The QA section on the steam forums for TM Turbo appears to indicate there will be no dedicated servers for console or PC version of the game.

That sounds like it would remove everything that's good about trackmania. No idea what the playlists would be like, but doesn't sound like anything people can join like an open server.

Can't see how Dedimania would work with this either, as this was always running on the server end.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/375900/discussions/0/598198356183305779:

Q: Will there be dedicated servers in Trackmania Turbo ?

A: No, Players who want to play multiplayer will connect to nadeo hosted servers for this version of trackmania. It will be possible for players to make a multiplayer session with their own track playlist!

Q: How about dedicated servers on the pc version ?

A: The same functionality described above will also be available on the PC version. (so No dedicated servers and managers on Consoles and PC for trackmania Turbo.

Dedimania doesn't need to exist if Nadeo can put together proper leaderboards. For me its the stuff like player count on these player-made multiplayer sessions, accessibility of user tracks, and, of course, music. It's all solvable stuff, and it might actually be cool if the janky, bolted-on server features got properly built and included in the core of Trackmania. But they sort of tried that before and didn't really get it done, so I'm not sure that I trust them to get it right. It could make this whole thing a gigantic bummer.

I didn't think of them taking the custom track leaderboards and building it into the game. I can't remember any mention of this in their previews so I'm worried they're not doing anything. Let's hope they don't mess it up!

In one of their videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMxkEs2dp4 found from http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1077686) they talk about music being affected by how you drive: music changes as you drive through checkpoints and when you brake etc). So perhaps custom music is out all together to support this integration?

It sounds like the big loss here is music.

Sure, if the game doesn't take off the servers might shut down, but if that happens I doubt i'd be trying to play.

A potential workaround is hosting a mixlr or spotify playlist for the server.

Yeah this sounds pretty bad. Will wait and see how it actually plays out before condemning the game but it's pretty concerning.

Looks like I am staying on tm2 then.

Q: Will the new Lagoon Rollercoaster environment be released for maniaplanet

A: Rollercoaster lagoon will be released for MP as a stand alone environment during next year

Well I hope the Trackmania resurgence is still alive by then. That environment looks totally baller.

Yup, it's a shame they're merging everything together this way. I much preferred the TrackMania United method of uniting all the environments.