[Will]

Originally posted by Rojero:
Anyway I hope this community will transfer over smoothly when ever Space Empires V comes around, but I am not worried about it. I know we will!

I think I agree with you on this point. There was a quite rocky transition from the old SE III communities to the Shrapnel-based SE IV community. There were a few reasons for that difficulty, I think.

First was the percieved quantum leap between the two games. Many people mourned over the loss of right-click menus, and refused to move to SE IV for that reason (and I'm sure there are quite a few here that played SE III and would tell you they *still* prefer the right-click interface). There were just so many little things that changed, even if the essential core of the game remained relatively the same.

Another thing was the already fragmentary state of the SE III communities. People would come in and out, without much continuity. Most attempts to make something Lasting did not work out. MikkoT's (sp?) "The Space Debot" (and no, that isn't a typo) was one of the few successes, although it closed up shortly before SE IV's release. Hadrian usually had some sort of community project going. And then there was the SE Ladder, which kept going for a while after SE IV's release, then just sort of stopped... I think there are currently some attempts to revive it, though...

I think the existence of the Shrapnel Forums will help to keep everyone together. A publisher that provides an area for a community to foster is the one thing that SE III really lacked. I think that eventually, there will be three communities. One SE IV-centric, one SE StarFury-centric, and one SE V-centric, with some overlap between each. As long as there are a few modders to reinvent the games, all of them should Last for a very long time.