I would say that the site's state is far worse than just being in a downward spiral. It's more like the site is on life support at this point. I wish luck in the future attempts to improve things.

There's no guarantee that we'll get our old users back, or if we'll get a large influx of users, but we're hoping that the changes will bring them in.

Believe me, we're all sad (staff and users) about Ala doing a down spiral. I promise you we are working on it. I can't reveal any details but all I'm going to tell you is after this, Ala is going to be better than how it use to be.

Seconding all Maggots has said.

I used to love this site was online all the time... pretty sure this is the first time I've signed on in a couple of months and even then only to see if it had picked up at all.... and to see almost no one online...

I considered selling my account many times over the months but I'm still holding onto hope things will improve and people will come back.

I've been on this site for a long time, and I remember the good ol' days when we had hundreds of people online at once. When there were so many people posting in the shout box, you could barely even keep up. When the forums were active, when items came out every month, and people would stay up on the last day of the month just to get a glimpse of what awesome new things were coming out. I really love this site, I've always loved the artistic detail put into it, and it makes me extremely sad to see it, basically, slowly dying. There really are people left with the artistic ability to conform to the site's style that would be willing to help make new items, especially for a reasonable (not ridiculously high, obviously, for the economy's sake) amount of in-game currency. Even I would be willing to try again, just to help see some light at the end of the tunnel for this site. I don't want to see Alacrity cease to exist; I hope things at least get easier soon for the existing artists, and maybe we can see some spark back in Alacrity.

A lot of websites run little contests for members to design items and the people whose design's are chosen get a prize, such as a rare/exclusive item or some in game currency. I think that could work here on Alacrity.

I agree with Rebel and Dark. These both sound like amazing ideas.
Though I know quality control might be an issue; and the application process would take up a lot of time. And it'd be more people to manage.
:/ Hmm, I still think it's a pretty cool idea. One I'd apply for myself if it ever becomes a reality.

why not advertise for a artist onsite that is willing to work for ingame benafits? i'm sure there are quite a few people who would love to help even if you couldn't pay them if they knew it was the case

Why not get some volunteers to help make items?

We need new artists to make said items, but they cost money. Sorry.

We need new christmas items instead of the same ones every year.

I hope that the presents got stored!