Message to everyone!

[Link]

Hey everyone,

Eclipse is changing a lot behind the scenes, and one of those changes is how the community is going to be managed.

I still own the eclipse domains, the website, etc., but I am stepping down as the “forum owner”, and joining the ranks of the other admins. When the “owner” title was introduced, the forums were starting to feel more corporate, and less like a community. We need to come together towards fixing this place, and I think the best way to do that would be to bring the life and fun back into the community.

Eclipse was and should be a community for game developers again; not a company to try and squeeze the money out of the members’ pockets. When I bought eclipse from Amish, we changed a lot, but I don’t think we changed enough, unfortunately. This is the first of many steps to try and mend the wounds caused by poor “management”.

When I first joined, 7 years ago, I loved coming here, hanging out with you guys, occasionally making games, and just joking around. There were definitely some members that tried to turn the place into a cesspool of negativity, but we thrived by continuing to just have fun and make games.

We’re going to make eclipse the community that you knew and loved once again, without all of the corporate nonsense.

There will still be business-y things in the background, but the main focus for the community will be to be a community—nothing more.

Regards,
         Link

[Marsh]

Sounds awesome to me :), I definitely miss the old days of just hanging out. Once all the changes are done I think some advertising and "fresh blood" would help things a lot as well.

[Draken]

The problem with getting this like it was back in the day is that most kids now days(No Offence to anyone out there) are ass hats. It's hard to find serious people online these days. Have you ever tried to go play an online game these days that did not have ass hat kids who are just trolling it's nearly impossible. Which is the main reason I don't game online now. Back in the day people would come here to joke and work on projects together. Now days it seems a few of us are working on projects and the others just troll.

This place will never be like it use to be simply for the fact that most of the members that would make this place awesome have grown up and are just to busy with their life to even visit the site. I've been here since Nov 05 and this place has changed so much in the years and every time it seems to get a little worst.

[Chief]

I'd hardly say that's reason enough to not try, though. Just be there to help us put forth effort. This is the first time I've had the chance to actually steer the wheel.

[Dr.House]

The fact that I'm still here posting this and not banned is a good thing, I don't see what can change anymore.

When Amish took over and tried to milk every bit of money ppl had, everything started to go down, admins and mods were very agressive and started banning ppl even for the most insignificant things.
I don't hate him or anything but I really dislike that he managed to kill the "party", lame party pooper he was.

Try selling people something great and they will buy it, try selling shit saying it's the good shit, then you're an asshole, he was that kind of a man who tried to sell shit, he had no ideas, no experience with such things, if anyone tries to say otherwise, I'll slap him/her with the fact that he left after he destroyed the community and gave such a bad reputation to Eclipse.

Now it feels like, whoever owns this place tries his best to rebuild a ruin, the exact same it was or better, wich is kinda too late, without a modern engine, since this place is about a "free mmorpg maker", not about "make your own mmorpg engine" or "discuss about mmorpgs and mmo engines"

I wish you guys luck, and I hope someday to see this place awesome again.

[Draken]

I'm all for trying to get it back to like it was.

Just saying it will be hard to do.

[AcidTumbleweed]

Not every game dev is a 13 year old kid discovering Eclipse on the internet. If you want to attract a community of experienced/aspiring developers you have to give them a reason to come here. Let's be honest here for a moment, Eclipse & Mirage-based engines are hobbyist applications, ESPECIALLY because they are developed with legacy software for legacy platforms. I've said it time after time, the community needs to provide something that caters to game devs… A place to simply talk about your projects will never be good enough because there is communities far more popular than this one for those exact reasons.

Whatever is going on with all of this community drama and the admins putting out fires is purely focused around the people already here with motives (seemingly) to preserve its current state while building on the future of this community. At this point, members who care about the community should show it by making genuine & beneficial posts to the forums or none at all. The admins should hear the opinions of the community to better it but the members can't be asses about it either. Really though, at this point, the admins are the members & vice versa because you're all the same people that have been lingering around here forever.

What can Eclipse do to attract more people to the community? That should be the focus and new decisions should be made with that in mind, from both the admins as well as the members. We know that the admins are in talks about how to move forward so everyone just needs to let them try without hassle. Every time these sites try to make a change the community backlashes, the rinse & repeat patterns will be the demise of these forums.

[Chief]

Engines aside, we're making other efforts/site-features that should draw in more users. Another effort that we're going to push again is advertising; it seemed to halt once Marsh handed over the reigns.

This is NOT business as usual.

[Zetasis]

I'm with AcidTumbleweed on this one, as far as the engine goes anyways. An updated more modern engine is very much needed. When I tell my programming buddies about the engine they seem pretty interested and excited, that is, until I tell them its programmed in VB6\. As far as I can tell, most programmers these days think VB6 is a joke and the fact that people still use it is even funnier. Sadly, I am one of those people who still use but I have been stepping it up and learning C+ and VB.net.

There are other engines out there that have been created using more modern languages that were based off of Mirage but for whatever reason it seems this site just doesn't want anything to do with it. I mean know of a couple VB.net engines that are an exact replica of the original Eclipse Origins. Why hasn't the site found a dev to pick that up and shape it into something better? I know the engine I am speaking of isnt the best but it would be a step in the right direction at least.

[or3o]

Hopefully this "resource limit reached" error on the site gets sorted out. I come to this site almost daily just to chat with friends and all i ever see anymore are people in the shout box begging for help, They don't seem appreciative at all. Some of the new users just expect everything to be done for them and that kinda bothers me. Its painful to watch people start working with our antiquated engine knowing that by the time a new user gets proficient with it they will realize how outdated it really is. I hope something can be done because I love this site.

[Sekiguchi Okitsugu]

Man that's so inspriational. A tear almost came out of my eye!(almost) Well i look forward to seeing the changes here in eclipse. Good luck everybody!

[Niko]

Ive always loved eclipse and always will. But a paragraph of words is just a paragraph of words, people need to see changes. Not only in features and website development but also an overall attitude change in the people running this place. As someone said above, Marsh always had the Site owner title. Everyone knew it and it never effected anything because he had a great attitude, he would help users and was not ban happy. Not saying that you guys are currently, that was not my point at all. But its just been a rough couple years around these forums. Anyway on a positive note, its going to be pretty hard to top what Amish did to the community so most likely it can only become better from here :)

[Link]

You're absolutely right about people needing to see changes vs a paragraph of words. I also agree about the attitude in the people running the place, that's pretty much the reasoning for the paragraph though because we are changing the atmosphere of how the place is ran. Time will tell though.