Note:-
There's probably no point to this post since I doubt anyone really cares about such details, but since a couple of recent comments in other threads seem to suggest a complete misinterpretation of this thread, I feel compelled to be more explicit.
It's my fault for not making myself clear at the outset, but I did NOT mean to suggest I was going to leave the Community just 'cause I couldn't get image posting to work on the Vault Forums - that just happened to be vexing me at the time.
Nor do I care for the inference that my actions are in some way perfidious, even traitorous - though the being likened to a treacherous rat deserting a sinking ship is almost certainly in my hopelessly paranoid imagination. (The sinking ship being the NWN Community, not the BioWare Forums).
Let's be honest, the Community is very small these days and largely consists of a cabal of intransigent die-hards, myself included, who have just refused to give up on something we adore.
From my point of view, though participation in the some of the CCCs and other things has sometimes pushed me to learn new stuff and improve what I do, which is a good thing, much as I enjoy some of the interactions - just plain silly or actually constructive - that I've had within the Community over more years than I care to admit, much as I still enjoy them, I do find myself asking myself vehemently whether it's worth it, given the increasing hassle of just keeping myself here.
As I've said, I don't have the internet and can't afford to obtain it. My mother has a strictly limited amount of online time per month, of which she kindly allows me some. But I still have to come down here from my murky lair and if anyone wants me to send them a texture or model, the simplest of things, I have to go back over to my lair, turn my computer on, get the file, nail it to my intermittently schizoid portable hard drive, and come back here. It's not practical. Especially when the weather's foul.
Then, as mentioned, there's all the work in preparing Haks for a dwindled and tiny Community, (not counting any of the time to actually create the stuff itself, 'cause I just do that for my own warped benefit anyway), but the spending of days getting it all sorted out, doing screenshots, coming over here, taking hours posting it with all its attendant screenshots to actually show what it is... And for what? So that a microscopic handful of people can download it, maybe one or two of whom will actually take a few seconds to say thank you.
I'm sure we've all had such frustrations - It doesn't really give much incentive to put in all that work.
What I do is generally "weird"; it's not D&D and it's not "accepted, normal Fantasy stuff that's comfortably similar to a heap of already available things", so clearly it's never going to be the most popular 'cause there are always people who can't think outside the box - even in Fantasy - and others who are simply never going to have any use for Debased PHoD Whassnames - which is perfectly understandable.
But when a Game Community is healthy and thriving, there are enough members that even the bizarre extremities of modding find an audience and the loonies can all huddle in a corner somewhere and dribble at each other... Any Game Community has a very small fraction who actually vote on and discuss artists' creations - again, we all know that - but when an entire Community is a tiny fraction in total... well... you're stuffed, aren't you?
I hate to say it, but, however much we may like to believe otherwise, the NWN Community is not a healthy one. Yes, it has some deeply committed souls who have put an awful lot into creating a new Vault when IGN dropped a 50 ton weight on us and they are to be commended most highly; to turn away now from all the work Niv's putting into the New Forums seems the height of rudeness and ingratitude (that feeling's more or less the only reason I'm still here, foaming about indecisively). And yes, occasionally, someone new comes along to actively participate in CC creation, Module building, etc, but it seems for everyone who does, some other member of the old guard vanishes. I could name three long timers who've gone, certainly for the foreseeable future, in the last eight months or so - and there are quite possibly others I can't think of at this second... And you can't blame them for giving up when they put their heart and soul into stuff and get more or less no reaction whatsoever of any kind. Who's going to run a PW for two players? Who's going to spend days, weeks, months, creating something, presenting it to a Community, three of whom download it and none of whom have the politeness to say anything regarding it?
Taking all this into consideration, I'm left, essentially, with a lot of good memories and a desire to keep on enjoying what's left of the Community... weighed against a lot of big projects, some NWN, many not, which are taking a MASSIVE amount of time, assorted other less enjoyable commitments which also thieve my time, a very impractical and occasionally even stressful so-called ability to even get online in the first place, a seemingly ever greater lack of interest in stuff on the Vault, and assorted other frustrations and minutiae I shan't bother listing. Also, Natasha and I need time for poking about at animals with sharp teeth.
The scales are constantly tipping ever further toward remaining in the Community just being impracticable without a lot more incentive than there currently is.
If I had limitless internet access of my own and a hell of a lot more TIME than I do, things would be different.
It's a cumulative thing. Like a midden.
In an ideal situation, I wouldn't even think of leaving until such time as I was the last, sole, only member of the Community... at which point the futility factor would be greater than even my rubbish mind could cope with. But the situation is not ideal in many, many ways.
Just wanted to set a few things straight.
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