Whaaaa? I'm curious what this drama's all about.

I'm glad to see JP is still making improvements to TW. If people don't like those improvements, or don't feel he's moving fast enough, or have ideas that are too radical to incorporate into TW without fundamentally changing it... write your own Darn game. Same goes for helpers and scripts.

I posted a public c-ya, and yeah, a private message with the
less public version of my feelings. That is where smack belongs,
not in a public forum. But thanks for posting that, as the public has
a right to know how you roll, bro.

You hope you are leaving the community better than when you
found it, yet are leaving in a huff and taking 10 'active users'
with you. Yeah, I'm sure that's better than when you found it.
I think you would've been right at home as smack mod....

I actually like Lonestar's sentiment:
Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

I agree, this forum is largely populated by a clique of twx script kiddies, with a few twx script writers.

It both amuses and saddens me.

They do not give a rat's proverbial that they drive away returning players. Ender, whom I remember from way back, is a case in point and I hope he reconsiders.

Loss of a single player isn't much of an impact, but those single player losses begin to add up.

I played a fresh unlim on Saturday and was the only player - logged out and came back in Sunday to see one other player. I podded the player and CBY'd, and when I checked on the game later, there was still only the one other player. Probably my second partial game in 6 months, and yeah I've been around long enough to know that the summer is slow for TW, but not this slow.

The player losses have added up. The game has lost players that help educate other players (new and returning).

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Yep, 1+1+1...

In this case though, it was 1+10 (seems like he convinced 10 to return). Cruncher, IIRC, had the same happen to her, retreads she brought back quit. She was too stubborn to quit (Irish women are like that, trust me).

Yeah, I know what you mean! I'm an evil player almost exclusively and she had me cashing and upgrading and selling and hauling colos and all kinds of nonsensical good stuff! I learned more than I EVER WANTED TO KNOW about being good! LOLOL.

On the contrary, I'm proof that this isn't the case.


No offense, but allow me to give a little perspective: The game was popular; support/development ceased almost completely; die-hard fans continued and adapted by exploiting every possible tactical advantage the game would allow (this is normal in any instance); yes, a design 'Bug', left alone for many years will invariably become the apart of normal 'game-play'.

Returning players should have an offical TradeWars site to turn too. Not, I repeat Not, a bloated forum. In contrast to Tradewars I submit for your consideration just about any other popular online Game in existance. I'm sorry, but the house is not in order to receive guests at this time. The game, as it is currently played, is light years beyond what people remember it. No one should honestly expect old players to jump back in and not feel overwhelmed.

I know, I really missed the game when I left it for 8 years. Once this game gets into your blood, you're hopelessly addicted. I left because I saw the direction it was going, and without support, well stuff happens.

I didn't return until after JP came back. Those first 3-4 months were very, very overwhelming and I did have some idea of what I was in for, but what I didn't count on is how much playing this game again effected me emotionally. I saw that same emotion in Enders post that started this thread.

It's long past over due to put feelings and egos aside and build the community again. Now that we have a few more choices in game settings, let's encourage them to come back with grace and respect.

Ender, I'm not sure what happened to alienate you. As far as I know, you didn't reach out to me with any issue. I may have missed it, being on vacation. But regardless, all I can say is that this is a community-run forum. I don't want to spend my time micromanaging it. What little time I have for TW I want to spend on improving the game, not managing a forum. That said, I think we're lucky to have a forum at all, because without the moderators and admins volunteering their time here, there wouldn't be one.

What I tell anyone who is bothered by the mainstream community is, don't bother with them. Come directly to me for support and with ideas and feedback. And run your games for your friends alone, until such time as I am able to provide enough options that you can be protected from those who choose to run the game in ways that are contrary to your own personal goals. That's the best I can do at this time. It's just a reality that the public face of this game is a bit harsh. That doesn't mean that the game can't be enjoyed by those who want to enjoy it. It can be what you make of it.

I can certainly understand if your passion for the game is dampened by the people you are exposed to through the game. I often deal with this myself. But it is possible to ignore those elements and focus on the things you do enjoy about the game.

I am committed to improving the game experience. There are some upcoming features that I think will be exciting, and will allow the game to hopefully evolve in a way that makes it more enjoyable to those who remember how it was once played. I hope you will continue to help me in that effort. But if you can't, I certainly understand. It's hard to stick with a game for years, let alone decades.

I love how JP is a diplomat and a programmer. You don't see that combination often.

I'm not trying to turn this into smack talk, but I spoke to Ender before he posted this message.
Enders reason for leaving was that he wanted a forum where everyone could post thier opinions on equal terms, and was denied that request.
He was lobbying for a smack talk forum, but I think he would have been satisfied with a more relaxed open discussion forum where everyone was treated equally where moderation was concerned.
That is water under the bridge now, because I haven't been able to contact Ender. I think he is gone for good now.

Ok. Well, he didn't press the issue with me, far as I can recall. But even if he had, all I could say is, we're working on establishing a fair and consistent moderation policy for all forums. It is my hope that people be allowed to express their opinions as long as they're respectful. Of course, that's a vague goal open to interpretation, and that's where we run into difficulties. It's definitely not our goal to prohibit opinions, even strong ones, from the site. If we lean too far in one direction or another at times, we will continue to strive for the right balance. That's really all we can do.

If there are specific examples of how Ender was being shut down in the forum, I have not seen it. I was not aware of any beef between Ender and the mods.

But several others have pointed the problem out to you, and you dont seem to care. I have sent you several PM's regarding this verry issue. All fallen on deaf ears. I will not go into detail in open disc. but I am sure you know what I am talking about.

To chime in on how much JP DOESN'T CARE about mods.. before Space Ghost left us he posted my personal information on smack. Inlcuding my email address and password... To both of my accounts. Now if JP actually gave two shits about this forum and what people thought then perhaps you would do more. All he said to me was I emailed him to remove it. Which was never removed.

So in fact I will agree with you Farley on basically not giving a crap about things...

Besides that Ender was hoping for this glorious world of twars like he once had it. A.K.A. the Cruncher Era when people were honest and worked togehter as one spending unlimited amounts of time at the keys and making things better. Funny though Ender joined up with me in a Match on UTW I booted him out and left my planets for dead in a 4 day truce game after he wasn't on 3 days. His Bot stopped working I emailed him here a few times and no response. I was decent enough to leave him with 500+ million credits all he did was self destruct. The day I booted him and self destructed he made a post on EIS about how he's taking players blah blah blah. Get real. You've been back for 2 minutes and your taking players were? This game is dieing or is dead I don't know. Helix monitoring this forum is also another waste. JP if you half Butt cared about this game you would spend less time promoting it in numbers and letters and try to strike a deal with real programmers and non scripters who've destroyed this game. Just my two cents...

I won't single anyone out, but... having been back here a couple weeks, the impression I get is that a lot of the remaining players are pretty neurotic and immature. (As are the players in pretty much every online game.)

When I played WoW, I formed a guild of locals and BBQed and drank and did drugs with them, and it was awesome. I'm reluctant to get serious about TW again unless I can enlist some of my real-life friends to corp with. Fortunately, I still have friends from the BBS days; the sysop of the BBS where I first played TW used to have potlucks at his house, and I'm still in touch with some of those people.

Come to think of it, I think that's probably what a lot of gamers need... RL friends.