Tale of Dragons

    There are some site owners or coders or artists (or some who are all three) out there that you just know are gonna flake sooner or later. They change names and start new sites or take jobs on other sites, but sometimes you can still spot an art style or game ideas or game mechanics or even their forum post style. I can think of 3 coders and 4 artists who have faded away into oblivion leaving more than one site owner hanging (or forking over more money to someone else to re-do art on the site because the artist withdraws permission to use his/her work). And I can think of at least half a dozen site owners/admins who either never got their games out of pre-paid alpha (if they even launched alpha, or just took the money and disappeared, taking down the forum a couple months later) or have closed games serially after they became too much work. Usually they show up again in a couple months on another project. I'm not saying that Silver is one of them, but there are a lot of people out there who will go *poof* and not even tell you what's up. I don't mind a game closing if the owner is honest and open about it, or if it closes because the coder poofed and there's no way to fix their funky code and no new updates to keep players interested, but it really bothers me for people to duck and cover instead of owning up.

    Using the money you earned for your product is not necessarily a bad thing. No one says the money you give has to be used exclusively for the site and not the owner. I personally know a site owner who started her site in her teens, helped put herself through college with the profit after the site hosting, etc. bills were paid every month and is now out with a degree in computer programming, whereupon she re-coded the entire site and improved it by light-years. She did use the money for herself, but only after the site costs were paid, and she was very upfront on the terms and conditions page and the donations page that if the site ever went very long without getting enough donations to keep it open she would close it instead of drowning financially trying to keep it up. I respect that. It's honest and open. People who create and administer a website should get something for their time, but they need to run the site as a business. If your local restaurant can't make the rent because it's not making enough money, it has to shut down, not just get put into cold storage until the next need for money comes along, then re-opened to commit emotional blackmail on its customers once again.

    A message from Cort on the DC site

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    As there is no longer an official place to address this, I decided to post this here....
    I'm really sorry to all of the users for how this all went down.... I'm sorry that I was unavailable to help during this. The site had such potential and I am saddened and frustrated at the mismanagement and immaturity. I want to thank the users for being the best community ever, despite the ups and downs. It was so fun to code, art, and write for you! It is incredible sad that is has to end like this, but after seeing how it went down I'm glad that it's over rather than the mismanagement continuing. I wish I had the time to make you guys the site that you deserve and I hope that you find it at Tales of Ostlea!
    Cort