Hudson
Electron
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2016
- Messages
- 766
- Nebulae
- 4,873
BnT WW3RP 2011 - 2012
Brawler made a gamemode called Clone Wars Roleplay and was running it on his community called BnT. It had a small playerbase, but he wanted something unique that was going to be a "smash hit." At the time he was in a course about world politics, and there was a lot of talk about globalism and nationalism.
On April 1st 2011 he unveiled the new project he called World War 3 Roleplay which pitched a modern army driven by a globalist agenda against a united coalition of nations. The new gamemode was intended to mix player versus player mechanics and serious roleplay.
It was popular for a time, and a new feature on Steam allowed players to take and save screenshots, so in 2017 I hunted down and gathered the screenshots that BnT members had taken and edited a montage video out of them.
Pulsor Gaming IWRP 2012 - 2013
The gamemode struggled in 2013 as a version of WW3RP got deleted by a disgruntled admin, and BnT eventually seemed to lose steam. There was an attempt at a revival by a new gaming company, but their goals were wildly optimistic and would fail. A second revival was run by the Pulsor Gaming community which much of the playerbase got behind, and involved coding work by TRUCKER. It was WW3RP with a twist, as it was set 300 years in the future and renamed Intergalactic Warfare Roleplay.
On one map the Globalist faction had a spaceship that hovered over the ground, although there's little to no screenshots or videos to help describe what the experience was like compared to other servers. Pulsor Gaming had two main servers; the community was split between them, and the content had flaws. The coder couldn't always be reached and had wanted to write off work on the gamemodes. PG slowly died off, but the players would see WW3RP return again in its original format under LemonPunch.
LemonPunch WW3RP 2014
LemonPunch had a popular HL2RP server, and Powley seems to have been involved in convincing them to run WW3RP. It was successfully brought back to life in late 2014 and found popularity again, and this was where I got onboard. The experience resonated with me, and I made what was the first montage video out of my own video recordings and screenshots. In later years I'd involve the community to inculde other players content in new montages, and eventually I'd go back to flesh out the series by making the BnT video.
LemonPunch WW3RP 2015
LemonPunch ran the gamemode throughout 2015, and the balance between deathmatching and roleplay was fascinating to me. Despite some frustrations I had which demotivating me from being on the server - I stick around the scene and watched the gamemode as it evolved.
This is where the montage videos turned into a series that became a yearly tradition. I already had the experience from editing the first one, and also with the help of the community it was now much easier to make them, so the 2015 video would be a mixture of mine and other players content.
WW3RP 2016
This was an emotionally charged year for the scene as LemonPunch dramatically split in April, with much of the playerbase and staff forming nebulous.cloud, while the official successor to LemonPunch was Monolith Servers. The much loved HL2RP server came back under nebulous, and after a short wait was also joined by the WW3RP server.
A community called After Flash tested WW3RP in July, and they had an interesting idea in making an introduction video for new players, so I helped them edit it. They ran their server briefly, but after abruptly stopping it I didn't hear from them again. So the 2016 montage would end up being a mixture of LemonPunch and nebulous content.
nebulous WW3RP 2017
With multiple communities having come and gone with varying degrees of success, nebulous managed to run the gamemode throughout 2017, and I think the montage video turned out particularly well that year. I'd logged on to capture some gameplay recordings with the intent of helping turn the montage into a story.
While showing most of the content from oldest to newest which tells the story of progression through the year, I also wanted to show the story of going through training, patrolling, and fighthing. So the screenshots appear in sequence, and there's video clips I captured showing the players experience spaced out throughout the montage.
nebulous WW3RP 2018
WW3RP was a unique gamemode in that it only ever had one server running it at a time. The culture had been evolving ever since BnT had started it, and the roleplay structure would get stressed by the deathmatching element. I often worried that things were out of balance and getting worse, and while everyone seemed to have their own opinion on why it died, perhaps there were many potential nails in that coffin. Strong leadership was clearly needed to carry it forward, and with the inevitable changing of hands, this time WW3RP now found itself without anyone continue its history.
An announcement was made saying that the server was going to close. I imagine that it's difficult to log on and feel a sense of enjoyment and progression when you know that it's coming to an end, so it was understandable that the server population dropped at the end. It did look like the best decision was to end it before the quality dropped if there was no strong way forward. I'm sure the staff have had to make many difficult choices over time, and no doubt this was the most difficult.
The nebulous server closed in early 2018, and the efforts to produce videos and archive the content and interviews will hopefully have been worthwhile to save memories for the future. It was bittersweet to edit the 2018 video, but the motivation to produce a montage was as strong as ever. I felt conflicted over those feelings, not wanting to see it end, but knowing I should still make a video of the ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kGd__LTs8k
WW3RP character profiles
We put one last video together to remember some of the countless characters that appeared over the years. Many of us probably spoke to eachother through those characters more often than speaking to eachother as ourselves. For as long as I've known WW3RP I've heard people say that it was dying, but by the time I'd even arrived it had already died three times. When it finally did end for good; and I read all the explanations of why it was struggling - or what could have been done to help it, I wasn't convinced that one reason alone could be responsible for bringing down a juggernaut like WW3RP.
There were a lot of different experiences you could have in the gamemode, and I saw a lot of different motivations among everyone involved, and countless threads about what to change or keep in it. It's always frustrating when you're passionate about something and it doesn't turn out the way you'd hoped, but I think this quote by Brawler about the early days of WW3RP would be a nice way to remember it...
"I can't remember a single person who didn't add something to the servers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ethq0F2nw
Interviews
These interviews helped capture the experience of WW3RP across different communities:
BnT WW3RP interview: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1489987633995096943/
LemonPunch WW3RP 2014 interviews: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1471966894861212285/
nebulous WW3RP 2016 interviews:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1700542332326425556/
Brawler made a gamemode called Clone Wars Roleplay and was running it on his community called BnT. It had a small playerbase, but he wanted something unique that was going to be a "smash hit." At the time he was in a course about world politics, and there was a lot of talk about globalism and nationalism.
On April 1st 2011 he unveiled the new project he called World War 3 Roleplay which pitched a modern army driven by a globalist agenda against a united coalition of nations. The new gamemode was intended to mix player versus player mechanics and serious roleplay.
It was popular for a time, and a new feature on Steam allowed players to take and save screenshots, so in 2017 I hunted down and gathered the screenshots that BnT members had taken and edited a montage video out of them.
Pulsor Gaming IWRP 2012 - 2013
The gamemode struggled in 2013 as a version of WW3RP got deleted by a disgruntled admin, and BnT eventually seemed to lose steam. There was an attempt at a revival by a new gaming company, but their goals were wildly optimistic and would fail. A second revival was run by the Pulsor Gaming community which much of the playerbase got behind, and involved coding work by TRUCKER. It was WW3RP with a twist, as it was set 300 years in the future and renamed Intergalactic Warfare Roleplay.
On one map the Globalist faction had a spaceship that hovered over the ground, although there's little to no screenshots or videos to help describe what the experience was like compared to other servers. Pulsor Gaming had two main servers; the community was split between them, and the content had flaws. The coder couldn't always be reached and had wanted to write off work on the gamemodes. PG slowly died off, but the players would see WW3RP return again in its original format under LemonPunch.
LemonPunch WW3RP 2014
LemonPunch had a popular HL2RP server, and Powley seems to have been involved in convincing them to run WW3RP. It was successfully brought back to life in late 2014 and found popularity again, and this was where I got onboard. The experience resonated with me, and I made what was the first montage video out of my own video recordings and screenshots. In later years I'd involve the community to inculde other players content in new montages, and eventually I'd go back to flesh out the series by making the BnT video.
LemonPunch WW3RP 2015
LemonPunch ran the gamemode throughout 2015, and the balance between deathmatching and roleplay was fascinating to me. Despite some frustrations I had which demotivating me from being on the server - I stick around the scene and watched the gamemode as it evolved.
This is where the montage videos turned into a series that became a yearly tradition. I already had the experience from editing the first one, and also with the help of the community it was now much easier to make them, so the 2015 video would be a mixture of mine and other players content.
WW3RP 2016
This was an emotionally charged year for the scene as LemonPunch dramatically split in April, with much of the playerbase and staff forming nebulous.cloud, while the official successor to LemonPunch was Monolith Servers. The much loved HL2RP server came back under nebulous, and after a short wait was also joined by the WW3RP server.
A community called After Flash tested WW3RP in July, and they had an interesting idea in making an introduction video for new players, so I helped them edit it. They ran their server briefly, but after abruptly stopping it I didn't hear from them again. So the 2016 montage would end up being a mixture of LemonPunch and nebulous content.
nebulous WW3RP 2017
With multiple communities having come and gone with varying degrees of success, nebulous managed to run the gamemode throughout 2017, and I think the montage video turned out particularly well that year. I'd logged on to capture some gameplay recordings with the intent of helping turn the montage into a story.
While showing most of the content from oldest to newest which tells the story of progression through the year, I also wanted to show the story of going through training, patrolling, and fighthing. So the screenshots appear in sequence, and there's video clips I captured showing the players experience spaced out throughout the montage.
nebulous WW3RP 2018
WW3RP was a unique gamemode in that it only ever had one server running it at a time. The culture had been evolving ever since BnT had started it, and the roleplay structure would get stressed by the deathmatching element. I often worried that things were out of balance and getting worse, and while everyone seemed to have their own opinion on why it died, perhaps there were many potential nails in that coffin. Strong leadership was clearly needed to carry it forward, and with the inevitable changing of hands, this time WW3RP now found itself without anyone continue its history.
An announcement was made saying that the server was going to close. I imagine that it's difficult to log on and feel a sense of enjoyment and progression when you know that it's coming to an end, so it was understandable that the server population dropped at the end. It did look like the best decision was to end it before the quality dropped if there was no strong way forward. I'm sure the staff have had to make many difficult choices over time, and no doubt this was the most difficult.
The nebulous server closed in early 2018, and the efforts to produce videos and archive the content and interviews will hopefully have been worthwhile to save memories for the future. It was bittersweet to edit the 2018 video, but the motivation to produce a montage was as strong as ever. I felt conflicted over those feelings, not wanting to see it end, but knowing I should still make a video of the ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kGd__LTs8k
WW3RP character profiles
We put one last video together to remember some of the countless characters that appeared over the years. Many of us probably spoke to eachother through those characters more often than speaking to eachother as ourselves. For as long as I've known WW3RP I've heard people say that it was dying, but by the time I'd even arrived it had already died three times. When it finally did end for good; and I read all the explanations of why it was struggling - or what could have been done to help it, I wasn't convinced that one reason alone could be responsible for bringing down a juggernaut like WW3RP.
There were a lot of different experiences you could have in the gamemode, and I saw a lot of different motivations among everyone involved, and countless threads about what to change or keep in it. It's always frustrating when you're passionate about something and it doesn't turn out the way you'd hoped, but I think this quote by Brawler about the early days of WW3RP would be a nice way to remember it...
"I can't remember a single person who didn't add something to the servers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ethq0F2nw
Interviews
These interviews helped capture the experience of WW3RP across different communities:
BnT WW3RP interview: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1489987633995096943/
LemonPunch WW3RP 2014 interviews: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1471966894861212285/
nebulous WW3RP 2016 interviews:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1700542332326425556/
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