I personally see nothing wrong with how both solo and alliance play are at the moment. The issue is that the playerbase is too small and people are getting lazier - no change in game mechanics will change that or even vaguely compensate without pissing off another group of people. All I can say is try to recruit as many people as you know into the game and try to find more opportunities to help new players.
Linked to this, people think Azzer doesn't care about the game atm - whether this is true or not, if we as a community can rope in a **** ton of new players, he's bound to notice the increase and will be more likely to pay attention to the game.
Two birds with one stone - but I'm not trying to say that it'll be easy. All I'm saying is that if we want to try to fix the major issues with the game, increasing the number of new players joining and, most importantly, staying is the only sensible option.