For the other immigrants around here, I thought I would point out that the king of the old world walked out to his balcony this morning to do more than advertise a stupid iPhone app he made. It's been all I can do to keep myself from typing, "Too little, Too late."

He's still about two weeks behind on pressing the button that empties his paypal account and fills mine. I wish he would, too, so I could put a link for Wargear on my 'fish profile and ever expect to see that money...

Screw that guy! I got my payout, I'm surprised you haven't yet unless it's like billions and billions of Fish Points worth or something.
I like how he gave a reason of the stalled games as "Heavy Traffic" and it started like 4 months ago or so.
Dip Weed.

That's so funny. I've been wondering whether I should post here or not with a similar experience. The ol' Sock Slider himself fixed a broken game for me yesterday only a couple hours after I sent in a(nother) feedback request about it, and sent me a super nice email to boot. AND he knew who I was.

I also noticed that he was browsing the forum when I clicked over there a little while ago.

I just got an email this morning telling me I won 30 days of plus membership. That is so awesome since my membership expired and now I have 30 days to get into the design tool and copy my map images in case I decide to bring any of them over.

Thanks Panda Dude!

I got a free month too. For the drawing for the week ending 6-26-2009.

I got my money and an apology!

Sock Slider?

http://www.keepnix.com

Steven wrote this iPhone app. Then, despite everyone screaming for months about stuck/broken/frozen games, missing features, a crappy design tool, a bugged flash interface, a half-assed tournament system, an oft manipulated board rating system, and so-on-and-so-forth, he has the gall to make 2 of his last 3 appearances on the site in the last 6 months to advertise it in the admin forum and not even acknowledge all the other concerns.

He just pops in to say, "here, look at this. what do you think?" And then the rest of us all sat around pretty much speechless. It would be one thing if Warfish were just some hobby that he does to keep busy. Except he charges people money to play on it. Once you accept money for something, I think the level of expectations regarding support increase substantially.

Ignoring the pleas of your customers at the same time as showing off some utterly stupid iPhone app is asinine. I am pretty much impossible to offend, and his actions in the last 6 months left me offended. The spring on the screen door hadn't even finished stretching open as I ran out when tom announced this place.

I might be a little more lenient if Sock Slider was putting food on the table in his household, but he admitted that it was really just to experiment around on his iPhone. Maybe it leads him to some lucrative career as an iPhone app developer. If so, good for him. I'm still pissed that he pissed on me.

He's answering forum threads from February. With no mention of the lag. He really seems to just want to go on pretending that the last year never happened. I really don't think that's going to work for me.

Shame on all of you. After reading this thread I am furious at you for acting this way. This is the last straw that I can put up with. Steven has had other responsibilities and duties to attend to more important than your whining about an online dice roll game.

I've kept my mouth shut the entire time you all bitched and moaned about how Steven wasn't rubbing your feet or answering your every single little request anymore. He is one man managing a website with over a million registered users and hundreds of thousands of active players (estimate). He does not have the physical time to appear at your every behest and summons. He, like all of you, has a life outside of Warfish.

Yes, I acknowledge the point concerning paying Plus members receiving service and map designers receiving payment. In that regard Steven could have handled things better, anyone paying real money for something should be getting that worth. Overall though, when these discussions occurred most posts were all too antagonistic and aggressive. Yertle and I did our best to provide soft responses to in an attempt to diffuse situations before they escalated, but after a fashion even Yertle gave up and I fought alone. I see now that what I should have done was just hold up a mirror and show you the spoiled babies in the reflections.

Yes, it wasn't ideal how he was absent over the last few months, but it does not grant permission to incite personal attacks. Reich, I already expected this behavior from you so I'm not surprised, but RiskyBack... I am disappointed.

After all the year(s) we have been together on Warfish working with each other and Steven to give advice and enhancements, you run away to a Warfish ripoff because your feelings were hurt. Well boo-hoo. Yes, you are all entitled to your opinions and your own perceptions of what Steven "owes" you from a support angle, but how you handle these situations shows the true scope of your principles.

KobraKai, I sincerely apologize that things turned out this way. I don't mean anything personal by it, but WarGear really is a Warfish ripoff. I was excited when you first announced your website and looking forward to see all the new innovative ideas you developed, but then after I spent a couple weeks looking around off and on, I saw too many aspects that were just copied over from Warfish and provided nothing different. Think of all the hard work Steven put into that website over the last 8 years. Think of the hours upon weeks upon months upon years that he spent writing in new upgrades and features based off of our own requests. Just think of the time and creativity it took for Steven and Theep to design the Flash UI alone! To have that work copied and transplanted onto a competing website is the biggest slap in the face you could have given him. And equally to blame is everyone else who ran here before "the screen door hadn't even finished stretching open" so to speak.

I quit WarGear. I have picked my side, and my loyalties stay with Warfish. I would hate to lose all your friendships because of this divide, but if it must be so then it shall be.

Good luck everyone. I hope to see you on Warfish.

\Doom

Hmmm.

Really, was there a Divorce and we have to pick sides as to who we are gonna be friends with?
Warfish is the same old thing it has been and there doesn't appear to be any updates or anything coming to try to keep it fresh. This site is giving us new things to use and to play with.

For you to get upset with us about being offended by the site being ignored, games being stalled for 7 months and the administrator ignoring, not just our feedback requests but "millions" of other users. That's just crap! And then he comes back and makes everything better by posting "Fixed" to something that is 7 months old without any other comment? That's just disrespect.

Have fun there, I'm staying here.

P.S. Isn't it you, Doom, who got all pissy saying that Steven is not even responding to "YOUR" emails anymore. Let's talk about feeling as if somebody is something special. I also believe that it was YOU who posted a few days ago about trying to buy him out because the site is being Un-Administered and you want something better.

WARGEAR IS THAT SOMETHING BETTER!

The Fish is Dead.....Let's all Gear up!!!

P.S. SMTN

P.P.S. Now you probably won't have to get your "friends" to give your maps high reviews and bash other people's just to get the top rated map.

Brings up the immortal question:

Does the butt go where the lips tell it or do the lips follow the butt they are so firmly attached to?

I'm not perfect Risky, and I never claimed to be. I've made mistakes in my past, mistakes which eventually got me arrested. Do I regret the mistakes I've made? Yes. Do I wish they had never happened? No. It's only after you make mistakes and what you learn from them where you define yourself as a person.

I'd hate to lose you as a friend Risky, you've always made me laugh and smile. Take care, and I look forward to your book on the bestseller's list.

Steven certainly deserves some of what he's getting. The details of how well he didn't handle his leave of absence are already documented. 7 months is a long time to leave paying customers hanging. 8 years is also a long time, a *very* long time to be deeply involved in a project. Human nature dictated that eventually he would need just this sort of break from WF. Handled very poorly, but in the end.. for the vast majority of time and the vast majority of users the site was still perfectly functional.

As for this site being a rip-off, gimme a break. There are only so many ways to play a game of Risk. Yes, there are probably too many instances of exact terminology and specifics of implementation than there should be. Enough that it made me raise my left eyebrow and check out the source code for this site when I first found it. Enough that it made me seriously consider the idea that tom was actually Steven, giving up on WF and making a new WF clone in order to leave all the site problems built up over 8 years and start over, oh, and incidentally snagging some more subscription money in the process. Enough that I actually checked the WHOIS registration information for the two websites.

I have no reason to suspect that tom's primary motivation for WG is cash. He obviously was deeply into WF. I suspect the cloning of WF aspects is also due to human nature and also a nod towards the fact that WF got quite a lot of things right in the first place.

Dismissing WG as a ripoff though disrespects the time he's spent building this thing from scratch. Just because a toyota looks a lot like a ford from the outside doesn't mean it's any easier to actually build one. (Obligatory car analogy). There is far more code written from scratch on this site than there are ideas borrowed from WF.

I see no reason not to play both sites. I already like different things better about each site. (I've also weaseled my way into free membership on both, so suck on that.)

P.S. I don't know any of you well enough to bitch slap you for the personal attacks, but I will anyway: grow up. (ducks)

Well said IRoll11s. I have not checked the source code for a site comparison like you have, so there are aspects of this site which I'm sure are completely different from Warfish. Thank you for that point.

I don't want to get involved in the personal firefight here, I just want to point out that this is the free market at work. When it comes down to it, Warfish and WarGear (and Konquer Klub, Land Grab, and whatever else these things are called) are businesses -- it is misleading to conflate a competitive enterprise with an individual person, which is perhaps the source of some hard feelings on all sides.

I think it is excellent to see some more competition in the market for this type of online gaming. Clearly there was a strong demand that Warfish was not meeting as things were. Hence WarGear arose to supply the excess. It is natural to expect that some consumers (who are almost by definition mercurial in their loyalty) would feel the desire to switch providers at this juncture. I sincerely hope that Warfish will respond with upgrades, new features, improvements, etc. to defend its market share.

We are all customers looking for the best vendor to meet our gaming needs. Individual preferences differ from person to person, but most players (and map makers) seek an active site that is adding new features and responding to user feedback in real-time. Currently, WarGear is offering that advantage, whereas Warfish sat stagnant for many months. In a competitive environment, that carries consequences. Maybe Warfish will start to revive activity again soon to respond to this competition. In that case, the game will really be on, and it will be a good day for all strategy players.

I have nothing negative to say about anyone, but i moved here from warfish immediately due to the lack of administration. Regardless of his other things going on, Warfish was his job. I don't care if he has another job, he was getting paid and not doing work. Not cool.

Internet Drama!!

Also, if I were a forum admin, I would remove this thread...