This is intended as a discussion for older people who are more mature in life and who aren't playing Zelda Classic - allowing you to be clear minded, rational and objective in your thoughts no matter how nasty they might be. But you should have been a fan of Zelda Classic at some point in your life preferably when it was first out in the early 2000s like myself. I tried a thread like this in pure but it seems like the younger people there don't really take well to it so hopefully if I post here they shouldn't go near it.

As you might know from pure, the fanbase of Zelda Classic is diminishing year by year. There are fewer quests made each year, fewer visitors and fewer quest makers. As for Armageddon Games well just take a look around. If the current trend continues then it'll be game over for Zelda Classic. In my view, the underlying reason for this trend is that scripting has made ZQuest inaccessible to new quest makers. It simply takes too much time for an aspiring quest maker to learn how to make a quest that is a "hit". So a new quest maker is going to either skip scripting and make a quest they aren't really proud of or spend a large amount of time learning how to script - and most will get deterred by this. No new quest makers means fewer quests, fewer quests mean less for the fans, less for the fans means no new quest makers - you get the picture.

We should all remember back to the pre-scripting days. The glory days of ZC - its golden age. I remember it like yesterday - thousands of fans and virtually everyone was a quest maker. NES Zelda was the currency accepted by the fanbase and quest-makers alike and every person and their dog had their own NES Zelda Nth quest. The reason why ZC was so successful was because the entry requirements for becoming a quest maker were very low. Anyone could make a quest similar to DarkFlameWolf's classics easily and without any real barrier to entry. And that lead to the huge numbers of fans and a large fanbase. Nowadays, no one will even touch a NES quest and no aspiring quest makers want to make a NES quest - despite ZC having being built and designed for exactly and precisely that purpose.

Recently, there was a 6th quest contest and the results of it should be very depressing compared to the glory days of the 3rd quest contest. You all remember how successful that was right? What's worrisome about it is that there was a very low turn out of would-be contestants and only a handful actually finished their quests. It says to me that quest makers are finding it too expensive to make a quest they think is quality and that will sell well to everyone else. What should be even more worrisome is that all the completions are heavily scripted apart from Gleeok's and Glenn's older completions which no one would even go near. I tried the newer completions and I'm thinking to myself "how on earth would a newbie quest maker learn to do all this?". One of the newer completions is going to be the winner of the quest contest - I have no doubt. I have this picture in my mind of a newcomer to ZC using it for the first time and absolutely in awe of the 6th quest winner. They aspire to make a quest like that. Then they see how much scripting they have to learn to make something similar to it. And they are forever put off quest making.

The scripting genie has been let out of the bottle and it can never be put back in. Even if it could, the modern fanbase would never accept NES Zelda again and there would be too much work involved to remake ZC's engine so that it has the features that the modern fanbase wants. So what are the solutions to this problem? I don't see any solution to this problem outside of a very long shot. Credit to Zoria - at least he sees the writing on the wall and has a plan to fix it. The solution involves getting rid of the Zelda branding in the game's engine so that copyright isn't an issue anymore. Then, "pro" quest makers who have mastered scripting can sell their quests to the ZC fanbase like any normal steam game. We're all older in life and should know how important money is and how influential and necessary it is hmm? There are inherent and obvious risks with this plan - firstly getting rid of the Zelda branding is going to hurt the game's popularity and reach. Zelda is iconic and replacing it with something else is going to attract fewer aspirants. Secondly, is the ZC fanbase going to accept paying for their games like a steam game? Another drawcard for ZC is that its completely free to play and changing that is going to be a very risky move. Finally, allowing quest makers to sell their quest doesn't solve the problem of investment. Quest makers need their money as they are making the quest - not when their quest is finally made.

But what other choice does ZC have? The status quo is almost certainly going to lead to a game over. What are your thoughts?