the encouraging part of my post is acknowledging you guys are trying to make the player experience better. that takes a lot of time and effort and should not be forgotten or lost in anyone's post. but the main reason the lottery worked before was timing. the game has changed and for multiple reasons the experience of it or anything similar will not be as good. As mentioned, you guys are limited in what you can offer as prizes, the prizes you can have less value due to being obsolete from tombolas and less value to to many no longer collecting or just saving cash to buy tombola gear from the market. Although some will participate and enjoy it, I just think it has a very limited run, like the Hire NPC feature.
If you want me to give examples of things that would inspire game activity... Speed world concepts appear to have been ditched like adventures, both despite mentions of "more to come". Although I would rather see activity on current servers, at least Speed world offered a variation. cannot we not have a FF across world version of that? Sign ups, clone characters to a new world and have a tourney?
For current worlds, do something easy. Pirate events requires a lot of work from you all. So grab some of the national belts from the shop and have a boxing challenge weekend. Strap a light (50 or lower game level), middle (100 or lower), and heavyweight (101 and above) belt on 3 NPC's and have players challenge using only fists. Make them damage, accuracy, and combo of both. then then first player who beats the champ in their level has the belt attached to them and can be challenged by players. winner each time gets the belt and the players holding the belts at the end of the contest get 25/50/100 nuggets or bonds of 250/500/1k. Want variation, two weeks later, same thing but with wrestling concept. Allow bats, brass knuckles, bottles, just melee weapons to be used... It changes nothing about the core game, but is an event that players can participate in if they so choose. mainly it offers variety