I propose we begin a community Google ad campaign that is funded by server and player donations. It's pretty much a given that in order to survive we absolutely MUST get the word out about our game. Freelancer may be an old game but it is still a extraordinarily entertaining game. The only other real competitor to a FL server is EVE Online, and the lack of ship control (point and click, really?) is an albatross IMO. I've played EVE, I've played Vendetta, Evochron (very cool game, BTW), but they all lack the real depth, serverabilty, and modability of Freelancer. We have a real gem here even though M$ doesn't agree.

It's my opinion that we can make a real comeback if we all band together and donate towards a formal ad campaign targeting gaming websites. Our only hurdle will be making the game available to new players. Obviously it is not for sale anywhere. I've got my own opinion on how we solve that (offer the iso as abandonware) but I'm sure many will disagree.

Below is an example of the ad we can run. I propose we elect a board of players to manage the campaign. I nominate The Starport to host the campaign.

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  freespacesim.jpg (7.59 KB)

Considering we dont even get enough donations to cover the webserver costs at all, I dont have high hopes for this..

Also, as you said, we are in a very bad situation with Microsoft's negligence as regards Freelancer and there is not a whole lot we can do about. We discussed some things "internally" but lets say, we didn't really find a way to bring Freelancer back to its glory legally..

What you're suggesting, we've done what we can to the best of our ability. You say we should go solicit for donations. Where? Anywhere you could possibly list for this action'd kick us out in a second for doing so. As W0d said, this site, which is arguably the most active hub for the advancement of FL in general, doesn't even get enough in the way of donations to cover it's own costs, let alone an 'ad campaign'.

As for your 'FL UN' - the Community Bar sites are as close as this is gonna get to what you want. Anything more than that would require some semblance of respect between the major FL communities... which there is not.

I'm not saying that we should give up on FL... but getting money won't fix our problems. The only way to get FL back on the map is to provide a REASON for it to get back on the map. We at the FW:TOW team aim to do that, as do most other dev teams. The only way to get attention back to FL is to mod the living hell out of it to the point where someone notices and publishes something somewhere somewhat important (alliteration ftw). I suspect that with the eventual public release of FW:TOW's engine improvements, we'll see a spike in activity, at least for a short while.

FW:TOW's news is not just restricted to TSP and the FL community, beleive you me. We've got plenty of coverage elsewhere.

Actually does someone consider Ads as serious help browsing through the net an gather valuable information. Me not. Is useless spam that wastes valuable space
Thats also one of the reasosn i stay logged in here in order to avoid getting the ads displayed inbetween the header and forumlist^^

Freelancer is not profit driven as most of the work that is done - is done in the sparetime of the individual modding and dev team members. There is no company behind it anylonger...

See, I would not click an ad such as that. I don't click ads. Most people don't. The only way we're gonna generate interest is through searches and a presence on other major sim gaming sites, in fact -

http://spacesimcentral.com/

They're pretty much the major hub for space sims at the moment. If you want to do something useful, go try and get attention there. But spending money on ads is pointless. They'd show up (if you're using google) when you make contextual searches... in which case they'd find what they're looking for anyways in LINKS not ads. Gotta generate search meta, not ads. Ads suck.

Why the hell would someone spend money on advertising when there's no product or service to sell, no cash return. They'd have to be be nuts.

Doesn't really matter what people can do to freelancer, they're never going to be able to compete with games of the present day, of which there are new ones all of the time. Most people want to try something new, not buy something old.

Like most of us that still have anything to do with this game, it's probably because you have an 8 year old disk that still works and still love the game. For others it's because they haven't bought a new pc in 8 years so are still playing old games.

There's no magic wand, no saving fl, it's old and everything that has a beginning has an end. Just make the most of what it has left in the tank like the FW:TOW team. They're work is awesome, but even that won't be able to compete with modern games due to the limits of the 8 year old game they're working with. It's never going to be an MMORPG with an ever evolving world, which the way people expect everything other than a COD death match to be.

I'd say personally that the FW:TOW team are nuts for the amount of hard work and lengths they've gone to make their mod, it's insane. But I know they love the guts out of modding the game so they'd do it anyway and that's cool. When all is said and done they'll be able to look at their work and think, hell yeah, we made that! Whether it gets the attention it deserves or not will not undo their achievement.

If you're gonna mod FL, do it for fun, then it doesn't matter whether you save the game or not.

not in my country (France)
i f i could have acces to some "advertise" about the mod, tin french or in english (that i can translate" to post to the french community gamers (not specialy spacesim fan, but lots of people will be interested )