First of all, there are 2 types of people that doesnt play on your server atm. Those are old players who quitted and new players that never tried the 10x yet.
What you need to do, Blaze, is to give all new and old ppl more reasons to stay.
So how can you do this? Well, first of all you can do an update, an update _fun_ and important enough for people to have something new to do. If you update to at least the Epilogue lvling places and make Gracia complete (u cant even get into gracia, only to Gludio airspace) there are more lvling places that old players can continue to level on, and s80 is actually obtainable. You wont need to farm 12783 hours to get s80 in Hellbound. Also, if you update this, people will see that many people has sgrade but also many has s80. By making s80 more accessible then people's point of view on gear wont be a problem, because they see that most people has sgrade. And also removing the "donation for 150+ crystals" is needed. This is the only overpowered thing with donations atm. But its overpowered enough that people complain. Also it is very important that you make Soul Crystals lvling on 4sep again, only Ember levels it atm and it almost never levels. Atm server has 35% (or whatever embers % sc lvling is) chance that each day will level 1 crystal, this is retarded.
So basically: Fix the soulcrystal levling on 4sep, Complete the Gracia continent with instance and quests (not many), update the Epilogue levling places, complete the few Epilogue quests of importance (s80 farming quests and the Epic Seven Signs quest), remove the 150+ cry's, make so that you can donate for _non-foundation_ sgrade (so that new players to get sgrade and a nice start, remember that s80 excists if this is done) and make b and agrade donation cheaper. WAY cheaper.
This way, we will avoid many unwanted bugs also, and after this is done you can slowly complete the update to full High-five or whatever update u want while we have fun on a normal unbugged Epilogue server =p
Hope my few cents of my mine are appreciated and helpful.
-Fred
EDIT: Also, getting new GM's that arent allowed to spawn A N Y T H I N G would be great, to make game and community activity more fun and honest. Get some bigshot from the highrate to be gm here, and the opposite too so that the gm has no "sides"