Multitude of factors imo:
- in the past there is no loot to savage, so only the like-minded people who truly wanted the challenge will go for savage mode. In HW, if you want the best loot, or raids that doesn't make you snore, you are left with savage. Imo on phoenix there are more savage grps than experienced raiders.
- There is nothing to do in this game outside of raids, so less people playing = less raiders. Even if you are interested in raiding, if your friends are quitting/taking a break/moving servers, you will feel more and more compelled to do the same. How long can you endure before you give up looking for a competent 8th member? Hell, there just isn't fun content in game. No, 3.1 will not fix this with 2 new dungeons (lol?) and a 24 man raid where people point fingers at how sucky each other are while being afk all fight long. Also, leveling an alt is just painfully boring these days while AF2 gear forbid people from gearing their alts effectively.
- There is a pretty big execution gap between each floor. A1S is super easy, A2S is super easy, then A3S suddenly places a proper dps check on the individual basis while you wipe once a while due to server not registering positions properly+bad rng.
- Due to a shrinking general population, raiders like to converge on unofficial raiding servers for new opportunities. Things are not necessary easier, since you still have to struggle with weeding out "the bads", and everyone thinks they are A4S worthy cuz they did 1200 dps on a dummy.


These days the game feel more like a chat room than an RPG. I end up just chatting all day with ppl outside of raids, post stuff on the MB for giggles, pvp once a while, raid when everyone show up with a good internet connect.

Today I logged in at 8pm svr prime time and had no queue. GG.

I beg the question: "What selling point does Phoenix have?"