It is now 5 years for Apolyton, the excellent site that keeps growing at a rate faster than ever. A year ago, I wished that we have 30 thousand members for our fifth anniversary, and I am really delighted to see that member count is nearing 37 thousand this year. There have been several new game releases since the last site anniversary, and all of them do present some interest. Play The World, expansion pack for CivIII, got released, but it failed to take the CivII MP veterans, yet there's quite a community of CivIII online players now. Master of Orion 3 and GalCiv also got released, with the latter generally getting better comments from the forumers, yet both games present some new things and can be refreshing.
The most notable release this year, in my opinion, is Rise of Nations. It was nothing like I had it expected the game to be -- it was better. I believe that Brian Reynolds and his team did a fantastic job, and Rise of Nations has many elements that many real-time strategy games could aim for now. Also, Rise of Nations has brought many new interesting people to these boards. It's definitely not all over in the other games, and Democracy Games play a big role in it. CtP, SMAC, CtP2, CivIII, CivIII PTW and CivII democracy games are being played, attracting a large number of players and an even larger number of posts.
The events have been very pleasant recently for Call to Power, the game that initially got me here. To great pleasure of the community, some former Activision members have made re-appearances at the forums, with St_Swithin gaining quite some popularity among off-topic posters as well. Game modders are, as usual, working steadily, and several new updates to mods have been released. All of the CtP2 community is currently very excited about the ongoing attempt to get the source code for CtP2, and I will take this chance to say thanks to Activision and everyone who helps us with this errand.
CivIII community is growing still, although not rapidly as it did before. However, the existing members provide some very good strategy posts, and the Apolyton University is indeed an excellent idea and a great undertaking. I am also very pleased to see that Firaxis Games members are still visiting these boards often. Locutus has recently told me that I don't look like I'm leaving the site anytime soon, and I definitely am not. I hope to be together with the other posters for many more anniversaries, and I'll place my bet for the member count for next year - I bet that we will have over 50 thousand, but not 60 thousands.
Happy Civing to you all!
/Solver
