What happened to Sirian?

[thekaje]

Does anyone know?

I'm talking about this Sirian. He was an AI/map consultant on Civ IV and made epic contributions to various game communities over the years. After I saw (years after the fact) that he was hired to work on Civ IV, I got curious and have been looking for evidence of his continued existence. He seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth sometime in 2006 -- which is odd, considering how consistently visible he had been until then. I even went so far as to search for Pennsylvania obituaries for "Robert Thomas" or "Bob Thomas". In fact, there seems to be no recent record of him on Google at all. Everything I find that's linked to Sirian or the "correct" Bob Thomas (e.g., his Amazon.com profile) was last accessed/updated in 05 or 06. That includes his Apolyton account. His Warpcore site is hanging out untouched, but though at some point he registered sirian.org, it's been taken over by a web squatter.

He did so much for the community for so long and then disappeared so suddenly, it seems a little eerie. Does anybody know? Considering how Soren Johnson seems to have basically singled him out as the go-to fan-expert, maybe I should just ask Soren Johnson...

[thekaje]

Here's his Civ 4 page.

[MJW]

"For now, players are going to have to play with what they've got. For me, that's not a particularly appealing option."

(From the second to last "real" paragraph.)

http://www.warpcore.org/~sirian/civ4/epic-four/epic4-z.html

[notyoueither]

Sirian is still around, just not very visible.

[Ell_man]

Check out The Realms Beyond.

Last post was Nov 29th, 2008.

[Sirian]

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated.


Where have I been? Right here. I haven't gone anywhere. I just haven't been making any noise. Been very busy. My father grew ill and then passed away in 2006. I wrote and helped code the Events system for BTS, and added more new maps, in 2007. Started on another project after that, and my social life heated up around that time too. I'm getting married this summer.

My plans for Sirian.org were a joint venture with my father, and after his passing I decided to let that go. I put so much energy and time in to my web site for so long, I just don't have the will to do that at this point. Maybe I will go back to it some day.

You have not heard the last of me yet.


- Sirian

[chequita guevara]

So my plot has failed.

[Grandpa Troll]

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated.


Where have I been? Right here. I haven't gone anywhere. I just haven't been making any noise. Been very busy. My father grew ill and then passed away in 2006. I wrote and helped code the Events system for BTS, and added more new maps, in 2007. Started on another project after that, and my social life heated up around that time too. I'm getting married this summer.

My plans for Sirian.org were a joint venture with my father, and after his passing I decided to let that go. I put so much energy and time in to my web site for so long, I just don't have the will to do that at this point. Maybe I will go back to it some day.

You have not heard the last of me yet.


- Sirian

Thanks so much for the reply my friend

[thekaje]

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated.


Where have I been? Right here. I haven't gone anywhere. I just haven't been making any noise. Been very busy. My father grew ill and then passed away in 2006. I wrote and helped code the Events system for BTS, and added more new maps, in 2007. Started on another project after that, and my social life heated up around that time too. I'm getting married this summer.

My plans for Sirian.org were a joint venture with my father, and after his passing I decided to let that go. I put so much energy and time in to my web site for so long, I just don't have the will to do that at this point. Maybe I will go back to it some day.

You have not heard the last of me yet.


- Sirian

Oh wow. Thanks for the reply, Sirian! I completely forgot about this thread.

Congratulations on the marriage! I'm sorry you've become less active, but I hope to hear more from you some time in the future! (...any time in the future!) I've really enjoyed all the work (?) you've done over the years, from your MOO stuff to your Civ stuff.

Take it easy!

[?????? ???????]

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated.


Where have I been? Right here. I haven't gone anywhere. I just haven't been making any noise. Been very busy. My father grew ill and then passed away in 2006. I wrote and helped code the Events system for BTS, and added more new maps, in 2007. Started on another project after that, and my social life heated up around that time too. I'm getting married this summer.

My plans for Sirian.org were a joint venture with my father, and after his passing I decided to let that go. I put so much energy and time in to my web site for so long, I just don't have the will to do that at this point. Maybe I will go back to it some day.

You have not heard the last of me yet.


- Sirian

Hello.

Couldn't use your old e-mail so I had to necropost here
I don't know whether you remember me or not. I'm Victor Korytov, Russian guy who tried to translate your Diablo 2 exploits in Russian.
I haven't heard about you lately so I've decided to do some googling about your person.
Sorry for your father's demise and I'm glad about your Firaxis job and your marriage in about 2009.
How's your seven-volumed book plan? Unfortunately my English is far-far away from native, so I can't evaluate it, but I hope you're getting some fun and relief by working on it
I hope you're still OK and as creative as you were back in 2001. I'm still inspired by your restricted way of D2 gameplay and I'm still your fan because of that. Unfortunately your D2 pages are greatly outdated (and offline) now, but I hope the way of playing I've learned from you will help me enjoying many other interesting games even more than it was intended my game designers

Thank you for being yourself.

Best Regards,
Victor

[ZEE]

real talk.

[Wezil]

bots are getting more personal by the day.

j/k

[PLATO]

Oh...I thought it was dead thread day.....