These are no official numbers exactly, but my guesses would be that when the registration was open 24/7. Every third account were new unique users, while the ones in between were most likely just junk/secondary/lolsandgiggles type of accounts. Just because registration is open doesn't have to mean we get plentyful of new users.
FeralHeart(if you look up it's history) has been here since 2011 for users to play, and there has been many changes taking place over the years. I really want to put some weight on earlier responses that even though things has slowed down a bit from these "golden days" that many speaks highly of, the overall growing pain problems this community had and the quality for the players who do play the game has been noticed even though it's not as "fun" to some people.
Now please don't get the idea wrong, you're not the only one who wants a big thriving community, me, the players next to us, rest of staff, we all want a big wonderful place with lots of diversity and interesting users, but so much for that if hell breaks loose and there's no game to play, or site that is working well. It would just be dust left of what once were. Many of the things you do not like, do not approve of is some of the few reasons why FeralHeart is still here today, free to register, free to download and free to play for everyone who wants to. The game client itself may be stuck in time, but the community and what is required for it to actually function has and still get a lot of attention when needed, even though I hardly think this were your intentions your posts really make it sound like people who know very well why things need to be done a certain way neglect the game or just don't care whether it's slowly dying.
Let me tell you now that even though opening registrations 24/7 may let us see an increase in new accounts, and might bring us a few players quicker to this game than it normally would allow, the trade off might not be worth it. Not only is it easier to maintain the game when people don't mindlessly log on the game and start doing whatever and actually check around the community and site most of the time before playing for the first time, not only do we have less spam/flood accounts made whenever people feel like it even though they already have 10+ accounts(there's worse people than this), and not only do we prevent users from as easily making new accounts thinking they can get around bans by doing so, we let them see and understand the community, put less strain on things simply out of our control(like the game client) and in the final end, less strain on the whole community.
This is not a race to get more members or be the biggest out there, it's about taking care of what we have and ensure we will have it in the future as well. There is no reason to be silly about it and dive head in first. Some of the people who spent the most time, resources and dedication non-stop taking care of this place since the get go decided having random registrations would be for the best. I am sorry if it doesn't live up to your nostalgia and old memories of this place and we should always try to aim high for the future, but the registration is just one of quite a few reasons why this game might not have as many active users at once as you remember.
There has been many things going on over the years, and back when FH kicked off it had pretty much no "competition" for the kind of game it were. There was no Impressive Title servers up and running or other games similar to it, FeralHeart was hyped up with what everyone thought it would become and now 5 years later, it's the exact same game that has been(at least from my point of view) been the center of quite a few attacks and drama over the years that's caused more or less problematic outcomes for it's players.
The whole "hacking" that took place is one of them where we now must keep a page open to play the game in order to ensure that we don't have toxic players that know how, going onto peoples accounts that aren't theirs. If we could we would make a much better and clean way to manage the secure login so maybe people even wouldn't need to start their browser. But as facts remains, we have no way possible to edit how the game client works on that aspect since the game creator left and has no intentions to continue on the game right now, nor interest to talk about it. This browser login is the bets solution we have right now, even if it's not the best or most efficient way to play.
In this case it's sadly that we cannot live in the past and we need to think about more than a number, and I'm certain you understand that too. There's no direct plans on opening the registration 24/7 currently, neither is there much we can do about the login page as we must have it there to ensure our in-game accounts don't get abused and we have no possibilities to make it better as it looks right now.
You must understand while most users think of the next step, some of us need to think of step 2 or 3 as well. I can see your point and what it's trying to say, but I can also say it's not that simple even though just opening registration, make compromises to the login page security to make it easier to play, and just let's users do their thing and let someone clean up the mess would certainly not require much effort from anyone until the day things come falling down.
