Is TrackMania 2 Stadium dying?

[stefan.fueger]

i guess me and a few others simply expected something different from tm2s
gonna stick to tmnf alap [as long as possible]. bye

THanks for the info. We already wondered about that.

[Tomei]

Well I stuck with Stadium for a few more weeks and slowly watched the numbers fall away (exactly like Canyon) and as it was with Canyon, I went back to TMNF and I'm having fun again with heaps of players, packed servers and good racing.

I had such high expectations of Trackmania 2 and especially stadium. But I guess the devs have made it loud and clear their intent is this mish'mash called ManiaPlanet and instead of one fantastic game, they will offer a handful of mediocre games and "hope" a community of players gets behind it and makes it better. Sadly with todays market and the plethora of fantastic titles available (unlike when Stadium was first introduced) I can't see this happening.

All in all you'll end up with a fragmented "community" (if you can call it that) of a few Canyon die hards, a few Valley die hards, and a few more Stadium die hards but with the majority of people going elsewhere. Already my own clan is slowly disappearing with guys not being seen online (in game or our forums) for weeks now. We got 4 servers up and running asap upon Stadiums release and at the start it was jam packed. Then the in-game complaints started about the game. All of which was pointed out I agreed. But I figured the devs would be onto it quickly (at least I hoped they would) before players started leaving the game.

During the last few weeks I have made contact with guys I have played with and asked what's going on. ALL have replied to my messages that they are playing other games instead.
Now all 4 of our servers are empty with the occasional player or two stopping by for a few rounds and vanishing. Not just our servers either. As I look through the server listings I see less and less players every day.

Of coarse this will be replied to with comments of the "official" numbers are good. More people than ever, blah blah blah. But I know what I see and I have seen this before with Canyon. I guess TrackMania² Stadium failed, just like Canyon failed and my hopes of TMNF on a shiny new engine have failed too

[Hylis]

You are still comparing free to paying. TrackMania² Stadium was in open beta and yes, there as been a decrease from there, and also a decrease over last ten days, maybe brought by the summer. This is why we are looking after the demos, like we always did from the first TM. But yes, the numbers are quite bigger than any other paying TM before and it did not prevented people to enjoy. I think that the diminution compared to the free version makes a bad feeling for some, that also there is a lot of multiplayer games around, like LoL, that makes the game in a more competitive environment. But our road is to make the best online racing game on PC (not talking about simulation here) and the best online FPS on PC as well (not talking about war simulation here as well) I don't say we will succeed, but we will welcome players that are happy to go there and I don't think there is a need or a plus to further continue this thread in that respect.