A History of My Online Activitiesby cleaverbHere is a brief history of my early online adventures. Risk was a board game I played a few times as a teen. I always lost. I didn't have a Risk board,so I traced it onto 4 sheets of typing paper, and took it home, for practice.I used match sticks for armies,dipping the heads into different colors of paint,to make 6 piles.It was a passion that never died. I can't remember when,exactly, I bought my Risk CD-ROM .I do remember it was at Walmart,and the 'box set' for 19.99 . It sat in my closet for at least 1 year, because I didn't have a computer fast enought to play it on. |
 RISK by Hasbro |
| In March of 2000, I bought my first internet service. Before that, I had Juno free internet and mail, for a few weeks. I spent the first few days just searching out stuff,such as World Empire,another game called Slay, And one of my first things to do was get myself a hotmail account at MSN. I had been playing Risk 'offline' , myself against the AI(the built in computer players=Artificial Intelligence) ,and I lost most of the time. I first tried to play on the MSN Gaming Zone.The picture below is a screenshot,taken on July 7th,2000. When I first got in there,I would sit and watch the chat all night. What is LOL? LMAO? wtf etc etc.After awhile, I joined the 'ladder'.This is a gaming league, with a ranking system. You can see this at cases ladder that is the current Risk ladder. |
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| It was easy.I have kept an accurate list of all the games I played.The players there were pretty good,
and it was several games before I won. Next, I got to reading some material about playing RISK on MPlayer. This screenshot is from April 13th,2001. |
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| That is where I met my best buddies online.
Funny, back then in 2000, I would sit in the lobby all night, watching the chat. I had no idea what LMAO or IMO meant.
It took a few weeks to get courage to ask, LOL . M-Player sold out to Gamespy in...was it April 2002 . This a screenshot from today,May 8th,2006. |
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| GS service was so bad then, that most people could not play online.
It tore our community apart. Eventually we did get to play RISK on Gamespy.I would estimate that over the change/lack of play,we lost 80% of our league.
Truthfully, many went to the 'Zone . We even tried playing by IP .With limited success.
Okay, in 2003 the MSN Gaming Zone officially dropped RISK from their site. And fortunate for me(and none other)
I was there to 'help' the zoners get going on Gamespy . Not that I was an expert, I just had some experience with GS, and
I knew/was known by most of the remaining 'Zoners . They carry on to this day...
and I would add that the Zoners make up the majority of RISK players .
More...I originally got online with a Packard Bell P-100MHz on dial-up connection. So naturally, after awhile I wanted to 'go faster' . |
| eBay was my first interest, although online buddies recommended other places.
The first computer I bought online was a Micron full tower P-200Mhz for
about $120 shipped. It kicked ass, and was a well-built machine.Built-in sound,
4MB video card...but this was in 2000 . Looking back,the Packard Bell had a
4X CD drive, and it caused my RISK games to hang . So the 16X that came
with the Client-Pro was appreciated.That held me over, until ??? My next 'upgrade' was a PII 400Mhz. I bought a'barebones' new mini tower that had a PC Chips motherboard installed,a 52X CD drive,built in modem, video,sound, and network card. This was another $125 machine.Except the processor cost me around $75 . to make a long story short, I bought/built about 30 computers,mostly from parts bought on eBay . It was 2003 before I started buying parts from e-tailers...eBay was just crazy. Bids were sometimes more than the item was worth...I could get it at Walmart for less. Going back to my RISK buddies, we occasionally got together to play games at GAMES.COM . And so, for several months I played Scrabble there. As with anything, I got tired of it after awhile.And back to eBay I would go. It would start as 'window shopping' usually just spend the night searching, and not bidding/buying anything. I also played alot of games offline. (This is often referred to as'playing w/ yourself, LOL) I would play big map, 4-7 hour games of RISK with full bots. Sometimes I would lose, but mostly I won . |
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| There was also a time, when I was telling my buddies about Risk2 .
They got to looking around, and found a free version that would play
online.This version had a small difference from the 'real' game,
and you did not need a CD to play(a positive).
We did play a few games of Risk2, but our worst problem was -
we could get players, but most of the time, they left before the game was over.
Sometimes, the guys would come to the Zone to play, and usually we would
'find' one or more lost MPlayer buds to get a game going.
So after about 6 months of not being able to play RISK ,,,we decided to
make an attempt at reviving the game. It went on for a few months.
It seems we got tired of it, again. In this time, I had told some of
the Riskers about the game DOMINATE which does not require a CD,
or a good internet connection to play. We tried that a few games. I am going to continue this some other time. |
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Last update: May 8,2006 Return to the Top of the Page Close |