g0lv's posterous

Hello teePlanet.

Out of necessity my first post might seem a bit harsh. This post is my personal opinion, and I only write this because someone has to. My friends call me Golvmopp, or g0lv. I've been playing Teeworlds since 0.2.x. and I've watched the game develop from a game with mere five servers to the monster it is today. I'm a member of anti-clan, an old school, inactive team. Some may know me from community stuff like TeeTV or Tee-Strike, and later on teePlanet/teewit. Some of you might not know me at all. This is all uninteresting backstory, though. Who I am really isn't important, but rather what I have to say.

Today we witnessed something unprecedented in the history of Teeworlds. The development was officially shut down and the site was removed without any warning and left the community to live or die as it pleased. No time to say good bye nor to grief all the hours spent on Teeworlds all gone to waste. Just shock and disbelief. 

Even if it all had ended there it's still enough to make me disappointed. Isn't there any value in the over 1000 daily players that time and time again returns to play and have fun? Is the work of a few individuals enough to punish the entire community and treat them like they have no worth? 

I'm gonna make an (apparently) OUTRAGEOUS claim and say that more than 95% of the community is only here for the game, for the friends and for the world we have created with our own time and dedication. For the Teeworlds we've come to know and love over endless hours of playtime. All we got was a door slammed in our faces with a note telling us to go home. 

I understand that getting DDoSed and spammed isn't something you want, but it is not a strong reason to just screw the community of an OPEN-SOURCE project. The type of project where the head of the snake CAN be replaced if necessary. 

Now, the story doesn't end here. Teeworlds.com is back up and with the exception of a short news post it appears like nothing has happened. Development is still going strong and the site was never down. 

This makes me wonder. How much thought was put into the close? Was the weeks of careful thinking suddenly overthrown by an urge not to give up? I'm not so sure that's what really happened. 

The differences between before the closing of the site and after is that minus now takes care of the server and Kottizen is the new IRC channel operator. I'm almost dizzy from all the change and sense of direction the development is emitting. 

I think matricks needs to make a choice. A choice that should've been made a year ago. Even now, after he closed the site and told us Teeworlds was no more, he still is the leader and it's still only his word that matters.  He needs to decide: Should he still have an active part of the development or not? 

I'm grateful for everything he's done, don't get me wrong. Without matricks I wouldn't be writing this today and I'm in debt to him for the creation of Teeworlds. But. Somewhere down the line he lost the flame. The eagerness to take Teeworlds into a new chapter and dedicate time into the project slowly faded away and sometimes Teeworlds even seemed like a nuiance to him.  That's when you should decide. Continue or back off. 

As of now I feel sorry for the aspiring contributors. We haven't seen a new release since October 2009, which was a small maintenance release. The latest major release came in January the same year. In ten months a server crash and some GUI issues were fixed. Since then there hasn't been a single release, which is a huge red light. 

Some that are reading might think "well, if you want a release that bad, why don't you contribute?", but that's not the issue here. The problem is that there is no direction nor any motivation driving Teeworlds forward. matricks has the final say and he isn't saying anything. Where is the implementation of TeeComp or Client-Pack features? Where are the new gameplay features? Hell, just some new skins even. There are great things out there but nothing happens. Where is the list of goals for Teeworlds? 

matricks needs to decide. Either do it yourself or let the community do what you have no ambition to do. Don't let your lack of interest stand in the way of Teeworlds continued development. 

What I want to see is a core team of active and ambitious people. People who have experience with Teeworlds and are dedicated to the development. I want to see a snake head capable of taking direction and planning out the future, giving contributors a goal to work towards. I want to see progress.