There are two points about the "TMW development" sub forum:
It is ambiguous:
First of all it's title: it should be called "Manasource" as it's relation to TMW is now only a dying client with limited support time (alongwith he point I mentioned before).
Second is more related to ethics and project/game consistency: Why (apart from historical and friendship reasons) should an external project have a sub forum?
If we follow o11c's logic:
o11c wrote:The whole point of ManaSource being on our forums is so that we *can* see what they're doing.
Then TMW should offer Evolonline a subforum too.
"The language of everyday life is clogged with sentiment, and the science of human nature has not advanced so far that we can describe individual sentiment in a clear way." Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million.
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness.
"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy." Donald Knuth.
History aside, the Mana project is relevant for TMW since it provides a client with which you can play the game (which is officially supported and still maintained, btw). You can't compare this with Evol Online or Land of Fire, both of which are simply projects similar to TMW.
Apart from that the Mana project is developing the new server that was previously being written as part of The Mana World before. Having the server as a separate project is meant to allow collaboration with other projects similar to TMW, but it does not mean that there may not still be a future for TMW based on this new server. Some of us are still interested in trying to make that happen.
Btw, I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm actually not against Evol Online or Land of Fire having a subforum here.