Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Hi,

My name's Alex (obviously), and I'm one of the staffers at a fansite for another Jagex game - the (hopefully) soon-to-be-released Stellar Dawn.

During the course of our research, we've happened across you before, but only recently did we find an official announcement from Jagex saying that they'd bought you up - bit of a surprise for us as well as you, seeing as we'd seen nothing of it since a trademark application for Galaxytarion a while back.

If you want the link to us, I'll post it, but I'm acutely aware that this is my first post, and I don't want to get banned for advertising right away.

Anyway, I'm here to ask if anyone could explain the situation for who owned PA before, who works on it etc. It's kinda confusing to have a look at your threads where you're indifferent to being bought out by a multi million pound company. Admittedly not the most well known of names, but they run RuneScape, which is pretty famous. So yeah, what does being bought up mean, and what would you want/expect to see?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Hello Alex

The reply to your question(s) is hardly a short one but here goes.

Potted History of Planetarion (probably not 100% correct before everyone starts to flame it)

Planetarion started about 10yrs ago (a little over) it was created by a group of gamers/coders who did it for a bit of fun in one of their spare bedrooms.

It became a huge success almost overnight, however that success from a player numbers point of view did not lend itself to a commercial success, and the game had to be sold. It also shortly after that time became pay to play (it was originally free for the players).

It has passed thorough the hands of a few gaming companies Jolt being one of them and the last owner a company called Fubra (and yes it has been done to death).

It was bought earlier this week by Jagex as you know, and we know as much about Jagex as we know about the moon around Saturn (astronomers excepted)

The game currently is resting after the latest round, the new round will start very soon, sign ups being scheduled for the 30th.

There is currently a speed game running http://speedgame.planetarion.com/signup.pl

Which is based on a previous round code, I warn you tho it is hectic, and does not reflect how a real round will run.

There is also the Beta game (preparation for the new round) http://beta.planetarion.com/signup.pl

Both of these are free to sign up and play.

The beta however is for the proposed changes and for the new stats to be tested, and not really a competitive game (although some players will abuse that) but it will give an insight into the game and the proposed "new stuff"

Galaxytarion is a new trademark to us as well, it was noted a short while ago that Jagex had registered it, we know as much about it as you do, but the best guesses around here think it will be the next incarnation of Planetarion.

The people that currently work on the game:

Now that is a bit of a strange idea?
There is one person who is actually (was) paid/employed and the rest are volunteers.

I can give you there IRC nickname but there personal information is for them not me to disclose.

At the top we have Cincinnatus he is the one paid person we have.
Appocomaster is the other senior figure within the game and does a lot of the coding work.
Then we have a support team which is split into two distinct areas.

Support and Multihunters

Support provide answers to game related questions and a conduit for the players to get help with credits (purchases) game related issues and bugs, and to help clarify some of the many questions the player bring to them.

Multihunters (a strange name to say the least)
However there role is to ensure a level playing field for all the players that the rules are followed and that each player has only ONE planet, hence a part of there role is hunting for MULTI account owners - multihunters -
That was there original and main function, but they deal with all sorts of issues from offensive behavior and abuse in the game to dealing with the consequences of people exploiting bugs (when they find one) as well as providing clarification of the rules.

Some would suggest and no doubt will (/me waits for the flame fest) that both support and MH are a complete waste, but without them the game would fall apart as the admins who do all the real work of coding and running the servers simply do not have the time to keep up with everything else.

There is one other important thing, the players in this game use IRC, a chat program for communication, yes it is old fashioned and kinda quaint, but that is where the bulk of the players are, and the medium in which they communicate.

If you do not have an IRC client you can get one for free from www.mirc.com or from www.Netgamers.org

The main channels of interest (for you) would be #support and #multihunters, there are hundreds of channels on the server and a lot of them are Planetarion related, but there are plenty that are not.

I suggest that you download the pirc program from the Netgamers website, it is completely configured for use on the Netgamers IRC server, if you do obtain mirc from www.mirc.com you will need to spend time configuring it for our server.

Oh and one final thing

Welcome to Planetarion.

Judge
#multihunters


PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarion

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

I think the cynical approach to being bought by random companies boils down to the history. Jolt - I'm not sure if Jolt constitutes as a multi-million company, or what their profile is - and Fubra were both relatively useless rubber stamps from the game perspective. They ran servers with mediocre success, but for what's on the surface it always seemed to be Appocomaster doing the bread and butter work and deserving the vast majority of the credit there is to be handed to anyone.

That is, undoubtedly, Jolt probably made some profits for running the game. Fubra might have made more profits, mostly due to asset pricing, considering they probably picked up well more money from selling the game to Jagex than what they did pay to Jolt for it.

The whole of the game, given the active (fanatical?) core society it has, has been stagnant for years essentially due to the lack of funds to invest in development. It's lead to a steadily declining population base, and obviously, a stature of a game that's essentially been a repeat of itself for a decade.

The strong community and the alliance ideal the game supports give a lot of room for certain social communities to be born and the best of my Planetarion memories have to do with game politics - the wait for which alliance is going to wind up attacking you, revising your own group's political plan, and climbing up the ladder.

TL;DR: Neither of the previous buyers have lived up to what they promised - interaction with the society and investment in developing and advertising the game in order to lift it up from the sorry state it's slowly decayed to. They've simply collected the given set costs, ran servers, and picked up sale profit margins, whilst apparently only paying to Cin (oh dear God how is this possible? does he actually do anywhere close to what Appoco does?).

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Judge you forgot to mention the irc server with which to connect to which most type in irc.netgamers.org but if you sign up to the game itself the comunit there auto connects to the right server i look forward to hearing from anyone with anything to do with jagex ive recently signed up to all the games on there site to test them out as i always do

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Yes your quite right: My apologies

http://www.planetarion.com/misc/pages/irc-guide

will provide help for using IRC

And of course the main Portal Site

http://www.planetarion.com/

have fun

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Some lengthy responses. I'll add my own ;)

Alex, the community are cynical because Jolt owned the game and gave it little support whilst making a profit (partially penalising the game due to the fact that they paid Spinner more than they made for a while).
OMAC took the game over when they purchased Jolt. They gave us a representative whose ideas were generally rejected and who made promises and never fulfilled them. The representative left, then OMAC said that they refused to host the game any more but would keep the name. This is when the idea of Galaxytarion was born.

Pete and Fubra purchased the game via the company "Renegade Games", and Pete started off fairly hands on but then, after generally having a hard time, found it easier to leave us and to use the money we produced to help to build his empire of advertising etc. Amusingly enough, he was quoted as saying he did so well because he cared about the customer - this didn't go down well when someone from Planetarion found out about it.


In terms of roles within the game, I'm one of the most visible. I run most of the community things (Q&A sessions, ceremonys) and I do some of the lighter but more visible game changes.

Cin does a lot more work behind the scenes (he's currently sorting out our payment system changes and a few other tweaks of the game, and has been taking the Renegade Games stuff out of the game and replacing it with Jagex stuff).

Ace manages alliance relations and runs the MH Team, Lunar_Lamp manages our servers, and Fiery heads the Support Team. Markb heads all IRC activities. We have no head forum admin, but both Cin and I have access, and we have a couple of mods who're still around.

Ultimately, the game would like more support in making some bigger changes, a few more community activities to increase participation on the forums / IRC, and some form of advertising - we've done with basically no advertising since (before?) Jolt owned it; Jolt just gave us a rotational banner thing and someone else paid for 1 week of advertising. Pete said he set us up for free on one of his sites, but we didn't see much throughput from that. We got more when we got #1 in MPOGD. :)

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Oh and if you want any sane advice, do not, I repeat do not, ask the whole community. Just talk to Apocco, he'll know who to talk to.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

theam quit posting

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Dutch hockey players/managers are certainly not on the list of people to talk to! Thank you for nominating me for more work.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

But you do such a good job pa wouldnt still be here without people like you mate we look up to you as one of the saviours of pa

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

The reason we're a bit jaded has been explained already, but I'd be interested to know if you can tell us anything about how Jagex usually treats properties it acquires. Especially if there are any corresponding games they've purchased and done something with.

I'm also impressed that Stellar Dawn has a fansite before it's even released. What prompted this?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

As for expectations, I'd say any kind of full-time staff assigned to development would go down very well indeed.

And just to set the record straight:
That is not true. They made a profit every single round they ran, and always got the money in up-front as 99% of the payments happened as a round starts. My salary from Jolt was a joke, tbh, and I only survived on it because I had been forced to sell our home and live off what we had left from that. In essence, I took a 80% pay-cut when I agreed to stay on with Jolt (they refused to buy the game if I didn't, and this would mean the end to PA).
Knowing what I know now, I should rather have bankrupted the company and bought PA myself, as I would have been better off financially.

That said, what's done is done, and good luck onwards :)

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

I think this point needs more elaboration as it seems to be causing confusion on both sets of forums. I am only posting what I know second hand though, so I can't guarantee its accuracy.

When OMAC essentially closed down the game, they allowed PATeam to retain the codebase but not the name. The community (organised mainly by Lunar_Lamp) started gathering funds (donations, etc) to acquire servers to host the game under the new name Galaxytarion, for which Lunar_Lamp acquired the domain name.

When Fubra and Renegade Games acquired the game from OMAC, the need for Galaxytarion was gone; all the funds raised were returned to where they had come and Lunar_Lamp let the domain expire.

A month or so ago Jagex registered the Galaxytarion domain name as you are aware. This seems to match dates for when talks of Jagex acquiring PA started, whether or not the actual acquisition was made a month ago or only recently is unclear. The purchase of the domain could either be seen as preparation for the sequel Jagex mentioned (please don't, it's an awful name and I think both forums agree on that!) or an attempt to block Spinner, the original creator of PA, from creating a new game with such a similar name - rumours started about a month ago of him working on a new game in the same genre as PA.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Hello!
I'm from the Jagex fansite too.
We can't wait for this game, so we're researching about it all the time. :P
We're waiting for it since 2007.

Btw. I like the name Galaxytarion. You can trust in Jagex, believe me. They know what to do, and how make things good ^^

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Yes, this is a common miscomprehension that I think stems from our wikipedia article. I'm not able to update it via my work internet, if someone else could clarify it there too, that'd be great. :D

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

See now son there's a common factor for us both then. The local population here has been waiting for something for quite a while too. Wait, fcuk me, that's three years and you're still keeping the spirits up?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

From what I've seen so far, Jagex seems more promising then the past owners of this game.
Hope they know how to deal with a very sceptical community. :)

There is no need to name this game galaxytarion :D

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

done

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Ahh, you were owned by Jolt. I understand your mistrust completely - I used to play NationStates 2, and that got canned for no apparent reason.

I can assure you, Jagex is in a different league compared to them. They've only just started working on third-party games, but their support for War Of Legends has been impressive (not a game that a lot of us fans like all that much, but they've been doing serious work on it). They have a good pedigree of keeping games free, and offering a real choice not to pay. So yeah, from what we see they're nowhere near as commerical as Jolt/OMAC. They're like a smaller Blizzard.

As for dealing with a skeptical community, I think half of the RS population is in a constant state of whining about every single community. You guys are a lot smaller and more mature than what they deal with on a weekly basis. In fact, the one thing I'd be worried about from your point of view is a flood of newbies that breaks your community spirit. You say you want more people, but you really don't want the average RuneScape player getting in here. They will piss you off to no end, because "THIS GAME HAS NO GRAPHICS!!!!111!1!!". Check out the RS Official Forums, especially the Rants section.

We're the most research heavy fansite that Jagex have, so we find things like this first, but if we got this it's a matter of time until bigger fansites either pick it up through an announcement, find it themselves, or rip it off of us.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Don't underestimate the power some on these forum possess to troll :p

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Haha, not likely!

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Dont worry noobs wont break anyones spirit here,,most of the alliances will completely ignore them as always,or just have general fun abusing em,others will be integrated well as long as the arent retarded enough to get hung up on no graphics.PA isnt really a game for fat ratards clicking buttons constantly so they can see shit happen,its a brain game,if they cant do simple math or use their imagination they will fuk off fast.
(heh i enjoyed having a peek at runescape for a few hours the other night, i hadnt been called a noob 200 times in one hour in a long time it was very refreshing, funny thing was its such a easy game to pick up, im eager to see roles reversed)

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Wise words.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

I smurfing loved Nationstates 2

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

You guys might find this interesting: (Er... I can't post links :P It's on our site, for those of you who've found it, the Eurogamer interview)

I don't honestly know what to expect for you guys, Jagex have made leaps and bounds in the past year or so for reaching out to the community. Previously they were very much closed off, and the main interaction was rebuttals to massive amounts at angst where updates didn't please certain people. They didn't recognise fansites, and the general opinion was that they watched from up high and did what they wanted to make the game "better". (Until recently, with War of Legends and FunOrb, and Stellar Dawn, Jagex have been a one-trick pony)

Then, they released some concept art to us, which was real groundbreaking stuff. Not since the community was around you size had Jagex ever really talked to the fans. Now they're posting on our forums occasionally, doing the odd interview with fansites and if we're having problems, they will help us out. If you look at the fansite support alone, there's the opportunity for them to fund you through ads at the higher levels. You guys being an actual game that they've bought, and their offical forums at that, I'd expect to see a few Jmods around here (probably the same ones that we speak to as the face, and another guy to talk to your devs and do the dirty work).

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

For those that cannot find it:

http://www.eurogamer.net/

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Hm, so it's ok to write the name Stellar Dawn, but not the name of my new coming game? Both in development, none of them testable...

I smell injustice!!
I want heads to roll, on silver platters please, with ketchup on'em!
I'll have a coke with that!

Then again, I'll settle for a link to the rules that will of course point out the difference between using these names :)

:-P

- Spinner

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Alex the best way to know PA is to play PA, give it a try this round i think you will understand the game better than by reading the forums and get a much greater sense of why we seem so disinterested

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Fairly sure the no advertising rule is aimed at advertising rival games from other developers. Would be abit stupid to implement a 'no mentioning the owners other games'.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

light, ever heard of irony/sense of humour?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

I was going to write something about the actual function of the moderators, but I just can't get past the irony.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

**Planetarion Forum Rules**

Clause 6: Advertising
Advertising in any form is expressly forbidden on the Planetarion Forums. This especially includes other online games, whether or not they contain similarities to Planetarion. Where the moderators consider an advertised product to be of particular benefit to the Planetarion community, they may permit advertising of it, but this is entirely at their discretion.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Surely a mutual "advertisement" arrangement could be done? benefiting all
Any offical responce from the MoDs on this matter?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

lol

Have you ever read any of her posts? :P

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Iota of sympathy for Light, her hearts in the right place poor soul !

From one of the old lags, for us its a labour of love, we've seen owners come and go, promises made and broken, there is general respect for Spinner, and his old crew, Appocomaster and Cin and their crew and lets not forget poor beleaugered A2 who did his time in the hot seat that Appocomaster sits in now, of course they made and did or didn't do what the players want, you cant please all of the people all of the time and you'd have a nervous breakdown if you even tried, but overall their names will remain in postive thoughts because they care/cared and try/tried to keep the game running for us.
Those that bought and used us for their own profit or goals have created cynics of us, now all we do is sit and wait and pray we are not just another notch on the bedpost of Jagex.
Were addicts, were fools, some of us will be here till the fat lady sings her aria, and will be at the stage door for her autograph, its its theese people with this dedication and sheer bloody minded determination that has kept us going through the really tough times, wounded and battle scarred we are, those wounds need healing time and the scars will still be there, but one day we hope to sit in the veterans lounge and remember each scar with a smile, maybe Jagex will own that lounge !

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Is it just me or is it a little pathetic not allowing people to even say the names of other games? If PA is that good then we'll keep playing it despite the names of these other games, I know I have through playing loads of MMO's etc, the only thing I still play is this.

Nice to hear from you Alex, welcome to the forums, and yeah as DragonKing said; signup and have a crack at the game, in theory they should be helping out with some of the newer player instructions, and failing that if you get stuck hop on mIRC and pm someone in #support or me in PM.

As for this Jagex, they sound good, I for one am willing to give them a chance, at least they've lowered the credit prices :D

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Slippery slope! Slippery slope!

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

It does seem to be selective censorship as the original post mentioned 3 other games and the 1st reply also mentioned 1 of those games

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

It is important to establish the logic of the local enforcement staff for the newcomers early, gzambo, to avoid misunderstandings.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Guys, is this really so hard to understand? The way the rules have been enforced leaves very little to the imagination. You can talk about Jagex games, but not about non-Jagex games. Whether the rule is a good idea is another matter entirely, but clarity is not the issue here.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

To be truthful, I am convinced that at the moment no moderation is taking place as we do not have any (active mods)

I no doubt will promptly be proven wrong !

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Given the previous post to yours was by a mod consider yourself proven wrong

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

thanks, i had no idea that Mzyxptlk was a Mod.

:D

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

I presume the credits are lowered temporarily to make it seem less bad when there's a rollback or downtime this round. I'm guessing we havent moved servers yet and when we do, there's bound to be at least one hiccup :p

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

This.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Only on AD. Out here in the wild, I can but meekly look on.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Maybe it's a stupid question - but what's AD?

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Alliance Discussions, a different sub-forum

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

See also: PD, PS, AR, SD, GD.

Re: Hi from a Jagex fansite
 

Such a cheerful message as always.

:-)