I'm astonished people are still playing as well, though it is quite different than the glory days. If I could at all describe the path of it's age... the best I could say is: The first 5 years were full of heavy content creation, albeit mostly basic content like maps, skins, and basic mods. I can't forget the large clan bases as well, the deathmatch, 1v1 and tdm scenes were active with consistent daily games. Then years later it transitioned into bigger more interesting mods, total conversion mods etc, servers with the focus of daily new content. I often think of Zeke's server, Pcube's server, Shivaxi's server, Matrix and CW's servers so on and so forth in that order. If I forgot any, I apologize it's just been a long time. I think there for a short while Winged Unicorn ran one. But right after that time frame things really slowed down, there was still some activity in the development area but the diversity in servers were beginning to dwindle away. I hate to tie it to 227 but it might have been on course with that, maybe indirectly. After the 227 era came along, there was still some development going on, but ultimately... most of the playerbase moved on, the last several deathmatch players were retired. I'd call this roughly 2010 and onward, from that point onward most people were just playing on Zora's and Zombie Deadzone Co\op, I think this had something to do with South America getting the game finally.
I would hardly call what the state of the game is now an era, but if I could name it I would simply call it the quiet era. Very few people on the game still talk, there used to be a lot of young players that were still in middle school, including myself... I think of Matrix for instance there. What I remember most are the dozens if not hundreds of people I knew, and the good vibes and the many hours of having that community to fall back onto.
long live
