Its not just 2.0 thats over hyped. Most are. I really am glad to hear you guys are more ready now to release bigger updates in the future, but still. Most people are forgetting the fact that we had more of a chance to get a player base before oldschool runescape came out. Now its out, and I understand it doesn't cover this exact revision, but it has everything and more. So either way, your competition is backed by millions of dollars and you're trying to emulate their game. Its going to be difficult to compete with the real deal. Its like Frosted Mini spooners (RuneRebels) is competing with Frosted Mini Wheats (RuneScape).
In reality, the reason our player count is so low, and player counts for most RSPS drop off is because people are put off by joining it - They already know what to expect and as the game runs for a longer length of time, people want to join less. Take it from the people over at rune server (and I've heard this complaint several times from prospective players), because we've been around so long, people like you, me, prayer, charles, n0va, cheshire, pyro, Vanguard, Gosug, Tennessee, Kendall, Pinkie, and more- all have massive banks with boatloads of items and good stats to be able to manipulate the economy even with an empty bank. If we were to do a full server reset, we'd lose all of our current ~20 dedicated players, and probably have 300+ players on relaunch. With a higher XP rate we'd have people more likely to leave sooner, but more likely to stay as well as it would be easy to catch up. This is why games with no level cap, often are abandoned, while populist games like WoW, where it has an easy to reach level cap, are so popular now. People want to be max level and do what they want to do(get rare items, do mass dungeon raids, PVP), not continually feel like their grinding up to something so they can do more and be better.
So between that and the fact that we are a 2006 remake (similar content to OSRS and done many times before, although not as well), really puts a damper on people's expectations of the game.
Currently we are working inside the scope of RuneRebels, and will not ever change the scope of RuneRebels. Your accounts will never be lost, and we will not change the fact that is an 06 remake. Everything we do in this remake is dynamic and can be used as the framework for any other RSPS type that we'd ever want to do.
That said, If we ever launched another project, you'd see an influx of players here to check RR, regardless of if they stayed or not. I know for a fact that there is a lot of people who have heard of this and never played it, or never heard of it at all. Another project that caters to a different audience would serve much like how most people here have checked out WorldScape at some point. Not everyone's cup of tea, but most RR players have tried it because it's tied to us.