[Tyred]

... is rather lacking in chaos, or anything else, for that matter.

I appreciate and salute Trerro for trying to pull everything together again, making what was once RA a whole, organized community again. Back in the old days, he would have had a whole lot of help, because RA was for a lot of people their social lives. This place started out with ambition and grand ideals, many of which still exist in an ethereal kind of way, but will never exist in a tangible way. It's not that we've lost the drive (although we have), or that we have lost our core (again, we have), but that we have nothing to bring anyone into the fold to really renew this community. That's not to say that we haven't tried (Trerro has, anyway), but that our current methods are not working, period.

Now, this is where I'm supposed to give a well-thought-out speech about how we can renew this place and make it into the RA we once knew. And that is where I will  stray from one formulaic speech into another. I will profess a different option.

Examining in brief the forums themselves, I see that prior to this post, the last one was made over two weeks ago with no responses. There has been a precipitous decline in the rates of posting since December, with a slight uptick in activity when the KoL gang started back up briefly, before being snuffed out once more. The old RA, I think we have all admitted after five years now, is dead. Most of those people have moved on, slipped away, fallen into new places with new friends and moved on with their lives. Our problem is that we will not let the ideal of the old RA die, too. We (at least, most of us) wanted the new CC to be like the old RA, robust and active and everything. But our good intentions and good ideas have found us nothing. This website, as good as it is, will probably never get to the popularity that the old RA had. And it is on that note that I say we abandon this sad project.

RA is dead. CC is dead. There are maybe six people who ever even come on here. I don't even bother logging in most of the time. I have found that, within myself, there is very little that connects me here anymore. I'm sure many other former "die hard" RA members feel the same way. We're not coming back, not as this group, we aren't. RA and CC are dead because none of us has the capabilities to devote our time and energies to this zombie community anymore. I've got a job, a family, work, and other projects to attend to more than I have time to sit down and have meetings for the RA or anything. I don't have the luxury of unlimited Internet access in which to chat and play all the time anymore. I suspect that with our growing age in the community, I am not alone in finding that real life is beckoning with a seductive finger. Our internet lives are fading behind us as we begin to look forward into our new futures in the real world. For the most part.

And that is why I think we have to put the nails in the coffin and let rest the greatness which once was. The RA was once a powerful force in one gaming community, and our steady decline into middle and old age has left us without a following. There will be few mourners when we lay this place to rest. I suggest to anyone reading this that they continue in the mysterious world of the internet, finding new places to interact and call "home" once more. We can still keep in touch as we need to through either IM or E-mail. There are still friends among you that I have treasured and have lost a little contact with. I will regret some of those losses, but I think we can maintain some sense of connection, should we try. And I advocate that we do try to stay connected. But this forum, this medium, is not the way, anymore. It is sad, but true.

RA is dead.
CC is dead, too.

If you want to contact me, you can send off an E-mail to my screen name. It may take me a while to respond, I don't always check that address.

Here's Tyred-Soul, signing off. His soul freed of his tired life, moving on into the world, the real world, with the bright glare of fluorescent lights guiding his way.

I wish you all the very best.

Tyred

[Trerro]

The RA as we know it died 2-3 years ago, and the event that ultimately killed us was about 5 years ago now - the death of KoC.

It's easy to point out that none of us have the time we did in college, and that KoC really was a one-time opportunity, as KoC not only forces you to recruit, but having no real social structure within the game, forces you to have external forums. That sort of game simply doesn't work anymore, because people only play 1 of those, ever, and everyone's been exposed at this point.

The thing is though, even at our peak, we weren't as huge as most think. Yes, we *technically* had something like 200 people logging in every day, but if you discounted the ones that were only there to use the clicker and not actually post, it was more like 50. Drop the people who NEVER posted outside of the KoC forum, and it was 20-30. Now, yes, 20-30 active, regular posters is way above average for a gaming community, but it's by no means amazing.

Our tinywarz faction is expanding - slowly, but steadily. It's finally at the point where people are occasionally asking to join without us doing anything, and I'd argue that's the first big indicator that a group is going to succeed.

Our RO guild, thanks to a server merger, is also expanding, though it's not where our TW is - yet.

We're even getting cross-traffic in that someone from an allied RO guild joined our TW faction, and as we get a bit more of that 2-way traffic, it's going to result in more players seeing us as a group to stay with beyond a single game. After all, while DyCyn's Level 10 Chain Vacation definitely damaged us, it was the death of KoC that killed the RA. We never really did recover from that, and it's absolutely critical that we be immune to that in the new community.

Of course, the forums don't reflect this new activity, at all, so to anyone in neither game, we appear just plain dead. I do, however, have plans to fix that, especially on the TW front.

As far as I'm concerned, this IS a completely new community. Some of the RAers will choose to stay on with CC, and that's awesome, but I certainly don't fault anyone who chooses not to. I do think we'll become a successful community again, and I do think in the next couple of months, we're going to reach the critical mass to make that happen.

Last but not least, the construction of a couple of tools will get people hitting our site - the free traffic our clicker gave us back in the day was a significant part of the RA's original success - I'd go so far as to argue we never would have been a significant alliance without it. Stuff IS coming on that front, and the dev site has also addressed some annoying issues we had.

So... best of luck to you in whatever you do. I do hope you pop in from time to time, but if not, so be it.

Rumors of our death HAVE been greatly exaggerated.