Alter-Fox......
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These topics have become quite interesting to me... almost to the point of becoming comical.
After reading so many posts from topics like this, I've come to the conclusion that there are basically three different types of people who seem to create and reply to topics such as this.
There's people who are legitimatly asking whether they should spend money on the game. They wonder if they buy it... will it just be dead in a few months? It's a legitimate question. It's a serious question. A lot of games die out after a very short period of time.
Well, TM2 Canyon is about a year old now. There's slightly less activity than the buzz of activity there was at the start. However, there's still a very solid and strong community here. So I wouldn't worry about the TM community going anywhere in the near future. It will only grow larger again as the game itself grows and expands.
Then there's also the people who like to get online for a few minutes during the lowest time of day. They see 10 people on the top server, 5 people on each server after that. Suddenly they shape their entire opinion about the activity in the game on that one very narrow slice of time and proclaim in the forums that the game is indeed dead. These same people tend to also say that Nations will always be the best and that Nadeo should have made a new Stadium environment instead of wasting their time on Canyon. Stadium is the answer to everything. They also complain over any bug or possible glitch and think that the game should work perfect since they spent money on it. They are quite happy to live in their little dream world.
The other group of people are ardent defenders of Nadeo and TM2. They acknowledge it isn't perfect, but they know it will get better in the long run. They try really hard to look at things optimistically. They endeavour to look at the big picture and look towards where the game will be in 2 to 3 years when there is a diverse ManiaPlanet with multiple environments and hundreds of custom gamemodes, custom objects (or possibly even custom blocks), and a community engaging in all aspects of the game. They're sometimes overzealous and say hurtful things about Stadium, not because they hate Stadium, but because they're simply tired of hearing that it's the be-all and end-all of the TM experience. They know there's more to enjoy and they want others to see the beauty they see.
I think as long as these three groups of people exist, these types of topics will always exist, and even thrive.
I'm sure I've defended my viewpoint enough times that I need not state it again. But maybe my choice of words already show some bias towards my viewpoint.
Please don't think I'm trying to shoehorn everyone into specific categories. There are actually as many varied viewpoints as there are unique people on the forums. And everyone's opinions are of course nuanced in their own ways, which is actually what keeps things interesting.
