2001-02-09 - 23:59:03

Planetarion: The Boring Catastrophe

NOTE: I have a new guestbook, one that actually WORKS! I just got sick of the problems I had at my old hosting site. Big thanks to my pal Sinnamon for setting it up for me.

Yes, another Planetarion entry. God help me, I need a life.

The fact is, I'm getting quite bored with the game. This round seems to be utterly played out, and it seems to be having a bad effect on nearly everyone. All sorts of destructive behavior is coming to the fore.

Tonight I witnessed a drunken, screaming argument between our Galactic Commander, J., and an ally of hers, Z. I don't know what was more disturbing, the fact that they were arguing over long-gone old business, or the fact that J, a married woman in her early 30s with two teenaged daughters, was having a shouting match with Z, a 16-year-old English boy who clearly has some emotional problems. In chat rooms you sometimes forget who you're talking to because it's all just type.

I'm debating with myself if I am going to play in next round, which should be happening in a month or so. The main reason I got into the game was because a friend of mine was playing it too, but since they seem to have lost interest in it, it's taken away a lot of the fun for me as well.

As I've said before, because Planetarion runs 24/7 it is a terrible Time Vampire, and I'm sure I could find better uses for my time. It's also playing hob with my sleeping patterns.

By the way, a Time Vampire is something that just sucks up huge amounts of free time. It's a term I've used for years. It's pretty self-explanatory, but I just explained it anyway. Moving right along...

Anyway, recently something happened which may make all these questions pointless. It seems that the dreaded Real World has come and kicked the space-fantasy wargame Planetarion in the teeth.

Late last year, Planetarion was bought by BarrysWorld, one of the biggest online gaming concerns in Europe. The game was then moved from its rather overburdened servers in Norway to some much bigger, more efficient servers in England. This improved the speed of the game dramatically. Thanks to this the number of people playing has mushroomed. At the end of last round there were about 45,000 planets in the game, now there are over 130,000. So, Planetarion seems to be doing just fine.

However, the same cannot be said of BarrysWorld. In late January there were rumors that they were having financial problems, and they were quickly confirmed. Like many a "dot.com" before it, BarrysWorld had run out of funding. The people ponying up the cash were tired of seeing no returns, so they pulled the plug. As far as I know, BarrysWorld went into bankruptcy a few days ago.

The creators of the game vowed that the loss of BarrysWorld would not mean the end of Planetarion, and so far they have been right. The game has soldiered on. However, I notice that the server address of the site has not changed so they are still on the BarrysWorld servers, although BarrysWorld technically no longer exists. Why do I have a bad feeling about that?

So one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, I may click on Planetarion and get a "Page Not Found." All the warring, all the squabbles, all the alliances will be gone as if they never existed.

Then I'll have to find a new way to waste all that time!