Today, the game is already big and the community as well. If you look at the sites, the videos, the competitions, the number of servers, the mods, the cars, the maps etc. So, it is difficult to make it bigger instantly and give the impression of a great percentage increase. TrackMania has already 8 years behind, and one more month will do less difference than first months. But take a look at what is being done everywhere, and you can feel that it is still growing. Also, since the release, Nadeo Live has provide a ManiaConnect interface, made the group more usable, created the calendar events tool, updated ManiaLive etc. More is to come in the upcoming weeks, and there is a need to see the global picture in order to have all the dynamics to start combining well. The main checkpoint of this will be the release of Maniaplanet 2.0.
But, the most important is the number of players, off course. So, while the game is above all paid TM version so far, stable and will surely increase with Christmas in that area, it is still very small compared to the ambition for Maniaplanet. And in that perspective, we are in the early months of it. We will bring more attention to the platform when it is more interesting to do it. The goal is to make this after Maniaplanet 2.0 and closer to Storm release. Meanwhile, many additionnal improvements are being done to optimise this time.
For the community, the most important is to welcome nicely the new players and new initiative. For them, they are in contact of really highly experienced players, and this is like skill game, it can be discouraging to see the level once you arrive years after. But if the community has less new entry for each player, it is going to grow old too fast ^_^ In fact, I think the community is readying itself also to welcome new players later. I have seen the new interface of the website JonTheKiller is writing for, two months ago, and it is also a slow but promising grow to enable everything to be in a bigger way.
I know people would like to have dates for all this, but if we give them, we diminish our capacity to adapt the development in order to pick the best moment for release. So, we will announce them just before the release.
My target is make Maniaplanet with tons of players, off course. And toward the community, I hope this for everyone of people in it that are making things for others as well. I am just so exited when I think that all Shootmania players will discover what you have achieve so far when they arrive. It is often the kind of feedback that I have: "they have no idea how big it is behind, and they will be really surprise!" and we are getting closer to it everyday.
And sorry for the time we have to wait, but we are doing our best to make it as soon as possible. You can believe us that we are SO looking forward to the big party
Florent
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