[TheLieka]

Wow, this thread was flirting with turning into something productive before everyone decided to Circle the Wagons.

Change scares some people, it's an unfortunate fact of life. I've been trolling the forums and playing on servers for few years (never hardcore, mind you), and I orginally heard about EQEmu from a friend that wanted me to try this awesome new thing called GuildWars (before the non-namesake ripoff PC game came out).

I've seen a lot of things change, and bannings sway based on which cults of personality were in control of which piece at the time. Granted, I didn't post for years after seeing some of the things that happened to people that posted. I've had a ton of stupid questions, but slowly but surely, I've found the answers to them, until I was finally ready to take a stab at setting up my own server.

Cavedude and Wildcard, I know it's instinct to get defensive, and I do understand that, but I think that you guys got brought into this as collateral damage. The central point to this whole thread is, something needs to happen to stimulate the community. Let's look away from the devs for a minute, and stop pointing fingers at whose fault it is.

The bottom line is, people are starting to get bored. Yes, your community, the group of people that, I've seen so many pretend, don't fucking matter. I ask you this: If the community (read as: the players) are not important, because they haven't submitted code (yet), then who are you building this code for? I could fill the fucking grand canyon with the posts I've seen bashing the players. Do the devs get together and have a tickle fight on a different person's server every saturday? No. It's not anyone's midterm project, no one has to do this. The code and databases exists to put up a server for PLAYERS to log into. The community DOES matter, and the fact that I've seen reinforced over and over is that as soon as someone gets into a control position, they seem to forget why they can even call themselves a (insert title here). There are a lot of political and social parallels to this going on right now, but I'll keep that to myself, for risk of the thread getting further derailed.

Something needs to happen, someone needs to, as image said, learn from the mistakes, and swallow a little gulp of pride. If you are in control (of the database, of the source, of the forums, of a server, of any aspect of this community), and you feel yourself getting disinterested, don't have time, or just don't give a shit, then do yourself and everyone else a favor and hand over the reigns to someone with some enthusiasm for it. Burnout is completely normal, and no one will view you as a quitter or a deserter for standing down, BUT do not half-way stand down (holding onto or holding back certain pieces of code, etc), don't try to make the community realize how fucking important you are, you'll only tarnish your own name, and people will resent you for your last days, rather than glorify your time in service to the community. This community (EQEmu and PEQ are not separate communities) needs to get excited about something, and it's been a while since anyone has had anything major to get excited about. When the community gets excited, you'll see more code slingers, database devs, security spooks, project managers, GMs, and players coming out of the woodwork to participate than you'll know what to do with (and all of the positions listed in this statement are equally important to this community, if you disagree, then reread the first two sentences of this paragraph quietly to yourself while you blush).

If you are jaded and unhappy with your part in the community, you're projecting that on everyone you come in contact with.

The good news is: Enthusiasm is extremely contagious, and it will only take is a few excited people to re-energize this entire project (if you say that it doesn't need to be revitalized, then you're in complete and total denial: likely due to a fear of healthy internal competition. Let's not forget that it's competition that put a man on the moon).

[/motivational speach off]