What Has Happened to the Community? It wasn't long ago that I found myself in the Orlando airport, my plane delayed an hour. I went down to the newsstand, and picked up a copy of PC Gamer, which I began to read. I turned to a preview of Neverwinter Nights, and looked at the pros and cons box. The pros aren't that interesting, but the cons really caught my eye. 'Vampire: TM - Redemption's "online community" didn't really take off . . .' My first reaction to this was anger, "The community's great!" said a little voice inside my head. Then, I actually started thinking. I remembered how active the boards were when the game was released. I remember how many people used to be in #redemption. And then, I asked myself the question "Where has everyone gone?" I remember how I first found out about vampire. It was on the Electronics Boutique website, when an advertisement caught my eye. I followed it to Activision's website, then to TheMasquerade.org, and finally to the Nihilistic bulletin boards. Wow! I had never really been part of an online community before, and I had found a great one. I began posting on the boards, but not a whole lot (I still only have 65 posts). Sooner or later, I found myself in #redemption of EFNet. There were so many people there. On the boards, I could check back every five minutes and find a new post. Everyone was anticipating the patch and the SDK. The guys from Activision and Nihilistic (Especially Magicman and Kaa) could always easily be found. It was a thriving, wonderful, community. In the weeks after the SDK and the patch, a flurry of maps and skin packs appeared. What would we have done without WhiteRabbit's skin pack, still almost mandatory today? The Map Depo was and still is a fantastic source of high quality maps. The Consumate mod (Now WoD Salvation) was cranking out the betas. The modders were just getting to work. But then something happened. All the great ideas that people had were just too hard to realize. Embrace is a very difficult program to learn and is even harder to use. A falling out began. Some of the less affluent members of the community disappeared without a word. Chatters in #redemption slowly disappeared. The boards were slowly becoming much less active. One of the nicest guys around, and a person who has done a lot for the community, Penfold, left. And PlanetVampire, once the best vampire site available, went through some very hard times. With Sandman on a well-deserved vacation, and Brian's popularity dropping in the community, the site was left to Wazzit. Unfortunately, Wazzit couldn't hold the fort by himself, and quit. Following that, Brian left, and Darklord became Site Director. No offense to them, but Darklord's staff, Arkady and Syco, just weren't in touch. This time was the lowest point for the community. Since then, the community has recovered somewhat. Yith has found out more about the game than the people who made it, and the Mage Mod shows this. Milkshape has let us create models. High quality maps are easily found. But the boards and #redemption never bounced back. I would like to see this happen. I urge all that read this to go to the Nihilistic Forums. I would love to see some more chatters in out new home, #nihilistic on Starchat. If anyone needs help with setting up IRC, just e-mail me. Help us bring back the Vampire community. by: Jelan