just the sales for the Java edition (which still continues to have decent sales; this edition in particular is targeted by the "Minecraft is dying crowd") would make the game the 16th best selling game of all-time - and it is the best-selling PC game by a large margin.
The forums also continue to gain new members at a healthy rate - nearly 80,000 over the past 6 months (note that all new accounts over this period were Twitch accounts; only existing ones were affected by the merger) - but they don't seem to be contributing much to activity though; for comparison, about 146,000 posts and 40,000 threads were made over the same period, which are well below the long-term averages in terms of posts+threads/member and posts/thread, especially when considering that many old members have become inactive, dragging down the long-term average.
Also, there is surprisingly little activity going on in the sections devoted to Survival or Creative; for example, almost nobody does Survival journals or mentions what they did while playing anymore and I'm the only one who has even a semi-regularly updated journal (I've considered starting a new modded world just to have at least one regularly updated thread even though I have not finished updating TMCW to version 5 yet; I do have one for my first world but I only mention significant finds or events since detailing everything I explore would be rather boring).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The Twitch merger occurred only last year; as I demonstrated before the forums have been declining since 2012, with a massive drop in 2013, before even Microsoft came into play (as many claimed that they would kill the game):
In fact, the drop between 2012-2013 is the single biggest year-on-year decline in terms of absolute numbers, so something pretty bad must have happened back then; there was a rebound in 2014 (only to half the 2012 average) followed by an even larger decline in 2015 (percentage-wise). Twitch only became relevant in mid-2016; the decline rate in the year since is not abnormally high compared to previous YoY declines (the years shown above started in mid-October of the previous year since I compared the latest data as of posting time to a year earlier; 2011 is actually since the time the forums started since the Wayback Machine only goes back to mid-2011 while the forums started up in mid-June 2009 so I used 2 years and 4 months/840 days to calculate the averages).
Also, as I mentioned before there are still many new members joining - hundreds per day - and the decline is far smaller than the decline in activity; the recent mandatory merging of accounts did not even have any effect on new members since all new accounts for the past year have been Twitch accounts.
Note that the numbers shown are only for Survival mode but other forums have been affected as well; for being the most popular edition by far there sure hasn't been much activity in the "Minecraft" / "Better Together" section, same for the Pocket and Console Editions, all with a combined 78% of all sales (also, this has been the case for 5+ years, as seen in this data from 2012 - already they had a majority of all sales, including a whopping 84.5% when just considering Christmas sales; in other words, in terms of percentage of all sales PC/Java has not changed much for 5+ years).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I personally use the forums less for two reasons.
1. I don't want to say I play less to imply I've moved on. To the contrary, this is one game I keep coming back to and still play a lot at times on and off. However, it's true I don't play as much as I did in 2012 to 2014. I also play other games more. The above post mentions 2012 to 2013 as a big drop off, and that's interesting but strange. The 1.2 to 1.3 change happened then, but that wasn't THAT controversial. Maybe just because it was around five years old at that point?
2. Main reason. I can't remember when, but the forums became bogged down. Advertisements went out of control, I think maybe the forum software changed (?), but regardless the forums are very slow to use for me and it wasn't when I first joined in 2012 (made a bit worse since Firefox as of late has become much slower for me since the multi-process update a couple or few months back, to the point the browser I've used for over 13 years and since before it's first official release might be something I also stop using, much as I don't want to). It all disrupts workflow sooooo much, and one of my posts is so slow to edit/maintain now and I've all but given up.
Also just came back to see a new account was required. Not "bothered" by it but it shouldn't be needed. Probably never going to use Twitch (actually, I can't as I have FBO disabled which prevents it from working). Guess some company merger is resulting in consolidation or something so whatever.
Account merger forcing "All" current forum goers to create a Twitch account or merge an existing one. = Guarantee a ton of forum goers stopped bothering once this stuff slapped everyone across the screen. I know it annoyed me, especially since I can't recover or create my original Twitch... and like the above there's no use for twitch in my case so why should I be forced to bother with it at all?
I personally am getting fed up with Microsoft's meddling with other sites/games/systems... it's really starting to annoy me considering that microsoft openly supports adware(Windows10 and the adware program disguised as an important update that slammed every computer running win7 or newer...)
Does anyone know what happened in late 2012 or in 2013 that caused the forum to drop in activity? Was that when the rules were changed? Or was it something else, like 1.3?
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Personally, I really don't think its too bad... (91 notfications!)
Microsoft doesn't own Twitch, Amazon does.
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No notifications since 3 days ago. Even this thread is dying now.
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You know, not all threads are supposed to last forever.
Especially when you consider that this section is rarely visited, usually only when someone has a forum question or support issue. Using a slow thread in this section as proof of the forums being slow is like dipping a glass of water into the ocean and saying there are no whales in the ocean because none wound up in the glass.
Frankly, the forum is getting less activity, that can't be disputed. But the reasons for this are plentiful and varied.
1. There is always a slump of activity after the summer.
2. The game is 6 years old, or 8 if you count before official release. The fact that the forums were as popular as they were for as long as they were has always been an anomaly compared to forums for other games. This forum has been more active at times than forums for entire game publishers, which can have sections devoted to a whole stable of games rather than just one game on different platforms.
3. Before, forums and the wiki were more or less required resources because the game had no internal source of knowledge for things like crafting recipes. That was not true for console editions with the different crafting mechanic and is less true now in PC as well with the recipe book.
4. Going off of number 3 for other game knowledge that isn't explained in game, the longer people play the less they need it. I would have the wiki open every time I played back in 2011, but now I really only need it for those rare times I forget a Redstone circuit
5. Some people will tell you the merger with Twitch slowed it down but... Not really. As a curiosity I went through the news article comments and saw who was still active. After 8 pages of people who said they were absolutely never ever coming back, I saw maybe 5 users who have never been active after the merge, and the one with the highest post count was something like 400 posts spread across a couple years. None of the people who didn't merge were especially active. Most of the people who said they would never return (roughly 90%) have been active within the last 5 days. So it was never as big of a deal as they made it out to be.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
One thing I find curious is that the online user stats (at the bottom of the main forum page) show over a hundred members online during most of the day yet there is so little activity, and quite a few members seem to be on regularly but don't seem to do much (I've seen members with 0 posts who have been around for years). A hundred concurrent members online over a day potentially represents thousands of members; assuming each one spends 10 minutes online (Alexa shows less than 2 minutes for all visitors) this means that there are around 14,400 members visiting the forums every day - but based on activity only around 1% of them, if even that, actually do anything.
Also, I don't buy the "game is 8 years old" argument since the game continues to sell tens of millions of copies per year and player counts continue to increase (22 million copies were sold in 9 months between June 2016 and February 2017. Even the Java Edition, which is particularly mentioned by the "Minecraft is dying threads" continues to sell millions of copies per year. There were also 55 million active players earlier this year - 15 million more than less than a year ago - which represents 45% of all copies ever sold so the game sure seems to have a good player retention rate).
In addition, why is the Survival Mode section so dead? There were only 6 active threads with a total of 6 replies over the past day! Surely people still play Survival and want to share what they have done; I'm the only one who has had an even semi-regularly updated Survival journal recently. Likewise, Show your Creation? Creative Mode?
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
This is a well-established phenomenon in online communities, so much so there's a rule for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
That sounds like an issue on your end because I have not seen any change in the propensity for moderators to issue warnings; here are the dates of every warning that I've gotten (most of them for being off-topic), and I have never gotten a ban, which only happens if you get too many warnings in too short of a time period and/or do something bad enough (I think you need 3 points within 30 days for a ban, with more and/or subsequent bans leading to longer bans):
May 10, 2017
Sep 20, 2016
May 21, 2016
Apr 5, 2016
Jan 20, 2016
Dec 5, 2015
Sep 30, 2014
Aug 20, 2014
Apr 9, 2014
I do disagree with some of the warnings and post deletions (no warnings) since I don't think my posts were that off-topic and somebody else, even the OP, made the original post that promoted me to reply to them (I think that if the OP wants to go a bit off-topic in their own thread they should be able to and one or two semi off-topic posts here and there are not an issue, only if they turn into an ongoing discussion).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I've had warnings on May 27, July 14, and August 4 (I only got a point on the last one). I have been here for 5 1/2 months (which means I get 1 warning every 56 days on average), and it's your fault you are getting warned. My first one was for necroposting and my second one for spamming my own thread and my third one was for calling someone a noob because I thought it was cool and funny. Also I don't see this as the reason the forum has been losing activity.
Check out my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4B9cOO6KxTDVnnbvRbDJGw
hasty judgements made without consideration are also a big part of why quite a few people have resorted to merely lurking instead of posting as they are afraid their actions will get them banned. This is because they aren't sure what is okay and what isn't when the rules are so heavy-handedly enforced by moderators who think it's their job to limit any and all things they deem to be against the rules even in the slightest and most obscure of ways.
I've been here since 7/29/2012 (1929 days), and I've only ever gotten 3 formal infractions (average, one every 643 days), with my last one being in 2013 (1582 days ago). I do not believe that is actually a problem.
My Github ด้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้дด็็็็็้้้้้็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้
I've had an experience which suggests that there are in fact still a lot of people who want to discuss the game - I recently signed up on Reddit due to how slow things had become around here (not that I'm planning on quitting the forums) and yesterday I posted a submission which just shows a couple maps of one of my worlds with a short description (on the image page) and the response is simply overwhelming compared to my experience on these forums (the Reddit post refers to the world in the second forum thread listed, which has had occasional updates regarding what I've done and is far more detailed):
Consider also there there are nearly 10 times as many registered users on these forums as subscribers to the Minecraft subreddit, which makes the response I got all the more overwhelming - the online Minecraft discussion community is still very much alive and well, just not here (you ought to see how much discussion there has been over the changes to the horse model, and related posts, or even just making the stone slabs in blacksmiths an actual anvil) - they just don't want to use these forums, even though I think they are much better in many ways; I've also had confirmation that former forum users have moved on to Reddit since they said that they remembered me from the forums and one even asked if I signed up because of the Twitch merger (which again cannot be blamed for the long-term decline).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?