its sad

[Byrnes]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

[Ashu]

Yeah, those were interesting times!

[buck]

I drop by a few times a year, the change each time is noticeable. Such a shame but il tell you what killed it, going from STARGATEwars to GATEWARS, MGM made the game significantly harder to find and fanboys (of which made up the original guys) weren't so interested. Only thing I see making the game sweet again is an APP. I play a MMORPG on app (of which name I won't mention) and it is insane how busy that game is, not much different to this one but it's so easy to open an app and play. That's what I think any how's .

Glad to see you still here Byrne, fly that WOB flag for us! Hope everyone is well.

[Kjarkur]

There's still a few of us around.

But we have been chatting more on Skype rooms then forums.

[Navy]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

never ending wars didn't help much. When alliances decide that a year..two year..three year "war" is necessary then some players feel like it's not even worth it. So, it forced a lot of the younger accounts to quit playing before they could really get a foothold in the game.

[Mathlord]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

never ending wars didn't help much. When alliances decide that a year..two year..three year "war" is necessary then some players feel like it's not even worth it. So, it forced a lot of the younger accounts to quit playing before they could really get a foothold in the game.

Try nine years of war Any time a game has been around for this long, it's going to be hard to make it for newer players to feel competitive while still allowing for all the people that have either spent their hard earned money or their time to make that time/money spent worth it. If you make it too easy to catch up, you lose your veteran player base. If you don't make it relatively easy to catch up, you don't get new people.

[~Odin~]

Indeed some of us oldies remain....even after I left I got dragged back in lol

[Byrnes]

Same here after about 3 years i had to come back

[Navy]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

never ending wars didn't help much. When alliances decide that a year..two year..three year "war" is necessary then some players feel like it's not even worth it. So, it forced a lot of the younger accounts to quit playing before they could really get a foothold in the game.

Try nine years of war Any time a game has been around for this long, it's going to be hard to make it for newer players to feel competitive while still allowing for all the people that have either spent their hard earned money or their time to make that time/money spent worth it. If you make it too easy to catch up, you lose your veteran player base. If you don't make it relatively easy to catch up, you don't get new people.

True story Math

[InR]

Same here after about 3 years i had to come back

i've quit for 3-4 times already now im here again, what a dummie

[Mathlord]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

never ending wars didn't help much. When alliances decide that a year..two year..three year "war" is necessary then some players feel like it's not even worth it. So, it forced a lot of the younger accounts to quit playing before they could really get a foothold in the game.

Try nine years of war Any time a game has been around for this long, it's going to be hard to make it for newer players to feel competitive while still allowing for all the people that have either spent their hard earned money or their time to make that time/money spent worth it. If you make it too easy to catch up, you lose your veteran player base. If you don't make it relatively easy to catch up, you don't get new people.

True story Math

You figure the first war between TA and Omega was November of 2005. The first war between TA and DDE was part of the big GA vs Faction war in Summer of 2006. OE and DDE have been at war off and on for 2-3 years. In a game where you have no way to truly annihilate an enemy (though you sometimes can get close), wars will drag on. Add in years of animosity and a pointlessness of peace, and the big wars will continue as long as the game goes on.

Besides, peace between the bigger alliances doesn't improve safety of the smaller accounts. If anything, big wars provide a bit of a distraction to prevent certain empires from massing younger players for sport. Sadly not enough of a distraction in the age of crazy attack planets that make massing ridiculously cheap for those with enough money.

[Belsamber]

Same here after about 3 years i had to come back

i've quit for 3-4 times already now im here again, what a dummie

+1

[Noobert]

Its sad i remember when these forums were busy and alot of people played where are my friends at the nostalgia is killing me

Kisskissfightfight.

[Norbe]

The game has been through a lot of changes over the years. There are a lot of places things went downhill that can be easily pointed out, many of which are due to updates to gameplay styles which ever didn't have the correct effect or were just simply too long in the making.

Take the current state of affairs with planets. The push for investment into the huge planets we see on top accounts today started about 4-5 years ago. During the very very long FUALL/TaskForce war of 2009-2011 we saw players collecting large amounts of duals and spending lots on merlins. That effect has only got worse over the years since to the point we have absolutely ludicrous discrepancies between the haves and have nots. If this was addressed with an update in mid-2010, it would have forced the player base to build in different directions and we would've had a very different game.

I don't think the admins expected the game to be this popular (and profitable) for this long. I don't think a plan was made for updates this far along the line or for how the gameplay should be. Honestly a lot of updates have been 'fixes' of imbalances after they occur, rather than being forward thinking enough for the game to always stay one step ahead. In my opinion, for an ideal game there should never be a point where the majority of players hit the army size caps with <1 days effort. It should then not be so quick, easy and cheap to damage another account, or to replace your own losses. That is the game that's developed, but it was preventable by forward-thinking other than reactionary updates.

If I were to run a game as a business, I would be constantly asking "what will ensure my game is still growing and becoming more successful in two years", and always aiming for that. If you were to be forward-thinking, as soon as the iPad was announced you'd have been working on a way to better incorporate gameplay from that, via an app. Keep the app free and simple, even if it's ad supported, and you'd have access to a huge player base. Then as mobile apps and games took off you'd have been at the forefront of them, instead of having the dwindling player base we have today. Our generation of SGW players started playing nearly 10 years ago. Most of us joined in the first three or four years. We were school kids, or students. Now we are working people with lives that can't revolve around sitting at home playing browser games. It needed continuous work to push it out to younger consumers with changing tastes and changing lifestyles so that we have people to keep things active as the vast majority of us grew up and consequently spend less and less time here.

To it's credit, no matter what else we say, Gatewars a very successful member of the online browser-text-based MMOs scene. It's certainly one of the most long running. It did a lot right, but perhaps like all the best things times do catch up with it.

EDIT: I take back that last statement above. Do a google search for "gatewars browser MMO" and see how many results don't come from the servers run by admins. Very few results from places elsewhere, certainly within the last few years. It's never mentioned in a "best MMO" list or even a "long running MMO" list. That's the real sad thing.

~Norbe~

[CC90]

well ive been away for 3 years and just came back and damn....

the forums are dead and the main server is just too easy to farm because of all the inactives...

i remember the days a 5bil hit was a damn good one now i see 100+ sitting out everywhere just for the taking :O

man this game has changed