I am not holding out hope for any more, to be quite honest. Everyone who said they would be entering on my dA journal did, other than kata. I don't know how many of Vixy's "last-minute" friends were in that bunch, but chances are most did.
As stupid as it sounds, I think I'll feel worse for the 1 or 2 people who don't make the top 3 if they can't win something, than I would if 2-6 additional people couldn't win a prize. Because then I'm gonna feel like I owe them something for participating, when they just missed out. Again, it was just for competition reasons more than anything. I know 2 months should have been enough time, but I always keep hoping to get a large enough field where it actually feels like a contest. If we don't get any more, we'll just roll with it and I'll take the blame for doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.
I've been doing these contests for 4 years now, and of course the main reason has always been to give something back to you guys and do some community-building. I wouldn't be essentially giving away $100-$200 of my own money for prizes every year if that weren't the case. (LOL, that's why I can't afford a tablet or up-to-date photo program!
) But I can definitely see the mood just isn't there anymore in our community, unless it's some awesome, new, special prize straight from Capcom themselves. And that's what other people have told me privately, as well. Sure, we get busy with life; I for one know that too much. And that affects how many have time to enter. But there hasn't been much change in participants recently, either. Plus enough Rockman fansites are dying out or just aren't too active, so fewer have interest in something like this, or in the prizes I end up giving away. I know not everyone is an EXE fan, but it's usually the easiest merchandise for me to get a hand of, or have extras laying around.
So for those reasons, that's why I was fully intending on this being the last contest I personally held, and I was just sorta hoping it would go out with a little more of a bang is all. Same reason why I didn't want Maq's to end on such a bad note in '08, and offered to be the one giving away prizes this past summer. Just so her last contest would actually be a contest, rather than ending as a year where the entries never got judged and disappeared into an unknown wasteland. So yeah, extending this deadline is partially just my ego holding on to something, hoping for one last-ditch surge. And for that, I apologize to any of you who don't totally agree with me prolonging it a week, especially when Valentine's Day will be long over. But I just...wanted to try one last time, is all. And that's the truth of the matter, which I honestly didn't really want to be made public yet.