There isn’t currently, I shouldn’t be in the future a reason to build 19-24 year old fighters. Either go 18 for your potential future open ID’er, or choose a 25er to enjoy right away - probably while your waiting for some 18 year olds to cook 

I think what a lot of people want is really more things to do in the game, not necessarily to have the game sped up. When this place was active people were doing fighter interviews, bios, smacktalks and rivalries. Both between players and managers. Writeups for orgs and other stories. The newspaper, the occasional forum drama and I guess some people were on buzz as well. All of this might not be for everyone but there was a lot of different stuff so always something to read if you wanted. That is what an active community provides, but it does add up to a lot which makes the game feel more alive and it feels like more is going on. For the game itself more players means quicker QFC turnaround, several competing id orgs at every interval with frequent fights. Huge difference against the 395K org desert I found when I came back a while ago. Log in now after two days and nothing happened, your guy is still waiting for QFC. This makes the game feel slower. This is why I'm afraid the game will die while we wait for the plumbing (sorry couldn't resist) to be finished.. in september 2025 😮 before the more noticeable changes start to happen. Actually the game won't die as long as Vlad keep at it, but the community could and it is to a large degree the same thing. To have more things happen and make the game feel less slow could be done with more ingame things to engage with between fights, like press conferences, training seminars or whatever. Such ingame functionality also drives player interaction if done right. But it would take a lot of development to match what a healthy community provides for free. Speaking of that here you have your reason to #freeCK, love him or hate him but he does a lot to keep things alive around here.

Around 3000 hours sounds more accurate 

See it goes both ways though, my situation is literally reversed. I've put in probably 5000+ hours into a few different FMs since 2018 and I can't find another good simulator for Mac or Android for any other sport. Out Of The Park Baseball is cool but it's not good compared to FM.