None of us have a crystal ball. I've gone MIA from CF for extended periods on more than one occasion, assuming the MUD would die of natural causes, but here it is, still alive and kicking.

In my RL, I had occasion to play and run a few table-top roleplaying games again in recent years - something I hadn't done since college due to time constraints and finding players. For about 2 years, the stars aligned to play and run those games, and I just loved it. It was something I looked forward to each week. Unfortunately, the stars fell out of alignment and that gaming fell apart.

I realized how much time I spent on the table-top games I ran. People enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I didn't worry about how permanent my efforts were - because I knew they weren't permanent, and wouldn't last longer than the duration of my games. I did it for fun, because it was fun, in the present. That made it worth it.

That's the kind of energy I've decided to put into CF as an immortal these days, without serious worry about the future. Maybe CF will limp along with the same activity it's had for a while now indefinitely. Maybe it will die. Maybe MUDs will experience some sort of retro-revival as some generation of kids discovers it (look at Minecraft, for example. I sure as heck would not have anticipated that level of popularity for that low-tech a game with kids.) Who knows?

Specific direction of the game will depend largely on the players and imms that are invested in it, and as Daevryn pointed out, there are a lot of variables in that mix. A lot of firm *direction-altering* changes depend on the time and focus of our currently-available coders, and that is a huge and unpredictable variable. Fortunately after all these years, we do have enough game content and tools to keep things viable and fun without code changes for coder-lulls.

My main message here is - let go of the dread. Just enjoy the game in the present. Whatever will be, will be. To quote John Lennon, "Time you enjoyed wasting, was not wasted."