Still no update for Skyrim?

[Sel93]

Hey,

I visited your page in november and was a bit disappointed that there was no support for Skyrim characters (since it was anounced a year before release). But I was glad when I read that the feature is coming "really soon". I visited the page from time to time to see if it supports Skyrim characters yet, but now, after 8 months of waiting, there is still the message saying that the feature will come "very soon". I've lost the belief in anything happen here anymore. If you can't because you lack ressources (time or money), than you could at least delete the promise that the feature will come "very soon". It only creates false hope amongst the people.

So, any news on when or if this feature is going to come?

Thanks
In regards
Sel

[Tom]

Hi Sel,

Unfortunately, this project has been put on indefinite hold due to a lack of time and a lack of perceived interest from our user base. Currently, I am the only code developer for The Elder Stats, so all of the grunt work of building the new website with Skyrim character support falls on me. That is fine, and I have always been willing to carry out projects myself in the past, but only if I perceived a decent level of interest from those who would be using the services. Over the past year, The Elder Stats has seen a significant decrease in user activity and this general lack of interest as exhibited by the user base has caused me to reconsider whether it is truly worth the time and effort to continue to develop the new Elder Stats website with Skyrim support. Trust me -- this was a project about which I was quite excited during the planning stages; however, I overestimated the level of interest of the user base, and I ultimately have come to the conclusion that the website would not see much of an increase in activity even with the deployment of the intended redesign coupled with Skyrim support. Money is not necessarily an issue at the time, but increased user activity would undoubtedly eventually cause financial concerns to surface, as I would need to pay for more server resources in order to support a larger user base. And, to boot, our advertising program is not earning us much revenue at all. With increased activity, this could certainly change, and it could be argued that with the addition of Skyrim support and deployment of the intended site redesign, The Elder Stats would see a substantial increase in activity from new and old members alike. However, I came to find this view to be a rather optimistic one, a view in which I began to lose faith as time progressed.

Up until a few weeks ago, my personal life was very busy and cluttered with scholastic, as well as other personal responsibilities. Though time has recently become somewhat more plentiful to me due to the onset of summer break, I still have other obligations to which I must attend, and other projects to which I would rather dedicate my time. I still love this website and what it once was, but I have to face the fact that it is no longer very active and is not likely to see any real increase in activity no matter what I do. I will continue to maintain the site for as long as I can, but any major future updates like those previously promised are probably unlikely to come to fruition. I'll admit, it's hard to be a one-man development team for a site of this type, and I can't say that I have anywhere near the same motivation for The Elder Stats that I once had three and a half years ago, back in October of 2008, when I first conceived and began to develop this service. Despite this fact, I do still hold a special place in my heart for The Elder Stats, as it was my first major web project for a game that I loved at the time.

I apologize for keeping those notices up around the site for so long. Now that you have brought that to my attention, I have removed and/or reworded these notices to better reflect our current position with regard to the proposed addition of Skyrim support to the site. I still do not want to completely dismiss any possibility of this update coming at some point in the future, but as time goes on I continue to believe more and more that the update would not do much to increase user activity or bring revenue in for the site, and ultimately it would not be worth my time. Should I somehow find that there is still a large interest in Skyrim support being added to The Elder Stats, I may come to change my mind. If the site were much more active, I would consequently be much more motivated to improve and update it. However, I realize that such an occurrence is highly unlikely at this point.

In conclusion, I do appreciate your concern and interest, but the unfortunate fact is that there is simply not enough interest in The Elder Stats to justify me spending my time to finish the Skyrim update. It would definitely have been a really cool update, especially with the new site design that we had conjured up, but I just can't bring myself to put out the necessary time and effort to complete it.

Feel free to respond back with any other questions or concerns you may have about this and any other items related to The Elder Stats, as I am certainly willing to hear them and respond.

[Sel93]

Thank you for the long and extensive reply. I understand your point completly and cannot blame you for that. But I think it was forseeable and no surprise that activity on this page would continue to decrease as long as there is no update on the new game. I mean, how many people out there are still playing Oblivion? I guess some, but most of the gamers (and especially the real fans of the series) have abandoned Oblivion for Skyrim and will only occasionally come back to it. Especially considering the game this page supports is already 6 years old.

The hype of Skyrim is still there, especially with the DLC coming out soon, and the fanbase of this game is really big. And everyone wants to show their progress, their characters and achievements - thats the nature of human beings.

If you don't want to continue here anymore, then that's okay - But as long as the page isn't supporting Skyrim characters, the "fan base" will definetly not increase anymore. Because there's nothing this page offers for Skyrim players at the moment. If on the other side you can create a visually appealing new interface in the style of Skyrim's interface, and add some intuitive things, and then go out e.g. into the official forum and show the people this page, than I can almost guarantee a lot of people will join and add their characters, maybe putting links in their signatures, recommending the page and the fan base will grow again.

So I wouldn't give this project up completly, there is still a chance for this to be successful!

[Archmage Solberg]

I know that I'm new here (having just found the site today), but I like what is going on here. It's always nice to play a game you like. It's even better when you can talk to others who play and like the same games as you.
One thing I did notice was that new members don't seem to be posting. I went through the last few pages of the memberlist and only three new members (well now four when this gets posted) have posted since November of last year. Why is that?
Anyway, I like discussing games with others so you'll see me around from time to time!

Post #1

[Tom]

One thing I did notice was that new members don't seem to be posting. I went through the last few pages of the memberlist and only three new members (well now four when this gets posted) have posted since November of last year.

Why is that?

That's a great question, and one to which I would like to find the answer. Maybe the community is never active enough on the Forums to attract the attention of new members and encourage them to post, as well? Maybe members are just here to post their characters and would rather participate in Elder Scrolls-related discussions on forums elsewhere of which they are already members? Maybe the addition of support for posting Skyrim characters on the site would help draw in more new members who would be likely to post on the Forums here in addition to using the site's main feature of character posting.

On a similar note, I've decided not to abandon The Elder Stats project, so you'll likely be seeing some updates in the future. When, exactly, I cannot say for sure. Just keep an eye on us over here for any announcements that might shed more light on the possibility of future updates.