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As much as I have seen the traffic on this list drop, I am also seeing
the ladders at leagues<br>
drop as well. At it's peak, the COD HQ 4x4 ladder had 235 clans, of which
probably 150+ were active.<br>
Now, it has 30, perhaps 12 are active. Similar drop in
TDM.<br><br>
The COD:UO ladders are not doing much better. It also does not seem
to be limited to COD.<br>
Noticed the same for UT2004, and even Counter Strike has been
impacted.<br><br>
Friends are closing up clans left and right, and people I know that own
server leasing companies<br>
are consolidating as they lose people. Even one of the cheapest
guys out there, like ET.<br><br>
Supply and Demand? I don't think there is much. There are
diehards that are excited about<br>
BF2 and COD2 coming out. I am. SO that should bring back life
again!<br><br>
I don't think so. I think, and have predicted that the FPS Genre is
going the way of<br>
the Combat Flight Sim. If UBI had released LOMAC (Lock-on) had come
out when that<br>
genre was hot, that small Russian team would have been wealthy.
Instead, it is a great<br>
sim, the best I have seen to date IMHO (A FX5950 would get down to 9fps
at times), and<br>
the newer 6800 during the same demo code run still only hits 43fps!
But it would have been<br>
huge, had the video card technology been what it is.<br><br>
Where are all the clans going? Why are their members leaving? Look
at the ranks<br>
of World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy, Matrix On-line.... Massive On-line
Gaming.<br><br>
If COD2 was going to be a MMO game, with Borgs, Trolls, and Flying
Faeries<br>
we could put lead in to, it might have a chance. ;-) I wrote some
pretty<br>
recent editorials to PCGamer, and submitted this observation as an
article to<br>
them for publication. They have contacted me back, and I am still talking
with<br>
their people. It is clear I am not the only one to notice the
trend. My communications<br>
with TWL's admins, and competition managers I have come to know I don't
think<br>
want to see it, but they notice the dips in ranks.<br><br>
I became friendly with many clan founders over the past 2 years while
running {TRv},<br>
and several were multi-gaming. COD, COD:UO, BF1942, BFDC, UT2004, SOF2,
with<br>
25 active players, and over 100 on their rosters that were active on
their servers<br>
and played via rotation via sign-up. Shut down last week.
Large healthy clans<br>
here one day. WOW comes out, and a month later, gone.<br><br>
Matrix was a DOA. WOW seems to have brought it back to life. <br><br>
I can take the death of gaming perhaps, but not the Genre. At 43, I
grew up in the Atari<br>
era as a 18+teenager, my early years were Mainframes, PDP11, Byte mag was
12 pages long<br>
and carried the ads for Imsai 8080, and Altair systems. 8KB Ram.
First multiplayer game<br>
was StarTrek on a Dec Vax at work. SO the Atari era was great.
<br><br>
I would hate to see the death of the Genre. I didn't like
"Scott Adams" text adventures<br>
back in the Era of TRS-80's and Atari, and I don't like the current
Genre, which is where<br>
I feel WOW, and Matrix-On-line.<br><br>
If somewhere COD:UO, and BF2 became RPG's and FPS's, where did WOW
become<br>
a MMO RPG Adventure and 3rd person shooter.<br><br>
I know there are many on this list that have gaming server
companies. I sure would like someone elses' view of what we are
seeing. The calm is eerie, and I hear that "Death
rattle", that once you hear it<br>
they say you never forget it....<br><br>
Over the years through COD, and UO, I have come to know and respect many
of you for many<br>
reasons, some of which includes knowledge and opinions. Please take a
moment if you have some thoughts, to share them.<br><br>
PCGamer did not turn my article down, they said they would get back to me
with commentary<br>
on content, and I provided some "food for thought"...<br><br>
I sure would love to be wrong.<br><br>
<br>
Best Regards<br><br>
Mark D<br><br>
<br>
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<tt>S1,-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Mark J. DeFilippis, Ph. D
EE
defilm@acm.org<br>
defilm@ieee.org<br><br>
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