Gang-Wars has been around a long time. In Internet time, almost forever. It is one of the first MMORPG type games to hit the web and chances are it is the oldest one still running. This History of Gang-Wars page is a work in progress. In an effort to document the game throughout time, as well help new comers and old friends understand how the game has evolved over the last 19 years, I've been trying to put together a historic timeline of the game from its creation through today. Please reach out to me directly with any suggested inclusions and/or corrections.

Gang-Wars 1.0 - THE BEGINNING

Gang-Wars officially went online in May of 2001 as the "Gang-Wars Beta Test". Shortly after, the game went out of beta testing and after some adjustments the first non-beta round began in July.

This incarnation of the game was created by a somewhat anonymous person that went by only "Web" "Webby" or "Webmaster".

Back in those very early days, the overall feel of the game was quite different. There was no chat console and you had to log in and out of each character. Without any shortcuts or the ability to switch between characters, it was quite a bit more work to play.

If anyone has dates & details on the major milestones of Gang-Wars 1.0 please reach out to me as I would like to include them here.

Gang-Wars 1.0 - THE END

In December 2009, during the course of the round, the server the game was hosted on began to fail. This resulted in the game stopping and abruptly starting without notice. This was the last round of GW 1.0 where the majority of the players attempted to play a serious game.

Throughout early 2010 the game saw signifigant problems that were related to the pending failure of the server it was hosted on. This wasn't suprising considering how hard it had been beaten on for almost 10 years. Quite often pages would fail to load or there would be error messages. To make matters worse, Web was unable to be found. He wasn't repling to our messages and pleas for help.

Quickly the game became so broken that it was unplayable and other than just goofing around, there was no one playing anymore. The game remained online in this broken state for about a year, then it vanished after January of 2011.

Game Over.

Gang-Wars - ARCHIVE

As the game became unplayable, I realized the entire mini-universe that Gang-Wars had created within the game, was going to quickly be gone forever. With the thousands of players the game had over the years, I thought it would be nice to put together an archive of the game for the community.

I went ahead and created my own best representation of the game in a walk through format. As I worked on this, I was approached by many members of the community asking me if I could possibly re-make the game from scratch. This had not been my intention at all, however after much prodding from community, with my background being in web application development, I decided to give it a shot - Challenge Accepted.

Gang-Wars 2.0 - THE PROJECT

Where does one even begin? Before starting 100% from scratch, I decided to reach out to Web in hopes that he might be willing to donate the game to the community or even sell it. It was basically crashing and burning, so I was hopeful. Unfortunately I didn't even get a reply. Not a thing. Radio silence.

This meant I had to start completely from scratch and create a brand new game that embraced the ideas and concepts that were what we all remembered as Gang-Wars. I set out to work with a supporting cast of community helpers, all committed to keeping the game alive. (If you assisted me in the early development and testing and would like to be included in this document please reach out to me, I have intentionally omitted everyones names for privacy reasons.)

We started with absolutely nothing. No data, no code. Only our memories of how the game felt when it we all spent countless hours playing. It was an overwhelming undertaking, but over the course of several months, we finally put together a brand new game that has now become Gang-Wars 2.0.

Gang-Wars 2.0 - EVOLUTION

There is plenty more to tell... I will continue to update the Gang-Wars history page as time permits.