So what's the more recent history of TR?

[Mortimer]

I always see a ton of old posts from around 2007, then everything shuts down super hard until a sudden burst in the past two years. What caused the sudden decrease? Delete this topic if it's a personal issue, I'm just curious.

[Nanu]

This forum has a steady stream of posts from '07 to now. Actually, every forum on the board has a steady stream of posts from '07 to now. We've only ever really had a handful of modders active at any one time. As time passes, Morrowind just get older. I'm happy that we still have a vibrant modding community.

[Not]

yup, hosted on m0use.net or w/e it's called/was called.

[Haplo]

I think it was really just a lull in our activity. Lots of people moving on with life, and in 2007 we implemented the TR Modder system, so people began having to complete a showcase and be promoted before they could participate in the claims system. Additionally, we had several quality revisions take place during those years, and decided to start re-doing a lot of our older content, which probably made it seem like there wasn't much "new" stuff going on. Moreover, it could've been at that time that a lot of the more active people were the ones on the core, so lots of the discussion was done in the administration section of the forum or on IRC, where stuff isn't logged for all to see.

EDIT: Also, m0use.net was the host before the host before our previous host. We've had four now; the most recent two have been under garfield (first in the UK, and now in California). But these forums have been around since late 2003, which is way before the 2007 timeframe that Mortimer is asking about.

[Mortimer]

That might be it, just lots of stuff hidden beyondst mein eyes.

What made you suddenly decide to see claims like this:
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=11750&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

(or most cites - See: Almalexia/Necrom) and decide they weren't of high enough quality? Was it more of a, "We have a TR Modder qualification now, we have to redo these claims.", kind of thing, or more of on second viewing years later you decided to go in another direction?

[Thrignar Fraxix]

2007 was also pretty much the peak of our oblivion modding, which has by and large been archived due to our dropping the project.

[Not]

And now we wait for that constantly asked question to come up: Why did we drop Oblivion?

[Haplo]

Well, most of the exterior land of mainland Morrowind was "built" by 2005. The problem was that it was all shitty quality. So we decided, once we implemented the TR Modder system (and thus, stringent quality control on all aspects of TR), that it would be unacceptable to keep the land as it was. The easiest way to get the level of quality we wanted was to scrap it all and start over, beginning with a unified plan of what geography and features we wanted to see and where, all over the mainland. This allowed for a more cohesive and natural environment (not to mention more believable), instead of having a bunch of people claim small parcels of land and just match them only as far as the micro borders go.

[Nemon]

And now we wait for that constantly asked question to come up: Why did we drop Oblivion?

We had one somewhat active modeler providing models of decent quality at that time, and Goldmoor was barely seeing progress at the hands og me and the lovely Lady Nerevar. The Oblivion Construction Set also felt somewhat weird, and we spent tons of time sorting out issues with it iirc.

Also, when modding for Oblivion, you require voice acting to make it up to par or beyond vanilla quality. We never had that, and even if we did it would still be a mess to sort out. We never gained the correct momentum, and TR's resources got spread out too thin.

I made Rihad, btw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ksaVGAZRY .