But well, people often leave the game for several different reasons, ranging from simply getting tired of it all the way to life itself no longer allowing to in some way.
It's true that after leaving for years, a player cannot realistically expect a clan to still be alive, regardless of the game, but it's not unreasonable to hope it is either, specially if by the time such a player left the clan was still big and very active.
Regardless, this particular clan didn't die because players left the game, it died because its clan members would play on any other server but its own, and so, many left it for other clans (rival ones even), whose servers they were active in, or would simply still wear the tag regardless just "because" (some of them might still use it nowadays).
And the reason why they stopped playing in WINGS, was mostly because the servers became highly unstable and not fun to play on, with a different IP every other week (if not more often), due to how its founder kept changing things around even when the servers would finally get stable and populated, and wouldn't listen to anyone as he wanted to have his way, dismissing pretty much anything he was told, so in the end he killed his own clan, when one day the site and servers simply disappeared without a trace, and that was the end of it.
Wow. This is definitely a nostalgic topic. Yes, this is the CandyMan that was once part of WINGS, I'm still around, you can catch me playing over at Vulpine Mission. To any of the other WINGS members that may view this topic in the future, hello and I hope you're all well, well except for trAns^3
Anyways, take care. I did join the UT99.org Discord, so if any of you would like to get in contact with me, I'm not hard to find