The state of N0VA, our official modpack

Thousands around the world use our Technic Launcher modpack, called N0VA. The N0VA pack is a modpack that extends upon the abilities of vanilla Minecraft, while still capable of joining vanilla Minecraft servers. N0VA includes mods such as TooManyItems, Inventory Tweaks, Better Animations, and more. It's essentially the mods that a large majority of players install on their vanilla client anyways.

The current version of N0VA is 2.3, which was released on June 22nd and runs on top of Minecraft 1.5.2. Many have wondered since we haven't updated it for Minecraft 1.6 yet, we must have discontinued it. The problem rests with Technic. Minecraft 1.6 introduced a new login system that Technic Launcher hasn't adapted yet. Minecraft 1.6 cannot be run in the Technic Launcher until support for the new login system is added. The other side is that modpacks based on Minecraft 1.6 cannot be uploaded to the Technic Launcher yet.

But N0VA is far from dead. We have been working on a program called N0VA Builder, which allows anyone to create a Technic modpack with no user interaction required beyond opening the program. Once the mods are placed in the correct folder, the script downloads the latest version of Minecraft Forge, packages the modpack, and can even upload it. Once it's ready, we will release N0VA Build for public use. Using Build, we will try to make a N0VA Beta release every day (or whenever Forge updates).

Then every few few days we will do a thourough test on the daily build to see if it's stable, then release it as a regular N0VA update. Long story short, we are working on the way we design N0VA and make it better. At the very least, it's not dead. In fact, it may end up being one of the most actively developed modpacks for the Technic Launcher, and will be almost completely automatic :)