The history of WZ multiplayer and 1.10 balance
Posted: 23 Aug 2016, 19:45
I started playing WZ multiplayer at age 14 in 1999 and finally stopped in late 2006. There are a few other players from 1999-2000 that still play today (Cowboy and Zepherian) but li33 (from China) is the only player that I know of who consistently played from 1999 - 2006 and I still see him today! By late 2006, weeks would go by without seeing a single player online and I thought for sure at that time I was the last player in the world until I found this website in late 2013. This is the history of WZ multiplayer as I know it, some players will remember the nostalgia...
Games in 1999 - 2000 were hosted by a 3rd party service known as "mplayer" that also hosted chat lobbies for several other games as well. Players from other video games could easily stop in the Warzone gaming lobby and connect with the community. Total Annihilation was the main competing RTS game with WZ. Players had avatars, profiles and could speak through a microphone.
The year 2000 was the peak of WZ with as many as 250 players in the chat lobby at one time although 100 - 150 was more like the average. The community was somewhat small but players' names were known and clans were territorial. RBL, WF, NF, DOW, MOW, WCS, Chem, Dr, GER, SoS and CC were the main clans of the time. Keep in mind, the notion of a "clan" was still relatively new in the world of online gaming.
Most people had dial-up 56k connections. I have no idea how the game didn't lag.
Mplayer staff members hosted KOTH tournaments (King Of The Hill) and were held about once every 2 months for the first year and tournaments were always played on rush map. MOW_Badboy won every tournament (5 total I think) except for the last one in which CC-Vegita won by using the soon to be infamous speed cheat. The speed cheat was a program that made a person's PC run faster (CPU clock I think) and consequently so did WZ including the research, production and power rates. Cheating played a large part in WZ's demise. The most common indicators of cheating was that a player wouldn't be able to tell the correct in-game time since their clocked ticked much faster. The other indicator was that the cheating player's units seemed to teleport small distances and droids/structures would explode before the enemy came near. It was because the cheating players units were moving much faster and their units were in different places than what others viewed them (desynced).
Rush map was the gold standard of maps followed by Ziggurat. Not many other maps were played. Teamwar was the first non-stock map ever made in 2000 and it revolutionized the game play by putting all of the oil in a players base and allowed them to duke it out with their opponent over a flat map. In retrospect, the entire evolution of WZ game play shifted towards Teamwar-like maps simply because the oil derricks do not produce enough power to sustain exciting game play in low oil maps (hence the reason for fixing this in EB mod).
In late 2001 or early 2002, mplayer folded or was bought out by Gamespy and Gamespy Arcade was now the main hosting service for WZ games. A lot of players did not transition to Gamespy and the community was significantly reduced as a result.
1.10 balance and strategy was absolutely terrible but none of us realized it at the time because we enjoyed the game. It was drastically different from what it is now.
In 1.10, from 1999 - 2006, never once did I ever make a single VTOL, cyborg or mobile artillery. Cyborgs were absolutely worthless and the cyborg factory was just like the command center relay, nobody ever built it. There wasn't any way to disable VTOL's or mobile artillery but if a player was caught using them then it was a legit reason to immediately quit and leave the game. The reason being is that they were so overpowered that their usage was the only viable strategy and it was understood by all players that you didn't use mobile artillery or VTOL's for this reason. They were strictly off limits and everyone in the community knew this. Kicking players was not possible at the time.
The common rule set all players adhered by was known as "All No" referring to No VTOL's, No Mob Arty, No decoys and No BT (Build Time). BT was usually specificed to be either 5, 10 or 15 minutes and meant that players were not allowed to cross the midway point between their opponent before the BT was over. Doing so was grounds for disqualification. Game name formats were typically listed as "All no, BT 15"
The usage of decoys evolved around 2002 in which it was realized that buildings received 100% of their hitpoints the moment construction is started and that droids fire at defensive structures before other droids. As a result, this caused a huge unintended consequence. It was discovered that building hundreds of unfinished bunkers and fortresses was the most effective strategy because they acted like decoys and absorbed all enemy fire. Since players were always out of power anyways, it didn't cost them anything to start construction on a building. Therefore the strategy was to build as many decoy structures as close as possible to your opponent and keep your tanks behind them. This essentially ruined any strategy WZ had to offer but it wasn't much at the time anyways because there were only 4 weapons used: Heavy cannon, lancer, scourge and laser.
Once teamwar map was released, all players started playing T3 games because T1 was far too slow. I don't remember the exact details of build order in T1 but I do remember that you wouldn't make contact with your opponent for at least the first 30 minutes due to the slow nature of the tech tree. T1 games could last up to 2 hours that usually ended in a stalemate due to artillery being overpowered. I don't remember arch angel, probably because the tech tree was so long it was rarely obtained.
All weapons were worthless relative to lancer and Heavy Cannon. Lancer was by far the best weapon in T1. All bodies were worthless except for scorpion and mantis. In T3 all players only made hover, mantis, heavy cannon. Rarely did players ever use scourge or laser due to balancing. So basically it was just a contest who could control heavy cannon mantis hover the best while building decoys.
All T3 games typically lasted 15 minutes in which after that time the person with the most heavy cannon hover mantis won was able to outnumber the same army from their opponent.
We did not use cyborgs, MG's, any cannons other than heavy cannon, any rockets other than lancer, no VTOL's and only hellstorm emplacements, no groundshaker. Artillery tanks were strictly forbidden.
The biggest flaw in all of WZ was discovered around 2004 when me and AaD-Knife-Man tested that unit and power production rates varied per player based on the stats of their PC. This essentially meant that some players had huge advantages over others simply because their PC allowed them to produce more power. I could never confirm this to be the case because I always suspected Knife Man of using speed cheat.
Another minor bug was that if you held the tab button while dieing, it would prevent the game from ending although the players knew who won the game by that time.
By 2004 there was only maybe 20 - 25 players online at a time. By 2005 it was about 5 - 15. By the end of 2006, I wouldn't see any players for weeks. During all of this time, I think teamwar and New Teamwar were the only maps available other than the stock maps that came with the game. There wasn't any map editor available to players so we all just played teamwar map.
When I refound WZ in 2013, I saw players making cyborgs and minipods and doing all of these newb things that I had never seen before. I was shocked at how much the game had improved, it was a lot of run relearning WZ all over again in 3.1. It was only until earlier this year that I discovered what the "stats" were. Once I did, it became my mission to improve them.
Games in 1999 - 2000 were hosted by a 3rd party service known as "mplayer" that also hosted chat lobbies for several other games as well. Players from other video games could easily stop in the Warzone gaming lobby and connect with the community. Total Annihilation was the main competing RTS game with WZ. Players had avatars, profiles and could speak through a microphone.
The year 2000 was the peak of WZ with as many as 250 players in the chat lobby at one time although 100 - 150 was more like the average. The community was somewhat small but players' names were known and clans were territorial. RBL, WF, NF, DOW, MOW, WCS, Chem, Dr, GER, SoS and CC were the main clans of the time. Keep in mind, the notion of a "clan" was still relatively new in the world of online gaming.
Most people had dial-up 56k connections. I have no idea how the game didn't lag.
Mplayer staff members hosted KOTH tournaments (King Of The Hill) and were held about once every 2 months for the first year and tournaments were always played on rush map. MOW_Badboy won every tournament (5 total I think) except for the last one in which CC-Vegita won by using the soon to be infamous speed cheat. The speed cheat was a program that made a person's PC run faster (CPU clock I think) and consequently so did WZ including the research, production and power rates. Cheating played a large part in WZ's demise. The most common indicators of cheating was that a player wouldn't be able to tell the correct in-game time since their clocked ticked much faster. The other indicator was that the cheating player's units seemed to teleport small distances and droids/structures would explode before the enemy came near. It was because the cheating players units were moving much faster and their units were in different places than what others viewed them (desynced).
Rush map was the gold standard of maps followed by Ziggurat. Not many other maps were played. Teamwar was the first non-stock map ever made in 2000 and it revolutionized the game play by putting all of the oil in a players base and allowed them to duke it out with their opponent over a flat map. In retrospect, the entire evolution of WZ game play shifted towards Teamwar-like maps simply because the oil derricks do not produce enough power to sustain exciting game play in low oil maps (hence the reason for fixing this in EB mod).
In late 2001 or early 2002, mplayer folded or was bought out by Gamespy and Gamespy Arcade was now the main hosting service for WZ games. A lot of players did not transition to Gamespy and the community was significantly reduced as a result.
1.10 balance and strategy was absolutely terrible but none of us realized it at the time because we enjoyed the game. It was drastically different from what it is now.
In 1.10, from 1999 - 2006, never once did I ever make a single VTOL, cyborg or mobile artillery. Cyborgs were absolutely worthless and the cyborg factory was just like the command center relay, nobody ever built it. There wasn't any way to disable VTOL's or mobile artillery but if a player was caught using them then it was a legit reason to immediately quit and leave the game. The reason being is that they were so overpowered that their usage was the only viable strategy and it was understood by all players that you didn't use mobile artillery or VTOL's for this reason. They were strictly off limits and everyone in the community knew this. Kicking players was not possible at the time.
The common rule set all players adhered by was known as "All No" referring to No VTOL's, No Mob Arty, No decoys and No BT (Build Time). BT was usually specificed to be either 5, 10 or 15 minutes and meant that players were not allowed to cross the midway point between their opponent before the BT was over. Doing so was grounds for disqualification. Game name formats were typically listed as "All no, BT 15"
The usage of decoys evolved around 2002 in which it was realized that buildings received 100% of their hitpoints the moment construction is started and that droids fire at defensive structures before other droids. As a result, this caused a huge unintended consequence. It was discovered that building hundreds of unfinished bunkers and fortresses was the most effective strategy because they acted like decoys and absorbed all enemy fire. Since players were always out of power anyways, it didn't cost them anything to start construction on a building. Therefore the strategy was to build as many decoy structures as close as possible to your opponent and keep your tanks behind them. This essentially ruined any strategy WZ had to offer but it wasn't much at the time anyways because there were only 4 weapons used: Heavy cannon, lancer, scourge and laser.
Once teamwar map was released, all players started playing T3 games because T1 was far too slow. I don't remember the exact details of build order in T1 but I do remember that you wouldn't make contact with your opponent for at least the first 30 minutes due to the slow nature of the tech tree. T1 games could last up to 2 hours that usually ended in a stalemate due to artillery being overpowered. I don't remember arch angel, probably because the tech tree was so long it was rarely obtained.
All weapons were worthless relative to lancer and Heavy Cannon. Lancer was by far the best weapon in T1. All bodies were worthless except for scorpion and mantis. In T3 all players only made hover, mantis, heavy cannon. Rarely did players ever use scourge or laser due to balancing. So basically it was just a contest who could control heavy cannon mantis hover the best while building decoys.
All T3 games typically lasted 15 minutes in which after that time the person with the most heavy cannon hover mantis won was able to outnumber the same army from their opponent.
We did not use cyborgs, MG's, any cannons other than heavy cannon, any rockets other than lancer, no VTOL's and only hellstorm emplacements, no groundshaker. Artillery tanks were strictly forbidden.
The biggest flaw in all of WZ was discovered around 2004 when me and AaD-Knife-Man tested that unit and power production rates varied per player based on the stats of their PC. This essentially meant that some players had huge advantages over others simply because their PC allowed them to produce more power. I could never confirm this to be the case because I always suspected Knife Man of using speed cheat.
Another minor bug was that if you held the tab button while dieing, it would prevent the game from ending although the players knew who won the game by that time.
By 2004 there was only maybe 20 - 25 players online at a time. By 2005 it was about 5 - 15. By the end of 2006, I wouldn't see any players for weeks. During all of this time, I think teamwar and New Teamwar were the only maps available other than the stock maps that came with the game. There wasn't any map editor available to players so we all just played teamwar map.
When I refound WZ in 2013, I saw players making cyborgs and minipods and doing all of these newb things that I had never seen before. I was shocked at how much the game had improved, it was a lot of run relearning WZ all over again in 3.1. It was only until earlier this year that I discovered what the "stats" were. Once I did, it became my mission to improve them.