I've thought about this a lot of the past couple days, if you think about the player base we have, it is seperated into 3 groups
1. townie types, these are people that enjoy building, may enjoy pvp, may not, but are focused mainly on building
2. pvp types, this is your jreems, munchlax, junarcel, ect type people, they really enjoy the pvp aspect of the server
At any given time out of 30-40 people online, at least 75 percent are the regulars of the first two groups
then we have group 3. This is the rotating new player / noob group. You hardly see these kids more than once. They start the server and say things like "why cant I make iron sword, and can I join town PLS Halp!"
I have a feeling that these kids don't have a place to live, don't have a lot in the way of possessions, and when they get farmed for KDR and lose their things just quit the server for good. Nobody gets a KDR of over 100 by fighting the pvp group, they get it by slaughtering the noobs
There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, as it is a pvp server. However, they might be doing it because they really want pvp, but in order to protect KDR some people stay indoors
ELO will solve this problem, as noobs become less attractive targets they might stay on the server and become regulars, get their friends to join, vote, and even maybe donate.
We have got to give this a try.