I hear you, my friend. I spent a good ten years of my life under the hold of a serious depression. I know where you're coming from when you say it can be hard to be optimistic. Like Segev said, what you need is some sheer, cement-headed stubbornness.
Refuse to let negativity have another day.
In my experience, the way to hold onto hope is to focus on the ways something
can work. Once you find that out, the only question left is how can I make
sure it works? Remove the obstacles one at a time, and arrange the circumstances to give success the best possible chance. And if you personally can't make those changes, then you support the people who can. Give them what
they need to stay focused or encouraged. Sometimes, like with us here, all that means is to be there saying things like "Cool!" and "Thanks!" and giving them feedback when they ask our opinions.
First off, look at the Icon program Codewalker has made (
link in case you haven't seen it). It's like freaking magic how good it feels just to watch your character moving around in the city again, with sound and the ability to control your movement. Granted, from what he's said, Icon won't be the program that lets us play it as a
game again... for technical reasons that I don't really understand (and probably couldn't even pronounce, hehe). But that's not the point. Look at what he's accomplished with it. Now realize that the people working on the playable version are making those same kinds of progress. They're just not showing it to us, because they don't want to risk their work being stopped midway. Once it's usable they'll get it out to us. These people have the same feelings of longing that we do to get back into Paragon City and fight Circle of Thorns and Longbow again. But they have the technical skills to do something about it, and they're using those skills as we speak.
Each of the Plan Z projects look like they're going to be really cool, too. With three different takes on a superhero game, most of us are bound to like at least one of them. I foresee a lot of people liking and playing all three. Their teams are all filled with passionate and skilled people, and are being lead by former players of the same game we love. Two of the teams are
completely made up of those players. They all remember what made Paragon City great and their goal is to put that influence into the new cities.
So what we need to focus on is supporting these different groups. And if we can't support them technically, then by $deity we'll support them in spirit! Because they
do know what to do, and they
do know how to do it. All we need to do is to show them that we're here and we're eager to use what they're making. Even if we're not here all day every day, we're ready to come back when the time is right.
As for the game
officially coming back, well... there are reasons to say a cautious 'maybe' instead of a definite 'no', but the chances are slim. The current owners just don't seem interested in negotiating. However that doesn't mean it will never be
playable again. We just might have to celebrate quietly, amongst ourselves, when it happens.
