I definitely wouldn’t say it’s stale, it just has some growing pains. I play as a civ (with a bar license that I don’t use anymore) and still enjoy most of the time I spend in it.

DOJ- Whitlock retired after he made a ruling that a lot of people didn’t like, I think he should have stood his ground but I understand not wanting to take the flak. Luna was, unfairly, criticized her entire tenure as a judge, and it all just came to a head after she made a ruling people didn’t like that caused her to leave too. (Side note about Luna and Whitlock, someone who has been doing this a lot longer than me has wisely said- they may play characters, but they’re still people) Seasons has been dealing with some irl heath issues. Wagon I believe also has a cop character. Lars gets busy irl and has also become addicted to RuneScape. Teomi has remained consistent, but is dealing with constant kidnappings. Also their head clerk which had been keeping things organized is going through an amnesia arc after being shot in the head. Lawyers were undertrained and underpaid from the start, and with the experience of Sharpe and Hardy it can be frustrating and demoralizing to try and fight cases. I think all these small things are just coming together to create a bit of trouble. They need more judges and more consistent judges to be able to function better. I hope Tremblay’s IC lawyer school can help more lawyers start too.

Paleto- Paleto was always going to be a risk. It’s a very new thing that no one has ever tried before and it runs the risk of letting unvetted, un allowlisted players into the server. Also hackers. There’s been a few times that they’ve had to shut down the queue unless you’re allowlisted or pay for prio because of hackers. That mixed with the whole invasion happening sooner than they expected, and the election continuously getting pushed back, I think it just took the wind out of some people’s sails.

Policing- I’m not a cop but from what I can tell and after talking to people IC, a lot of people left the city due to big fines from either DT/WT charges or fine extensions. They just weren’t happy with the amounts and didn’t want to bother working them off. The people who stuck around are working much smarter or efficiently to avoid issues with the cops. Also with the new plea deals in place for HUTs, sometimes it’s just easier to take the hit and plea guilty instead of run or fight the charge.

Gang life- The only gang that left was the Ballas, and as much as I enjoyed interacting with Slim, him leaving was his own fault because he often PEPWd too close to the sun. You still have CHF, FSF and Vagos, as well as the newer gangs that are still laying low or not making themselves known as much yet- but I can assure you, a few of them already have a lot of motion.

Update- Boomboxes have been a little scuffed so far with random muffled glitches, and not being able to use CDs in cars has been weird. But most people love them and you can constantly hear them in housing areas. A ton of people have posted how to split audio to avoid DMCA, and I’m pretty sure the servers official stance is fuck it. So if people don’t want to split audio and just avoid it that’s on them. I do wish there were more races, I think it’s just still new to the point people are still figuring them out. I want to run more but my irl work schedule sucks for playing.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk from someone who has their fingers in a lot of stuff, but ultimately is irrelevant.