Warbirds Online

[A1C_Elliott]

has anyone ever heard of warbirds online? ive been flying on its VERY off/on for the last 5 years, its pretty fun... it aint no accusim models now, but i was wondering how man people had even heard of it? its like a ww2 flight sim MMORPG. Kinda first of its kind but falling to the way side. Very sad

[realtrance]

It's been around since the mid-1990s, amazing it's still going.

[A1C_Elliott]

been jammin on it alot today, its pretty fun, but i dont know if its worth the monthly charge after the two free weeks. ive been playing it roughly 6 years and i mean not alot has changed. but they have finally updated it to like... maybe FS2004 type graphics... These guys need advertising help and what not for sure.

[JJB17463rdBombGroup]

I've been tinkering around with it since the late 90's offline though (don't get the real fun).
Remember the Air Warrior series which was older than Warbirds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Warrior


When that era ended I think some of the developers of that came out with a substitute called Aces High
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aces_High_(computer_game)

[Tomesk]

I've been tinkering around with it since the late 90's offline though (don't get the real fun).
Remember the Air Warrior series which was older than Warbirds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Warrior

When that era ended I think some of the developers of that came out with a substitute called Aces High
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aces_High_(computer_game)

I believe some of those guys went on to develop WWIIOL:

http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/

Great game when the player population was strong. I played pretty regularly around the heyday in 2004-2006. Game is still going strong although the occasional times that I have logged on recently it seems a little quiet.

[seaniam81]

There's always Rise of Flight. It's got a real strong community and is always being worked on by developers. Free demo is limited to 2 aircraft and some game mode limits, but other then that it's completely playable.

[Lewis - A2A]

Ive heard of it but I was always an aces high kinda guy, though even with that it was on and off and mostly flew standard now classic WW2 combat sims such as EAW.

[JJB17463rdBombGroup]

EAW was easily my favorite for a lot of years too.
It had amazing immersible ambiance Never got bored with it.
Probably the best well rounded WW2 flight sim out there in the year 1999 and 1999 sure had a slew full of WW2 combat flight sims.

[A1C_Elliott]

the battleground europe game..... one word.... EPIC! i cant beleive the realism put into this game

[Hook]

Good ol' WarBirds. That was the last company I worked for before I retired about 1999. I maintained their Unix billing system.

In those days it was $2 per hour to fly, and a typical monthly bill was around $65, although there were a few who paid as much as $250 per month to fly online.

WarBirds grew out of Dale Addink's involvement with Air Warrior. He figured out how to use his own flight models, and eventually made his own program which became WarBirds. There was some good natured rivalry between the two companies.

When the company "merged" with iMagic, the quality of WarBirds promotion went down, as iMagic wouldn't let WarBirds handle it. They wanted everyone to relocate from Texas to Research Triangle Park (?) and I don't think anyone wanted to. Dale and a few of the people went off to make Aces High, and John McQueen and the rest went on to make WW2Online. After I left WarBirds, I did not keep up with the new games.

Dale was the best programmer I even met. He had 28 years of experience at the time, to my 23, and I watched him sit and think for a moment, then start typing in textbook perfect code that worked. We had some extremely good people working there.

People would buy games and bring them in to work and we'd all check them out. Research, y'know. A lot of the guys liked to fly a WW1 simulator, but I forget the name. We also played a lot of WarBirds, even at work, and Pyro, the guy who handled the flight models, was good enough that he could sneak up behind someone, shoot out all their control surfaces, then leave them flying like that.

It was a lot of fun. I don't miss it a bit.

Hook

[Gypsy Baron]

Good ol' WarBirds. That was the last company I worked for before I retired about 1999. I maintained their Unix billing system.

In those days it was $2 per hour to fly, and a typical monthly bill was around $65, although there were a few who paid as much as $250 per month to fly online.

WarBirds grew out of Dale Addink's involvement with Air Warrior. He figured out how to use his own flight models, and eventually made his own program which became WarBirds. There was some good natured rivalry between the two companies.

When the company "merged" with iMagic, the quality of WarBirds promotion went down, as iMagic wouldn't let WarBirds handle it. They wanted everyone to relocate from Texas to Research Triangle Park (?) and I don't think anyone wanted to. Dale and a few of the people went off to make Aces High, and John McQueen and the rest went on to make WW2Online. After I left WarBirds, I did not keep up with the new games.

Dale was the best programmer I even met. He had 28 years of experience at the time, to my 23, and I watched him sit and think for a moment, then start typing in textbook perfect code that worked. We had some extremely good people working there.

People would buy games and bring them in to work and we'd all check them out. Research, y'know. A lot of the guys liked to fly a WW1 simulator, but I forget the name. We also played a lot of WarBirds, even at work, and Pyro, the guy who handled the flight models, was good enough that he could sneak up behind someone, shoot out all their control surfaces, then leave them flying like that.

It was a lot of fun. I don't miss it a bit.

Hook

Ah, good history there Hook. Dale is STILL " the best programmer" as he developed Aces High after the 'conflicts'
over at Warbirds.

I first ran into HiTech back in 92, I think it was. Flying Air Warrior on the GEnie network. Back then it was $6/hour
and $12/hour 'prime time'! Fortunately 'prime time' was during normal US business hours so flying in the evenings
only incurred the $6 rate Many a month I had $600 to $700 credit card bills. That is just how addictive AW was!
I was '4580' plus a couple of 'shade account tail numbers back then When AW went on to the CRIS network
and the price dropped to, $3/hour it was a god-send for us hard core fliers.

Then of course the $14.95 all-you-can-eat price when it went on to AOL and Delphi brought in another influx
of 'ten thousand dweebs" ! Unfortunately that 'watered down' the nature of the experience, at least for me.
Too many arenas spread/split the community out over ETO/PAC/Full Realism/Half-Time, etc.

However, that said, the community that AW spawned is still alive and well today. I have an Aces High account (GypsyB)
but I don't fly there much at all. I loved AW scenarios...particularly back in the AW days when DoK ran the 12-frame events.
Frames on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday for 4 weeks running! VERY intense, particularly if you were on a command staff
and had to generate new orders for your group overnight after the Saturday frame. I killed a LOT of trees back then
with my 12-15 page mission orders/plan for the buffs!

Aces High evolved into too much of a 'capture the flag' mentality and less of an air-to-air combat environment. That's
when I went 'dormant' there. I now dedicate my online flying time to the 91st Bombardment Group in FSX as the
'Mission Development Officer'.

These days a bunch of us now old Air Warriors still congregate online in a NNTP newsgroup hosted on a server run
by one of the AW pilots. Just recently Blue Baron started to frequent the group again, bringing with him great memories
and stories of AW days long past! There is also a couple of FaceBook pages dedicated to AW out there but they are
not nearly as 'intimate' as the 'begweek' newsgroup.

On a trip to New York City a week ago I had lunch the another AW pilots (Lone Ranger) and have met up with others
from time to time all over the world. That is an indication of the lasting effects of a truly great sim and the people
who made it possible and used it.

A couple of years back we had another 'reunion' back in Indy. hosted by Jordi. Kelton Flynn, the father of AW' made
an appearance and was duly honored.

Many of the old Kesmai staff are still working in the gaming industry. I believe Moggy is as well as Quarters.

Paul aka Gypsy Baron aka 4580 aka GypsyB

[A1C_Elliott]

this is some awesome history, i knew warbirds went way back. However, i didnt knwo you used to pay by the hour. Infact, i think im so young i dont know of any games that are pay by the hour... when i went to visit my uncle in the czech republic they are still using pay by the hour internet there for all connection private or business i beleive. I cant imagine the bills id rack up, im ALWAYS connected lol.

Ive been playing on ww2online since it was posted up there, i can honestly say its a true shame the waste of good games like this one and warbirds and aces high.... they all have their issues and are all considered "low grade" in todays standards, and especially with WW2Online, its a complete shame......

I dont see how there isnt a ton of people playing these games, especially in the flight sim community. Although there arent terribly alot of platforms for flight simming, like there is of first person shooter up games, it sometimes feels like the sim community maybe too saturated with games at times. Once again, its just a shame....

Still good stuff, just not the same investment's being made into furthering the games.....

[Lewis - A2A]

SIMHQ is still home to a great EAW community still flying here;
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/f ... an_Air_War

IMO the classic of all classics, love that sim!

[A1C_Elliott]

ok so i got sucked into war thunder.... WW2 Online was awesome, only problem was... like me, everyone gives up on it... including the devs.....