Memory Lane

[Dundradal]

Way back when I used to run #wc-rpg on DALnet. It was an interesting little group. I made a website for it and all that jazz. It really didn't do too much after a while, but it did provide one fantastic thing.

Because of it Andrew Keith e-mailed me about it and it's how Keith became more involved in the WC community. So it wasn't all for naught.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I've actually never seen a 'canonical' WC RPG -- it's always crazy extrapolations, outright weirdos or nothing. I'm not even sure there's an audience for it.

 

[MannPower]

Well, I'm an audience. I'd love to get something started on around the time of the Vega Campaign, on another carrier. No crazy new alien races or magic or whatever these people are throwing in; I'd like to play a WC RPG based entirely in Wing Commander.

I've run, and still run, Role-Playing Sims. I've done so for about a decade, now. Most of them are originals, based on in-depth background information. I've done everything from post-apocolyptic to military sci-fi to low fantasy.

I'd try to get something started for WC, but I'm currently steeped in preparations for another, similar Sci-Fi Sim. Players are fighter pilots, so it's WC-like, but not WC.

A shame nothing like this is going on.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I haven't had any real experience with RPGs, myself - it's something I always wanted to try but never got around to being involved in. LeHah was going to try setting up a WEG Star Wars session on IRC to show a couple of us how it's done...

 

[MannPower]

I have no problem helping out, either, if you guys want to do an impromptu WC-based one. It's pretty simple, and I've been doing it for so long that I've got hosting down to a science.

I do free-form, as opposed to simulated dice or whatever. Imagination/GM-based resolutions, as opposed to stat-based. Gives the story more precedence, though it takes a more discerning host to be fair.

I'd go more in-depth about the current Sim I'm creating, but I'm not entirely sure of everyone's Science Fictions tastes, here. though, if you're into WC or BSG, then you'd probably dig it. I guess the real issue is that there's usually two camps, for players; fans who only want to play in major franchise-based RPGs, and hardcore-players who like new stuff with less rigid boundaries.

 

[ChrisReid]

I am really curious about newsgroups, and am having trouble trying to picture what they were. It almost sounds like you 'posted' in a similar fashion to writing an 'email?' Was it more difficult (read: slower) to have internet discussions back then?

There was a similarity, because a newsreader was generally also an email client and vice versa at the time. But posts appeared instantly, so discussions were no faster or slower than discussions today. From a technical standpoint, I suppose you could say that the downloading part slowed things a bit. You might go online and spend 5-10 minutes downloading the day's new posts to a certain newsgroup, then go offline and write responses to them for an hour, and then go back online and send all of them. You'd do the same thing with email.

It must have been a great time to be part of the WC universe online. I liken that time period to right after the Big Bang - the WC universe was expanding quickly and in many directions.

Yeah, it was great, but a lot of things have mostly been good for as long as I can remember. In 1999 or 2000, there were threads like this with people reminiscing about the "good old days." And look at how far we've come since then. Pretty much every fan project you can think of is a product of the 21st century. Today it's hard to imagine a pre-Standoff or pre-WC Saga community or an internet before Wedge's or HCl's website or even before most of the current CIC sections had yet been created. It was not that long ago that there was no way to play Armada on modern computers (not to mention online), no Prophecy multiplayer or Standoff scoreboard and no WC Arena for fans to battle in. A couple years from now, people will look back on 2007 and marvel and what a great time for WC fans that was too - and I'm really excited for the things yet to come.

Anyway, I knew of the CIC's existance starting from when it first came up and checked it periodically but by no means as often as I do today. I did go into the IRC channels a bit, particularly when I was experimenting with the WC Aces club (which was fun by the way)... but not too long after that I discovered the MUSH Wing Commander Red Horizon and dropped off AOL to spend three years there until it closed down finally.

Wow, I had no idea Red Horizon lasted for that long. I did a couple updates about it back in 1999 https://www.wcnews.com/news/search?body=Red+Horizon and I never really grasped how big it was. I think of stuff like that and the current ongoing WC RPG and wonder about all the Wing Commander things going on right now that I might not even be aware of.

 

[Avenging_Angel]

I remember coming online in 96 and joining the WC community. My first few years had there ups and downs. I had a long flame war with a board for the life of me i cann't remember thir name. looking back it was a stupid flame war that got out of hand. Later I join the Killer Bees. One of the first Squadrons outside of the Aces Club. After I had to different clubs that failed. but i take the blame for that. But I find myself dreaming of Adventures for BWS Constitution. As for the TCS Alabama she for now retired. But I think I might start my fiction back up from scratch. BTW any Killer Bees or people who know me still around?

 

[Vinman]

I remember coming online in 96 and joining the WC community. My first few years had there ups and downs. I had a long flame war with a board for the life of me i cann't remember thir name. looking back it was a stupid flame war that got out of hand. Later I join the Killer Bees. One of the first Squadrons outside of the Aces Club. After I had to different clubs that failed. but i take the blame for that. But I find myself dreaming of Adventures for BWS Constitution. As for the TCS Alabama she for now retired. But I think I might start my fiction back up from scratch. BTW any Killer Bees or people who know me still around?

I was in the SRA, but Avenging Angel sounds familiar.

edit: Oooh, 666th post!

 

[Avenging_Angel]

I was in the SRA, but Avenging Angel sounds familiar.

edit: Oooh, 666th post!

does the Fighting Jokers ring a bell?

 

[Vinman]

does the Fighting Jokers ring a bell?

I don't know, a little bit. I used to poke around the different wc rpg websites back then.

 

[KrisV]

We put a lot of thought into the 'new' CIC. No more system of leaders (Akkbar famously credited himself for five or so different things in the site's credits page), absolutely no advertising, a focus on archiving information and doing deeper researched articles rather than just publishing news. Basically incorporating elements from some of the late great sites (I'm looking at you, TCU) and improving them. Updates *every* day! In one of history's great coincidences, Neil Young came to Chris and I (yes, *that* Neil Young - that Electronic Arts Vice President) and said he wanted to host WCHS on Origin's servers. We said no, we'd build a new site - a better site... and then we did! I hope.

That was really generous of them. At the time, the CIC moved some 30 gigabytes each month, which was really a huge amount for 1998/99. This February it will be eight years since we left the Origin server. There weren't many people buying webhosting in 1999 (average people used Geocities or Tripod) so providers couldn't oversell their bandwidth as much. Blacklance HQ helped out a lot by hosting our downloads and music and we kept our news thumbnails small (but we never screwed with the full versions -- resizing, watermarking and advertising are all things we will never do). We always just squeezed by on our traffic allowance. If we do 30 gigabytes in one day now, then it's been a pretty slow day.

(Edit: I really miss the original CIC menus, too. Phoenix built them and they were *stunning*. These wonderful multicolor mouseovers for each link... the only problem was that they were such a huge pain to add, maintain and load.)

I think we still have a page hidden away somewhere that has the original layout. Another problem was that the menu was not divided into sections. It could take a long time to find what you were looking for. But it looked really great.

Kris and I were the top posters. From 1996 to 2001, I posted over 27,000 posts and Kris more than 7000. Delance was also close, and he, Kris and I were huge rivals. I got to know Death and Hades very well there. Haesslich, Karl Frank/CFF and Ed Filho as well.

I had to pay by the minute, so I would go online in the morning to download 1,500 posts (headers and message bodies) and then spend a couple of hours during the day writing up replies offline. And there would be another 500 messages waiting for me when I went online again to submit my posts. I wish these forums were as busy.

Sometimes it varies. The top three spots juggle between the CIC, IMDB and Wikipedia. I've seen the CIC in the top spot while Kris loads it at the same time and we're second or third.

Sometimes when we're in the top spot, Google will provide extra links straight to popular sections like Files, Music, Academy TV. That doesn't happen very often nowadays.

I remember the countdown in 1998 when the CIC went online and how great it's been since then, although it's too bad that all the forum posts from 1998 to 2000 were lost.

I think the original wwwboard disappeared before I was on the staff and I don't know what happened to those posts. The Ultimate Bulletin Board that we had up to the year 2000 was sadly destroyed by a Y2K bug. I'm sure I could save those posts today, but UBB data files were unwieldy compared to a normalized database and back then we didn't know much about the way those programs actually worked.

 

[LeHah]

Mr. Borton actually visited our community last summer

Was he the guy who wrote up the WC RPG rulebook for the AOL Chatroom play? I never played in that myself but I found the rules to be impressively simple and seemingly fun (in theory)

 

[powell99]

I remember my first visit to the CIC. It was the start of Christmas Break of 1998 and my friend got his hands on a copy of Prophecy Gold, and told me all about it. Almost instantly I remembered all of my fond memories of Wing Commander from when my Dad bought Wing Commander, to when I was in the first grade and I was sent home for being really sick and my dad had a copy of Privateer waiting for me to feel better, to the Christmas I got WC3.

Just after I got home, I went over to my Mom asked permission to use her computer and started up whatever Web browser she had, and began my first adventure in the internet. I was somewhat terrified. Between the TV, and my school I was convinced the Internet was an evil place filled with kidnappers, stalkers, snuff films and all sorts of evil I couldn't even imagine. However, I had permission to go and embark on my mission to find Wing Commander. I typed 'Wing Commander' into Google. I was immediately overwhelmed with information that I couldn't comprehend. I clicked just about every link that came up, and after a while I found the CIC. My exact words were "Holy Crap!" I began to pour over every single article, archive, and link on the sight. To me the CIC was the most amazing thing I had ever seen on the interenet. From the other sites (WC Aces, WC Commonwealth) I saw that people were making thier own ships and stories. I immediately got on the phone with my friend and told him about this wcnews.com. That got him hooked (for a while at least) as well. From the CIC I read about the WC Movie, that was something amazing. Every day after school I would go on the CIC and just stare at all of these picture from this movie, I cared more about the new WC movie than I ever did about the new Star Wars film. I remember when my friends all went out to by the Star Wars incredible cross sections, I went for a copy of the Confederation Handbook. My binders were decorated with WC Ships I drew from the Handbook, from my copy of Victory Streak, and from a series of gifs with Rotating WC2 fighters (What where did those come from? They were a huge deal to me at the time, I remember seeing them again not too long ago.)

For years and years I poured over the CIC, and eagerly awaited things like the ships section, the timeline, and the Encyclopedia. It wasn't until 2003 I finally decided to register on the forums. Definatley not as exciting a story for people who had been on the internet for much longer, but it was my first real experience on the Internet.

 

[Cardinal]

I entered the WC community around 1996, just before WCP was released. I had played WC ever since the original came out, but I didn't know about the online community until a fellow fan told me about the Aces Club. I was amazed by all the online dialogue beyond the games themselves, such as the fanfics and RPGs.

I first got involved with a "New Technology Group" that was part of the Aces Club; not surprising in hindsight, since I'm an engineer by trade. I thought it was neat that I could come up with designs that people would use in their fanfics and RPGs. After about six months I was still unable to get anything passed by "the Review Board". This was partially my fault, as I was new to the process and defensive about any negative feedback. On the other hand, when they shot down concepts, even when there was nothing but positive feedback, it made them seem a little...elitist. Eventually, I realized that fanfics can use whatever the heck ships they want, and moved on. I took a look today and found the NTRB is still open (with a facelift from my days), but it hasn't been touched in over a year.

I moved on to fanfics; it seemed as if the Aces' fanfics were in three categories. The first category tended to deal with average pilots in a timeline which would meld decently with canon. The second category tended to deal with extremely good pilots in "Aces Club supercarriers" which would throw canon completely out the window, but the dialogue and writing was decent enough that they were enjoyable. The third category - which I call "the Tannock zone" - well, I won't go there...

I tried writing my own fanfic, but during a reread I became dissapointed with where the plot was going; it was drifting more and more into the second category, and I stopped the project about a third of the way in around 2000 (I found the Word files on my laptop while I'm writing this)

Around that time I found this website, or whatever version it may have been at the time. I lurked around, reading up on the various projects and forums during my off-time over the years in grad school. The credit for my taking the plunge and registering, however, has to go to Standoff and their scoreboard - seeing how well I fared amongst other WC fanatics was too great a temptation to resist. Projects such as UE, SO, HTL and Saga rekindled my interest. About six months ago, I started working on a new fanfic; fortunately, it's still in that first category I mentioned above.

OT: Hey, this post takes me off the Cadet roster. About darn time.

 

[Phillip Tanaka]

At first when I joined I thought it was a cool place to talk about Wing Commander and all. This was back in the day when I was...well not right, I admit, and people took full advantage of that. As to how I found out about it, I wouldn't have the first clue but odds are it would have been a search hit for Spirit that led me here.

 

[Haliwali]

I didn't find out anything was even happening to WC two years ago. The I saw a link to Saga and played the Prologue. From there, I floated to the CIC, where I popped on daily to check out the new stuff. It was only veeery recently that I started joining forums (you guys may have been better off if I'd rethought that after I look at my entrance.)