Hello friends, I hope you all are doing good, I would like to use this post to talk about the current state of our community and discuss what's next.
As we all know, SoD settled down for a while already, Fungrades 2.0 ain't being visited much, not much happening in our community etc. Basically ZPS Cabin and (probably) Minecraft keeps breathing fresh air into those SoD lungs, but our actual community doesn't do much together anymore (at least for ZPS). It might be understandable that people go their own paths and therefore branch out into other games, especially since ZPS didn't blow up as much as expected. But that's not the whole reason why SoD/Fungrades isn't as active anymore. I have the feeling like most people simply settled down aswell and over the course of several years up to almost a decade are most likely done with ZPS and it's upgrades ones. On the one hand we all age and close old chapters and open new ones. Some maybe attending a job some even might have created their own family already, whatever it is, it's most likely reasonable. One the other hand ZPS is an old game and even though it's a (for the most part) fun and cozy community, it's still small. And getting new people to keep SoD alive is almost impossible without risking to recruit freaks. Therefore I assume the priority switched from expanding the community and running towards constant improvement on games/servers/staff, to keeping alive what's there and enjoying the people we have (don't get me wrong, those improvements aren't completely abandoned).
I have been thinking and discussing a lot about our current state, what to change, what to do, where is the point in what. It was interesting to see different opinions and sadly some of those people I talked to already left or probably are tempted to leave aswell. I am not trying to create some sad atmosphere or declaring the communitys status into something absurd, don't worry we're not done yet! I am simply pointing out mine and other peoples thoughts. It's obvious, hard times will come when the community is based alone on a really old game and therefore keeping a modded server alive on a good amount of players is pretty hard, considering the daily player peak of ZPS is around 100 (I think). Nonetheless people still love this game and branching out into other games has sadly failed. Too much we are different and yet this game still unites us all.
The question is now though, what do we wanna do next? Who is actually still alive and wants actively take part in future events? I would like everyone to give out their thoughts on anything regarding what I wrote or stuff in general you got in mind. State your wishes or ideas or even suggest something we all can do together.
As for myself I have been talking to Bizerco about expanding into Warframe just for the people who actually play it, not to force the community to shift over like it usually failed. I think it would be nice to have an SoD clan over there with people who wanna contribute to it. It's a team based game. At some point you rely on your friends and building the clan, going on raids, exploring new updates, requires teamwork. Especially for the upcoming updates personally I am hyped because it will grant you a clan space ship to explore the space, which requires teamwork to be maneuvered. It's pretty chill hanging on the discord and just fool around while bashing through raids or mission in a squad. Overall this game gives a sense of community, which ZPS mostly doesn't focus on (actively). If we actually have some peeps interested in this, we could set up a Warframe section on Forums with tips/guides/questions etc. to give those people who play a small place to exchange on knowledge and help eachother. And who knows, maybe some members will follow or new ones will be found over there.
This is just my personal idea and nothing I take as granted, I simply would like to get some response from you guys.