The Major BBS Forums (Archive)

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 3:10 am**

for those that have been asking about infinetworks prices,etc...

http://arcticzone.dyndns.org/infinet

im adding more, he is sending me a revised list sometime this weekend.

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:23 pm**

Well, I surely hope they have a better pricing plan than that, because those dialup prices are a ripoff.

Cybertank wasn't even really played a lot by most people on any of the local boards I use to log in on. In fact, ring masters was probably played 100x more.

I would probably pay $25 for cybertank and $15 for ringmasters though. If ringmasters was a 2-player only game, it wouldn't even be worth that, because getting 2 people to play it would be pretty hard. Luckily, it does have single player against the computer.

Posted: **Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:22 pm**

Malakai wrote:Well, I surely hope they have a better pricing plan than that, because those dialup prices are a ripoff.

Cybertank wasn't even really played a lot by most people on any of the local boards I use to log in on. In fact, ring masters was probably played 100x more.

I would probably pay $25 for cybertank and $15 for ringmasters though. If ringmasters was a 2-player only game, it wouldn't even be worth that, because getting 2 people to play it would be pretty hard. Luckily, it does have single player against the computer.

what ya look at is the platform it runs on versus its price.
wg modules have always been pricey.
matter of fact i think majorjail is the first one i have ever seen under $50

in todays wg age i totally agree that game pricing should come down.
most my small stuff is free i have 3 games that will cost only cause i been putting alot of work into them and i am getting away from btrieve and going the powerlink route.

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:03 am**

I'm not even looking at how good or bad a game is but at how many people are going to play them. Back in the dialup days, on the largest board on my area, cybertank had probably 5 people total playing it over the bbs's lifetime. I did not really play the game either, other than just going in to it and seeing what it was but have the feeling that I might personally like it.

Ringmasters had a few more, because it was a "different" game, to toy around with some times or play against friends, but I doubt that game supported any long-term gameplay. This game, however, I did play some.

I can't dictate how much Nate is going to charge for either of the games, but I can make the choice not to buy them if I think they're too much $$$.

All of the money to be made on worldgroup as a hobbiest board is already made, as far as I'm concerned. If these guys want to help hobbiests out, they will definately need to get a better pricing scheme, if not totally free. It's unfortunate that Metropolis's MajorMud is actually what's keeping worldgroup hobbiest boards alive.

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:30 am**

Malakai wrote:I'm not even looking at how good or bad a game is but at how many people are going to play them. Back in the dialup days, on the largest board on my area, cybertank had probably 5 people total playing it over the bbs's lifetime. I did not really play the game either, other than just going in to it and seeing what it was but have the feeling that I might personally like it.

Ringmasters had a few more, because it was a "different" game, to toy around with some times or play against friends, but I doubt that game supported any long-term gameplay. This game, however, I did play some.

I can't dictate how much Nate is going to charge for either of the games, but I can make the choice not to buy them if I think they're too much $$$.

All of the money to be made on worldgroup as a hobbiest board is already made, as far as I'm concerned. If these guys want to help hobbiests out, they will definately need to get a better pricing scheme, if not totally free. It's unfortunate that Metropolis's MajorMud is actually what's keeping worldgroup hobbiest boards alive.

yeah but theres alot of bbs's out there that we havent even seen yet. die hard-gcomm fanatics that once gcomm went bankrupt they didnt care for the netvillage version of gcomm.
i have a database i have put together with, yes count em, over 300 worldgroup related bbs's.
one of em i wrote the globals package for em, they actually bought and paid for alot of the old stuff that was extremely expensive.

they do not run mud, or any mud for that matter cause they believe in down-home bbs'ing not logon and script 24/7.

theres a large community out there bigger than we are seeing so as long as people continue to buy prices wont fall, sad yes, but true.

majormud hasnt sold a version of rose since 2001 its still what $599?

just the way it is sometimes, most i do nowadays is support and help others get online and get running, i have a few modules yes but as you said im not wasting away years of coding for something that will only make a dime here and there.

my biggest thing was global teleconference for majorbbs 6.25 there were i think 5 modules named this, i sold a ton of those back in the days.

will the product resurrect? no. as much as rick or nate would love to see WG rise from the ashes its not gonna happen no matter how well you re-write it, upgrade it, etc....

it had its run, now its synchronets time. say we make wg tru 32bit totallyt redone, in the time it will take to do that synchronet will be up to v5 by then. the problem with wg has been greed. over the years all these people wanted to see this and that added to wg or this changed and never happened.

wanna know what, 4 of those people now help rob develop synchronet and one of em is the man responsible for making the web server js/php/sql/cgi friendly.

if a single entity tries to control a product that needs this much work its gonna be a long journey.

i got massive devleopers experience but nothingo n the scale rick is looking for to develop the new WG, im a self taught programmer but a college graduate networking engineer

i taught myself c playing with wg modules for fun.

now diont take this post the wrong way im never leaving WG im a dedicated fan and will continue to offer the support i have been giving over the years, and helping everyone within this community as i have always done.

i mean hell who else do you know sees someone make a request for a module and i have a working module ready by morning?
and ask for 'zero' dollars.

i love WG always have i just feel things should be done differently.

my 2 cents

i

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:49 am**

Malakai wrote:I'm not even looking at how good or bad a game is but at how many people are going to play them. Back in the dialup days, on the largest board on my area, cybertank had probably 5 people total playing it over the bbs's lifetime. I did not really play the game either, other than just going in to it and seeing what it was but have the feeling that I might personally like it.

Ringmasters had a few more, because it was a "different" game, to toy around with some times or play against friends, but I doubt that game supported any long-term gameplay. This game, however, I did play some.

I can't dictate how much Nate is going to charge for either of the games, but I can make the choice not to buy them if I think they're too much $$$.

All of the money to be made on worldgroup as a hobbiest board is already made, as far as I'm concerned. If these guys want to help hobbiests out, they will definately need to get a better pricing scheme, if not totally free. It's unfortunate that Metropolis's MajorMud is actually what's keeping worldgroup hobbiest boards alive.

I will not comment on another vendors prices as that's their deal and they can run their business the way they like but I don't believe modules should be free as it takes a LONG LONG LONG LONG time to write a module.

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:52 am**

I know what you mean. I ran a PCBoard BBS years ago, 3 nodes, and never made a dime off of it. We could take this back to somewhere between 89 and 92, when bbs systems started shooting up every where (not just wg/mbbs) and door game authors and bbs program authors just went hog wild, pumping out stuff to make millions of dollars from.

I have mixed feelings about this, because these people mostly ran hobbiest boards. There are 2 sides to it:
#1: Hobbiest boards make little or no money
#2: doesn't matter if hobbiest boards made money, because the coders had to get money for their work and time

I spent $800 on the PC to run pcboard, another $400 to upgrade the ram, another $150 for 5 node version of pcboard, and about $300+ for modems, $450 for phone-line installations, the cost for running 3 numbers monthly (can't remember what it was back then), $300 for a hard drive, not counting other stuff, all to offer access to the visitors for free.

Now, add about 30 games, that cost any where from $15 to $35+ for the average board, 1 or multiple cd-roms for night owl and modem madness and crap like about half of the boards had.. Long distance calls every night, if your fidonet hub was long distance calling.

Add the cost of repairs when needed, etc.. You get the picture.

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 4:14 am**

Malakai wrote:I know what you mean. I ran a PCBoard BBS years ago, 3 nodes, and never made a dime off of it. We could take this back to somewhere between 89 and 92, when bbs systems started shooting up every where (not just wg/mbbs) and door game authors and bbs program authors just went hog wild, pumping out stuff to make millions of dollars from.

I have mixed feelings about this, because these people mostly ran hobbiest boards. There are 2 sides to it:
#1: Hobbiest boards make little or no money
#2: doesn't matter if hobbiest boards made money, because the coders had to get money for their work and time

I spent $800 on the PC to run pcboard, another $400 to upgrade the ram, another $150 for 5 node version of pcboard, and about $300+ for modems, $450 for phone-line installations, the cost for running 3 numbers monthly (can't remember what it was back then), $300 for a hard drive, not counting other stuff, all to offer access to the visitors for free.

Now, add about 30 games, that cost any where from $15 to $35+ for the average board, 1 or multiple cd-roms for night owl and modem madness and crap like about half of the boards had.. Long distance calls every night, if your fidonet hub was long distance calling.

Add the cost of repairs when needed, etc.. You get the picture.

Well, hobbies do cost money. The question is: Is an original game written today worth buying if it has good game play value?

Posted: **Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:39 am**

I really wish the answer to that could be yes, and even though I can't say no, it's about what visitors would play. People are hesitant to play new stuff, and it seems as though the only people that ever go in to chat rooms are sysops talking to other sysops.

I can tell you what people play on my board, if that will help you come up with some thing. I do not have majormud yet...
#1: T-Lord
#2: SOC
#3: Mutants
#4: Other versions of LORD (DOS/Synchronet door game server)
#5: BladeMaster
#6: Farwest Trivia
#7: PimpWars

Tournament LORD has somewhere around 20 players. Swords of chaos has around 6 or 7 players, mutants has a few that comes and goes, but most people that know the game gets out of it because of the crash bugs and spells i've had to take out to prevent those. Farwest trivia has 2-3 people every month messing around with it, usually not much serious.

Wilderlands II has 1 person that plays for a few mins every couple weeks.

Blademaster has about 3 or so players, and pimpwars has 4 or 5 players.

The Rose - COG is never played. Oltima 2000 is never played. Fazuul, kyrandia, and zorgon are never played. Quest for magic was played a little bit, but it had to be taken out, due to the crash bug.

I think a few people venture in to the horoscope/biorhythm, and even lunatix as well but not too often.

All in all, you might as well say that my visitors are mainly focused on LORD. Legend of the Red Dragon is just what people know. It wasn't my intentions for it to be that way, but that's just how things fell in to place. [/img]

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:39 pm**

Did nate ever get back to you with a final pricing scheme, or has he decided to stick with the old pricing?

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:41 pm**

Malakai wrote:Did nate ever get back to you with a final pricing scheme, or has he decided to stick with the old pricing?

for now thats what ya get, i can get ya a better deal if ya tell me which one you are interested in.

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:43 pm**

A better deal with those dialup prices isn't going to be what they're actually worth in this day and age.. So, I guess I'll stop my pursuit of ring masters and cybertank :/

Posted: **Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:52 pm**

Like I said in the beginning, I'd be willing to pay $25 for cybertank and $15 for ring masters. If you can get him to sell those games for that price, he might actually sell a copy every once in awhile, instead of them being used as "Virtual" door stops.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:33 pm**

Malakai wrote:Like I said in the beginning, I'd be willing to pay $25 for cybertank and $15 for ring masters. If you can get him to sell those games for that price, he might actually sell a copy every once in awhile, instead of them being used as "Virtual" door stops.

I wouldn't bother to be honest. Those prices wont budge from what I understand. Hell, I couldn't get Nate to reply to my email for a couple of months now hence the reason we're developing our own games.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:09 pm**

The Storm wrote:
Malakai wrote:Like I said in the beginning, I'd be willing to pay $25 for cybertank and $15 for ring masters. If you can get him to sell those games for that price, he might actually sell a copy every once in awhile, instead of them being used as "Virtual" door stops.
I wouldn't bother to be honest. Those prices wont budge from what I understand. Hell, I couldn't get Nate to reply to my email for a couple of months now hence the reason we're developing our own games.

actually i purchased some of them at a very reasonable price.

as i said before most people nowadays email him for the source codes, or free keys, or wanan buy the source from him and hes not interested in selling.

also sometimes the emails dont get to him cause netvillage.com the bbs side of it was crashing so the emails weren't getting processed.

he emails me back immediately.

as far as a $25 module, i doubt he'd go that low, i mean alot of time goes into developing these things and to turn around and sell it for 20 bux wouldnt be worth the time.

i read in a forum once someone offering to buy a copy of majormud for no more than $40 cause thats what doormud costs.

games will reflect the platform they run on.

and thats general development lore.

compare prices to programs that ran under win 3.1 to the price of win 3.1

then programs that run under winxp to xp

same with majorbbs

$25 addon game would reflect around a bbs package costing $150 tops.

worldgroup thrugh netvillage is high priced as is the addons that come with it.

thats always been a fact with worldgroup and i dont see it changing really.

i cant really recall anything decent under 150 bux.

even on dos majormud,tele-arena,annex stuff all that was 150+

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:51 pm**

All pricing aside, the problem with Nate/Netvillage is that he betrayed the hobbiest sysops. I don't know who developed infinetwork and jabberwocky, whether it was nate or a third party, but he lost touch with the hobbiest and is only interested in the big money enterprise.

I've had graphics programs in the early 90s that cost over $4000 new. You know how much those programs are worth now? Probably $2 as retro collectables. The "he or she put so much time and/or work in to this module" doesn't cut it for me. PCBoard 5 node version was $150 when I originally bought it. I've seen several copies on ebay for $15, one of which didn't even get a bid. I've also seen several worldgroup/mbbs packages over the years on ebay, some with probably $100k worth of stuff originally. The last one I saw actually only sold for the price of what the version of majormud they included cost new. This had probably 40 games, a dma server, 2 PCs in which it ran, majormud, and a ton of other mods.. I think it sold for $1600.

Nate is just like gameport when it comes to responding to e-mails. I emailed gameport about a month ago about majormud, and they still have not responded to me, however, several months before, I actually bought t-lord from them, and they responded pretty fast. You really have to flash money in front of these people to make them even budge, which is ridiculous.

I know I saw a lot of stuff about pricing, but at least rick's stuff is only appx 1/3rd of the original price, and free in some cases.

There is a lot more I could say about Nate, but since this isn't my message board, I'll hold my tongue.

But I can say this.. It's every ones fault for competing against each other, trying to build up an empire, one that failed before in 1996. Too many coders, companies, owners, etc want to control the whole scene.

Nate has a vision of using worldgroup as enterprise servers, for porn sites, or database management or whatever.. Rick has a vision of bringing back the hobbiest sysops in to the game.

The way I also see it is if you're (also coders, companies, owners of isvs) not a contributor to the re-building of worldgroup, you're a contributor to its demise. I've even been caught up and fired up about the he-said she-said stuff. So, I'm probably as guilty as any one else, however, I'm not a coder, nor do I work for a company or ISV, or own any rights to any mbbs/wg modules. That's the difference. I'm the customer in this case.

When I decided to set up a worldgroup bbs earlier this year, I honestly did not know there was this much tension between ISVs, this much fighting, bulldogging, arguing, talking behind each others backs, jealousy, it's just like a bunch of kids going at it in the school yard.

I understand that, as a "business" you may not want to be friendly with other isvs that you see as competition, and that'd be fine and dandy except when it starts affecting the way potential buyers/customers start looking at the situation.

There is also another issue. Many sysops in the early to mid 90s felt abandoned by a lot of the ISVs, gcomm, and even clark development when it folded. Even when sean ferrell was still supporting his games, he was an asshole to a lot of people that were actually going to buy his games, and to people that just wanted support from him. Near the end, I've heard several stories of how he told people that wanted to buy TA just to find a crack on the net. I see why a lot of people consider him and numerous other ISVs as abandonware. I understand why some of the sysops have gotten angry about these "rights" shifts. Luckily, I wasn't part of those people, as I was a PCBoard sysop and bought my version at 15.3 I think. So, I didn't get stiffed for the metaworlds thing like so many other people that paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars and never received a refund or a product.

There are many games that worked on DOS MBBS, some on wg2 dos, that will most likely never see the worldgroup nt transition.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:50 pm**

Malakai wrote:All pricing aside, the problem with Nate/Netvillage is that he betrayed the hobbiest sysops. I don't know who developed infinetwork and jabberwocky, whether it was nate or a third party, but he lost touch with the hobbiest and is only interested in the big money enterprise.

I've had graphics programs in the early 90s that cost over $4000 new. You know how much those programs are worth now? Probably $2 as retro collectables. The "he or she put so much time and/or work in to this module" doesn't cut it for me. PCBoard 5 node version was $150 when I originally bought it. I've seen several copies on ebay for $15, one of which didn't even get a bid. I've also seen several worldgroup/mbbs packages over the years on ebay, some with probably $100k worth of stuff originally. The last one I saw actually only sold for the price of what the version of majormud they included cost new. This had probably 40 games, a dma server, 2 PCs in which it ran, majormud, and a ton of other mods.. I think it sold for $1600.

Nate is just like gameport when it comes to responding to e-mails. I emailed gameport about a month ago about majormud, and they still have not responded to me, however, several months before, I actually bought t-lord from them, and they responded pretty fast. You really have to flash money in front of these people to make them even budge, which is ridiculous.

I know I saw a lot of stuff about pricing, but at least rick's stuff is only appx 1/3rd of the original price, and free in some cases.

i see your pointm however PCB isnt supported anymore, worldgroup is.
now rather netvillage had the right to do it or not they still did it and contunie to support it, now theres rick who supports it as well, but bottom line is wg continues to be supported and sold, thus prices will never go down.

should they? hell yeah they should but at the same time the product needs to be partitioned so it offers the best of all worlds.

as WG is right now its in a world of trouble.
i have a DOS wg 2.0 server that will compete with any 3.xx version ever released and i did all this with borland 4.5

worldgroup needs to be updated to new standards, but the thing is, WG has always been expensive, synchronet may be free YEs, however no other BBs software platform has programs or games on any level to compete with worldgroups smallest addons.

my idea for a wg would be:

HOBBY EDITION - 50 node $100 (50 node upgrades $25 a piece)
includes only telnet daemon

addons would be an email package smtp,pop3 - $40
nntp stuff including maillink etc.. %35
webserver addon - $40

COMMERCIAL EDITION
everyting wg has to offer, boxed with an official distro Cd and bounc manual

100 user - $349
256 - $549

that would make everyone happy by serving their needs.

QUOTE

actually worldgroup was never created for the hobbyist sysop, i know its sad, but its true, they aimed at more online communities, and such rather than a sysop wanting to throw up a game server.
the MajorBBs was for the sysops running games and such when it went worldgroup it was setting the bar high for commercial sales.
now there are some who will probably disagree with me but gcomm got "GREEDY" they mad a ton off of simple people running simple servers so they stepped it up to get as much as they could.

when gcomm became galacticomm technologies it got even worse.
however i actually had some good talks going on right after the release of 3.12 about making available for the simple bbs's again removing everything but the baselines and telnet daemon.
the response was it was something worth attempting but would have t wait until some other things were ocmpleted.

needless to say one of those other things was their bankruptcy.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:39 pm**

Malakai wrote:All pricing aside, the problem with Nate/Netvillage is that he betrayed the hobbiest sysops. I don't know who developed infinetwork and jabberwocky, whether it was nate or a third party, but he lost touch with the hobbiest and is only interested in the big money enterprise.

He's just continuing the trend. Galacticomm, Inc. started that - a lot of folks started to feel squeezed from late 1995 and on.

Malakai wrote:I've had graphics programs in the early 90s that cost over $4000 new. You know how much those programs are worth now? Probably $2 as retro collectables. The "he or she put so much time and/or work in to this module" doesn't cut it for me. PCBoard 5 node version was $150 when I originally bought it. I've seen several copies on ebay for $15, one of which didn't even get a bid. I've also seen several worldgroup/mbbs packages over the years on ebay, some with probably $100k worth of stuff originally. The last one I saw actually only sold for the price of what the version of majormud they included cost new. This had probably 40 games, a dma server, 2 PCs in which it ran, majormud, and a ton of other mods.. I think it sold for $1600.

Correct. That is valid and true, and it's also true that The Major BBS and Worldgroup, in its current state, is only worth a fraction of what could be charged back when.

The funnier part is that in many ways, netVillage and Soft Arts, are charging MORE now for stuff then things were charged by the prior owners! That's ridiculous. Neither have done anything extreme to advance the code, just small fixes. Worldgroup was at 3.2 when netVillage.. ahem.. "took over" .. and 3.3 was the tip release of the code - half or more of the fixes were already done by Galacticomm. It was more a release to put their name on it, even though they didn't and don't own it.

Malakai wrote: Nate is just like gameport when it comes to responding to e-mails. I emailed gameport about a month ago about majormud, and they still have not responded to me, however, several months before, I actually bought t-lord from them, and they responded pretty fast. You really have to flash money in front of these people to make them even budge, which is ridiculous.

Gameport only cares about one and a half product - the one product is MajorMUD, which they acquired from West Coast Creations a few years ago. Since then, they've produced TWO add-on books - 8 and 9 - and that's it. They've been more than happy to charge for it, though. I have no idea what they bought it for, but I'd love to know.

The half is LORD. They only care because they actually get more than a handful of registrations, and they have a deal with a programmer named Michael Pressler that he maintains the code for them and they give him a percentage of the proceeds. Gameport still holds exclusive and absolute rights to the game, so there isn't any confusion.

Malakai wrote:I know I saw a lot of stuff about pricing, but at least rick's stuff is only appx 1/3rd of the original price, and free in some cases.

Yes, 1/3 or less, and most of the modules are free. Soon more will have source available, too. I'm trying to do right here.

The original goal was for them to be ALL FREE. But I couldn't, because the ISVs charged me quite a bit to acquire software rights, and so, I had to try to stem the bleeding so to speak. I never expect to break even, and if I do, I'll probably reduce prices to a token payment (to protect those that DID pay).

Malakai wrote: There is a lot more I could say about Nate, but since this isn't my message board, I'll hold my tongue.

You may say whatever you like. This is not a censored board.

But I can say this.. It's every ones fault for competing against each other, trying to build up an empire, one that failed before in 1996. Too many coders, companies, owners, etc want to control the whole scene.

Well.. no - but there is still a lot of greed here and that simply stinks. It's far too late for that, but the facts are what they are - the code was stolen by someone whose only interest was wringing what cash they could from it, with no care for the software, the customers, or the legacy. Much was tossed out, much was lost, all in the name of simple greed.

Malakai wrote:Nate has a vision of using worldgroup as enterprise servers, for porn sites, or database management or whatever.. Rick has a vision of bringing back the hobbiest sysops in to the game.

The way I also see it is if you're (also coders, companies, owners of isvs) not a contributor to the re-building of worldgroup, you're a contributor to its demise. I've even been caught up and fired up about the he-said she-said stuff. So, I'm probably as guilty as any one else, however, I'm not a coder, nor do I work for a company or ISV, or own any rights to any mbbs/wg modules. That's the difference. I'm the customer in this case.

I want to bring the hobbiest sysops back because they're the ones most likely to use it; to promote it; and to come up with ideas to advance it. Frankly, its a much more difficult sell to offer someone Worldgroup and expect them to get excited about it. It has a LOT of cool features tightly integrated out of the box, and its still easy to manage, but the features at this point are barebones and a decade behind in bells, whistles, etc.

Malakai wrote: When I decided to set up a worldgroup bbs earlier this year, I honestly did not know there was this much tension between ISVs, this much fighting, bulldogging, arguing, talking behind each others backs, jealousy, it's just like a bunch of kids going at it in the school yard.

There isn't tension. There aren't ISVs. There are three very large rightsholders to the great majority of ISV software - Elwynor Technologies, Dialsoft (who owns about 8-9 other ISV catalogs), and Metropolis Gameport. There's a fourth - Soft Arts - that owns a good number of modules. But Soft Arts is not active; they're taking depreciation and don't want to sell any copies. Metropolis only maintains -- and I use the term loosely -- two products of their 30+. Even Elwynor and Dialsoft aren't exactly "active" in developing new modules and updates because of resources issues. And the great majority of the other ISVs are dormant and/or lost. There are a couple that are trying to start up now, but..

The only tension there is, as far as I'm aware, is over the issue of who owns Worldgroup and Galacticomm.

Malakai wrote:I understand that, as a "business" you may not want to be friendly with other isvs that you see as competition, and that'd be fine and dandy except when it starts affecting the way potential buyers/customers start looking at the situation.

That's a problem, but, I feel it's important that people spending big money with a company know the facts. I prefer honesty.

Malakai wrote:There is also another issue. Many sysops in the early to mid 90s felt abandoned by a lot of the ISVs, gcomm, and even clark development when it folded. Even when sean ferrell was still supporting his games, he was an asshole to a lot of people that were actually going to buy his games, and to people that just wanted support from him. Near the end, I've heard several stories of how he told people that wanted to buy TA just to find a crack on the net. I see why a lot of people consider him and numerous other ISVs as abandonware. I understand why some of the sysops have gotten angry about these "rights" shifts. Luckily, I wasn't part of those people, as I was a PCBoard sysop and bought my version at 15.3 I think. So, I didn't get stiffed for the metaworlds thing like so many other people that paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars and never received a refund or a product.

Sean is a unique individual. What you don't know is that a lot of the ISVs were f***ed heavily by Galacticomm in 1996-7 ... some sued the company, others just gave up completely.. It wasn't managed well, it fell apart, etc..

Malakai wrote: There are many games that worked on DOS MBBS, some on wg2 dos, that will most likely never see the worldgroup nt transition.

Actually, that isn't true. I have found most people.. and am doing my best to negotiate to get the right to bring them back. I'd say the majority of DOS games/add-ons will eventually be ported to NT.

Currently working on and finalizing Datasafe and HVS. It takes time, because, frankly, it's not a priority to anyone anymore.

dspain wrote: i see your pointm however PCB isnt supported anymore, worldgroup is.
now rather netvillage had the right to do it or not they still did it and contunie to support it, now theres rick who supports it as well, but bottom line is wg continues to be supported and sold, thus prices will never go down.

should they? hell yeah they should but at the same time the product needs to be partitioned so it offers the best of all worlds.

Worldgroup is barely supported. If there were a real emergency problem, they wouldn't be able to react to it in a way that is expected of the prices they charge! All of their coding is out sourced and off-shored!

The product needs to expand and get more customers. That is impossible when you're turning interested and relevant parties away - even people who are not interested in being a hobbyist sysop but use it for small business or something - and losing that insight and influence on the product.

Worldgroup under Netvillage - it's been 7 years - and they've literally done next to nothing with the product. A point release that was very insignificant (3.2 to 3.3) and much done by Galacticomm, and a module or two.

You're telling me that you'd spend $5,000+ on a piece of software from a company that has that track record and expect to get relative support?

dspain wrote: as WG is right now its in a world of trouble.
i have a DOS wg 2.0 server that will compete with any 3.xx version ever released and i did all this with borland 4.5

What did you do? Come on, Dan. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the product, but really.

Worldgroup 3.3 itself isn't much different from the Major BBS 6.0. yeah, a client server and an active html engine. Aside from that, the damn thing's still Major BBS 6.0.

We need to advance the product, not go backward. The DOS versions are useless because DOS is useless.

dspain wrote: worldgroup needs to be updated to new standards, but the thing is, WG has always been expensive, synchronet may be free YEs, however no other BBs software platform has programs or games on any level to compete with worldgroups smallest addons.

There was a time that Major BBS cost $59.00 to get into. 2 user, sure, but $59 all the same.

There is no reason a similar and properly scoped pricing model could not be adopted.

dspain wrote: actually worldgroup was never created for the hobbyist sysop, i know its sad, but its true, they aimed at more online communities, and such rather than a sysop wanting to throw up a game server.
the MajorBBs was for the sysops running games and such when it went worldgroup it was setting the bar high for commercial sales.
now there are some who will probably disagree with me but gcomm got "GREEDY" they mad a ton off of simple people running simple servers so they stepped it up to get as much as they could.

The Major BBS and Worldgroup are identical products. All that changed was the branding; BBSes were dying, the Internet was all the rage, and Groupware, at the time, was a hot market (Lotus, Novell, Microsoft, and Corel). Worldgroup was re-named to reflect that the product was more than a BBS and capable of Groupware.

The Major BBS was never a hobby system, either, frankly. It was always meant to be a commercial system, as it was prohibitively expensive at any size beyond 4 lines even back in 1989.

dspain wrote: when gcomm became galacticomm technologies it got even worse.
however i actually had some good talks going on right after the release of 3.12 about making available for the simple bbs's again removing everything but the baselines and telnet daemon.
the response was it was something worth attempting but would have t wait until some other things were ocmpleted.

Yeah, and that could happen too, but you'd have to break it so that nobody could simply install the other daemons after the fact. Who wants to run crippleware? Who wants to run something that requires a complete re-install to enable later features?

dspain wrote: needless to say one of those other things was their bankruptcy.

Yes, but that had nothing to do with supporting hobby sysops.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:05 pm**

Questman wrote:
Malakai wrote: What did you do? Come on, Dan. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the product, but really.

well keep in mind all wg2 stuff i did was on a a/a level.

the no ghosting, pals, internal globals, exporting whos online to html w/o the need for active-html, internet email can be sent without typing IN:blah blah it detects @ in the name and automatically launches the internet email routines, an rlogin server that passes login/pw into the bbs and jumps right into a module, (crashes if user is a master key holder????)
just a ton of stuff, so yeah i;d say i got 2.0 terminal side running just as good as any of the 3.xx

but hell thats my opinion anyhow

and besides im done with 2.0 now im happy with my dos bbs and im moving on to other projects.

59 for major? you're talking v4 yeah? i dont think i was playing with this stuff with v4.

as far as confusion as to who owns it, i think everyone here is on the page that you do, i think the confusion is netvillage.com in general,
as long as they continue to sell their version i think confusion will always exist for people who dont regular this forum.
which is key to getting majornet back up and running.

i emailed marc for a maillink code, no response

and also in my opinion i feel the lack of informative sources also gets people awry.
((is that even a word? hell it sounded good ))

where would one go to buy a new copy of 3.xx nowadays?

bear with me i havent gotten down how to quote individually yet

regarding metro their demise is on its way, even some of their majormud developers are involved with the greatermud.com project.

complete rewrite of majormud in a stand-alone telnet mud.

the word greatermud.com is banned from majormud.com, lol

so thats gonna leave dialsoft, and elwynor.

thing is i think most sysops nowadays just wanna put up a fun place to play games, etc... IM's have murdered chat, it all comes down to gaming today.

only traffic i get on my server is support, other sysops wanting support stuff i like to say i have one of the best public file libraries for wg out there.

Worldgroup 3.3 itself isn't much different from the Major BBS 6.0. yeah, a client server and an active html engine. Aside from that, the damn thing's still Major BBS 6.0.

We need to advance the product, not go backward. The DOS versions are useless because DOS is useless.

dspain wrote: worldgroup needs to be updated to new standards, but the thing is, WG has always been expensive, synchronet may be free YEs, however no other BBs software platform has programs or games on any level to compete with worldgroups smallest addons.
There was a time that Major BBS cost $59.00 to get into. 2 user, sure, but $59 all the same.

There is no reason a similar and properly scoped pricing model could not be adopted.

dspain wrote: actually worldgroup was never created for the hobbyist sysop, i know its sad, but its true, they aimed at more online communities, and such rather than a sysop wanting to throw up a game server.
the MajorBBs was for the sysops running games and such when it went worldgroup it was setting the bar high for commercial sales.
now there are some who will probably disagree with me but gcomm got "GREEDY" they mad a ton off of simple people running simple servers so they stepped it up to get as much as they could.
The Major BBS and Worldgroup are identical products. All that changed was the branding; BBSes were dying, the Internet was all the rage, and Groupware, at the time, was a hot market (Lotus, Novell, Microsoft, and Corel). Worldgroup was re-named to reflect that the product was more than a BBS and capable of Groupware.

The Major BBS was never a hobby system, either, frankly. It was always meant to be a commercial system, as it was prohibitively expensive at any size beyond 4 lines even back in 1989.

dspain wrote: when gcomm became galacticomm technologies it got even worse.
however i actually had some good talks going on right after the release of 3.12 about making available for the simple bbs's again removing everything but the baselines and telnet daemon.
the response was it was something worth attempting but would have t wait until some other things were ocmpleted.
Yeah, and that could happen too, but you'd have to break it so that nobody could simply install the other daemons after the fact. Who wants to run crippleware? Who wants to run something that requires a complete re-install to enable later features?

dspain wrote: needless to say one of those other things was their bankruptcy.
Yes, but that had nothing to do with supporting hobby sysops.

Posted: **Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:23 pm**

If they kept the name MajorBbs
wg would have been, mbbs 7, 8 and 9, I think.

Posted: **Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:57 am**

I agree with Rick about worldgroup support. It's absent. I don't even think you can count the release of v3.30nt as a real release. I've had problems with it that 3.20 most likely doesn't have. It hasn't affected my ability to keep running it, but if I can easily switch to 3.20 with out any problems, I probably will.

We can only hope that Worldgroup is one day supported again. Taking away good features that every one, including things that hobbiests would use, like e-mail and web would just not be good. You mention synchronet. They have all of that stuff as well, but for free. There are ways to add more features on an enterprise version than just take out all of the servers though.

For one, you can add web hosting with secure password protection, in which each individual would be allowed to make sub accounts, or they could make it completely open to all. A built in web page designer on worldgroup's web server would be great too.

Secondly, I've said this before, video conferencing.. Hobby version = 2 or 3 user, netmeeting/enterprise/porn site = 256 user...

As far as no other bbs having the games/addons that mbbs has.. MBBS never had clans, pimpwars, barren realms elite, stardock loco, and a lot of the thousands of door games that were released, but mbbs games in general seem to work faster and most work in a multiplayer enviroment. BRE never had that, and I don't think Clans did either.

The first thing that turned me on to MBBS wasn't actually games. It was a couple things. First, just the multi-node enviroment, and secondly the teleconference. I've talked on many teleconference and chat systems from many bbs systems, including pcboard's chat, along with probably 20 chat mods on it, wildcat's chat system, synchronets, vbbs, and others, and one of the things I always noticed was a delayed typing. Maybe this doesn't bother a lot of people, especially ones that started on 2400 baud modems, but it did me, and mbbs didn't have that delay. Who would have thought some thing as simple as that would make some one like MBBS instantly? hehe

I spent many many hours in teleconference and farwest trivia, not just in mutants and crossroads.

BBS vs MBBS were just different playgrounds. As a lot of people have stated back in the dialup days.. MBBS is the rich kid's hobby board, while every thing else was just a hobby board. A lot of those normal hobbiest sysops wanted to run mbbs, but just couldn't afford to run it. Now days, things should definately be different. One problem is that a lot of the people in the late 80s and early to mid 90s were young kids, older high school students, and college students. Once they grew up and got on their own, and the internet replaced most of the boards, they really didn't think much about the BBS days. I'm just one of the few that was heavily in to it and still reminisce about those days all of the time.

dspain wrote: i see your pointm however PCB isnt supported anymore, worldgroup is.
now rather netvillage had the right to do it or not they still did it and contunie to support it, now theres rick who supports it as well, but bottom line is wg continues to be supported and sold, thus prices will never go down.

should they? hell yeah they should but at the same time the product needs to be partitioned so it offers the best of all worlds.

as WG is right now its in a world of trouble.
i have a DOS wg 2.0 server that will compete with any 3.xx version ever released and i did all this with borland 4.5

worldgroup needs to be updated to new standards, but the thing is, WG has always been expensive, synchronet may be free YEs, however no other BBs software platform has programs or games on any level to compete with worldgroups smallest addons.

my idea for a wg would be:

HOBBY EDITION - 50 node $100 (50 node upgrades $25 a piece)
includes only telnet daemon

addons would be an email package smtp,pop3 - $40
nntp stuff including maillink etc.. %35
webserver addon - $40

COMMERCIAL EDITION
everyting wg has to offer, boxed with an official distro Cd and bounc manual

100 user - $349
256 - $549

that would make everyone happy by serving their needs.

QUOTE

actually worldgroup was never created for the hobbyist sysop, i know its sad, but its true, they aimed at more online communities, and such rather than a sysop wanting to throw up a game server.
the MajorBBs was for the sysops running games and such when it went worldgroup it was setting the bar high for commercial sales.
now there are some who will probably disagree with me but gcomm got "GREEDY" they mad a ton off of simple people running simple servers so they stepped it up to get as much as they could.

when gcomm became galacticomm technologies it got even worse.
however i actually had some good talks going on right after the release of 3.12 about making available for the simple bbs's again removing everything but the baselines and telnet daemon.
the response was it was something worth attempting but would have t wait until some other things were ocmpleted.

needless to say one of those other things was their bankruptcy.

Posted: **Tue Aug 29, 2006 1:44 am**

[quote="Malakai"]I agree with Rick about worldgroup support. It's absent. I don't even think you can count the release of v3.30nt as a real release. I've had problems with it that 3.20 most likely doesn't have. It hasn't affected my ability to keep running it, but if I can easily switch to 3.20 with out any problems, I probably will.

We can only hope that Worldgroup is one day supported again. Taking away good features that every one, including things that hobbiests would use, like e-mail and web would just not be good. You mention synchronet. They have all of that stuff as well, but for free. There are ways to add more features on an enterprise version than just take out all of the servers though.

For one, you can add web hosting with secure password protection, in which each individual would be allowed to make sub accounts, or they could make it completely open to all. A built in web page designer on worldgroup's web server would be great too.

Secondly, I've said this before, video conferencing.. Hobby version = 2 or 3 user, netmeeting/enterprise/porn site = 256 user...

As far as no other bbs having the games/addons that mbbs has.. MBBS never had clans, pimpwars, barren realms elite, stardock loco, and a lot of the thousands of door games that were released, but mbbs games in general seem to work faster and most work in a multiplayer enviroment. BRE never had that, and I don't think Clans did either.

The first thing that turned me on to MBBS wasn't actually games. It was a couple things. First, just the multi-node enviroment, and secondly the teleconference. I've talked on many teleconference and chat systems from many bbs systems, including pcboard's chat, along with probably 20 chat mods on it, wildcat's chat system, synchronets, vbbs, and others, and one of the things I always noticed was a delayed typing. Maybe this doesn't bother a lot of people, especially ones that started on 2400 baud modems, but it did me, and mbbs didn't have that delay. Who would have thought some thing as simple as that would make some one like MBBS instantly? hehe

I spent many many hours in teleconference and farwest trivia, not just in mutants and crossroads.

BBS vs MBBS were just different playgrounds. As a lot of people have stated back in the dialup days.. MBBS is the rich kid's hobby board, while every thing else was just a hobby board. A lot of those normal hobbiest sysops wanted to run mbbs, but just couldn't afford to run it. Now days, things should definately be different. One problem is that a lot of the people in the late 80s and early to mid 90s were young kids, older high school students, and college students. Once they grew up and got on their own, and the internet replaced most of the boards, they really didn't think much about the BBS days. I'm just one of the few that was heavily in to it and still reminisce about those days all of the time.

well worldgroup support as a corporate entity is absent.
i mean hell you know from a fact if someone has a problem i research the hell out of it and come up with a solution.

example: i spent 5 hrs one night installing mutants from mbbs all the way to 4.0 to find that crash bug.

or like if someone requests a module in the request forum i have one worked up for em the next day.

toyduck and ghalleon will tell ya that.

regarding email and stuff, that may be true, however i dont think anyone really uses bbs internet email anymore.
and without my rlogin mod the only port they can rlogin out on is 513
or host on 513.

then me and rick both have telnet mods to host on ports other than 23.

so the standard ico really wouldnt be an issue.

yeah the web server stuff is nice to be able to link to active-h modules but without php support, rss feeds, and the like would be much easier to use something like apache and just run wg's web interface for module support.

yes i know that falls back to the support issue meaning thats what wg needs to have but im just pointing it out.

for door games, yes some of the greats were never ported to wg, and wgs dev kit basically makes any module you make multiplayer without the need for additional libraries but then again some were, wg just died before anyone got around to doing it. would be nice to see.

here in richmond teleconferences never were the big smash with worldgroup it was adventureocmms telnet module where we could dial in locally, and pay like $18 a month to have unlimited telnet out + $10 a month for an unlimited account comet bbs opened the portal to the internet for us.
log in the bbs all lines would be telnetted out somewhere else.

rich kids hobby board, definately.
i bought synchronet in may of 1995 for $99 for a 2 user version and later upped to 16 then to 256.
all in all i paid less than 500 bux.

i bought majorbbs 6.25 2 line $249 just so i could aid a bbs in using taedit and testing tele-arena out, then later upped it to an 8 line and on and on.

in the end total payout was a bunch.

why some of wg is the way that it is is far beyond me, why so much was not opened up for us to have always has me wondering what the hell they were thinking.

simple bbs's like ra, sync, wwiv, vbbs all had all this cool stuff.

qwknet, although a dud today was a HUGE networking engine in the 80's and 90's starting with me with wwivnet

internal door support.
the ability to emulate other bbs's ansi codes
just alot.

but i think rick said it best, mbbs was a commercial product for the commercial consumer.

Posted: **Tue Aug 29, 2006 2:14 am**

Malakai wrote:I agree with Rick about worldgroup support. It's absent. I don't even think you can count the release of v3.30nt as a real release. I've had problems with it that 3.20 most likely doesn't have. It hasn't affected my ability to keep running it, but if I can easily switch to 3.20 with out any problems, I probably will.

Yep, you can.

Malakai wrote:We can only hope that Worldgroup is one day supported again. Taking away good features that every one, including things that hobbiests would use, like e-mail and web would just not be good. You mention synchronet. They have all of that stuff as well, but for free. There are ways to add more features on an enterprise version than just take out all of the servers though.

For one, you can add web hosting with secure password protection, in which each individual would be allowed to make sub accounts, or they could make it completely open to all. A built in web page designer on worldgroup's web server would be great too.

Yes, or, offer an embedded SQL solution (such as SQLite) OR for enterprise users a RDBMS solution (such as MySQL or Oracle or Sybase or SQL Server).

Embedding a wiki-like engine would be very cool. I have a ton of ideas. I need programmers.

Malakai wrote:Secondly, I've said this before, video conferencing.. Hobby version = 2 or 3 user, netmeeting/enterprise/porn site = 256 user...

Or 4096 user. Or..

Malakai wrote:As far as no other bbs having the games/addons that mbbs has.. MBBS never had clans, pimpwars, barren realms elite, stardock loco, and a lot of the thousands of door games that were released, but mbbs games in general seem to work faster and most work in a multiplayer enviroment. BRE never had that, and I don't think Clans did either.

MBBS is efficient. I read some of the posts on greatermud.com which said that Worldgroup was too bloated; it isn't actually true.

We almost had Pimpwars. I have a half-finished Pimpwars for Major BBS somewhere

Malakai wrote:The first thing that turned me on to MBBS wasn't actually games. It was a couple things. First, just the multi-node enviroment, and secondly the teleconference. I've talked on many teleconference and chat systems from many bbs systems, including pcboard's chat, along with probably 20 chat mods on it, wildcat's chat system, synchronets, vbbs, and others, and one of the things I always noticed was a delayed typing. Maybe this doesn't bother a lot of people, especially ones that started on 2400 baud modems, but it did me, and mbbs didn't have that delay. Who would have thought some thing as simple as that would make some one like MBBS instantly? hehe

Right. It's brilliant, for the time, and even for now, it's still damn good.

Malakai wrote:I spent many many hours in teleconference and farwest trivia, not just in mutants and crossroads.

The early days were definitely dominated by CB/Teleconference. The Adventure/MUD/RPGs did get popular, but teleconference was ALWAYS the hot spot on ANY big BBS.

Malakai wrote:BBS vs MBBS were just different playgrounds. As a lot of people have stated back in the dialup days.. MBBS is the rich kid's hobby board, while every thing else was just a hobby board. A lot of those normal hobbiest sysops wanted to run mbbs, but just couldn't afford to run it. Now days, things should definately be different. One problem is that a lot of the people in the late 80s and early to mid 90s were young kids, older high school students, and college students. Once they grew up and got on their own, and the internet replaced most of the boards, they really didn't think much about the BBS days. I'm just one of the few that was heavily in to it and still reminisce about those days all of the time.

A lot of those bigger Entertainment BBSes started as 2 and 4 line hobby boards that were busy 24/7 and had to be upgraded, and thus had to charge... then they grew to 8... 16.... 32 lines..