March 2021 Update
It is time for a much belated status update! There is some good news to report and a lot of bad news. However, it all points to a positive outcome long-term for this site as well as many of my projects which are currently on hold. This is also an incredibly busy time for me in real-life which is making free time a scarce commodity for the time being. All of this is adding up to fewer updates in the near term, but more promises for the long term.
February kind of flew by without my notice. Following the site outage at the end of January, I started devoting my free time to finding the right technology upgrades I want to implement to keep this thing running. This led to me reaching out to a few old contacts as well as finding out just how far the online world has gone since I first started this latest rendition of Worlds of Nations. Let’s say there are a lot of changes and potential improvements I can make. Given how close a call January was, I have put these at the top of my priority list.
I have always maintained that this site is a hobby for me. I hold no personal information, make no money from it, and keep it purely as a resource for others. I do not know why anyone would bother to try and hack it or would take an interest in trying to take it down. If push came to shove, I would sooner shut it down than face legal action or pay off a ransomware attack. But for as long as someone gets enjoyment from this, and it continues to be possible to maintain it without it becoming a full-time job, I will keep this site running. What might change is how I do backups, where I maintain a closed repository that I can use to re-establish the site if disaster strikes.
That said, I reached out to a few old contacts and found a potential partnership opportunity for this site. It means moving away from the pure website-based community. I’m thinking this will be a good step for me, as it allows me to pursue some creative ideas I had this year, but will be able to partition the efforts with other like minded friends. There will be more to come on this if it gains traction but there will also be changes to the maintenance of this site if something happens.
Later this month, I will be posting my first rendition of the Tradelands Stock Exchange, a project I’ve been working on since January. I also have some updates to make on some existing EDCE sets that I will make. I do not think there will be much time for anything more than that, as my real-life job is keeping me very busy. I am still taking suggestions for the pipeline if anyone has something they would like to see.
