of course i understand many will see the dropping of all AJ's web projects as conclusive proof that he wishes to disappear and has no intention of ever returning.
I guess im not one of the many then. Because the sites didnt go down because AJ
wanted them offline, they went down due to a major server crash which means he himself had nothing to do with this. The fact that it came at a time when AJ has more important things going on in his life is simply immensely bad timing, though in a more philosophical manner of thinking one could also see it as a 'test' thrown our way by fate to check out where this community really stands when it comes down to it. Obviously it failed miserably, (big surprise), but then again it made a couple of things crystal clear. Which again is good in a 'know thine fellows' kind of way, if you know what i mean,...
there remains the possibility of him hanging low for many months and then reestablishing VPF and his other projects before their registrations expire.
AJ has renewed the registration for vpforums.com on i think Jan. 28th. Since this cost him money it doesnt exactly look like the act of someone who plans on shutting everything down a couple of days later, not to mention the fact that he specifically said that he will provide the forum as long as there is a demand for it too. And that is a pretty bold and definitive statement for a site owner, so why would he say that if he didnt really mean it? Makes no sense at all, on the contrary, if he hadnt really had that intention he most likely hadnt brought up this topic at all.
maybe we need to let him know now that there is a new VPF and that it's too late to bring the original VPF back.
No offense, but this sentence makes me wonder how fast you experience the lapse of time. The fake VPF is online for what, 4 weeks? 5 weeks? Thats what, like 30, 40 days? Well i dont know about the others, but to me such a ridiculously short amount of time is hardly worth mentioning, let alone a reason to engage any 'its too late' attitudes.
Not to mention of course the fact that AJ is and always will be the one and only original VPF, which again means that he will always be the one and only person who has the right to run a forum under the vpforums domain anyway. When and how is not our concern, its his baby, his creation, his work and effort, and in spite of the shortcomings we owe him for this because if it werent for him we would probably not be here today to talk about this either.
On the contrary, the whole thing would most likely have died years ago, and what that means in turn should be clear to anyone. Perhaps the ROM emulation would have been further developed as a fork of the MAME project, all well and good, but without actual tables to use them with, who would have given a damn? The ability to play a couple of pinball machine sounds is hardly very attractive, its the ability to play the games that kept attracting new people. People like JP Salas for instance, who would never have become a VP table author if AJ hadnt provided the public platform for table development AND a place for people to upload and share their creations for all these years. It was the one thing that kept everything together and going, which means if the whole thing had died 5 years ago there wouldnt even have been a fix for SP2 anymore, let alone any VP9s.
Having to see how many people are prepared to dismiss all of this so easily makes me sad, but what makes me even sadder is when people now even start to talk about 'too late to bring it back'. I mean he ran the place for 8 years and it was no doubt the most important factor of all. Nobody else had the right to open a forum with this name to begin with, so what difference do a lousy 4 or 5 weeks of fake VPF make in comparison to the 8 years that contain the entire history of this community? In my opinion the fake VPF should be shut down immediately and PN made the new official VPinball Home. If and when AJ brings VPF back online then people may decide where to go, if he doesnt then at least the place died with dignity. People who want to open their own VPinball forums can do so with their own names and earn their own merits. That much respect do we owe AJ at the very least. Too bad only that only a handful of people actually really understand this,...