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You're right, all I see is what's on the forum. I don't have time or desire to play AA anymore. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you run a server that people enjoy playing on. I'd love for you to prove me wrong on that. I don't have time to figure out people's new in-game names so it's entirely possible I could have seen you playing and not known it.

Back to the topic at hand, you admit the problem that I have, which is with your behavior. You trash talk, harass, instigate. Yea, a lot of communities and games have that but it does not make for a welcoming environment and stirs up drama. Worst of all, it continues to enforce people's opinion of you that you're an asshole. If you gained some maturity and rose above the petty arguments, you would get respect rather quickly. Everyone loves to hate you because of the drama that follows you, which I think a lot of it is either started or reciprocated by you. I've seen the arguments between you and others. You should know just as well as I do that you can argue endlessly with people you disagree with, especially on the internet, and nobody wins. Just a bunch of shit gets stirred up and eventually threats come out. Whole lot of chest-beating. But it can end with you. You don't have to involve yourself, you don't have to prove anything, you don't have to argue. Choose to ignore the shit and go back to the game that you enjoy. You will (just as anyone else, including myself) always have haters and people that actively try to annoy you. Just ignore it. You will be a better person for it. Try it, you'll end up being that one dude that runs the fun server that everyone likes and you'll be viewed as one of the good guys. The people that enjoy what you bring to the table will outnumber the haters.

The answer is nothing, otherwise we would have done it. People have different computers and different desires. We could move to another game but a lot of people would be lost, some couldn't play it, some wouldn't like it. AA is what it is and nothing will replace it. Those that are comfortable playing similar games have already done so for the last 5+ years (AAPG, Insurgency, ARMA, etc).

AA has always been a love/hate relationship for me. I think we all love the classic days and funnily enough, those are all different time periods. We came in at different times, knowing different people, enjoying different servers and different crews on different versions. But we all share the same fondness for a specific period. The way it used to be.

It's almost heartbreaking, the poor timing I've seen in this game. I came into this game around when 2.6 was released, maybe a bit before. This was a weird time. All the anti-cheat sites were still popular but MD5 checks didn't exist and you could do crazy easy cheats and only get caught if the server admins were lucky enough to get a screenshot. I met Crusade just as he was starting to take off on modding and hacking, bringing back a lot of the old school coding to life that was pioneered by PAS clan and Rifle over at the Hazard AA Tracker. I had learned about modding and loved to run my own server and looking to make it better, I found out about custom maps and that's when I met BlueBlaster. Both him and me were scraping together the remnants of the custom maps once created by enthusiastic people at aa-maps.net. We were too late to work with them but instead just browsed through the forum which was more of a graveyard. This is just a tidbit of my personal history with AA and the great people I've met through it. I say the timing is heartbreaking because, knowing what I know and seeing the timeline unfold, I was always too late. Finding out about cool shit after someone else was done with it. I've come across so many super talented people over the years I've been involved with AA. It's impossible because it's gone but I often wonder what would have happened had the timing been right and a lot of us gotten together to create something amazing. Brilliant website coders and designers, creative UScript, LUA and C++ coders, 3d modelers, countless talented mappers, tons of eager people willing to learn. It's been such a waste. Looking back, a lot of these characters quickly burned out. I'm sure they all had various reasons but I can't help but think that given what we know and have today, if that same enthusiasm and knowledge they had 10 years ago, if that was around today... wow.

I don't know what it is about this game but it's just heartbreaking and frustrating. I miss the way things used to be. I am disappointed in the waste of potential due to timing.

What do you miss? What do you wish was different?

I've been talking to this guy on Facebook. Long story short, he's porting MOUT McKenna to UE4.

Jealous haters, all of you.

I was told you like my pipe. I will be there, prepare to be owned.

I don't miss the glass effect. It's outdated and served no real purpose aside from some fancy eye candy that distracted people away from the green & blue days of Windows XP. A flat look is simpler to use too.

I have no problems with Windows 10 and have been doing MANY upgrades to it for customers. With decent hardware, it's fast and lean and powerful.

As far as being monitored by Microsoft... if that concerns you, it's best to not use the Internet or any electronic device. Gathering statistics and information brings progress and innovation. It helps companies know more about their users and how they use the service so they're not implementing unpopular features or adding things that break popular functions. Microsoft needs information about devices to know what kind of hardware is popular and what features to support.

Progress and change is difficult and a lot of tech companies get a lot of hate because of it. The thing is, you can't stay still and expect people to forever love your product.