I've played on 2238, TLA mkII, FO2, Reloaded, FO3, Requiem and probably some more I've already forgot about. Hours and hours of fun and feeling of time well
wasted spent. I still play once in a while here or there, but not even close to no-life marathons anymore though.
These server and dev work are incredible, but, what do these server need to bring back fallout addict ?
Nothing.
Nothing can be done about it, way too late. Like 10 years too late. The real Fallout addicts still remaining around FOnline This or FOnline That are just a handful of dust, blown away by wind one by one. Advertising over antisocial media and YouTube won't change much in long term. FOnline has nothing to offer and is unable to attract people who never played Fallout 1 or 2 and is discouraging and ugly for those who played Fallout 3 or 4 only.
Everybody switched to Reloaded from 2238, which was good, but had its problems.
Well yes but actually no. Just before Reloaded's been launched, there was a premature release of FOnline 2. So no, not "everybody switched to Reloaded" as numbers in the beginning of FOnline 2 were significant and hard to ignore.
The high quality ores/minerals timer in 2238 kept the economy in balance, in Reloaded everything became too abundant and so nobody had a real need to PvP.
Timers/cooldowns were simple pain in the butt and economy never existed in any FOnline, regardless of the developers' efforts. Experienced or smart enough players were always finding a way around any limits, cooldowns, restrictions etc., so it was neverending battle impossible to win. War, war never changes...
With all that said, Reloaded was still very good, UNTIL season 3, when they gutted PvP.
This caused the game to die, as all the players who switched to Reloaded from 2238 simply quit because of the PvP change, myself included. Also town control was never close to what it was in 2238.
Yeah, that was a massive gameplay change and since playerbase got used to full loot feature for years, bringing it with season 3 was a great shock. However it makes a paradise for casual players, all 15 of them, others just vanished like tears in the rain. Surprisingly for myself I have to admit I was totally wrong in my predictions after no loot became a thing there. Obviously there is not enough Mad Max Wannabes around to rush the Reloaded and enjoy it.
No worthy successor has come since then, and even if one did come along, we don't have the hype we used to have of 'an online Fallout game'.
It would take some big youtubers to bring attention to it, but there is nothing good to bring attention to currently sadly 
Oh come on, you have some alternatives, look:
https://fodev.net/status/Checking details of every server leaves no doubt - numbers are stable for long time (years...), playerbase seems to keep them solid. I can't see a single reason for this situation to change, FOnline idea expired and dropped down into a niche for just a few sentimental adults with bills to pay and children to look after. Nothing is given forever.
To sum up, which FOnline to play?
- FOnline2 - if you don't mind everybody has everything due to 5+ years season and the only fun is gang wars/toilet control
- FOnline3 - if you don't mind short few months seasons, random changes of random stuff, lack of balance, chaos and weird things all over the place
- Reloaded - if you don't mind playing multiplayer game in singleplayer mode or if you and a bunch of other casuals have couple of evenings to feed nostalgia while shooting raiders, caravans and such like
- Requiem - if you don't mind cyrillic alphabet and want to see how 2238 should look and feel like in 2010 to keep hundreds of Fallout fans
