General Discussion Forums |
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| URL | TribalWar.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Gaming news/general forums |
| Registration | Free; Required to post |
| Owner | Anthony "Rayn" Maio |
| Created by | Anthony "Rayn" Maio, Jon "Ratorasniki" Naiman and Johnny "Imposter" Titus |
| Launched | December 6, 1999 |
TribalWar, often abbreviated TW, is a general news website that originally focused on the game Starsiege: Tribes, or Tribes, a team-based online multiplayer first-person shooter, and its subsequent sequel and prequel. TribalWar was created on December 5, 1999, by Anthony "Rayn" Maio, Jon "Ratorasniki" Naiman and Johnny "Imposter" Titus. The website has since propagated its news coverage to general subjects due to the financial failure of the most recent Tribes game, Tribes: Vengeance, and presumed end to the Tribes franchise.[1] The most popular feature of TribalWar's website is their message board, which uses a heavily modified version of vBulletin. TW currently has the 17th highest number of posts of any video game forum[2] and the 6th highest post/member ratio of any video game forum[3] according to Big Boards. Over twelve million posts have been made on TW by its approximately 21,400 members. TribalWar has expanded to the point of almost excluding the game series it was formed around, although it still features specific forums dedicated to Tribes. In order to appeal to a more varied audience, they now feature non-gaming subforums.
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Tribalwar was originally conceived by Anthony "Rayn" Maio after the now defunct website "planet-tribes" lost its web host. He enlisted the help of two other members of the Tribes community, Jon "Ratorasniki" Naiman and Johnny "Imposter" Titus. Their plan was to develop a base for the members of the competitive Tribes community who played on the Online Gaming League, or OGL, a game ladder. At the time, the community interacted almost exclusively on OGL's message board, but soon grew tired of the strict moderation and a perceived high amount of censorship.[4]
TW's forums were created by Naiman and provided an outlet for the disgruntled members of the OGL forums. Soon after the forum's conception, Maio created an automated system for website goers to upload and download demos, or in-game recordings, of OGL matches between the "tribes", the term for the teams formed to play the game competitively. Naiman along with his brother, "Beatstick", and a friend, "Wonderdog", picked up and promoted with great success the idea to SHOUTcast matches between top tribes. TribalWar hosted the new broadcast "network", named TSN, or the Tribes SHOUTcast Network, which later became known as the Team Sportscast Network. TSN later separated from TribalWar and formed into a limited liability company and expanded into games beyond Tribes. A bustling forum, demo hosting, a SHOUTcast network, and later hosting for top tribes as well as members of the community who created mods, maps, scripts, and HUDs, or head-up displays, helped TribalWar to become the central Tribes related site.[4]
The announcement of Tribes 2 and its subsequent release in March 2001, marked a period in which TribalWar became the source of news for the Tribes franchise. Many employees of Dynamix, the company which developed Tribes and Tribes 2, and Sierra Entertainment, the company which published the entire Tribes series, joined TribalWar's forums - most notably Tribes 2's producer, Dave "QIX" Georgeson of Dynamix, and brand manager Alex "Marweas" Rodberg of Sierra. The staff at TW developed a script to alert them any time posts were made on the forum by Dynamix and Sierra employees and the content of these posts often found their way into news articles which were picked up by popular game news sites such as Blue's News,[5] IGN,[6] Shacknews,[7] and FiringSquad.[8] Although Tribes 2 was economically successful (selling over 400,000 copies[9]), it suffered from a premature release and incomplete software patches. The game also came under criticism from TribalWar's community because of a perceived "slowing and dumbing down" of the game compared to Tribes 1. Dave Georgeson eventually ceased his posting on TW's forums due to the hostility directed towards him. Although Dynamix was shutdown a few months after Tribes 2's release, former development team members (GarageGames) continued to support it and contribute on TribalWar.
In August 2002, Sierra hosted an event in Seattle, WA dubbed the "Tribes Council". Three Sierra representatives invited and met with 18 prominent members of the Tribes community, almost all either affiliated with and/or a member of TribalWar and its forums. The purpose was to discuss the major issues the community had with Tribes 2 and the future of the Tribes franchise. [10] Sierra's increasing working relationship with TribalWar was met with criticism; Jerry Holkins of the comic strip site Penny Arcade accused the publisher of pandering to the "whiner's choir" at TribalWar. [11]
Following the announcement of a third Tribes title (Tribes: Vengeance or T:V, a prequel to the first two Tribes games) in April 2003, TribalWar gained a role in the development of the game. The creator of a popular mod for Tribes and Tribes 2 and TribalWar contributor, Michael "Kinetic Poet" Johnston, was hired by the game's developer, Irrational Games - one of his functions being a liaison between the community and the developers. TW worked with Sierra's new parent company, Vivendi Universal, to host public competitions to create background music for promotional trailers for T:V[12] as well as a skinning contest ("A skin is the two-dimensional texture that is placed over a three-dimensional character model to give it a unique look in a videogame").[13] In 2004, two annual LAN parties for TribalWar members - TribesCON for west coast members and UVALAN for east coast members - were combined (held at the same time in Los Angeles, CA and Chantilly, VA) and the event was named Tribal Wars 2004. The event was used as a marketing push for T:V and the developers debuted a beta of the game for attendees to play. The event was covered by G4 (TV channel) and a profile of the event was aired. (G4's coverage of Tribalwars 2004) The three armor types in the game were named after TW members ("Kinetic Poet"; "Natural", the most prominent tribes 1 player; and "Colosus", a TribalWar administrator).
Tribes: Vengeance was released in October 2004 and despite critically good reviews ([1] [14][15]) the game suffered from terrible sales (47,000 copies of T:V were sold after six months in comparison to the 210,000 copies of Tribes 1 and 400,000 copies of tribes 2[9]) . There were a number of reasons for this: Poor marketing, a lack of support (only one patch was released), cheating, and competition from more heavily advertised and prominent games such as World of Warcraft, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Halo 2. In March 2005, a planned second patch that was to add anti-cheating software was officially dropped because it "was simply not economically viable" to run it through the quality analysis process.[16] In a post on TW's forums, now former Sierra brand manager, Alex "Marweas" Rodberg, said, "VUG... [has] no plans for current support, let alone further TRIBES products... TribalWar will have nothing further to do with TRIBES except as a fan site helping them squeeze the last few nickels out of the franchise." [17] T:V's failure left TribalWar in a bind as its namesake no longer had a future.
Ever since the demise of the Tribes franchise following Tribes: Vengeance's failure, TribalWar has shifted its focus from a Tribes news site to a general news site and off-topic forum. TW has adopted a digg style news format, meaning users are able to submit news and others can "bump" it.