First of all: Holy crap! I’m writing an article this week! I haven’t had a lot of free time lately, but I’m putting out an article this week because I have a tiny amount of free time, and I enjoy being part of The Buzz team.
I remember during the summer that someone else wrote a ‘State of Bootleggers’ type article (it might’ve been FlameS). A lot of people were unhappy at the time and a lot of people felt that there wasn’t enough being done in terms of new features and fixes. Having taken a slight step back from the game lately it feels like the general morale of the community is on the rise.
BSF2000 has made a range of changes just recently and although none of them were brand new features, I think that they have helped to improve the mood of the community. As long as players can see that progress is being made, that what they have a problem with is being taken into consideration by the administrators, then I think any change will help to improve the feeling within the community.
Another ray of sunshine could well be that BSF has confirmed that he is looking to add another coder/developer to the team. I think that this could be a major boost as long as certain conditions are maintained. The new member of the team must be someone that will definitely stick around. A lot of coders want to help develop online games until they get a look at the code behind it. A new coder that sticks around for two months isn’t going to help anyone.
A non-admin related boost the community is definitely the return of the Bootcast. I’m sure that there is another article about this already, so I’m not going to go over the Bootcast itself. However, I think that it’s a great example of players taking it upon themselves to create something that benefits the community. It’s a way for everyone to connect and for those that want to, to get involved. I like Bootleggers as a game as much as the next person, but sometimes it can get a little bit boring or quiet. Let’s hope that the new Bootcast can liven things up a bit during those quiet evenings.
To summarise, during the summer months I think a lot of players became frustrated with a lack of activity. A few months on, some changes, Bootcast returns and the hope of another admin actively working on the game… everything seems a lot better. Let’s hope that the game continues to improve in all aspects so that we can all keep on playing and enjoying.
