I worry about things getting too fragmented. I just want a stable home with a healthy population enough to be able to find people to do most of the game any day.
Don't worry about that, Brigadine. I hear what you're saying.
But there isn't just one big studio doing 'one' strand of development any more. (And there's no one that wanted to see i24 officially released than me...and the coming of the Batallion and the Moonbase as revealed by Matt Miller in his last interview re: CoH.)
There's 20 thousands registrations so far. That's more than enough to support a handful of servers.
The 'home brew distros' (matter of time) will cover people like me who will fly below the radar.
You'll have big communities and small communities. But? We're still the CoH Federation of 'Love our Game.'
It will just be like going shopping. You'll have your favourite type of food, clothing, car etc. Or 'ice cream.'
You'll be able to decide what flavour of CoH you like.
Fragmentation. It doesn't really mean anything other than?
Choice. Something we have in most areas of our lives.
There just won't be one studio developing the story. Not Paragon. Nor NC. Those 'official' days are gone. We have to take responsibility for i25's story content upon ourselves. Some that want to enjoy i24 as a frozen testament to what 'nearly' launched can do so.
But the sacrfices made by the dev' that leaked the code, the team at SCORE that preserved it and really brought some quality of life improvements and development fixes to i25....scream that we, as a community have to take responsibility where it goes next.
That means coders racing to get a i24 home brew distro that can be run more economically. It means, eventually, the tools to create our own content. (We can start with AE....maybe write our own Battalion arc...for The Wharf zone?)
We shouldn't fear this. It's the nexus inflection point.
Those seeking a more 'like live' home will be wishing and hoping that Tony's talks with NC go well. My Duo-partner feels that way. And maybe they'll have a license to take the game forward with some story content to go with i25 along with all the fixes and improvements they've made.
Me? The privacy of my own distro run by me...where I know a legal nuke isn't going to take down the game or the server.
Azrael.