A "death" of a server is the final stage of a server's decline, whereupon the player base either completely abandons it (or enough to the point that Roleplay as it was is impossible) or the playerbase see's a shift that strikes a death blow to the server's original population or intentions.
In most cases, server death is a gradual thing. While disbelief may set in suddenly to players who have come for many weeks or months to a single server, veterans seem less and less fazed by such occurences (Upon the "death" of Nukesilo, a chorus of players reportedly began typing the lyrics to 'The Circle of Life,' which, if true is quite apt) excepting of course those admin staff and creators of the server in question, who are almost universally attached to that server for obvious reasons.
Signs and Omens of Server Death[]
If there is anything close to reality in this analogy, then the pule rate monitor is most close to the nightly playerbase activity. Some TSRP communities are bigger than others, some are smaller, and while one server may see a drop to 20 a night as opposed to 30, and view this as a death knell, a handfull of servers have clung onto life with 8 or 9 players for considerable amounts of time.
Don't mourn, they're prone to getting up and disappointing expectations as much as 3 years down the road.
However when a server begins to decline, the most common reaction from player bases is to abandon ship. This can be observed as either mass hysteria, or the development of a kind of intuitive sixth sense for when a server is about to die. Alternatively, this has been viewed, much like "TSRP is Dead" as a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Cynical (Self-Fulfilling) Server Death[]
It can be called cynical that the immediate reaction of many, including veteran TSRP players, is to assume the most bleak scenario: "The Server has no players tonight? The Server is dead." "The Server has no Police Officers on tonight? The Police Department is dead. Ergo, the Server is going to die soon." This is not so simple a case, however, that it can be dismissed simply as overdramatic response on all counts. On many counts, the veteran response of predicting and following through on the assumption of a server's death, either migrating to another server or going dormant, is really a learned response through years of cyclical server deaths and rebirths.
However, some credence must given to the hypothetical notion that if players were to stop wailing "The Server is dead," the server in question might indeed see an increased life expectancy, or even, for a time, a full recovery. However, every server is a dead server that just hasn't died yet.
Comings, Goings, and Various Incarnations[]
Servers come and go, and sometimes, they come back. Great examples can be found in X-Factor RP, who's webmaster and chief admin Terminater2 brought it back around 3 times from the brink of utter failure, each time seeing a considerable return of the playerbase. As well, M7XRP had a comeback period in what some may consider a period long after its prime, but what was regarded as a great achievement of TSRP at the time of its happening.
More recently (As of early-mid July, 2011), Havoc9 saw an enthusiastic, if somewhat troubled reincarnation under entirely separate management. While notably Havoc9 was managed by Cosmo, the new version in 2011, "Havoc 10" was put together and managed by Aerocow, Snakeh, IcE, Xalphox, Xeon, and a few others. Ultimately Cosmo would come to visit the server briefly, having long since moved on from TSRP to other means (primarily GTA: San Andreas Multiplayer RPing) of RP, but seemed to make some amount of peace with the playerbase, not outright condemning the unofficial rebirth.
Cerberus RP has seen varying degrees of success with rebirths as well, though each time the "Starship" setting seems too much for many involved, just as the futuristic elements of Havoc 9 and 10 cannot be expected to amuse 100% of TSRP's purists, who would no doubt favor Mecklenburg regardless.