I too have been contemplating leaving as well.

Dammit. You guys were the reason I joined this place. Now everyone is bailing. What the fuck?

Just losing it's appeal. A few months ago it came back when we were trying to be innovative and revive activity and bring back old members. It worked for a short time, but it's starting to lose its luster.

D3v's gone, I'm no longer planning on leaving.

I wish MJ would come back.

If you could somehow inform MJ of d3vs ban then he might consider coming back.

Zelaron used to serve a pragmatic purpose as a gaming forum, but we have tried to cover too much ground in the past three years.

Right now, we're stuck with a multitude of different categories that interest 2-3 members each. This fragments the "spirit of community" and instils an intuitive conclusion amongst members that the forum is dying because you only choose to visit limited parts of Zelaron. In reality, the sum of parts shows that Zelaron has a fairly high level of activity.

So the question is, how should the community be united?

In theory, the process is fairly simple: Focus on specific areas, e.g. gaming, or even particular role-playing games. Zelaron was originally a Diablo 2 forum, which has been the foundation for our activity in the past six years. The automotive, art, anime, debate, entertainment and flame forums may have to go, although of course, exceptions can be made. There are already too many general conversation forums on the Internet; being another one doesn't help us.

Members with specific knowledge about particular areas on Zelaron could be granted moderator positions as motivation for posting useful information and keeping their forums in order. BlueCube for the RPGMaker forums is an archetypical example of this, and -Spector-'s guides have been a helpful step toward increasing the activity of the Diablo 2 forums.

Once the forum upgrade will take place, it will be easier to rearrange things. The portal will cover only specific areas (humorous computer and video game reviews and news? Raziel has expressed interest in writing reviews for Zelaron), rather than attempting to encompass the entire spectrum of potential areas of interest. We'll also advertise the community on Something Awful and other relevant sites once things have gotten up to speed.

Stay around, and we'll make Zelaron unique and awesome again!

I think keeping Debate and the Flame forum would be in our best interest. The other sub-forums could go. The History forum is practically dead and I don't tend to have much of a chance to fish around for history-related news, sadly, especially now that I'm trying to find a place of my own and setting up plans to move to So Cal next year.

I miss you.

I miss him too. :(

I hate jumping on any kind of emo train, but same here.

He was good people.

lol. THat's pretty interesting.

Dunno how many of you are into SimRPG's played on forums but I understand it's a pretty popular thing. You could always try that. If that fails you could start a game modding thread here. I have been modding games since 98. Specifically Diablo, D2, Starcraft, Mount&Blade, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Dune, Dune 2, Emperor Battle for Dune, Dune Windows 95 version, Neverwinter Nights, F.E.A.R, The Sims, The Sims 2, and various Command and Conquer games.

This only makes me miss him more. :(

This thread or my outrageously nerdy response to Chruser? Either way I will miss his big brain. I always read his posts simply because they were so well put together. Someone should try to get mj back dammit.

I don't think he wants to come back. I'll try talking to him some time, but I don't think he'll want to chat.

Chruser said that MJ most likely wont be coming back anytime soon, due to IRL stuff.

He's a busy man anyways.