Webwars: Fortunes of War, looking for info From: mPisi@flash.net (SJ) Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2003 05:24:22 +0000 (apologies for xposting, these were groups where the game was advertised originally and I hope to find others who played) I am searching for information about an online game known as Fortunes of War, produced by Webwars Continuum Inc. (webwars.com or webwars.ca), a small group in Canada. I believe it started in 1997, and I played it online from late 1998 until 11/29/1999, when the server went down for good as far as I know. The game was a hex-based, turn-based strategy wargame, played among several (2 to 8+) players using a simultaneous movement principle. Each player had a client program where he watched the turn's action and plotted his moves for the next turn, then the client sent the move to the webwars.com server. When all moves were submitted, or the deadline had elapsed, the server computed the simultaneous action and sent the resulting "movie" back to the players. In addition to military action, the player also managed his nation's economy, conducted secret and open diplomacy with the other nations, conducted espionage, etc. The game setting was the classical period, with nations available including Rome, Carthage, German Tribes, Parthia, and Macedon. Each nation-type had unique units, and the combat was very well balanced. The game was supposed to be subscription, but I began playing as sort of an open beta that one of the designers, Von Rex, advertised in some gaming newsgroups back in late 1998. In addition to being great fun, Fortunes of War was very advanced for its time, and exhibited better stability and production values than many major games I've bought. I've posted a screenshot of the game at http://home.flash.net/~mpisi/Pics/Webwars_screen.jpg (236k) if you'd like to take a look. In late 1999, the Fortunes server seemed to get more flaky, and was down for periods of time before being restarted. There seemed to be friction between some of the Webwars Continuum team, possibly with some moving from Canada to Seattle, but nothing was really said to the regular players. On 11/29/1999 the server went down and never came back. Periodic emails to everyone I had addresses for and to the domain contacts did not yield any information on the situation. On finding the game again lately (I still have the client and numerous game files), I resorted to posting on some newsgroups to try to find some information. I would be most interested at hearing from anyone with any information on the game's status, or corresponding with old players. Ideally I'd like to get a server running again, as the game was obviously a ton of work and shouldn't be forgotten. Thanks for reading, Scot, "mPisi" -- Scot Johnson mPisi@flash.net.nospam Up