Achievement unlocked: 24 Years of WWII Online

"Three years ago my brother Euphobone told me about this game he was playing. I really felt like it was a waste of time, "I don't play games anymore..." i said. Well, for our birthday in 2022 I promised I would play a match with him. So I did. Later that week I woke up at 3am to play WWII Online again...I was up till 6am in an empty CP building talking to a vet about life and the game....I was hooked. I was immediately welcomed and learned about how great our community was. THEN I heard about CHOKEPOINT and the hook sunk in deeper....here I am today. Thanks for the great opportunities that Xoom and CRS has given many Team Members and especially our player base by keeping this game alive and always progressing for 24 years!!!"

"Happy 24th anniversary, WWII Online! As a teen, I remember fondly jumping onto my uncle’s account and stepping into pure magic. As an adult life got chaotic with military deployments, but logging in once or twice a year was like visiting an old friend, still chugging along with tanks and dogfights. Here’s to the CRS team for keeping this world alive, and to the community for making every login special. Cheers to 24 more years!"

"I always say I wish I knew about this game 20 years ago, I'd probably still be playing it. But it was merely 4 years ago when I stumbled across this game and community. After dying a bunch of times to people I couldn't see, I just about gave up forever. I played some other games, did some research, watched some videos, and decided to jump back in. And after watching the 20 year anniversary Unreal Engine tech demo presentation featuring Dinant, I was blown away at the potential and future this game would have, and with the subsequent acquisition of what is now Chokepoint, I became a builder within 2 months of become part of this community. It has been an awesome 4 years, of updates, developments, and progress. Keep up the good work, CRS."

"I have had a keen interest in WWII since my early teens when my father (his dad served in a tank battalion in Borneo in 44-45) gave me a copy of The Dambusters by Paul Brickhill, which I read a fair few times. He then subscribed to Purnell's weekly history series and we collected and read all 7 volumes. When I saw the game in early 2005 in Melbourne, I couldn't wait to play it, even though it meant hanging around the office to play on their big (at the time) server. I played on and off for a couple of years after that, then got back into it around 2013, then answered a call for volunteer C++ developers in 2018. I've seen and helped the game change quite a lot since then but what doesn't change is the determination of CRS to keep the game alive and advance it."

"This evening, I was talking with my wife about our 24th anniversary (the game's that it) and she chuckled and said that game nearly caused me to divorce you and then there were times I would feel bad about working on lesson plans at home (she's a teacher) but then I would remember that you would go play your game so I didn't feel bad about working late. I said to her, you couldn't have told me all those years ago? No, she said with a twinkle in her eye. I've really enjoyed the friendship & comradeship as I consider WWII ONLINE my virtual bar / clubhouse. It's the best bargain for my dollars. Thank you to the community & the entire team at CRS for keeping this wonderful labor of love alive and growing after all these years!"

"My teen age son told me about a friend of his doing beta testing for this game called WWII Online. I thought it was a great idea so I got onboard, March 2001. April 2001 I joined a squad and began to build comradery with those playing the game. Squad and in the community. I found it like no other game and I'm still playing it 24 yrs later. I can't imagine not playing the game. The community has helped me through times when I needed it and we still give support to one another plus have fun and frustrations while doing it. I'll probably be here until I can't play any more."

"In January 2005, I logged into this amazing game environment for the very first time – I was 23 years old. This year, I turn 43, and over the past two decades I’ve gotten married, had children, and experienced both highs and lows in life. Yet throughout it all, this community has remained a constant presence in the background – thanks to the dedicated individuals who not only play the game but help drive it forward. While other games and communities have faded over time or lost momentum, WW2OL has continued its steady progress. This has allowed new players to discover the unique gameplay and strong sense of camaraderie that we have. It wasn’t until I had the chance to contribute as a volunteer that I truly understood how much time, energy, and passion it takes to develop a game of this scale and uniqueness. Together with a devoted dev team and an incredible fanbase, I’m excited to be part of the journey as we bring this game world into the future. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has contributed to its development over the years – and to all who continue to log in and play, both new and old. Happy 24th anniversary, WW2OL!"

"It's been a wild ride! I first heard of this game on the old CFC forums (combat flight center). 2 of our members there, WW and Rcflyer started posting about this amazing game that had just released. WW was a writer by profession and would post these spellbinding AARs of WWIIOL game play. It sounded like everything I could ever want in a WW2 game. I asked if my rig, AMD k7 500mhz/voodoo 4 vid/256 megs ram would run it. They replied No, needs at least a pentium 1ghz and 512 megs ram. I kept reading those amazing game play posts and finally told my wife "Saturday we are driving to Charleston (1.5 hours away) and buy that game." So July 8 2001 I logged in for my 1st taste of WWIIOL. On that old machine it was laggy, took literally 30 seconds to change positions on a tank (seemed like 2 minutes. Took what seemed like 5 minutes just to load the game. I was hooked so bad. The next payday we were back in Charleston to get me 512 megs more ram. After several years I got in as a beta. Was the last dialup beta tester and only got access to cable 1 month before CRS dropped dialup support. Now 24 years later I've been a part of the CRS team for, I've forgot how long now. It has been a wild ride and also a honor to have both played and worked on this game."

"I started down this rabbit hole in March of 2008 and was hooked! Along the years I have watched the community age together and grow together forming a bonded community around our common love for the game. I really enjoyed learning the game at all levels from boot on the ground to a few campaigns as Axis CinC. My favorite part was the map moving chess game (before we had garrison supply) and I have to say perfected the breakout after learning from mrtoad. I became a RAT in 2018 and served a few years as community manager before moving over to assistant game manager. Each and every day in this game I learn something new. That and our great community is what keeps me coming back! Happy Anniversary all."

"A long, long, time ago in a life far, far, away, (Houston circa 1993) I met some guys that would go on to build the first ever MMO WWII flight sim that would run over this thing called the Internet. Well before MS Windows or Explorer, Google, PayPal, and Ebay, I didn't even know what the Internet was. But alas, I found a local ISP and WarBirds became a hobby, and by 1996, eventually a job that would have me moving from the SE Texas coast and my current job flying around the Gulf of Mexico, to Grapevine, Tx., and working in a small but incredibly dynamic office with a bunch of WWII sim and computer nuts like myself.

Our lives revolved around developing/maintaining that flight sim game, and a couple others, (Dawn of Aces, and Planetary Raiders), and many great times were had. We all worked on the best MMO flight sim in the world, but after hours, if not playing one of our own games, we'd hop on the LAN and play everything available at the time from FPS's like Quake and Counter Strike to racing sims like Grand Prix Legends or Nascar 4, and other war sims like 688 Attack Sub/688(I) Hunter/Killer, M1 Tank Platoon, Mech Warrior... Anything that was "simtastic" and multiplayer LAN capable back then...

As so often happens in business, one thing led to another and the money folks ended up conning the creators out of their creations, and by 1999 we found ourselves having to make the choice between continuing under someone else's will, or following our passions and taking another leap of faith to start over and keep doing things "our" way. While some had already left to chase other opportunities, the majority of us jumped, and Playnet was founded. As mentioned before, besides working on the best flight sim available at the time, we played all these other Internet/LAN games for fun. So when we started discussing what our new project would be, we asked ourselves "As much as we enjoy all the other sim types as well as our old flight sim, why not add it all together?" "Air, Land, and Sea, all in the same Massively Multi-player Online Game?"

And WWII Online was born.

A fairly hot PC at the time was the Intel Pentium III 1000. Those were the office PC's that we started development of the game on. Corn was doing the build compiles so he had special high performance "scuzzy" (SCSI) drives in his box. Best modem at the time was 56K with a bandwidth of 7 kilobytes a second and inherent best case latency of 100-150ms just to your own ISP. Typical 200-350ms latency to the server!!! Now I'm sitting here with a 16 core 32 thread 4.5GHz processor with hardwired and/or cellular internet that averages 60ms to the server. My how times have changed!

I'm really at a loss for words when looking back at what we started, what has been accomplished since then, what we have today, and the amount of my life that has gone into the "idea" that became and is WWII Online. Not because of a lack of them, but because of all the memories and emotions that come rushing forward when I open that door. That said, Y'all know me, I'll do my best and manage to come up with something.

Its is and has been a pretty amazing experience. Clueless and making it up as we went, 7 years with Playnet the first go round. Now, back in the saddle for another 9 since Badger said some guy named Xoom would like to talk with me about possibly joining the team again... 24 years end to end with an 8 year gap in the middle... Not always a bed of roses, in fact, some could argue sometimes in spite of ourselves, we're still here. And in spite of its 24 year old graphics engine and mobile spawn points (sorry guys, I hate 'em, believing their current implementation inhibits community building and team play), the game looks and runs better than it ever has and is still improving every day. 24 years... Seems like the blink of an eye.

Founded and created with the passion of a small group of folks building a new home and asking why not? Saved from extinction by its dogged community, a small group of passionate volunteers, and one guy with a God given ability to see them through... And now, with the support of its community and a much larger and capable support group of characters, embarking on a whole new chapter of technological growth and capability. Being there from the beginning, its amazing to look back and see how far we've come. But its that much more exciting and inspiring to see what we've all accomplished in context with where we are today, and imagine where we can go from here."

"Few things can make me enjoy online gaming more than growing my own business and playing with my kids: I can't resist to squad-based MMO experiences, accurate tech simulations, and strategic leadership roleplaying.

For 25 years, only WWIIonline has been able to combine the three and create a lifetime addiction!

Some of my best memories? IRL events with my Squad friends, and flying with my father as a wingman."

24 year anniversary of World War II Online, what it means to me. I remember this projects beginnings starting back in 1999, shortly after I had moved to Grapevine, TX. I was hired officially to be Tech Support, but my main underlying role was to continue to produce audio for Dawn of Aces (WW1 fighters) and improve audio for Warbirds by integrating my current sound pack I had created when I was just a player. Back then there were rumblings and meetings about moving the TX office to North Carolina. really did not want to move again, and turned out nobody else wanted to either. So discussions began about all bailing from the ship to start a new project. Our forte` was WW2 stuff, but we wanted to do more than just aircraft. I remember walking into Killer's office and could see he was pondering something. I said, "What're you thinking about?". Killer's response was, "Well we know we want tanks, aircraft, and ships (infantry was up in the air since none of us had experience building FPS stuff) but what are we going to call it?". I looked at him and said, "You just said it, we want to create a game that allows players to play out World War 2 but without the civilian casualties or other crap, let's just call it World War II Online." The name stuck right away and was my first positive contribution to a long living title.

Back in 1999 when we were all gathering at Killer's house for design meetings, they later moved to the gazebo since Killer and a few of us liked to smoke and was less noisy as well. But back then if you would have mentioned this title, not only still being played 24 years later but development is still ongoing and expanding, the first response would have been, 'We have to survive the first year still.' Then humorous laughs would have followed. Yet here we are, I mean seriously wow!

This anniversary also reminds me of why we chose this release date originally. Strategy First forced us to maintain the date, but that is a different story. We chose that date to honor D-Day. We all support veterans in many ways, that was our choice at the time. The fact that World War II Online is very much alive and being further developed is further reflection of our dedication and commitment we made to our verterans, our community and to our hearts. It reminds me of why we do what we do and why we WILL get to 2.0.

I thank you all so much for all you have given over the years and I look forward to being able to give back all we can as a team to keep this dream alive!

Having been here since 14 years of age, and now at 37, there are too many coincidences that have occurred here to explain all of this. Nearly witnessing the fall of everything back in 2012 an getting a fresh opportunity to rebuild in 2020, I could write a whole long book about this. Maybe one day.

Today I focus on gratitude, of my predecessors, my fellow team members and fellow community members. So many people have helped make this achievement possible it's hard to recognize them all, as I'd probably have a huge list. You know who you are and thank you for your collective efforts in making WWII Online come to life, and to carry the torch forward.

Over the years I have been blessed to collect some things and have it in what I call, "The WWII Online Shrine." Here's a quick look at that:

• Technical manual is the only thing I have from my personal original box.

• Right WWII Online box is unopened, from HQ that I got at my first visit in 2012.

• The "Mac" version box is also unopened, from HQ.

• The ammo box was a fun thing I had built containing some shot glasses.

• The "Hat" was from Cuda, who took it off his head and gifted it signaling the change of the helm at Playnet/CRS in 2020. This was a very special gesture that I will forever value. Cuda was largely responsible for WWII Online coming to life in the first place, so his support and recognition of what I have done, particularly through some of our company's darkest days, was enormous.

• Acrylic "Have You Enlisted" Tiger sight is on our Red Bubble.

• Rat trap was a gift from Hatch and was part of original promo efforts.

• 2006 Texas Truce coozie, I attended that convention when I was 19 years old.

• Grenade (far right) was picked up over the years.

I would have never guessed that picking up this game would result into all of the memories, the lessons, the friendships, a career, or eventually becoming captain of the ship. At times it is a daunting task, and that's when I lean back into the community and "give it to God" so to speak because through him and his guidance, all of this has been made possible, and will continue to be. But it has got to be one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. Truly blessed and grateful.