Shareplay Newsletter
No. 9, February 4, 1999, Thursday
Dear SharePlay Newsletter readers,
In this issue you can read about:
1. SharePlay is one year old!
2. Panumbra news
3. Space Merchant update
4. Monarchy has moved to a SharePlay server
5. M.A.C.E. - a new SharePlay game
6. Magellan Conflict update
1. SharePlay is one year old!
We are one year old! SharePlay was launched on January, 19th 1998 with the release of Panumbra 2.0 demo. SharePlay became a multi-game service when Space Merchant went into open beta on July 31st. We added Monarchy in October.
The year has been a roller-coaster ride. Highs are the new releases, a flourishing and growing community, great support from players. Lows have been server and network problems and bugs. But we are in for the love of it all - and that has not changed. Thank you all for your great support that makes SharePlay a good place to be!
2. Panumbra news
The second Panumbra quest has completed in January. One of the winners have requested a new world area, that will be added when we receive the map. Brian added 35 new skills before Christmas, and is currently working on updating character templates with the new skills. New monster pictures were added.
New updates on the Panumbra website include a map of the world, the gods of Taera, and new Panumbra fan sites on the Player's Corner.
We released a patch in December that contained a fix for using multiple rings of the same kind, and fixed some server problems. The server continues to be unstable, and we are restarting it on average twice daily.
3. Space Merchant update
Space Merchant's first quest game, "Arms Race" has opened this Monday. The objective is to assemble components of a super weapon. The first alliance to collect all pieces on one planet will win. The other big game, Famine have turned out such a well-balanced game that we decided to keep it running until the beta test ends.
Space Merchant has moved to a faster server mid-December. The performance improved vastly, however intermittent "storms" of unexplainable errors set in. We are working with Microsoft technical support to resolve the problem. Errors are less, but they still happen. Due to the mysterious errors, we are planning to gradually port Space Merchant to a non-Microsoft platform over the next year. We will also add a new server to help with performance at peak times.
The Space Merchant Guides, a group of players devoted to help newbies, started work in January. Guides cannot participate in game play, but will answer questions over messaging and chat.
Race pictures and descriptions were added to the help files.
4. Monarchy has moved to a SharePlay server
Monarchy has moved to our servers in December, and is currently available at http://monarchy.shareplay.com. The home page has been re-designed, but everything else stayed the same. A new game has started beginning of January.
5. M.A.C.E. - a new SharePlay game
The makers of Monarchy are working on M.A.C.E. a graphical web based strategy game. You will compete against thousands of other players to colonize new worlds. Use 20 types of war machines, and form multi-planet corporations with your allies. Open beta testing is tentatively scheduled in March, 1999. Take a look at a more detailed description and screenshots at http://monarchy.shareplay.com/mace.html.
6. Magellan Conflict update
The Magellan Conflict is still suspended. Due to the problems we have with ASP in Space Merchant, we will not use the current ASP code but will rewrite Magellan from scratch. That means Magellan will not be available at least until summer.
This was the SharePlay Newsletter for today. Thank you for reading!
Regards,
Marta Gabnai
and the SharePlay development team
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