hey bor. whatcha up to these days? I havent seen you in years lol. maybe i'll pop ya an email one of these days :)

I observed that stated decline over a long course of time, until, by the time my [TxA] Adaptive Bots server "career" had allowed me to become one of the more competitively skilled in the community, and a player among those with the most ongoing playtime on the server, the server appeared to me to be a shadow of its former self. Many old-time regulars left, moved on to other servers, or more likely, other games entirely. Many regulars began frequenting the server less and less often--and staying on-server less and less when they were on.

*tumbleweeds*

(to be continued)

Frankly, when I initially became infatuated with the server, and Old and Slow's brilliant concept and implementation of the Adaptive Bots approach to a PvE CS:S playstyle--all human players teamed against an all-Adaptive Bots opponent team--I believe it was not long, a matter of months or a year or so at most--that the player population began (or continued) a gradual decline. I am sure it was a natural progression, because I certainly was not an early adopter of CS:S in the beginning, nor had I been one of the old guard that came from CS 1.6. So the "new" had worn off CS:S before I began to enjoy the game and well before I found the [TxA] Adaptive Bots server, much less became an eager, learning regular of its player community. So as many -- and eventually, most -- players drifted to other servers and ultimately to other games, I contrarily waxed more enamored and regular (and skilled, I hope) on this particular server.

(to be continued)

Furthermore, consider the great amount of playing time I invested "seeding" the server during hours of the day when the vast majority of the community's regular players were not on the server, for instance, early morning US time, as European players were going into the post-school early and mid-afternoon hours, European time. All these statistics were kept on the server's website page, available to anyone with a mind to look, and especially to the owner.

(to be continued)

(As an aside, many of you will *not* recall, however, because you likely never knew that I was not initially appointed as an admin by [TxA]Old and Slow. No, I was delegated admin props by a gentleman who had been a long time regular and admin well before I became a community/server regular--that is, a player/admin named Memphis. I am pretty sure that only the oldest, most regular players will even remember Memphis.

As Memphis told me when he gave me admin rights, he said, you are on here so many hours that no one else is on, especially no admins, that you should have been made admin a long time ago. I am sorry that I didn't think about it before, and I don't have a clue why no other admin, and especially Old and Slow, has not already done so, but I am correcting that oversight now. Sadly, as I recall, Memphis was less and less frequently seen on-server, and not long after he made me admin, he disappeared from the community altogether.)

(to be continued)

I believe there was a critical aspect of my historical involvement with and investment in the [TxA] Adaptive Bots server community that was ignored, lost sight of, or simply not even recognized, by Old and Slow and a tiny handful of ineffective and incompetent admins. I refer specifically to the many, many hours I played that server per day, day in and day out, and primarily that server alone, over a timeframe that spanned many--several-years, as I actively played and actively adminned on that server.

(to be continued)