Hi all,

Ratsy, one of our longest-standing and most active WGW members has not logged in for over a month, and as far as I know, it wasn't a planned sabbatical from this site. Does anyone know if he's ok? Can anyone contact him at his personal email address or FB account?

Chele

I sent an email a couple of  weeks ago to a gmail address of his I had from a couple of years ago.  Did not hear anything.

he'd be the second recent major MIA i've noticed (Crandawg being the other - altho Cran's predated the server issues by a month or two)

EDIT: the hangout from the RT Tourney we did doesn't have his gmail linked? i can see his G+ page, but can't email him thru it..weird?

Yeah, I think Cran was slowly dwindling down his games list.  

For 7rich7 and ratsy, it was 'poof', they're no longer logging in out of the blue.

Thanks guys, I just hope he didn't have some health emergency. It's not like him to just dissapear like that

I hadn't noticed Crandawg and 7rich7, they will be sorely missed

I've noticed missing peeps as well, with outages of late and the MIA's, it would seem to me that there would be a way for Tom to setup an automatic individual account email advising that the site is back up. Sort by recent activity, and use the same notifications override that is in place to advise us when are accounts up for renewal. Just a thought, would also be helpful to the confessed Wargear addicts checking the site every hour  ;)

good idea hootz. maybe you can get a response from tom if you PM or email him. let us know what you hear.

Yeah, good idea, but ratsy's absence is really scary. I hope everything is ok.

For what its worth...I was a dedicated player for years. Any my job means I can take my turns at work no problem as well as at home. But a few months ago taking my turns felt more like work than like fun and went from a dedicated player to getting booted in all my games within the space of a week and haven't played since. Sort of like when you are suddenly over a video game.

Fits and starts. The website going up and down hasn't helped. I seem to be seeing the same dozen or so players on the maps I enjoy. It used to be so more varied. I'd love to know the average games being run now, compared to earlier years.

I would like to see him come back. It's hard to get good competitors on the site sometimes. 

Aiken Drumn wrote:

Fits and starts. The website going up and down hasn't helped. I seem to be seeing the same dozen or so players on the maps I enjoy. It used to be so more varied. I'd love to know the average games being run now, compared to earlier years.

Go to this link: http://www.wargear.net/charts (you can get there by clicking on "charts" tab above), and select Games / Games Started / All Time.

The data goes back to mid-2015, and you'll see there was a definite slump around the time of the server crashes this past summer, it seems the site hasn't recovered yet, with about 2/3 as many games started post-crash as compared to pre-crash days

I'd love to see what those numbers look like for 2009-2015

My guess is, in terms of non-WGWF play, the site peaked @2012. Seemed like games were a lot more varied in terms of who you played against.

I'm willing to bet that activity started falling off when Tom stopped (or severely curtailed) the development of requested site features, both for players and designers. Apparently he got a real job ;)

I know I pretty much stopped designing when it became apparent that none of the ideas and requests we designers were kicking around would ever come to be.  Not that the designer features aren't great.  Personally, I'm just more interested in coming up with more innovative mechanics for play and pushing the limits of what can be created in general.

Thingol wrote: My guess is, in terms of non-WGWF play, the site peaked @2012. Seemed like games were a lot more varied in terms of who you played against.

Yep. I see about 1/5th of the medium/big games on non-world maps going now-a-days. Which, unfortunately, is what I like to play.

I would cite the ranking system as a factor - it's almost impossible for new people to break into that and we have no real alternatives - 

Amidon37 wrote:

Thingol wrote: My guess is, in terms of non-WGWF play, the site peaked @2012. Seemed like games were a lot more varied in terms of who you played against.

Yep. I see about 1/5th of the medium/big games on non-world maps going now-a-days. Which, unfortunately, is what I like to play.

I would cite the ranking system as a factor - it's almost impossible for new people to break into that and we have no real alternatives - 

I just logged on after roughly a year without playing and it looks like I am still top 100 in Board championship points and top 200 in global ranking. Which is kinda nice for me but would be discouraging for a new player.

Seems like it took the players in the top60 awhile to get there too, so I’m thinking the absence of a superquick jump into the top 30 is not such a bad thing. I think players can jump into the 40-60 range relatively quickly.

I registered in December 2016, made the top-50 for global ranking six months later and the top-10 earlier this year. It seems to me it shouldn't have to happen much faster than that. And I'm sure there are more skilful potential players than me around.