Ex-ember here! I left Fire a few weeks ago. Here's what I know and some other things I heard from a friend who stayed in Fire a little longer than I did.
To start off, Fire runs the same few events with very low incentive prizes for a profit push every month. People have suggested other events and provided high incentive prizes out of their own hoard for those events if they were to run. Sure, they would be losing money, but it would be fun for participants and good for the bank (possibly). One of those people suggested an event that the dom leads did not end up running. Instead, they ran it as their own separate idea but 'simplified'.
The bank also doesn't share what's actually in the bank. One of the leads said that it could be leaked if they were to share. When I was still in Fire, I had zero clue what was actually in the bank besides 200kg in funds. I'm not sure how it is now though. I also heard that when that bank holder got banned years ago, one person replaced all the missing funds from their own hoard. I also heard that the same person replaced all of the OOFR prizes in 2017 when someone ran off with all of the prizes. That exact person also would provide tons of currency to the bank whenever they ran low during conquests. They left Fire now so...
I don't know about Fire Discord toxicity because I spent a lot of time inactive on the original server. I do know that when an active member got banned from the server from an argument with a dom lead in a channel over the bank itself. The gist of it was that they wanted to know what was in the bank, dom lead said no, they said they wanted a refund for their items. Dom lead couldn't tell them where the sprite collection they donated went, dom lead pulled the 'what if I left with everything' card. That person was the one that replaced the lost bank funds when the bank got banned and replaced an entire OOFR so they said they could handle it if the dom lead did quit. They got banned and the chat log was deleted. Afterwards, some people asked where that person went and why they left the server. I do believe that one of the dom leads said something along the lines of 'they just left it's not that deep' though.
From what I've seen, embers are extremely willing to do dom. It's just the dom leads that don't. In the last push I was in, the event that was running was the 'simplified' one mentioned before. It's similar to a house cup except it's in 4 teams with no OOF help. One member managed to completely steamroll the competition with I believe 18k levels? The next highest was 12k or 8k, I don't remember. That one is the one that shared a few details in a SMR post's replies. Embers can and will absolutely participate in dom, the leads just have to run an event to motivate players to do things.
I do believe that Fire plans to bring new members into the Ashfall Alliance after Flameforger's, so we'll just have to wait and see if anything changes. It is true that all the top exalters have left Fire already, the major funder and the 18k levels exalter included, with little or no plans to return.
TLDR; top exalters did leave, Fire dom scene is dead due to leads hosting the same 3 events every profit push, bank isn't very transparent either.
Re: Fire Dom Tea?
To start off, Fire runs the same few events with very low incentive prizes for a profit push every month. People have suggested other events and provided high incentive prizes out of their own hoard for those events if they were to run. Sure, they would be losing money, but it would be fun for participants and good for the bank (possibly). One of those people suggested an event that the dom leads did not end up running. Instead, they ran it as their own separate idea but 'simplified'.
The bank also doesn't share what's actually in the bank. One of the leads said that it could be leaked if they were to share. When I was still in Fire, I had zero clue what was actually in the bank besides 200kg in funds. I'm not sure how it is now though. I also heard that when that bank holder got banned years ago, one person replaced all the missing funds from their own hoard. I also heard that the same person replaced all of the OOFR prizes in 2017 when someone ran off with all of the prizes. That exact person also would provide tons of currency to the bank whenever they ran low during conquests. They left Fire now so...
I don't know about Fire Discord toxicity because I spent a lot of time inactive on the original server. I do know that when an active member got banned from the server from an argument with a dom lead in a channel over the bank itself. The gist of it was that they wanted to know what was in the bank, dom lead said no, they said they wanted a refund for their items. Dom lead couldn't tell them where the sprite collection they donated went, dom lead pulled the 'what if I left with everything' card. That person was the one that replaced the lost bank funds when the bank got banned and replaced an entire OOFR so they said they could handle it if the dom lead did quit. They got banned and the chat log was deleted. Afterwards, some people asked where that person went and why they left the server. I do believe that one of the dom leads said something along the lines of 'they just left it's not that deep' though.
From what I've seen, embers are extremely willing to do dom. It's just the dom leads that don't. In the last push I was in, the event that was running was the 'simplified' one mentioned before. It's similar to a house cup except it's in 4 teams with no OOF help. One member managed to completely steamroll the competition with I believe 18k levels? The next highest was 12k or 8k, I don't remember. That one is the one that shared a few details in a SMR post's replies. Embers can and will absolutely participate in dom, the leads just have to run an event to motivate players to do things.
I do believe that Fire plans to bring new members into the Ashfall Alliance after Flameforger's, so we'll just have to wait and see if anything changes. It is true that all the top exalters have left Fire already, the major funder and the 18k levels exalter included, with little or no plans to return.
TLDR; top exalters did leave, Fire dom scene is dead due to leads hosting the same 3 events every profit push, bank isn't very transparent either.