funnily a few days ago a few of the older players were talking about the old days. there is gonna be a mass email getting sent to invite the older players to irc for an reunion.

I want to get back  These: TheBurningfieldsF,ASPY,Izmer.Syeknom    Deci say u remeber this round..MW 1,2 or 3..Pimps, we sucked

I am not so sure the Betas classify as an era, or the Alphas either. I would not be so trite, but surely the only three eras in IC are:
Pre-Mace
Mace
Post-Mace
???
I basically joined at the tail-end of beta 2, a week before it ended and the gals were merged. It seems to me that the game's membership was still sufficiently small and utterly dominated by a few players that at the start of Beta 3 all that mattered was, "Where's Starstrike?". A player I knew nothing of and was determined to beat.

However, beta 3 was the beginning of a glorious era in IC. For the first time we had sectors and a competitive galaxy. SS's tri was made of the three dominant MW beta 2 families, and had (illegally I believe) managed to get some of the best players into them. Yet there were brilliant players around like Demonshome, Mystic Light, The Vorlorns and Heaven. Plus Sogil's 9-fam sector 8 alliance, Carpathian's 7-fam sector 2 alliance. The Confeds and the battle between Thakendar and Zane.
I think beta 4 marked the last round with no Fleet Readiness limitations, in the same way beta 3 marked the end of being able to declare war and attack down to any NW.

However, I also think Rounds 1 (The Doughnut) and 2 are part of this era. After round 2, families were shuffled and round 3 came. This round was really a halfway house between eras. The shuffle was great. Suddenly 120 families and 2400 players, of which 1500+ were active. Not only that but round 3 was littered with some of the best wars in the game's history and was probably the pinnacle of the game's history. Of course I have happy memories as my tiny family was barely 40th after expo-phase was almost over, and yet finished 2nd (by NW) despite never being above 15-20 all round!

Round 4 (parts I and II) was the new era. Part I ended after a week and Part II was inaccurately referred to as Round 5 for about 2 years as MW players mis-numbered their own history. However, this was now the era of TNT's family, the TNT NAP, and the Flint Jump. It was also an era of mass illegal drafting and arguably Mod-cheating.

The era came to a head in Round 6 when Lizzy deleted half the players in half the top-half of the families for being drafted. And ended with another shuffle and legalised VIP drafting for Round 7. The era was characterised by two big server crashes, with one halting play for about a month. Rounds regularly were restored and wars had to be refought.

My eras:
Era 1: Alphas (I&II) plus Betas I+II (May-September 2000)
Era 2: Betas III&IV plus Rounds 1+2 (October 2000-June 2001)
Round 3 - as I say this round is the bridge between the two best eras. It probably belongs more as the end of era 2 and as the game's zenith. (July-September 2001)
Era 3: Rounds 4-6 (September 2001-pos May 2002)
Era 4: Rounds 7-?
At some point the game came very cliquey. The use of tools widespread and strategy development stopped. Players now specialised, cores became everything and the amateurish fun lost. You could divide these eras up into times dominated by TNT's family or by PP's family.
Era 5: Current era (Probably since 2004/5)

Heres my attempt at catogirizing the history of IC into eras:

Early Development Era(Alphas through end of beta 4): The early days of IC when it was a brand new exciting game. Everyone played their own way. There weren't (m)any tools around to help players, people tried different things, exploited game mechanics and some few made suggestions on how to improve/fix the game. This was also the only era which saw a lot of role-playing to go along with the gameplay thanks to altruist's fam and their allies.

Illegal Drafting Era(Round 1 through Round 6 or 7): This is where we saw crazy amounts of illegal drafting because people either wanted to make their families the strongest, or they wanted to play with the same players as before after the crashes/reshuffles/merges. This period also saw immense amount of theorycrafting and calculations, new strategies, tactics and helpful tools being developed. There were a few different families/alliances who established themselves by finishing in top ranks, although I have to say the Dragons+Munchers alliance took more round wins here than anyone else. Although marred by server crashes and high scale bug-exploitation (Anyone remember the round where you could get unlimited resources through the market or aid pages?) This Era probably saw the biggest and most fun wars in IC as the planetary distribution of families used to be very open back then resulting in tons of shares.

NAP-Break Era (Round 7 through Round 14 or so): This is around the time when mods cracked down on cheating and legal-drafting was introduced. Game was still pretty compeditive and breaking agreements was the easiest/most convenient way to get your family ahead in the ranks. The uni-news was constantly full of nap break threads. IC stagnated, the strategies started to become common and the difference between families started to come more from their level of teamwork than the individual players.

Core Era (Round 14 - Current): By now 90% of the IC population knew the basic strategies and started using tools, most notably Maloeran's Map Generator, which made it easy to create and manage cores. The number of big-share wars diminished greatly and early round core management +
econ became the biggest factor in determining a round's top families. There would still be decent wars now and then when early NAPs were made and held to but it became exceedingly rare.

Jaguar, interesting approach.

Mace, thanks for adding a list of eras to your post.

Here an interesting bit I've found posted by Mace.

Mace:
"The industrial family-sized jumps from Round 5 onward killed the game for the old romantics...  no more could a single brilliant player survive in a family-dominated game."

Jaguar's eras are similar to mine. My era 4 is Jaguar's NAP-break era. Though NAP-breaking has been common all through the history of the game, I understand Jaguar's thinking.

His core era is essentially my era 5. Others may define it as family-banking era. Of course, few 'tactics' are new. The notion of a core or a definable defendable territory started no later than Beta 3 Milky Way but perhaps haphazardly. It is a long time ago now but the Confeds determination to keep Starstrike and his family out of sector 2, plus SS's own family trying to own all systems within x parsecs of their home were early steps on this route.

The differences?
1- "Professionalism" : as the game evolved (if that's the right term) more families adopted the same tactics. Increasingly to the point where a few sets playing styles become de facto. It makes sense - everyone is used to them and no matter how many shuffles or families you join, you know the tactics.
2- The VIP tools. Unfortunately the VIP map tools have done more to destroy the game than anything else. Easy searching for unexplored planets means hard-work in late or post-expo is not so rewarding. In Beta 3 I was able to send a 27-hour expo to takeover a planet 3 ticks from Starstrike's home post-expo, then portal it... etc. This has been impossible since round 5/6.

If Stefan could rid the game of the awful VIP map tools and defend the game against the scanners a few players now have, it could become far more exciting again. Having to actually scour systems to find intruders rather than spend 3 mins with the Map tools and the Map Gen, is so much more 'fun'. hard work but with rewards.

Family banking began as a response to majorwars but was not really anything more than a fledgling tactic until flint-jumping. I find it a legacy tactic, there's some merit in it, but I doubt the returns are truly maximised - who calculates ROI variables in IC?

Jaguar's eras 'Early Development' and 'Illegal Drafting' are where I slightly disagree with him. Illegal drafting began in the betas* and was endemic by Round 1. Plus some families existed pretty much unchanged from beta 2 to the end of round 2 - which is a kinda era in its own definition. Thouh admittedly I think the era change was beta 3, when the galaxies merged. Jaguar is right that before beta 4 there were few tools. Guide2IC was created by myself and Sorbent Stephen in Beta 4. By Round 1 this had become ICFederation (and later ICMafia, ICWizards..) and tools were being developed (or more accurately, shared) amongst the community. I believe Maloeran's Map Gen saw the light of day around round 4.

*Interestingly until beta 3 had finished, drafting spots were advertised in the forum. Xandronia advertised an empty account in Family 85. And I became Cyborgia after deleting my other four accounts [I joined IC a week before the end of beta 2 and created an account in each of the four galaxies].

All i can say is i remember when i first joined: 2004, and i remember my first family was in milkyway with Godland.

My dad played in the Alpha and Beta stages before i started, he was Devilsi... and he played with people like Spyro and another banker.. Lemon..somting or other.. i think i remember that. White horse or something there was too, i dont really remember but i remember sitting and watching him, and i started playing when i was in my first year of high school, which was when i was 12.. in 2004. So yeah, my dads fam was AYB, thats just one i remember from the old times. i remember they had a changing family picture every time you clicked on the fam page

Interesting point on history Smaug your Round 3-5 family was not the same family at the beta-round 2 family. (Though by drafting/'cheating' may have contained some of the same players)

noobstalgic pussies!

Anyone remember the forum rickrolls... Or when KillaBeeze said harro to PPs pop... "Ding dong The wicked witch is dead"

Wow... so very many names I haven't seen in nearly a decade, that have recently posted. So I'm not the only nostalgic one that likes to take trips down memory lane. Good to see all of you. Great idea of a thread.

Without Defeat X(,
One cannot truly appreciate Victory !

I figure I'll add some to this thread, strictly about MW though as I haven't really played any other galaxy seriously.

I didn't play in the betas, but started right after and still plenty in time to hear about the Confed War and the Donut Rumble. Notable families from this era would be Potatoes, of whose members I don't really recall except for Chili, Spaceborne with Evael and Erehwon, BeTa conglomerate with Ara, Cappadocians, existenZ, Altruist's Harkonnens with Nr 42, and High Heaven's Olympia. Of course there was Starstrike too, Zane, Sogil, Mace's fam with Thankendar.

Rounds 1 to 6 were predraft with alot of illegal drafting going on. It was a tumultous period and probably the best IC has seen. Notable families were TNT's Munchers, the Dragons with Doomsville and Bahamut, the GoDs which was my own fam, along with Warsong's Phoenix Dawn. There were also the Harbinger of Death, who I think were also from the late betas, with Smaug, Disektor, Minuz1. Commonwealth reused Olympia's theme and had a good fam with Beleriand, Painkiller and others. Impire and TIF also had proeminent families.

Round 7 and forward saw the introduction of drafting and a rise of some new families like the 1st version of AYB, with myself, Optical Illusions being the main coordinators of an all star lineup that was possible due to 8 draft slots, and it was common to all families. Munchers remained a powerhouse for this period, as well as families made by Impire and the appearance of new fams like the Dyslexics with Grimmie, Weedkillers, Torqez and others. There were also players who had fantastic but sporadic rounds, like Greatest, Hastur and others. This time also saw the appearance of PP in MW and with him the introduction of cores.

This period went on for a good while, maybe up until round 20-22, where major drafted fams would control for periods, with AYB and Munchers claiming most of the rounds. Meanwhile, the player base started dwindling, draft slots got severely cut back and players mostly started to play with friends of many years.

From rounds 20-22 on, we have seen the rise of some new players like Parrot, but gameplay is much more laid back now and the pressure to do well is mostly gone. The competition is much more scarce, mostly due to the very small player base.

And I'm done because I would be here all night else!