The Caves of Narshe at Fifteen

Another year, another birthday message (last year not withstanding, during which time I was far too preoccupied with the impending presence of my flesh-and-blood baby to actually write much for this baby I've had fifteen years now). That's right, scorekeepers at home, this birthday is our fifteenth, and you might have noticed we've given the site - and we hope you - a present in the form of a shiny new revision. We've taken the liberty of generously forcing all of you to see it, though all of our classic skins are still available for you to switch back if you don't think the new skin, called "Skyglade," is the fanciest thing we've ever done. If you want to switch back, though, you can; the way to do it on the site is on our style selector, and the way for the forums is in your control panel. And, if you're not seeing it on the site but think you should be, try to reset your CoN skin selection entirely.

Skyglade represents years (on-and-off) of design work on the part of Tiddles and myself to make sure we could bring you something that freshens things up without losing the qualities people enjoyed most in Persona (fanart in particular, which you'll have seen before if you're a forum regular, designed especially for this theme by Rujuken). Not only that, you'll notice that all our themes are carrying a special anniversary version of our logo. As I've said before, the Caves of Narshe is a hobby run by professionals, so if you want to know more about why Skyglade is the best thing we've ever done for the site and its users (like it or not!) check out our freshly-updated CoNHistory.

Fifteen years is a long time. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: over that kind of time, a lot of things change for all of us. It's made it mostly impossible to churn out content at the
rate we once could, which makes all the more proud of our accomplishments so far this year. It's among our greatest sources of pride that we can still be here presenting you this site, a site which we're still excited to improve. A site which we hope, and indeed know, is still useful and relevant to players of the old games, and can continue to be over time. We owe a great debt to every single human, animal and robot who has helped us along the way, including Climhazzard, from the patient staff who've tirelessly trawled through game data, to the fanfic writers and fanartists, to every single forum poster and chatter who's stopped by and chatted with us along the way.

I've mentioned before that our fifteen-year mark predates just about every Final Fantasy site that still exists, but thinking of fifteen years made me wonder what other sites on which CoN has seniority. Here's a few: Livejournal. Myspace. Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. Photobucket. Microsoft. (At least Microsoft was almost as ugly back then as CoN.) CoN is even older than Wikipedia! Anyway, listing those is certainly just a conceit - we'd never be considered to be in the ballpark of any of those sites, but it's worth noting that you don't just start a site and keep it going that long unless you have at least some of the dedication required to build a sustainable project from the ground up, and we do have that in common with those web Illuminati.

The sites in that list, even the ones spiraling into oblivion, are an interesting part of CoN's evolution, particularly as it relates to our slowing community growth. We know that we can never supplant Facebook or Twitter. We know that the way we operate the informational sections of our site is no longer trendy in the face of crowdsourced content. We're cool with it, because we're not looking to be everything to everyone. We are looking to remain the best source of gameplay information for the games we cover, and we are looking to keep you reading this interested in talking to all your fellow CoN members. Of course, we want you all to stay involved, and we'll do everything we can to help. We know that we're a niche, and we're thrilled that you choose to spend some of your attention and time with us - we know firsthand that the supply of both is finite and more and more splintered every year. So, if you don't have the time to come here and post or chat the way you used to, that's alright. We understand. Try to do us a favor, though - if you're on your social network of choice, why not share or retweet our posts and content? The more people we expose to CoN, the better off we are as a community. If you don't think your friends will care, then you're hanging out with the wrong folks online and need to spend more time here, anyway. Of course.

Some things don't change. We're here, and so far in 2012 we've done a pretty bang-up job of new content. Our Final Fantasy V Advance project was a bit of a shambles in 2011, but we stepped up and really got it done in 2012. Skyglade was two completely separate projects for years before now, and it's just in the last few months that we got together and really made it happen. There's still life in this site, and that means there's still something for you to contribute. Among Square Enix fans, you guys are pretty much the best of the best, and that's why we're here. We want to hear from you, and we want to continue to create the content that creates more of you. You can say what you will about the state of Square Enix and the Final Fantasy franchise, and you should. But what CoN has is the kind of Final Fantasy that gamers everywhere should experience, and that's why we're all here. We want to continue to be the best portal on the internet to evangelize some of the finest games yet made, and the best way to do that is for all of us to be here and continue to do what we've done for one, two, five, or even fifteen years.

Insert "Challenge Accepted" meme here. Except, please, totally don't. You know that we don't roll that way. But take today to get back in touch with us - we've got small tokens of appreciation for those who do!