TLDR;
Voting does help, however, not as efficiently as hoped for. If anyone looks at ToG, they immediately look at the servers with the most votes, so right there they take an immediate interest seeming to "Ok, that server is populated..."... Great, we can get that down. But once they step foot in game, they want stuff to do. So to clear my point, lemme put it this way... A potential player browses the ToG list... Let's just say Core has 12,000 votes as opposed to all other servers having 10,000... GREAT! Then they read the details.. "Level cap is 105... awesome staff... etc etc." (I really have no idea what it says this is just an example)... They don't just want a populated server with awesome staff. They want a server that will keep them interested. With level 105 as cap, I personally do believe it's low. Most servers I see are mostly 110+, most are 120-130 if I remember correctly. Forgive me if I remember wrong though. To cap, it only takes a matter of a couple hours or days depending on your availability to play. Most things we do to level, we can typically farm our gear while doing also (i.e: SL, malephar, shadows, etc). Wonderful! Capped in a couple days and geared! Then probably a couple weeks to get some Malephar gear. So let's say 2-3 weeks time to get all of that done. Now, what is there to do to benefit themselves....? Nothing since everyone already helped themselves for the most part. I think it's not so much the advertisement or player base, but more so what is offered to the players. I believe if raids and dungeons aren't so focused on lower levels and perms but rather implemented towards higher levels, we can make more content for more cap raises/patches as well as making a server that keep the players occupied til the next patch or whatever. To sum it all up, I don't believe it's voting that is the main issue towards getting the server populated again. It all has to do with adding more stuff for us higher levels to do. Of course, we have Karen and the new raid, but, in all seriousness, she's a bitch to kill at only 105. (at least that's what I hear. I haven't tried yet with anyone so I'm going off of hearsay) Increase the cap, focus more on making dungeons and raids for higher levels, and I truthfully believe it'll bring a lot of who we lost, back, and then some.