@Lemon-Fox I’m curious as to which staffer made that statement. If it was a relatively new staffer (one who has been around for roughly a year or less), you may be able to take them at their word. If not… well, just be careful. Most of the time, ‘I haven’t had that experience,’ usually means, 'I haven’t had that experience yet. But I wouldn’t cry if the place really has turned over a new leaf (or at least buried the really nasty stuff far, far away from the non-twisted population of the game, and stopped hunting up new victims).
Also, the Empire snatching up worlds being due to dice results is a relatively recent thing, one that arose with the implementation of the naval combat system. Before that… well. It was basically, ‘Don’t bother locking the door… they’ll just knock it down or burn through it’. So you could either be under occupation, or be under occupation AND have to get a new door. This was especially true just after the timeshift.
As for population, the place is miles ahead of almost every other MUSH out there (even if you can see 100 logins on WHI, and about 40 of them turn out to be alts. That number has sunk to a rough average of 80-85, with at least 30 alts, but that’s still miles ahead of the 12-30 logins typical of most MUSHes), and there are a lot of scheduled events. Spontaneous on-grid RP seems to be coming back out of its grave at long last, too. This is entirely due to an influx of new and very active players over the last six months or so.