With all due respect to those who miss the old maps, continually dragging up the past will not bring back those times or the old maps. All this sort of discussion does is stir up past drama about the old maps which hinders the game's growth and scares away new players.
You all need to move on and stop bringing this up over and over and over. It is no different than if someone kept bringing up a subject that you didn't want to hear about. Do you really think that new players who know nothing about those maps would want to come play a game where people keep bringing up things from the past that they know nothing about and that start fights between people who have different ideals?
The future of FH is in fact the new enthusiastic players who join this game. But they don't come here expecting dumb drama over past events they never knew about. We need to be considerate of them by no longer bringing up hurtful events from the past.
The reason FH is so empty right now is not because of old maps but rather the drama surrounding them and other recent events. If you truly care about FH, you need to let go of the past and work toward building a future that is free of drama and strife. All the problems we have rn are caused by division and disagreement. Let's put aside our differences and work together.
There are in fact 2 quotes that come to mind regarding division:
"United we stand, divided we fall."
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
One thing I find truly sad, is that the FH community has become known all around the web as "toxic". All people know about this community anymore is the drama. That is why so few people are joining. Why join when they hear that FH has a bunch of drama?
Perhaps it is time that the community realized that they are indeed one of the things destroying FH. They need to let go of the past and embrace the future.
We aren't here to fight over things we disagree with, we are here to have fun and enjoy FH.
While I, like someone else that responded, haven't really seen much actual "drama" over old FH vs new and rather just people having bittersweet conversations about it...
I think a big reason the community refuses to stop digging its claws into the topic is because (from what I've seen), a BIG chunk of trust was lost between the community and staff. Repeatedly whenever I hear people bring up the topic, they ask, "No one really wanted __/People wanted ___/We asked for ___/etc.
so why didn't the staff listen?" That's why. They don't feel listened to by the staff. And I've mostly stayed away from all the "tea" on what was happening behind the scenes and why the staff took things in this direction, but I vaguely remember a thread/post somewhere here on the forums where (was it Raz? I don't know) said something about not doing what's popular because it might not necessarily be a good idea. Even though it is an idea I agree with and think is pretty valid, of course the community will see something like that as further proof the staff doesn't care about what they want, regardless of whether or not it actually is true. While yes, bringing up the topic again and again helps no one, I do think this could've been handled in a more clean manner.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt as I was inactive during all this chaos, but a community isn't independent of a game or franchise. It is directly influenced by its creators. If they are unhappy, most times it is because they feel unheard (Harry Potter franchise w/ JKR's strange changes, Star Wars w/ the lackluster new trilogy, Animal Crossing w/ Nintendo's money grabbing, the YouTube community w/ YT's ad-pocalypses, etc.) and therefore disrespected as they believe it is because of their support that these games/franchises/etc. have become successful. I'm not putting blame on the staff as none of them could've foreseen any of this, but this isn't exclusively on the community.