we need more players to get this site going again, but there do need to be regular updates for that to continue.  My fear is that the site is stagnated, and maybe people wouldn't want to join a 20-year-old game that has little activity and may not be as fun as a game that has more content.  Not trying to roast the game too hard but I think that games this old have a hard time coming back from stagnation.

Ads might help but I think that there needs to be more activity and updates before that happens also.  I think there also needs to be a little bit better monetization while still keeping it fun for f2p.  Not that I know a whole lot about monetization I just know that atm there's very little reason for people that aren't doing the world-building to buy anything really.