Long time away

[ionian]

Hello TM peeps - I've been away for a bit and today I just downloaded maniaplanet for the first time in a while. Years actually. at least seven years. I'm not sure if anyone would remember me, I used to be very active in the TMU community and I alpha and beta tested both TM2 and Shootmania, but that was way back when. Life happened, I got married, had a family, got a busy job and no longer had time for pc gaming. But recently I upgraded my PC for photo editing and - what do you know - that means it can run a few games. So, having quickly grown tired of the toxic community that surrounds most online gaming in 2019, I thought I'd check in here with what used to be the most friendly online community known to humanity.

So hi! And what have I missed? Where is Maniaplanet these days, what is active and worth playing?

PS A special hello to the Nadeo team - I have missed you guys
PPS RIP Jamie

[riolu]

Welcome back, great to see an old name returning to the game.
The game has changed a lot ever since you were gone. The core identity of the game remained the same, but everything around it became a lot more complex whilst providing a huge amount of customizability and room for creativity. Players can now create their own blocks, edit existing ones, create titlepacks, own gamemodes and all the other stuff you probably still remember from the past.
The game has been gaining some popularity lately, especially thanks to efforts from tournament hosters to push the game's eSport sector. Zerator Cup, the TrackMania World Championship and the ongoing TrackMania Grand League (hosted by Nadeo/Ubisoft themselves) have been successful projects which attract big player numbers even outside of the core community. TrackMania² Stadium is the competitive game, other titles do have their own small communities but are nowhere close to Stadium's player numbers.
Recently Twitch streams have gained a lot of popularity as well with their own main characters and community members pushing the game forward through a vast variety VOD content. Various Discord servers, such as the official TrackMania Discord became a very centralized place for discussions, announcements, and casual talks.
It'll take a while to re-discover all possibilities but the community is as friendly as ever before, so your questions shall be answered.

[Alinoa]

Hello Ionian,

Nice to see you here and welcome again ^_^
I invite you to read this topic about the 15th TM Anniversary if you want to have some news and souvenirs from players and the Ubisoft Nadeo team and to also to have some great testimonies of humanity: viewtopic.php?f=526&t=45144.
I agree with you, the toxicity is an issue for online games and in social media but we talk more and more about this issue and we can hope that things should go better with the time
And you are right, you can find great people among the maniaplanet community ^_^

Kindest regards to you,
Alinoa

PS: I didn't know for Jamie

[ionian]

Thanks Rilou - its good to be back even though it is strange to be starting from the beginning (not that I was ever any good at Canyon, but I do miss those TMU competitions).

Alinoa - great to see you, best wishes to you, Hylis and the team! That's a fun topic and I'm glad to see are still working with Trackmania. The current free-to-play model made popular by Fortnite and others seems to be a late imitation of TMN, you guys were showing them how it was done over ten years ago!

I'm sad to report that Jamie passed away following illness in 2015 - I was lucky that he was one of the first people I met when i started playing Trackmania in 2006ish and we played together for many years. He was one of the good guys, he had a generous heart and was always laughing. He is deeply missed.