I do remember some nightly builds , long ago but:
1.They where hidden in an obscure URL , that was only mentioned in some thread deep in the forums , so the chances that someone heard about them was rather low.
2. IT is much more easier to report bugs , when you play a game 2 hours a day and see a bug randomly while playing once a month that trying to debug a game which isn't enjoyable because it has no contents i guess most people , downloaded the nightly played 5 min to see the new features and went back to Athena saying wow i want that to be finished.
SO here is my proposal :
1.Announce at the new's page "0.1 is available we aw now in transition phase".
-. announce it also at the 0.0 clients "update window"
2.at the downloads page add links for 0.1 binaries next to the 0.0 binaries
3.by the way the contents of tmw.mericet.de (another obscure URL
) is mature enough to be incorporated to
themanaworld.org NOW.
I do not now if it is possible but can you just copy Athena World as it is and implement it at TMW?
if you did that tmwserver would become massively ("TMW massively") played and adding new features and developing tmw server own's content would just come in the future with client / server updates and releases.
IHMO , most people dont care if TMWserver is finished / perfect they will be happy enough to play if it is playable enough , then bug testing would become more effective.
4.When a large group of players play TMWserver just kill TMW client (with a warning a week before) , and you are done , work can be focused to TMW server.
I d not think it is going to be finished on the current path.