16th Birthday Party Moves to a New Night! (July 17, 2014)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
It's almost that time again! We're just about a month away from the CIC's 16th Birthday at wcnews.com. All Wing Commander fans are welcome to attend our virtual party in the IRC channel #Wingnut. It'll be one of the most fun nights of the year with updated CIC features, trivia and prizes - all in the company of your fellow fans.

There is one major change this year! The CIC was founded on August 10, 1998, and out first fifteen birthday parties all took place on the actual anniversary. A specific date in mid August worked for us when everyone was in school, but we recognize that the vast majority of our visitors now have jobs, kids and other responsibilities that make certain nights of the week impractical. So this year we'll be observing the birthday on Saturday, August 16, 2014.

The event still takes place at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). We know this is still late for European time zones, but we hope that holding the party on a Saturday night makes attendance far more doable than asking people to join in at 1 AM during the work week. It also keeps the party at a decent time for Pacific Wingnut regulars in Alaska, Hawaii and Australia. Newcomers can easily get started here. Our web client even works on mobile phones for fans who won't be near a computer. We hope to see you there!






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Original update published on July 17, 2014
 
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I understand why the change was made, but I'd already booked 11th August as a day off in anticipation that it would remain on this date. Is a Friday night / Saturday morning a possibility? I would have thought that would be much better than a Sunday morning. While I did turn up last year, I don't think I should keep dropping out of Sundays. But if that's the date that works best for everyone, then I'll accept that.
 
It's the best date that works for most of the staff this year. Unfortunately, life dictates our schedules more than in the past. I'm going to be attending from my phone while at a wedding. It's not going to be as fun as normal, but I couldn't imagine missing it.

Holding the party on the second or third Saturday in August allows for more Wingnuts to attend. As the party regulars know, weekday parties have lower turnouts with all of us having jobs, families, etc now. Weekends always have better numbers. It certainly makes it easier for everyone around the globe to stop by, even if for a little while. I always look forward to seeing everybody pop onto IRC and start catching up and talking WC.
 
Just out of curiosity, is anybody planning to do any kind of observance on the actual date as well (in addition to the big shindig on the 16th)? Mainly curious; Saturday's my day to do chores as a rule. Still works better than Sunday, but not much.
 
Just out of curiosity, is anybody planning to do any kind of observance on the actual date as well (in addition to the big shindig on the 16th)? Mainly curious; Saturday's my day to do chores as a rule. Still works better than Sunday, but not much.

I'll be around and I'd guess most of the IRC regulars as well. We certainly won't let the actual date go by without some observance.
 
I understand why the change was made, but I'd already booked 11th August as a day off in anticipation that it would remain on this date. Is a Friday night / Saturday morning a possibility? I would have thought that would be much better than a Sunday morning. While I did turn up last year, I don't think I should keep dropping out of Sundays. But if that's the date that works best for everyone, then I'll accept that.

Yeah, you have to understand that this is a fairly excruciating decisions for us. We are very tradition minded, and most of us would have ended up taking the 11th off work as well, so if we were throwing a party for the CIC Staff, of course it would just be August 10. But, we don't expect the vast majority of our visitors to make the same life adjustments for us. I'd have to think that we pick up a lot more people on a Saturday than any night before a weekday because Sunday-Thursday is bad for our many European visitors. I think Friday nights are almost as tough for attendees in the US. The start time is 4-7 PM, which means most daytime office workers would need to leave work early and/or hustle home and go straight online. People who need to pick up kids, make dinner, etc would have a conflict on Friday (same as any weekday).

I think Saturday evening US/Europe time is the clear winner. Any time you're trying to coordinate an event for 100 attendees and have some choice in the date/time, it's not going to be easy. Like Dund pointed out, summer is wedding season, and I'm also going to miss a wedding-related dinner on the 16th in order to make the party myself, but we've been all over the calendar and think we've found what works the best for the most people. We sat on the decision for this year for a while to make sure it was the right one, so I don't see changing next month's event, but if anyone has any ideas for future parties, we'd love to hear them.

I'll be around and I'd guess most of the IRC regulars as well. We certainly won't let the actual date go by without some observance.

We won't be posting any big updates to the CIC on the 10th, and I wouldn't want to say we're having a separate party on the 10th, because then we just end up splitting the event and defeating the purpose of the move. But I do expect a few of us will be around, and we wouldn't let the moment pass without some recognition. :)
 
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I understand the difficulty in trying to find a time that suits everyone. I suggested Friday night / Saturday morning because I thought that would still qualify as 'weekend', but I didn't realise it was that early in the afternoon for those in the Americas.

Well, I hope everyone has a good time at the party this year then. Maybe I'll drop by on my day off (for the actual birthday).
 
Thanks for moving the date to a more family/work friendly time slot. Sadly, I don't know whether that will help me because, like Dundradal, I'm on a wedding on August 16th, but unlike Dundradal, I can't participate via my phone (and I think my wife would be pretty pissed if I did that since it's a wedding of one of my colleagues, so she's more or less doing me a favour by accompanying me). On the other hand, if we take our kid with us I think we won't be too long at the party, maybe around midnight. Then I could maybe still join. We'll see!
 
WC Multiplayer matches are a great idea, but the CIC staff usually gets pretty tied up in the actual event prep. If anyone would like to organize anything though, that'd be great and we can definitely let everyone know.
 
I might be up for a death-march or two; never have done it with the original Prophecy though. What's involved?

Similar vein; anybody know of an XBOX360 emulator (that isn't warez)?
 
If you haven't done Prophecy multiplayer, there may be an issue with playing. I think the system authenticated to the old Crius.net forum database, and I'm not sure HCl has gotten around to updating that. So new players may not be able to play. Here are the original instructions: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2007/12/01/get-started-playing-prophecy-multiplayer

WC Arena would be affected by a similar issue. I'm not sure if they have decent 360 emulators, but such a thing would have to simulate more than running the game. Multiplayer is handled exclusively through XBox Live, so there would need to be some way to trick the game into using a fake PC-based XBox Live spoof network, which I just made up and I don't believe such a thing exists. There is internet tunneling that would simulate LAN system link without XBox Live, but Arena does not support system link.
 
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Well, I can try at least try to set up Prophecy. I'll give the instructions a go and see what happens. Thanks.
 
It's the best date that works for most of the staff this year. Unfortunately, life dictates our schedules more than in the past. I'm going to be attending from my phone while at a wedding. It's not going to be as fun as normal, but I couldn't imagine missing it.

Holding the party on the second or third Saturday in August allows for more Wingnuts to attend. As the party regulars know, weekday parties have lower turnouts with all of us having jobs, families, etc now. Weekends always have better numbers. It certainly makes it easier for everyone around the globe to stop by, even if for a little while. I always look forward to seeing everybody pop onto IRC and start catching up and talking WC.

Hey Dun,
I have something I'm working on that I'd like to contribute, we can talk about it off line. Also if you could PM me a non gmail account I'd like to send you the exe's I tried to send you last year but gmail kept blocking me.

Thanks,
Shades2585
 
I'm going to try and make it, I haven't been to one of these in years and it'll be nice to talk with everyone given how much craziness has happened in the last few years! I'd also be in for some Prophecy deathmatch.
 
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