Quote Originally Posted by Energizeric View Post
Actually it is my understanding that during the halloween event, there were more players playing the game than ever before, which is why we had all these connection problems suddenly. Then releasing the planar tombs made it even worse.

It just seems like the number players is declining because many of the players you know from long ago have left. That is typical for these kinds of games, you will always have a natural turnover as people move on. So most of the new players are not end game pros yet, and many who have reached end game are not yet in your class to be able to compete with you. But overall there are more people playing AL now than ever before.
You are right about people downloading the game a lot, but I remember reading an article saying that most players quit after the first 24 hours in an MMO.