PigLick on 10/3/2021 at 16:38

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yeh you hit the nail on the head, err joke not intended

Aged Raver on 10/3/2021 at 19:33

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> … This forum is pretty unactive nowadays.

I guess you’re talking about the Community Chat forum, which I think of as a sub-forum of (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/forum.php) TTLG Forums. And that's all OK as long as it's acknowledged other sub-forums exist. At this minute there are over 300 users across the lot of which about 25 are signed in. I hardly ever venture in here and as a relative newbie it seems that different groups frequent certain sub-forums and go nowhere else. That’s certainly true of me. Most of the sub-forums I’ve never ventured in, ever. My normal home is the Thief Series, in particular Thief Fan Missions, so for selfish reasons I wouldn't want to see that part redesigned too much. I'm too old for quick-fire chat etc :D

For me Thief Fan Missions sub-forum is vibrant, extremely helpful and polite, and a well moderated community. A network of people. The number of new fan missions over the 2 years that I’ve been a member is astonishing with great design and craftsmanship and all for free. Updates to software happen quite often. New members join regularly and I have trouble keeping up with new missions from guys, gals and international collaborations. Some big future campaigns are in the pipeline.

There are competitions, regular calls for volunteers, beta testers, and recruiting posts for artists, voice actors, ambient audio creators, translators etc to help out on new missions being developed. My own skills are limited and the best I can do is assist when people ask for help in playing missions that I happen to know (and vice versa). I try to post with humour and a positive attitude (otherwise not at all). You can also PM people if needed and yes, you do get to know someone a little bit more.

Two weeks ago a journalist who’s writing a magazine retrospective of Thief FMs over the last 20 odd years posted. People regularly use the ability to go back through the old posts. One of the first FMs I played was published more than 10 years ago and it is still brilliant today, intelligent, funny and mischievous. Earlier today I noticed there were over 50 users viewing the TTLG Forums Archives.

YouTube has countless Thief FM walkthroughs with new ones added all the time. We have a monthly podcast with guests which goes out on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube and elsewhere.

You might say Oh yes but back in Nov 2018 we had 7,253 users online. OK. Great. Perhaps there was a massive argument and 7000 people got banned. I don’t know.:joke:

Actually I think I do know. It was probably due to the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] Anniversary competition when 23 new Thief FM Missions were released on the exact anniversary. I didn’t join until 7 months later after playing the exceptional winning entry and I wanted to thank the male/female partnership personally.

During recent lockdowns and isolating, the Thief community has provided good escapism for me. Long may it continue. You may have guessed I could say a lot more :nono: but in answer to the original question I’d say yes people are alive and yes parts of the forum are active. It just depends what part of the forum you’re in.

Tomi on 10/3/2021 at 20:25

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I might be wrong, but of those 300 users most are probably web crawlers (search engine bots). 7253 users online at the same time sounds a bit suspicious to me! :D

I started my TTLG life in Thief Editors' Guild and Fan Missions too, but have since left those behind and moved to General Gaming and occasionally Comm Chat. The Editors' Guild sadly seems very quiet, but it's nice to see so much activity in Fan Missions again - last time I checked it was full of "happy birthday" threads and not much else!

Yeah you have a point there :) They are well remembered in some parts of the web, but are these nostalgia pieces enough to actually make people come here and join the community?

Tomi on 10/3/2021 at 21:38

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Those are some genuinely great ideas!

I wonder how many people stumble upon the TTLG front page, notice that it hasn't been updated for five years (+ the dead links), and then just leave thinking that this place is dead. The legacy of Looking Glass lives on in the immsim genre, so it would indeed be appropriate to promote these games even on the front page, I think. That would surely generate a bit more traffic and bring some new life in here. I think the front page (and why not the forum too) could do with a little bit of a makeover also - nothing overly fancy though! We could make it a community thing - there's so much talent in here, great writers and designers and so on. I could volunteer to write some updates as well, but as a non-native speaker my written English isn't as eloquent as it could be. :)

Kolya on 10/3/2021 at 22:10

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