ATN : History of atWar - Origins Pt2.

Greetings,

Really thanks for all the support in the last article. It is good to see that there are some players interested on this project. I've been working in cooperation with Madara to make the article more interesting, reviewing some threads and looking for some players. It is always awesome to discover how the game worked in the past, and we had got an interview with one of the oldest active players in the game, Safari. You can find it at the bottom of the article.

In November there were updates that definitively changed the game. Which one was the best/worst update for you? We'd like to know it! Feel free to comment and post as much as you like. The next article is coming soon, so stay turned!

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Promotion & Development: Implementation of basic features - November 3rd through 14th, 2010

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As more players started to register, the small community of 300 players quickly grew over to 1,000 by the end of the month. Two important events are responsible for this growth: The release of atWar on Facebook on November 16, and it's subsequent advertisement. Reddit also bought up many new players that saw Ivan's post.

But even with those numbers, a good part of those players weren't very active. Most of the registered accounts didn't manage to pass through rank 2, and you could still see the lobby empty at late midnight. It was a long road before atWar could be consistently active 24 hours a day.



Back in lobby, there weren't any moderators. Both Ivan and Amok were the only admins monitoring the game chat, shout box, and forum posts.

Two weeks after the official launch, a thread was made by Promotex, denouncing the chat spam and misbehavior of some players. Lets not forget that you could kick someone from your game even through it had started, which was a heavily abused feature. The admins quickly mended the problem with the Ignore button (Day 14) and Flood control (Day 19). In addition to this, the admins made English the official Language of Afterwind Public Channels (Day 14), after a problem with the Turkish players.

Before the well-know upgrade list made by Aristosseur, there were earlier attempts to make an upgrade list. Blah64 and later on omnomtom would try to make a list about such upgrades. Soon, Blah64 would stop updating the guide.

Some months later, a moderator of name King Cow looked at the guide. He offered to stick a list of upgrades that was more updated than this one, a task that would've been undertaken by Aristosseu's two years later (2012).


With the new idea of an Alliance (Later on It would be called 'coalition') , there were many ideas about the alliance in-game and the alliance out of the game. Ivan though about changing the alliance in-game name to 'pact', while renaming the alliance out of the game as 'Alliance', but he changed his mind later on.

In the earlier versions of Afterwind allies were able to send money to your allies, but it's version 0.911 that allowed allies to capture other allies' empty cities. It was also set that, if you and your ally attack a city of your home country, you would get the city if your troops survived.

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Here's Safari's eye witness account!

[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Hello, I am working with Madara and the ATN in a project called "History of atWar". After zizou you're the 2nd oldest active player! and I'd like to interview you.
[pr] ~Safari: Nice. Go on
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: How did you found Afterwind,
[pr] ~Safari: Well as many of you know, I'm a web developer. I was looking for Silverlight cases.
[pr] ~Safari: on the official page of microsofts silverlight afterwind was listed there and it looked nice and so I started a game there
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Awesome! what was your first impression of the game?
[pr] ~Safari: It was good, otherwise I would have returned. I was thinking. Wow compared to the other games that have been listed there. This is super awesome
[pr] ~Safari: The unit movement is unique
[pr] ~Safari: Also the people I was playing with my first game have been very nice and helpful
[pr] ~Safari: If you play nowadays a game, people are not so helpful anymore
[pr] ~Safari: but that was probably because every player in the game was playing their first game and exploring it
[pr] ~Safari: as soon you found a cool feature you just shouted it out
[pr] ~Safari: so that everyone knew about it
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: I see. Yes, according to my sources the game had around 300 accounts (and some guests!) when you joined
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: How was the lobby? Was it easy to host & play a game?
[pr] ~Safari: that is possible. I remember that their have just been 1-3 games open all time. So everyone joined them
[pr] ~Safari: if you opened a game people joined, since there have just been world games
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Yes, the countries were divided one month later, in december 2010.
[pr] ~Safari: what I really liked about the world games was that people didn't quit after 5-10 turns. at that time I played many world games with 50 turns or more
[pr] ~Safari: Also at that time USA, Russia, China, Brazil have only been one country. Not split up like today
[pr] ~Safari: So you had to spend like 25k for USA
[pr] ~Safari: That was also a reason, why 50k games have been fun back then. Since you could buy expensive countries
[pr] ~Safari: but still most games concentrated in europe, since the huge amount of countries was more fun.
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: I see. So most of the players would pick europe in a worldgame?
[pr] ~Safari: Actually no, because people still didn't knew what countries are better. Each world game had like 2-3 africa players
[pr] ~Safari: in my first world game I also started as an african nation and failed hard and just won with a few others with ally quit
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: And zizou was there?
[pr] ~Safari: yes he was there. I just remember that, because he was there already rank 3 and we just thought. Wow he must be good. (the others have been rank 0,1 and maybe 1-2 rank 2)
[pr] ~Safari: keep in mind that zizou just joined a few hours before me
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: wow so he got rank 3 fast. According to my sources, admins were still to implement alliance at that time, were all the games FFA? or another kind-of alliance system was implemented?
[pr] ~Safari: sorry I cant remember. I know the system was slightly different, but not how exactly how. I mean that was almost 5 years ago
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: I see. So I'd like to ask another thing
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: I read in a post Ivan made that there were some problems with Turk players, and so they implemented the ignore button and flood control in November 14 and 18, respectively
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Was the lobby chat too crowed?
[pr] ~Safari: well there haven't been too many turk players. Maybe only 20. But these have all been chatting in public channel. There have also been no moderators. So that was programmed to be
[pr] ~Safari: chaos
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: were players speaking English in your first game? since it was also made atWar official language in November, 14
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: in the public chats, too.
[pr] ~Safari: yes. we had to speak english, since players came from all different nations. For me it was obvious to use english, since the interface is in english too
[pr] ~Safari: but I dont know all that details anymore, since as moderator I see all time abuses in lobby chat, etc. The "abuses" at this time have been nothing compared to later
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: I see. So I'd like to ask one last thing before concluding !
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Did you even found the admins playing? Or even got to play some match with them on November?
[pr] ~Safari: actually no. The admins didn't changed in all that time. If they play then only 1-2 games, which take 2-3 turns
[pr] ~Safari: of course at this time they played more, since the game was new and there have been many bugs. The amount of their games are comparable to today with the new alphy version
[pr] ~Safari: but they could answer more questions in forum, since there have not been to many requests as today
[pr] ~Safari: that was pretty cool.
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: oh yeah, my bad. Forgot to ask you about the forums. How were the forums then vs now?
[pr] ~Safari: It is always good to know, that the creators of the game respond to you directly
[pr] ~Safari: well the forums have been almost empty and fast responses from admins.
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: so there weren't much activity, I see.
[pr] ●hardcore player: ~Safari: Thanks for letting me interview you
[pr] ~Safari: you are welcome

Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this installment as much as the last, we love your comments and criticism so keep it up and we'll hold up our end.
Thanks! - Madara

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Wow lucky bastard at 40k SP, it must had been chosen by zizou at rank 0 and blessed by hdrakon with the power of the greatness.

Keep up the Good Work.

Nice

Nice, is there pt3?

Scris de Guest, 29.07.2015 at 12:22

Nice, is there pt3?

In about a week!

When u guys are done u shud put all parts in a locked and stickied thread where they can all be read easily

Mfw Madara not mod, he's done so much for community

Scris de Sultan of Swing, 29.07.2015 at 22:48

When u guys are done u shud put all parts in a locked and stickied thread where they can all be read easily

Mfw Madara not mod, he's done so much for community

i will agree when he explains me why he hates me,he is only person dat i dont know what i did to him......
(well,unless reason i agree,he did much to community,more then mods dat was reporting all strats and units they cant 100% beat,i dont want to tell example.

Edit:you know what?idc,example:laochra)

Thanks for bringing back the sweet memories!

Scris de Amok, 30.07.2015 at 02:46

Thanks for bringing back the sweet memories!

Our pleasure, it was just as fun looking back at everything we missed out on!

Scris de Kromn, 30.07.2015 at 01:42

i will agree when he explains me why he hates me,he is only person dat i dont know what i did to him......
(well,unless reason i agree,he did much to community,more then mods dat was reporting all strats and units they cant 100% beat,i dont want to tell example.

Edit:you know what?idc,example:laochra)

It was a joke, sorry to let you worry!

Scris de Sultan of Swing, 29.07.2015 at 22:48

When u guys are done u shud put all parts in a locked and stickied thread where they can all be read easily

Mfw Madara not mod, he's done so much for community

Already did that here, bro.

Scris de clovis1122, 29.07.2015 at 08:29

Wow lucky bastard at 40k SP, it must had been chosen by zizou at rank 0 and blessed by hdrakon with the power of the greatness.

i think lb had like a 20 crit and was seen as a troll strat. nowaday hw is a troll strat

Scris de Htin, 30.07.2015 at 16:40

i think lb had like a 20 crit and was seen as a troll strat. nowaday hw is a troll strat

I think someone (Hi Stryko) say once in forum that LB was originally a troll strat, created by the community. I haven't found any sources to confirm this but... At November it already exist.

Scris de clovis1122, 30.07.2015 at 16:50

I think someone (Hi Stryko) say once in forum that LB was originally a troll strat, created by the community. I haven't found any sources to confirm this but... At November it already exist.

Pics or didn't happen. nice thread btw

Scris de clovis1122, 30.07.2015 at 16:50

Scris de Htin, 30.07.2015 at 16:40

i think lb had like a 20 crit and was seen as a troll strat. nowaday hw is a troll strat

I think someone (Hi Stryko) say once in forum that LB was originally a troll strat, created by the community. I haven't found any sources to confirm this but... At November it already exist.

I dont recall anyone asking for your personal opinion tho, but hey, u gave it anyway!

Scris de Al Fappino, 31.07.2015 at 05:21

I dont recall anyone asking for your personal opinion tho, but hey, u gave it anyway!

ok

Nice! I wish I joined back in 2010. I was just finishing high school

Nice thread!

Not bad

Scris de Trooper21, 01.11.2016 at 06:54

Not bad

But not good either...?

Well fuck it ill bump this one 2

The great depreision of atwar 2016-????

Wannabe mod....

D

Scris de Waffel, 01.06.2018 at 03:21

Wannabe mod....

[/size=1]D[/size]

Admin wanna be....................

Scris de SyrianDevil, 01.06.2018 at 07:11

Scris de Waffel, 01.06.2018 at 03:21

Wannabe mod....

[/size=1]D[/size]

Admin wanna be....................

Wow I failed my size 1 D ...

Thanks for quoting! D

Scris de Waffel, 01.06.2018 at 11:03

Scris de SyrianDevil, 01.06.2018 at 07:11

Scris de Waffel, 01.06.2018 at 03:21

Wannabe mod....

[/size=1]D[/size]

Admin wanna be....................

Wow I failed my size 1 D ...

Thanks for quoting! D

you're welcome