Community Revival: Any Interest?
-
So having been gone for the better part of a decade now, I’ve finally come back around to Freelancer. In the last few weeks I’ve been poking around the internet, and it does seem that there’s still a good degree of interest in this game (GOG, ModDB, Various Discord servers), even if there aren’t that many people playing it now.
I understand that there’s some pretty big technical and time-related hurdles to modernizing the Starport, although I’d love to see it active again, I think Freelancer’s glory days have been and gone, so it would probably be a pretty huge undertaking to even approach how things were.
Would anyone be interested in a bit of a community revival initiative? It would be pretty easy to get a centralised Discord server up for Freelancer and Freelancer modding-related things. I think there’s some fairly low-hanging fruit with regards to getting people engaged with the game and the community again.
What do you all think?
-
Count me in. there are active people out there but mostly in Discovery. But I think we can arrange something, like a global FL community in discord
-
Yeah, Discovery does seem to be the largest active community left, but there’s lots of (very) little ones and a tiny modding scene still going. I feel like if you have a central point to get people around, it gives these places a chance to grow.
I’ll see what I can get together a bit later today then! Will post the link here when I can.
I did reply to your DM by the way, but I have no idea if it got through! Seems like there might be some technical issues going on with them at the moment.
-
Well, I set up a Discord server. Need to think about how to organize things a bit, as well as fill out the resources and links pins. Does anyone have an up-to-date list of currently active Freelancer communities/servers?
For those interested, the Discord can be found here: https://discord.gg/8vZnZGF
-
That would be great! We’ve already got a small group of people together, any chance to grow it would be brilliant.
The FLCN bar doesn’t seem to work on my install of Chrome though. It just appears to be static at the moment?
-
that there’s still a good degree of interest in this game (GO
Can you explain? The game isn’t at GOG.
I am actually pretty impressed by how many are online at that server.
I think the mix of the discord server, the first FL fancampaign ever (even if only the demo) and an unified FL filebase provide a nice chance altogether.
I think when each individual community becomes too small…we are bound to form a global community. -
@w0dk4 Thanks! We’ve been getting a steady influx of people since we started the Discord and having the link on the sidebar should definitely help keep that up!
Regarding GOG, Freelancer isn’t on there, but it’s in the top ten list of all requested games. Voting it up a bit more can’t hurt!
-
It has been in that list for rouhgly 9 years lol
Honestly, MS has forgotten FL exists right after they released it. It didn’t even get A SINGLE digital release ANYWHERE.
Let’s be honest: The chances for FL even getting a digital release at all are pretty slim.
-
Bas wrote:
It has been in that list for rouhgly 9 years lolHonestly, MS has forgotten FL exists right after they released it. It didn’t even get A SINGLE digital release ANYWHERE.
Let’s be honest: The chances for FL even getting a digital release at all are pretty slim.
9 years is big time duration. You are right that there are very less chances of digit release no who knows in the future it can be productive more then now.
-
Well there at least has beem a physical sale of the game a few years ago with Ubisoft as publisher.
I think that publishing the game is tricky due to licencing. It could be that MS would have to re-licence third-party code that was used in FL. The effort might be bigger than the benefit (usual company thinking applied).
Then again there is the question where to publish a digital copy. Most platforms of course want a fair share of the profit which reduces the benefit for Microsoft even more. Using the Xbox store probably was not an option due to UWP.
We also could speculate under which circumstances Digital Anvil was sold to Microsoft and what conditions for publishing the game exist.
Just hypothetical: it would be that Chris Roberts said “here you can have the game and my company and in return I get 5$ for every sold copy” (such deals are not unusual). This of course would eliminate every incentive for MS to sell a 20 years old game anywhere.Lots of speculation but the truth probably isn’t all that far away from that.
-
Hi all, Still looking in every now & then. I paid less than $6 US back in 2002 when I got the game. A few years back, I saw it on Amazon for, get this, $74. I immediately posted not to buy it in the reviews as to Amazon is trying to scalp people. Weeks later, I checked again and the price had been dropped to something like $34. Whomever it was selling the game was trying to collect todays’ prices for a 600MB game. lol
Here’s the link Freelancer and the prices are still in the $60 rage for some places.
That should take you to the page and on the right, click other buying options to see the list of sellers. Many are used discs and I would trust purchasing a used disc that may be full of scratches. Never know though unless, one was to purchase it.
The Discord deal sounds good but, I don’t use it. Some reason’s more than personal. I just don’t trust it.
It’s is good to see some recent posts being made here and the interest slowly coming back.
Hope everyone is doing well in spite of, what’s going on in this world today?
I still play the game now & then on an old XP system, that’s about all it can do for me anymore. Not sure why but, it seems to just be giving out when trying to do anything else on it.
Freelancer turned 20 this year so, Happy Birthday, Freelancer?
HK
-
It will turn 20 in March 2023.
The high prices don’t surprise me… its a rarity meanwhile and demand is higher than the supply.
Just like fine wine.
