I spent a whole night at one point trying to figure out why I couldn't talk in Discord voice chat... Tried everything, twice... Finally figured out its my new headsets mic that doesn't work at all and of course I was gone for a month after I got it so missed the chance to return it... and I have no idea what I did with my old headset... so yeah, I do sit in the AFK voice channel a lot and occasionally post to the general chat.. but its hard to do that and play games at the same time. I do plan to replace my broken headset, but just for a mic its not high on my priorities.
Other than Discord I spend a lot of time reading the forums, watching Twitch streamers, occasionally checking our Reddit page, and once in a while getting into SC to see how long I can go without the game crashing or some bug that gets me stuck and I have to restart. And this is all in my free time when not at work or not taking care of my kids. Oh, I occasionally sleep too..
I've played a lot of games, that were actually finished, and the amount of activity we have is astounding considering we're waiting for a game that's barely into its Alpha phase. We've only got pieces of the game at this point and yet we have a lot of active community members patiently waiting it out, testing what there is and sharing what they've done. Lots of planning has already happened, there has been no shortage of time to think about what we're going to do when the game launches, and right now it looks like we still have lots of time to plan our conquests.
You might see a lack of interest because people aren't talking about the game constantly, but you can only beat a dead horse so long. Things do pick up with each big update. 2.0 and 2.1 have been big, finally a small piece of the univers, something other than Arena Commander and Racing. But the newness and lack of in-depth content will quilckly become boring to most and people will once again fade back into the shadows until something new happens again. This is true with most alpha/beta games, the closer you get to a complete game the longer it takes people to become bored with it.
Once we hit Beta I'm sure there will be a huge spike in activity and that will only increase until launch. Thats when plans will come together, sub-organizations will be formed, friendships will be discovered. And at launch you'll have an idea where you want to be, and who you want to be going there with. In the meantime, we hang out, talk about whatevers current, play whatever games popular at the moment and wait... always waiting. Damn you Chris Roberts for creating this this visionary game we all want to be a part of.
