Listen, I've been playing this game for what, 7 years? 7 and a half? I don't know, 7+ years. Every single year I've seen a different thing blowing up and found something different to like in this game. To be honest, my best years here might have been gone (2009-11), but that's more my fault than anyone else's - I ran out of inspiration to build, the thing that made me like the game in the first place.
At any rate, I would never say the game is dead. Not while there's new people every day. Not when it launches new versions. People must know that rebuilding processes happen even to the best of us, and right now TM is going through one. We the veterans must understand that new people will come and that maybe some of us will retire for different reasons. Some might have entered college and don't have time anymore. Some might have been hit by RL. Some might have found love too, and stopped playing TM to spend more time with the loved one. But if you still like the game, why wouldn't you play? CoD 4 is still going strong, and it should have been "dead" for 5 years already.
What this game gives me is the fact that, no matter when I log in, there's something to do there, whether it's test maps, build maps, train maps, race online, chat... And that's why I like it, and that's why it's not dead.

rip conyaon

TM2 was already born dead with only one environment.
It sucked the rest of life out of TM1 and left us alone without promised envi updates for a too long range of time. Now most of the old crew are gone - sad very sad

Hey KEV Fan! Great to see you post here.

I love that TM has always had a well established community with years of experience in the game. But it's also understandable that some of those people aren't going to play this game forever (whether it's TM1 or TM2). Life is full of so many other wonderful activities and pursuits. People will come and go. Some people, like jet777, have always come and went as they pleased, even in TM1... often taking months or even years away from the game.

So I think the issue is more complex than saying TM2 didn't have enough environments. If you loved Canyon like you loved Island, I don't think you would care that TM2 had only one environment for over a year. Maybe with more environments you would have found one you loved. Then again, maybe not. If you're always staying with the same track style and always comparing the feeling of gameplay to old environments, chances are you would never be happy with any new environment.

I loved fullspeed tracks in TM1, especially in Island. I built and played them a lot. But when I started playing Canyon, I realized that tech and speedtech were a lot more fun for me in this environment. So I changed the style of tracks I primarily played. And I think I've had more fun by doing so. I'm not the only one to switch styles. Look at Ganjarider. He's well known as a fullspeed builder, and yet he's transitioned to a speedtech builder in Canyon... and his tracks are still amazing. There are also people like Sayotoshi who make insane fullspeed tracks in Canyon, and fully exploit the new sticky wallride physics. So there's something here for everyone.

But, it's okay if you can't bring yourself to love tech and speedtech, or to come to grips with the new wallride physics (pun intended ). The wonderful thing is that TM1 still exists. And people DO still play it. I played in the Coppers Millions Cup last Thursday and there was over 80 people there. That's on par with the number of people who play the Planets Millions Cup. Every weekend TMX has a Knockout competition in TMUF. And the MTC continues in TMUF and TMNF as well.

The level of activity in TM1 may not be what it once was, but it's not dead. And as for TM2, I see activity picking up considerably here, especially after the release of the TM2S openbeta. And it was never dead here to begin with anyway. In fact, Canyon feels as active to me as TMUF ever was, even in its most popular times. I think much of that feeling is not derived from external forces (other players doing stuff), but from me keeping busy and active with my own projects within the game.

And let's not forget the reason this topic was created. The inability to blockmix easily with a tm2unlimiter spells doom for some track builders who have become dependent on it. So instead of figuring out other ways to build, they quit... in protest... in frustration... whatever. Enai wrote this topic title "Canyon is dead" as a way of saying that it was dead to him, and that he would no longer build as long as there was no mixing tool available.

But many of us don't blockmix most of our tracks anyway. So that's not really a big issue for us.

I really do believe the game is what you make of it. Sure, the old times are gone. Some of our old friends have quit. Yeah, we had some great times for sure. But I really don't want to let an overwhelming sense of nostalgia get myself bitter about the present. Yeah, we miss those guys who aren't around anymore. But there's a lot of cool people still around that you can get to know and have fun with.

The times we have now will be the fond memories of tomorrow. Let's make some great ones!

I'd like to see some more KEV-Fan-Style-FS-Tracks in Canyon!

He missed the December MTC...

But no, perhaps (and I aspire for this) TM1 will eventually make it all the way into TM2, and by that I mean all the environments appear on the platform. No game or developer has really ever done such a thing, but Nadeo's an innovator, and I don't think it's realized sometimes how much the players might want and could benefit (the company even $$) from having the original be part of the sequel. It's kind of an unavoidable fact that the majority of life and community centers around the latest, and that might help.

We'll see, there's still a long road ahead before such might happen.

But perhaps that long road will be what will finally deter TM1 players from sticking around, or they'll have already left.

Just do it now Nadeo!!

Trackmania is not dead, the reason why it seems like there's less players on now is because we are spread out among all the different environments and games. I'm sure this is in fact less people playing but it's not as big of a gap as it seems.

Right. One envi. That is your setback Kev. You have more island tracks than released tracks, for the love of everything beautiful in this universe. I mean, I used the TMX tab (Browser tabs + tab grouping ftw) to do a quick search of your maps, put all in the same page, and of 99, there are over 85 islands. Of your last 20, only one isn't Island, and it's an island-on-stad envimix. BUT TM2 IS ASS BECAUSE IT ONLY HAS ONE ENVI THO.

I can understand the frustration of not finding your style in canyon, that happened to me too. But it isn't overcome by saying "This envi is shit" or "This envi is dead", it's overcome by building, building and building. Did you know that before I released my first map in TMUF I had built over 200 maps, and then some until I built my first decent one? Look at me now: I'm FT, I have an audience, I have a style, I build decent tracks. I think I have actual chances of winning last month's TM2 MTC. And I didn't give up on it because I didn't find my style, I just kept building and kept trying to find a style, which I found about 4 years ago for TMUF and about a month ago for canyon. Different envis are thought for different trackstyles, and I like that canyon makes it almost impossible to build a red booster extravaganza, the same way I like that snow almost rules out braking, desert almost rules out turns in FS and coast almost rules out FS. We had 7 envis because everyone liked different things, true, but you are not the one to tell, as you would spend your entire life playing the TMS demo without problems.

complete agree with you osaka
canyon is a great envi with many possibillities
you can build nice techmaps(its techstyle not everyone likes)
speedtech which is great fun for me for example
and also fullspeed(with or without slide) with slide it works a bit like island in my opinion and without it works like stadium
the envi isnt dead in any way
enai said that for him canyon is mainly dead because of the missing unlimiter
i like blockmixing but i think that you lose a bit your creativity when you mix
and it also looks ugly sometimes

canyon has not many players atm
but many players came to maniaplanet the last time because of stadium and storm(wich also steal canyon the players, at least a bit)
but what about tmu?
if i try to join a nice server there arent more that 5-7 players on it
does anyone call tmu "dead" ?

neither tm2 nor tmu are dead for sure!!!

Canyon will alive forever for me if there is races and extreme cliffs.