The Long Winter: Retrospective

The Long Winter is still heralded by Koe and a lesser extend, Chegg, as possessing strong foundations that could have worked well as a whole. However, it is pretty obvious that something wasn't working when it failed after around a week or two. These are the key points for why it may have failed:

Premise
The premise works far better as an alternate history forum post, not as a roleplay. Enthusiasm may have been low due to the vastly different timeframe that the game was in compared to any period in real life, with not just one point of divergence, but several.

Timeframe
The game was launched during the exam season in May for most of the northern hemisphere, sapping away potential activity. That being said, launching the game later was not too viable either, as Koe and Chegg were both desperate to begin the game early in the first place because of the knowledge that major exams from roughly October would drain the time they had to spend on the game. Essentially, the game had an approximate 'end date' long before it was even started. All this meant was a rushed development and a lack of long term hope. There is some speculation that the game could have worked out had it been launched near the start of the year or even earlier, during the limbo period of GS7-GS8.

Player deficiency
Several core players were inactive during the game. Conq, for instance, refused to even join the server until much later, due to Duck's presence. Due to personal circumstances, Chegg was virtually inactive in the server. Most concerningly, even was surprisingly dead at the time, probably due to Quartz's focus on school (see above).

Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm was already low due to the compounding effects of personal circumstances, weariness from 1.5 years of GS, and a lot of drama. The latter is important, as it made Chegg less interested in playing, and Conq in particular refused to even participate for some time due to drama with Duck. All this contributed to was less interest in genuinely running the game or having the ability to tolerate the work. Koe, for instance, decided that he no longer wanted to work on the game after approximately a week of existence and many hours of development, becoming frustrated not only with the game's progress but also how little it reaped in return for the amount of effort put into it. Other players were noticeably less interested in playing than they had been in previous iterations. This issue of low enthusiasm is something that has been noticeable for several games, since the end of GS6.

Legacy
TLW could have worked if all the aforementioned issues weren't there, but that's a bit like saying Nazi Germany could have won WW2 if [insert wehraboo argument]. There were simply too many issues and circumstances to let TLW live on. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it just meant that like all things, most people have moved on for a variety of reasons. For now, a HOI4 mod and alternatehistory.com/sufficientvelocity timeline are being developed, but it will probably be a very long time until that happens.