92 replies to this topic

[Caspa]

When the fuck did this happen and why wasn't I involved? I know this place was dying a slow painful death when I decided to run off, but this is just inhumane. Revora was a wonderful place filled with hilarity, lunatics and Chemical Ali. Now it's akin to a diseased, cancerous, starving dog that's trying to crawl across the Antarctic Desert with all four legs brokenwhile occasionally having its' bollocks pecked at by penguins.

Just what exactly is keeping this place alive? Why hasn't the coup d'grace been applied by way of a sledgehammer to the back of the skull?

[Pasidon]

Ad revenue.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Excuse moi if I appear rude, but many people (however lacking in a number of members' resources of sarcasm and hilarity) love this place and don't consider it dead by a long shot.

[Elric]

Fellbeast he does have a point tho. Revora used to be A LOT more active then it has been... So it is slowly drifting that way. Which sucks.

[Pasidon]

We've been more active recently. You two posting is evidence of that. But still, who gives a rat's brass knuckle.

[Elric]

Rats have brass in there knuckles? What is this magic!

[Plokite_Wolf]

The communities that Revora hosts are dying slowly but firmly - C&C, Commandos, Petroglyph, BFME... all except for the Minecraft community. Sad but true

[Caspa]

don't consider it dead by a long shot.

Because if the bloated corpse involantarily farts, it's a sign that it's not dead? That it's still got some life left in it? Maybe you're right. Maybe Revora isn't dead. It's still alive and well and just suffering from a mild bout of locked in syndrome! Sorry, but when the horse has been turned into glue, it's probably best to stop checking for a pulse.

We've been more active recently

More active than what exactly? A continental drift? Coastal erosion? Fuck, even Romanul isn't this bloody slow.

Edited by Caspa, 26 July 2012 - 03:50 PM.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

My point is that a number of members are still here. If we weren't, there wouldn't be in-progress work and legitimate posts every day.

[Chocolate Star]

people move on, just how it goes!

[duke_Qa]

Also, modding modern games is a bit of a tough call. Proper game-programming, indie game development through engines like flash/unity/udk/ogre, proper artists for 3d/2d; is where Revora should go if they want to remain relevant.

But on the other hand, pc gaming seems to have a resurgence these days. Indie game developers are more nostalgic and open to letting people mod their games. It can go either way I guess, so we'll see.

[Pasidon]

Actually, modding is the hot thing right now. With the Steam workshop, lots of games are receiving fantastic tools and communities that are all focused around modding. We're just ignoring it and not investing anything into it. Also, the Indi Machine should of been up LONG ago, and we're missing out on that as well. At this point, it would be bandwagoning. Put these things off for another year, it would be too late. People would have already chosen their target communities and we wouldn't be able to provide much else. It also doesn't help that our top dog leaders are rarely seen. These are my honest views, and my honest conclusion will be death if we stop sitting on these great ideas and get into something great. All I can say is that a lot dumber and less worthy people will be getting better communities since they're actually going to start investing before us.

[Chocolate Star]

Actually, modding is the hot thing right now. With the Steam workshop, lots of games are receiving fantastic tools and communities that are all focused around modding. We're just ignoring it and not investing anything into it. Also, the Indi Machine should of been up LONG ago, and we're missing out on that as well. At this point, it would be bandwagoning. Put these things off for another year, it would be too late. People would have already chosen their target communities and we wouldn't be able to provide much else. It also doesn't help that our top dog leaders are rarely seen. These are my honest views, and my honest conclusion will be death if we stop sitting on these great ideas and get into something great. All I can say is that a lot dumber and less worthy people will be getting better communities since they're actually going to start investing before us.

I wish Brink could be modded, to have way more maps.

[Pasidon]

Yea, it's all about choosing the right games with what people you have. All of us are divided on gaming interests really, and we probably won't decide any common grounds on new games to host in the future. When C&C and BFME die out more, that's the point when we better start up something new or just die already (we should be deciding this now, by the way). I'm ungala-tasking my horns off with all the projects I'm doing around here, but with the community we have right now... well, we can't find much motivation other than commenting. I'm being mega-optimist, honestly.

But if anyone really cares, my ultimate suggestion right now is to make Eric Edwards (Hostile) a prime site leader. He knows how to start up communities better than anyone else here and has enough motivation and time to contribute tons of work. And he's spent thousands of dollars keeping this site alive, so I have no idea why we're just letting him be a wasted resource while he's wasting resources on us, Well that should answer part of your question, Cas. Hostile is why we're not in a dead situation.

[Neth]

We've been more active recently

More active than what exactly? A continental drift? Coastal erosion? Fuck, even Romanul isn't this bloody slow.

This is legendary Caspa

But yeah, this place is slowly dying, I remember when I used to have loads of topics to check after waking up in the morning, now there's just a few posts, and I haven't even been here as long as most of you. I just come back now and again to check how things are

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

It's more than just the divisions being quiet.
For a while the most active section was the Think Tank and despite there always being news and stuff to talk about that forum is dead.
We just have to be more active.
The main part of Revora has gone the way of a lot of forums as being just a place for old regulars to hang out until ad revenue dries up completely.

[duke_Qa]

It probably is how most of these things go if you aren't "hip" and up to date with whatever game is the most popular in your day and age. Revora and the other C&C related forums were big back in the days, but C&C have sort of died since then. We'll see if the new stuff people are working on will help on it. Something of a news-thingie might help getting more hits while the forums allow people to communicate.

But if anyone really cares, my ultimate suggestion right now is to make Eric Edwards (Hostile) a prime site leader.

On the topic leadership and whatnot: I think its better to figure something out together no matter what position and investment you've done, instead of divide and conquer and become king of the corpse hill. I suspect all of those that have invested into Revora are rational enough to be able to work together for Revora. So: Leadership of Revora should not be a topic until there is a real good reason for it. Starting a discussion on that right now would be more dividing than useful.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Leadership of Revora should not be a topic until there is a real good reason for it. Starting a discussion on that right now would be more dividing than useful.

Though I'd agree, I'd also like to add that, without more popularity it's pointless, so moreover we need to decide what we're going to do. Maybe open up new possibilities? After all, Revora being known as the Creative Network implies a large span of interests, so we could explore and expand into different areas than just modding (whilst keeping it at the forefront) such as music and ulterior graphic work, and whilst I know it is there, it's relatively unknown to most Revorians, and unlike sites such as DeviantART, we've never really publicized that it is in fact there. Also, possibly fiction (and non-fiction) writing?
Plus, with our quite well-known reputation as a modding community, we should probably go into more games, such as the megaselling Bethesda series of TES and Fallout. It's possibly one of the most modded games around, along with the Civilization series.

Lastly, I'd personally love more emphasis on Unity3D. Or maybe the Unreal Engine. That'd be a major attraction, I think, though apart from Qa and Digi_Byte, I've not seen much interest (though I myself am fascinated, and attempting to learn it, it's not really my area of expertise, so it's going slowly)

[Caspa]

people move on, just how it goes!

People move on because there's fuck all here now. If they had a reason to stay, they would. Even when users got bored with modding or the current crop of games that Revora supports, they'd still hang around because of the community spirit, but without some form of reinvention, without some reason to stay, they will move on. If this place was kept active and guided in some form of direction, a large amount of users would probably have stayed.

If Revora isn't simply going to fade away, barely clinging to life on the meagre ad revenue, then there needs to be a serious shake-up and very definitive direction for the future of the site. As a broad-stream creativity site, it's shit. There's much better, much more active sites than this. The very few games that are supported, are almost completely irrelevant now, and the communities within are mostly gone. We need to pick a direction, a new set of games and run with it.

Leadership of Revora should not be a topic until there is a real good reason for it.

No, leadership of Revora should not be a topic, until they're here to defend themselves, which is likely never. Even our "fearless leaders" have gotten bored with this place and fucked off, possibly never to be seen again. I reality, there's only a small handful members actually left here. This place is like the Millennium Dome, only slightly fuller and with a slightly worse future.

Edited by Caspa, 28 July 2012 - 08:49 PM.

[Mathijs]

So come up with a plan then.

I would like for Revora to be more active again, but I think we need to answer the question of what exactly we want Revora to do. The way I see it, the direction and aim of Revora is spread too thin; there's a fair amount of subforums that only serve to clog up the layout. Nobody posts there, and whoever does post there could, 9 times out of 10, just as well post in Open Topic. What little activity we have is spread out over far too many subforums, making the place seem even staler than it admittedly is. We simply do not need all of these subforums for the handful of people that we have left. Best thing to do:

• Decide on a specific, less broad direction
  
• Clean up forum
  
• Advertise specific, less broad direction
  
• Expand forum as the need arises

Basically, start over with a cleaned up slate. The core of Revora, offering free hosting space in exchange for traffic (ad revenue) is a really good idea.

By the way, someone suggested a creative writing section: we tried that, nobody gave a damn. It's a lot easier to look at pretty pictures then read someone's short story, especially because there's a big chance it'll turn out to be a pretty shitty short story. So let's not go there again.

If you, Caspa, have an idea or vision to improve and rejuvenate this place (and are not just kicking a man while he's down) then I'd love to hear them. I'd also like Pasidon to write down his vision in detail, basically everyone who is still active and willing to contribute. Gather up the ideas and see if we can do anything to shock ourselves back to life.

Edited by Mathijs, 28 July 2012 - 09:07 PM.