Sorry but I disagree and I'll say my reasons why again but it's unlikely to connivence you.
It's just simple math. What made worms so good in the glory era and TUS's first inception was the activity. Back then we had fewer scheme options and less of a sandbox so we had 'less things to play', that meant that there was more people playing the same thing and therefore more activity, more emerging players etc etc.
Now a days we have so much choice and selection and because of that, over the years the limited activity was divided across so many ways of playing worms. Therefore there were smaller communities and groups of players but it is less appealing to come back and play WA competitively because you get to be the big fish in a small pond, instead of the big fish in an ocean.
For example, If kaos and some of these other schemes never existed I think we'd have a more active allround league or more active ONL.
In the last 6 years or so we've split the activity across too many things are the disadvantage to competitive play across all those things.
Even TUS has a silly number of accepted schemes for playoff picks which makes it demotivating to bother playing as someone can now pick tower rr, big rr etc. back when we just had elite, t17, bng, shop, wxw, ttrr, rope and hyst things were way better.
Of course this is all subjective and it's just my opinion. It doesn't mine I'm right or you guys are wrong. It's just how I personally feel about the direction of WA.
And back to ranks. In game ranks and secure logins and easier hosting would save this game because the newbies would stay and we would have new players coming into the game, that's why we are declining because there isn't any support for new players. So I agree about the lack of support from t17