Thanks for all the warm words and for explaining to me what I can't see for myself - that BM and M&F are very much different, much more than I thought they would be.
To me, they are very similar because they are incorporations of the same idea. Like brothers. But brothers can be completely different persons.
I would very much love to update the BM codebase from 1999 style to 2015 style. But it basically means a complete rework and that is nothing that any sane person can do. Over the past years, Tim, me and others have already updated a lot of the code to use Doctrine at least, but we are still extremely far away from any modern coding paradigm.
The main problem, however, is that the BM world is static. It is ideal for a certain number of players, and fairly good in a nice range around it, but when there are too many or too few players, many of the systems just fall apart. And for that problem, we've never found a solution. The much more dynamic and editable map of M&F is such a solution.
And yes, decline is part of the lifecycle. As is a waning of interest both from players and developers. You all know I've long left BM more or less behind. My current interests in game development are in a completely different direction: I'm working on a game right now where I provide only the backend and an API and other people can implement the client, be it a web-based client or an iPad client or a Desktop game. Nothing like that is possible in BM without a huge amount of effort.
But there is 15 years of history in this game, and I just don't want to see it end. I can barely remember a time in my life without Perdan and Sirion.
