The thing about splitting the community is true, and it's unfortunate. But at the same time, if you disagree with the direction that some project is taking, you have only two choices: shut up and play, or make your own server. I can perhaps make minor suggestions, and I may or may not be able to join an existing dev team and try to steer the project in my way. But if what I want is a complete overhaul of the whole server, it's not going to happen unless I do it myself.
You might say that all fonline devs should join forces and create an awesome super-server, and everyone will be happy. But of course that's just wishful thinking, because most fonline devs are in disagreement about what exactly constitutes a good server. In fact, that single property might be the one thing that turned them into devs to begin with: they all wanted different things.
The fact that there are quite a few different fonline projects going on, and even more have been attempted (and failed) in the past, it says two things to me:
1. It's very hard to make a successful fonline server.
2. Not everybody is content with the existing servers and what they can offer.
Perhaps it's naive, and obviously I'm biased, but I believe we are on to something promising with AoP and that there's a chance that we'll beat the odds and succeed where others have failed. And if we do, we might just end up uniting a community that is already split, and bring fresh blood to a scene that has had far too little far too long.
Time will tell. Most importantly however, we're doing it because it's fun. Not all of it, but enough that we want to continue despite the odds.
