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Back right to the start. As a youngster of about 7 I loved
choose your own adventures. I read them avidly until one day when I was about ten, my
mum brought a book home from the library for me. One of the Fighting Fantasy
Series (Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone). Well that's where I got hooked on the
dice and fantasy. It was then on a holiday to Anglesea I came across some kids playing
Dungeons & Dragons and from then on I played all sorts of RPG's.
I started buying GM magazine, a magazine which really covered all area's of the scene
including PBM. Always being short of people to play my game's with this immediately
took my fancy. I couldn't afford to actually play one (my pocket money never went
far as a kid) so I decided to make my own. "The Portal of Power" consisted of a
24 page rule book within a few days. I never actually launched the game (it would
have been quite ambitious for a 13 year old) but that was where I started. It was
similar
to War of Wizards (and a lot of other PBeM's) in many ways.
Managing resources building unit's etc.
The other big event at this age. Our family got our first computer.
The mighty power of an IBM XT, one version before the 286. This is where
I got hooked on the computerised games. Still being a little on the creative
side I decided to learn to program and make my own game. My first attempt was in BASIC.
This was a simple game similar to a choose your own adventure with a lot of IF's and THEN's. I then got into PASCAL programming while at school and from their I attempted my next big programming pr
object, "WARRIORS QUEST". This was similar to a fighting Fantasy in many ways.
You had Fighting Skill, Stamina, Dexterity and various other skill score's as well
as an Inventory for collecting items. The basic plot was that you were based in a
town where you could visit
shops such as Blacksmiths and Wizard's Guilds buying items with your gold.
You then visited the warrior's guild to recieve a mission. Most mission's
revolved around the evil wizard Bargel's plot's to conquer the town. First
mission was journeying to some cavesand stopping a troll army and Bargel's
plans using the "Sands of Sleep". Second mission was clearing the local graveyard
of it's undead resident's lead by a Ancient Vampire. Third mission, well it never
got that far. I included some spectacular (tacky actually) sound affects during
the battles and when riding horses. I also added a starting sequence using Autodesk
Animator. Chris then came in on the scene and added in a few more graphics which I
had constructed. I will post
Warrior's Quest on this page when I find it, it would be good for a laugh
if nothing else.
After Warrior's Quest I decided to try creating a war game called "Baron".
This is where my programming skills peaked unfortunatly. I managed to program
graphics for a map and unit's to move from cities and across the landscape. There
were 5 cities, the first to hold all cities at once was the winner. I had
the battle system up and running, you could get status reports of unit's and
different terrains were using up different amounts of movement points. I will
post this game on this page also if I manage to find it.
After finishing Year 12 together Chris and I both got into
University and both ended up staying on campus at The University of Melbourne
in Queen's College. Chris took on Electrical Engineering/Science which took
his computer skills far beyond mine to the very impressive stage they are currently
at. I myself was not yet ready to be shunned as a nerd, so I entered Physiotherapy.
A course which needs a high year 12 score, sporting ability and a generally hot body.
However, it unfortunatly does nothing the
advance your computer skills. This left me basically to use only creativity. At Uni we now had access to the Internet and Email. Chris finding and getting us both involved playing Atlantis 2.0, our first PBeM was the next major event which brought
us
closer to WoW being created. I loved playing Atlantis 2.0, firstly as the Knights of the Whiterose (who were eliminated in the fall of Monzon to the Resivoir Dogs), then as the Global Trading Company (who survived trying to seek revenge until the games
conclusion).
A PBeM was the project that was going to get of the ground. I came up with the title "War of Wizards" which could be shortened to WoW (pretty catchy I thought). I designed WoW 1.0, a much more basic version of the current WoW 2.0. This was the time I
got into webpage editing. I learnt it from scratch, mainly using template's and managed to get a few pages up on the net. I soon had players reading my posted rules and signing up. I was initially was going to slowly program it running the first few
turns by hand with a dice. I had absolutly no comprehension of how fool hardy that would have been or how big WoW was to become. At this stage the old team of Chris and myself reunited and Chris quickly whipped up the WoW 1.0 program. I sent out offers
to
about 15 players needing 10. We were ready to go a few days later but only had 8 players. This is where FATE seemed to jump in as I sent out a few more offers, 2 guys from Singapore (in a similar time zone) replied stright away. Jeff and Kuo were two
of the players whose continual feedback and idea's turned the basic WoW 1.0 into the far more advanced WoW 2.0.
WoW 1.0 Game 1 ran reasonably smoothly and by about turn 10 we had it completly debugged. It became obvious that to implement magic, heroes and all the more involved functions we were going to have to start from scratch creating WoW 2.0. In the mean
time
we started Game 2 which I had a go at GMing. At about turn 10 I mucked up overwriting something I shouldn't have and instead of spending hours sorting it all out, the game was abandoned so that players could join Game 3. The WoW 2.0 playtest.
Chris spent month's programming WoW 2.0. I did the map of Varlania which
was 7 times bigger than WoW 1.0 Land of Gondoria. We also had 20 as
opposed to 10 players. I spent my time creating and entering data for
the 12+ races, 200+ units, 10+ land types,
25+ buildings, 70+ spells, etc. The playtest was soon (well after a
long time actually) up and running and the debugging began.
Since then we have moved off the University server's we were using and on to the Alphalink server specifically for WoW. The once simple web pages now have automated sign-up (saving me hours of work), a page dedicated to each race, game and world.
Player
pages have popped up. We have rankings and news pages. A map editor
which may be downloaded. The map editor is actually the begining of what
will hopefully be a graphic interface. A Bulletin board for questions
and discussion on WoW. An IRC channel. I'm getting a
bit carried away here, I know but the WoW site contains a wealth on
information. Back to the game though we started a second WoW 2.0 game.
Game 4 commenced in Janurary 98 using the same map of Varlania. Game 5
started on a new
map The Elemental Isles. As was Game 7. Large 51 player games of
Shadowmoth were started along with smaller faster games of
Westentasia. In what was to be July 98 (but now looks like Feb 99)the WoW
project turns commercial
and hopefully we will raise enough capital to get our own server and the
development of WoW will go to the next level.
That has brought us up to where we currently are. We still have big plans and big improvements coming, so stay tuned.
Okay. By popular demand, one more photo (girlfriend included).
You can contact Harry at
harry@wow.pbemgame.com.
Back to WoW Home page.