what time do u play? Unless its the middle of the day (eastern time) when I normally @ work there are few games going on but if its the evening there are always games. I will be playing tonight around 7 pm eastern time till about 10 pm. I always play during the weeks during these time and so does my friend Flgator. My friend list is only easternfront players and its @ 75+ people. Make sure to always friend during MP because like you said we aren't a huge community so we need to stick together. My screen name is the same as mine on here.
I don't think advertisement will really help the reality is this game as well as coh can never be mainstream because its not based on bland fantasy (the kind that gets beat to death over and over u know elves, orcs, dwarves, dragons), modern combat (ww2 suxs everyone knows america pwnd all with noones help I need to fight chinamen and A-rabs because u know thats a challenge ::) ) , also its complex to the point where even if u knew always exactly what to build u still have to use the units properly (unlike basically all RTS's).
When COHO came out I got all my Real Life Friends into it because it was free. Only the 3 most intelligent ones last more than a week, and now I only have 2 friends that can even play and have fun and its really only 1 since the other plays so much damn WOW .
Sadly only a small percentage people find RTS intresting anymore. When I was in high school it seemed like that was the only kind of game but now to me its is a totally dead genre other than a 5+ year old RTS named company of heroes which is by far the best made RTS ever regardless of the game setting. If you like RTS and you dont like COH you dont really like RTS because if you are like me and been playing RTS since the beging you know that finally you get something that rides the line perfectly of realism and gameplay. Sadly games which take infintely less brain power and skill and tactics (starcraft, shogun (which is by far the biggest waste of $50 I am about to commit hari kari over it) are going to be more popular because they have more interesting (to common people) setting and they are simpler. Americans especially are bored of WW2 (strangely but not games with orcs and elves which u can shit out and make money but if u put time into a ww2 game u might lose) . Thats why most players on EF are from Europe, WW2 had a bigger impact so it still is more interesting and for the most part Europeans are smarter than Americans thus more interesting in history, tactics, strategy, and skill.
The only people that I feel we are missing out on are Russians. I feel there should be a shit load more of them online (the ones I met when I went to Russia love war games and strategy war games) but vCoh leaves them out so they are probably like screw that game why would I ever buy it (especially when most games are pirated), when little do they know there is a free mod worked on by smart awesome people who are concerned with doing good quality work that features there beloved Rodina.
So if I was going to advertise I would to it on
http://vkontakte.ru/ which is the Russian version of facebook. Similarly other Eastern Euopeans countries might also be good recruiting grounds as I have played with alot of Polish and a few Slovakians.
Sorry if I offended anyone with my generalizations. I am American its one of the things I do best :P
