Some meta level stuff that occurred to me after my previous post...
- Availability on a major digital distribution server. (GoG is acceptable, Steam is vastly preferable.)
- Social media presence by the game/company if not by the Devs themselves. (By that I don't mean the Reddit ghetto or the Discord slums. I mean Facebook and Twitter.)
The reasoning behind both is simple: To survive, let alone grow, Neo-CoX (Homecoming) needs what CoX-Classic never quite managed to maintain... A steady stream of active new players to keep the numbers up and the servers alive. Losses are inevitable for any number of reasons, and must be balanced or more-than-balanced to keep the game living and breathing. Being publicly visible is a major component of that.
In the same vein: Enough servers to spread the load, not so many that the population gets over diluted. Login queues are Very, Very Bad. Ghost towns are Way, Way Worse.