[Cana]

Had fun while it lasted. Big thanks to both, players and staff, who contributed to making this incarnation of IN happen. Nice to know that forum stays. I'll keep an eye on this place to see if the community will move on to something else that seems interesting.

List of character names used over the years:
IN1: Canaris [SIN/Daemon], Kieran [PoD]
IN2: Ardagor Al'azath [S]
IN:X: Kamos, Malik
This shard: Ogmog [Goblin], Kael [SIN], Pops, Vadir

[Echo]

It's been pretty impressive that the community has supported this shard (my first and only UO experience) since 2001. I've enjoyed being part of the community and being staff here and being able to chat and catch up with old players.

I hope the IN community can keep in touch whether its here on forums or elsewhere.

- Dev Echo/IN, GM Damien / Rob[TRU] / Desmon[KoC] IN1, GM Apollo / Nastradamus[KoC] IN2

[wordsofreason]

As you already know I have been inactive for quite some time now. I thought I would have gotten my interest in UO back by now but unfortunately I haven't. There are several reasons for this but that doesn't really matter.


I first started playing Ultima Online on Imagine Nation way back when it was first created. Eventually I staffed there and helped out with scripting as well. I never played IN2 and didn't play UO for a long time. Not until I heard that Imagine Nation: Reborn was about to launch did I start playing again. I asked Coldrake if I could help out and started staffing there as well.
Unfortunately IN:R was too buggy and broken to succeed and that's when we got in contact with Maka from Xtreme Ultima Online and created the merge Imagine Nation: Xtreme after a while. I was a Seer there and when Maka eventually stepped down he asked me to take over for him, which I did.
The merge didn't go quite as well as expected though, so ultimately I decided to shut that server down. Which I now think was probably good.
After a while Shade (who helped me out a lot on IN:X) started talking about recreating another Imagine Nation clone based on the IN:X scripts. I didn't have the time to help him out at the time and I didn't think he was that serious. But I told him that he could go ahead and use the scripts and sure enough, a few months later he and Eru had done an awesome job recreating IN once again. By this time I could help out again and took a place next to Shade.
And while we are talking about Shade. I announced that he was dead, which is what I was told. But a while after I made that post I got told that he wasn't in fact dead. To this day I still don't know if Shade is alive or not, which is also why I never announced it.


Anyway, enough history lessons.
I've had a lot of fun recreating Imagine Nation and chatting with old friends again. To tell the truth I never thought we would hit 200+ players, but we did! I can't even begin to explain how excited I was when this happened and I think a lot of you were as excited as I was.
But, for several reasons the playerbase started shrinking. There's no way to tell for sure why that happened. I know a bunch of people think it's because of the lack of staff activity, but the playerbase started to decline when staff were still active. It didn't help that most staff went inactive eventually, but it wasn't the main issue.


So because of my lack of interest and Eru's busy schedule, and a few other reasons, I've decided to shut this server down. I will keep the forums open for the sake of the community though. Maybe Imagine Nation will live again in one way or another, but for now it's over. I will leave the server running until the end of the month, July 31st, and make a backup of the current world save. So take this opportunity to equip and brag about your items and mounts, hehe. Or just run around and say hello to old friends.


As I said, I had a lot of fun on this shard and I want to thank everyone, both staff and players, who helped this shard to grow and become a great place to play on.


Oh and if you didn't already know, I had two playerchars, Saragok [Goblin] and Arthas [SIN]. Had some fun times with both of them as well
Take care!

Well, it seems you are in the business of shutting shards down sir.

All joking aside, what exactly does this mean; shutting down a shard that you have taken loads of donation money on to run, wasting a ridiculous amount of people's time and not even letting anyone run the shard instead of you?

I think those are some legitimate questions. I'm pretty sure this is illegal (the donation part). In order to not break the law, maybe you should stop taking donations and keep the shard running until you run out of donation money, and THEN shutting it down? You know, keeping it clean (not a scam).

I'm interested in seeing the response to the above mentioned questions. And the thing with staff not having time to be on one second per week because they've got a life; you could have made other people staff members, there were plenty of serious players who would have gladly helped with programming, etc.

Thanks and good bye.

[Taran]

Without donations the server would have been shut down a long time ago. We didn't force anyone to donate, when you donated you never bought anything. You got some gifts as a thank you when you donated, that's all.
It feels dumb to spend the last money on a dedicated server only to keep it online for a bit longer, especially with a playerbase of 10-20.

And about time spent. I don't think anyone spent as much time as I have through the years working my ass off on this server and all previous versions. Ultimately it's my decision to shut it down. There are only a few people I trust well enough to host the server instead of me, and they are all too busy RL or don't have the connection to be able to host it.
Maybe the server will come back online again, maybe not.

[Artur]

You shouldn't shut it down ;(

[Mister Pickles]

Just for curiosity's sake, how much money was donated, and how much do you have left?

[Taran]

I think we had around $1500 at most one time. Most money went to advertising (around $300 every time) and then the rest to pay for the website, domain, server, chat etc. Now there's $283 left.

[Mito]

To keep forums online and for the staff to meet and have a drink together

[Baron]

I would gladly take over. There are multiple reasons why the shard has failed to keep the 200+ players it once had. I think it has very little to do with staff, and alot to do with Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and of course, other UO shards with a higher population.

I would definitly take over, I have been scripting for over 10 years. Im also a web developer and graphics designer so I have no problem with redoing a new website and making it more user friendly and being top of google SEO. Up to you guys though.

[Falstaff]

it was fun while it lasted. For whatever reason the player base just disappeared so ending it now is probably the right thing to do. When i found the server I couldn't believe there was still an IN shard going. I played IN1 when it started but didn't play any other IN incarnations. So it was fun to play for a couple months. But the nostalgia of UO kind of wore off. UO is still the only MMO i've ever loved. WoW and all its clones feel like a single-player game. The thing is...i can see myself a year from now getting the UO bug and playing again somewhere. But it will never be like it was back in the day. But nothing ever is , is it?


IN1 - River[FW]. Amun-Ra [Pharaoh]
IN- John Falstaff

[Gang]

It's been real fun while it lasted. There's no other game that will leave me with so much memories. And who knows, maybe we all will get together on some other IN recreation in future? ;p

Now the character list. I don't think I'll remember all of them but i'll try;p

IN-X:

Gang-Bang[Myst], Margarita, Phanatic[Vampire], Mcl and GM Promoe


IN-UO(this server):

Vys[Hostile], Gabugg[Goblin], Vashex[Metal Knights] and GM Overdose.

[Artur]

It was nice to play with you guys, I hope one day IN community will meet on another shard, perhaps IN3
IN1 - Iluvatar
IN2 - Iluvatar[Vae Victis], Thorgal Aegirson, Helen - miner