TripleA still up and running! Many players online.

[Veqryn]

Edit:
TripleA is doing just fine.  We are still running, and have usually 30-100 people online during americas timezone and europe timezone, and many more people playing by email, network games, or single player hotseat or vs ai.  
Go here to download it or see the website: http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/

Old post:

Hasbro just shut down TripleA,
you can see it here:
http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/Forum#nabble-td3251158%7Ca3251158

What is next? Will they shut down ABattleMap too?  After, it has A&A maps on it.

What a load of *******, don’t they know that everyone who plays TripleA has AT LEAST one of their A&A board games sitting at home?  Hell, I’d be willing to best the average number is higher than 2.  Hasbro obviously has no clue what their customer and gamer community looks like.  If anything, TripleA is a source of Free Advertising for their franchise.  
(As a some-time economist I have read many articles about P2P’s and copyright violations, etc, do to companies bottom line.  Take thinks like Napster and Limewire for example.  Common sense says that the companies and bands are losing money because of them, but all of the studies done on it have shown that something else: it is free advertising, and results in more sales of lesser known bands.  The bottom line with those things is that it lowers the revenue from Big-Name Brands like the Beatles or 50Cent, which people know of already and would buy normally, and it increases the revenue from not as well known bands and artists, who normally would get next to zero advertising without it.  In most cases the two trade off or are close to even.  These companies just have their heads up their asses and are unable to adjust to a changing marketplace.)

So, I ask, who do we need to petition and email to let TripleA be downloaded and updated and distributed, etc.?
I am guessing Larry Harris can’t help directly, but I’m sure he might be well placed to whisper into Hasbro’s ear.  IL, who do we need to talk to, who do we need to email, write letters, sign petitions, etc, for?  What method will be the most effective?

Hell, without this forum and without TripleA, I would not be at all as excited about Axis and Allies as I am today.  Flaws and all, I love A&A, and Hasbro seems to think they can p�ss me off and still get my money later.

EDIT:

PLEASE EVERYONE,
help your fellow A&A players, even if you don’t use TripleA yourself, please express solidarity with your forum members and SEND AN EMAIL TO HASBRO

May I suggest people help petition please?

I have sent an email to the following emails:
corporateinfo@wizards.com
Hasbrogamespr@hasbro.com
hasbro_investor_relations@hasbro.com

Here is what my email said, if you send your own you do not have to be as long, just try to be nice:

Dear Hasbro,
As a good customer and fan of your products, I would like to show you some of the good reasons that you should allow TripleA to continue existing, or alternatively, that you should co-opt the developers to make TripleA for you.
TripleA is free advertising.
As a freely distributed program, developed at no cost to you, TripleA is a form of advertising for your Axis and Allies board game products.  TripleA increases the desire of its users to own the various board games in real life, and also increases awareness of your different board game products.  Anyone who plays such games online will also want a copy to play against their friends and family in-person.
TripleA does not compete with your board games.
Almost all users of TripleA already own more than 1 of the board game products that are simulated in the program.  It takes a very hardcore player to be willing to play such games online.
TripleA supports your customer community, eliminating TripleA will alienate your customers.
Many of the users of TripleA are among your best board game customers and fans.  Most of them already own the products that they are playing with online.  By shutting down their attempts to reach out and form communities online, meet other players, share strategies, and play games online, you will be hurting or alienating your best customers.
TripleA is an open source and publicly developed application, which allows for continuous development and support at no cost to Hasbro or its subsidiaries.  Attempts to sell such narrow applications have in the past been complete failures, resulting in a loss of equity and time for the company involved.  After their marketplace failure, these pieces of software were abandoned and no longer supported, despite their bugs, resulting in a bad image for the companies involved.  Instead of viewing TripleA as a threat, though it positively impacts your bottom line, you could instead co-opt the developers of it.  Since it is doubtful too many people would be willing to pay for software to simulate the game they already own at home, a suggested path would be to continue releasing it for free, but with advertising banners to provide some revenue as well as to increase awareness of other Hasbro products.  Opensource software saves significant money by having the customers and users do the development, support, and bug fixing for you for free.  With the time and cost it would take to build a new version from scratch, significant money could be saved by employing or even just tacitly supporting the developers of TripleA, who have already experienced all the major issues and bugs surrounding building such an online application.

In short, TripleA increases your revenue through its free advertisement of your products, as well as positively affecting your public image and providing support for an important and vital portion of your customer community.  TripleA should be allowed to continue being distributed, and/or the development of it should be co-opted by Hasbro.
Thank you for your time,
XXX

[SgtBlitz]

WHAT. THE. F*CK.  Can we still play networked games on this thing with the latest client?  Cause I don’t think they can shut down that.

Seriously?  HASBRO???  They made ONE super shtty AA CD-ROM game like 10 years ago and are shutting down ALL of TripleA because of it?  I cry bullsht.  AA50 is Avalon Games anyway, is the unstable AA50 client gonna be able to work???

There’s like maybe 50 people online on TripleA at any given time, anyways!  Holy sh*t!  Like these people would be playing a game at home!  The ONLY way you’re going to be playing (and finishing!) a 12 hour Axis and Allies game is ONLINE!

Where’s a link to a petition or something?  This is ridiculous, as there are MANY of the games available on the TripleA client that Hasbro has NO rights too!  I could see them trying to get Classic or Revised taken out but the whole client is just FOOLISH.

Hell, how am I gonna participate in the ladder now, wanted to play matches over TripleA…

Edit:  BTW, may I add I have CLASSIC, REVISED, AND AA50 SITTING IN MY CLOSET AT HOME.  GATHERING DUST.  TRIPLEA WAS THE EASIEST WAY TO FIND OPPONENTS AND GAMES.  THANKS A LOT HASBRO.  NEVER BUYING ONE OF YOUR PRODUCTS AGAIN.

[Imperious Leader]

The infringing material is an unauthorized downloadable
    version of the AXIS & ALLIES® game called “TripleA” that its
    developer refers to as “an axis and allies clone.”  The TripleA
    maps, unit types and game rules are exact replicas of the AXIS &
    ALLIES® game. The infringing material is located at:

I think you cant have AA name on any of the maps or files or language. Perhaps this notice is presented because WOTC is finally going to make a new software version of the game and wanted to first remove competing brands.

I always refused to play Trip A because to me it sucked. It was too ugly.  But i guess when nothing else exists for online play and the LL people refuse to play the game table version because you cant do LL. Now i guess the LL will finally dry up. But it is a loss to many

[dondoolee]

Got to love IP.

[Romulus]

In our Italian forum we use only TripleA for PBEM and online play. Every member of the forum has more than one copy of the game. Moreover… people that can not play A&A “live” with friends come to the forum for playing with TripleA and they have their own copy of A&A. And finally we have also people that, thanks to the forum and TripleA have discovered A&A and bought it. I have made the translation in Italian language of the Anniversary Rulebook for using by the forum members and the high number of download it is an indication that initiative like the forum and like TripleA are “free advertisement” for A&A and that is a gain for Hasbro! Heck, Hasbro should pay TripleA developers and the forums (like this one also) that are able to disseminate A&A knowledge increasing the selling of the game! All the active members of the forum own at least Classic and Revised and, if lucky, they have also Anniversary.

Hasbro should compare this “free advertisement” with their marketing policy… there are people that have not their copy of Anniversary because there are no more copy to buy!!! They made a number of game boxes less than the number of cgame boxes they could have sold. Way? Maybe becasue they are not able to evaluate the positive effort of “free advertisement” provided by initiative like TripleA and forums?
So, Hasbro sold less game boxes than the real market demand and are worried about losing in selling?!?!? Who are the market experts at Hasbro? Duffy Duck and Donald Duck? How they “made the numbers” of the game box to manifacture?

IL there is also an important advantage with TripleA. In our forum we use TripleA to play multiplayer A&A with PBEM, each nation is played by a forum user and we enjoy the needs for diplomacy and mediation between players, as in the original spirit of the game as was conceived by Larry Harris. TripleA is far more easy to use than AbattleMap and other similar programs, without it a lot of our entertaining games will be not possible because there are people that have difficult in usign map managers programs.

I hope that my post is clear enough, I have tried to explain my ideas, in english and maybe they are more complex than my english writing abilities.

[Battlingmaxo]

@Romulus:

I hope that my post is clear enough, I have tried to explain my ideas, in english and maybe they are more complex than my english writing abilities.

Your english e benissimo.  Mi dispiace about triple A

[Romulus]

@Battlingmaxo:

@Romulus:

I hope that my post is clear enough, I have tried to explain my ideas, in english and maybe they are more complex than my english writing abilities.

Your english e benissimo.  Mi dispiace about triple A

Thank you! :)  (+1 for you!)

[Lucifer]

People use whatever platform they prefer, be it the boardgame and f2f gaming, or GTO or TripleA. Many players think TripleA is better than other alternatives, so they use it.
If Wotc/Hasbro makes a better, easier product than TripleA, I would use it instead of TripleA, as would all the other players also.
I started a thread in the software forum, I didn’t see that the discussions started here already.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=14901.0

[SgtBlitz]

BTW everyone: Hasbro = Avalon Hill = Wizards of the Coast.  Boycott their products.  One gigantic gaming company of FAIL.  TripleA probably SOLD them more copies of the board game than any of the sh*tty clients they came up with, their AA CD-ROM game was a REAL p.o.s., it crashed after round 5 every time.  My guess is they’re planning on releasing a new computer game (that’s GUARANTEED to be a horrible failure, their game designers won’t have the YEARS of experience TripleA devs have had in foreseeing conflicts/problems and will take years of patching to catch up) and that they’re nipping all the competition (however free and good for them it might be) in the bud.  Why they couldn’t have co-opted/commended the devs for making their game for them already is anyone’s guess.

Man, Avalon Hill SOLD OUT of copies of AA50 like 1 year ago, they CAN’T be hurting for money with the AA franchise.  Just a sheer money grab, plain and simple.  Never buying any of their products again.

[Jennifer]

Look, they shut down Dogs of War and that’s about as completely different a name as you can possibly imagine!  I still have a copy, of course, and the AI is WAY better than in TripleA (which sucks, IMHO) and the graphics were way better too, but that’s that.

I notice they went after TRIPLEA and not Battlemap. :P  I think the difference is that Battlemap is just a map with icons and the icons don’t really look like the ones you get with the boardgame.  On top of it, battlemap doesn’t have rules similar to Axis and Allies because it does not have an AI!

If you want my opinion, and you’re getting it no matter what, I kind of expected TripleA to be shut down because they shut down Dogs of War for the same reason.

PS: I would enjoy an “official” AA game to be released that had all variants of the game, an AI that didn’t use the tactics of a 5 year old, and a stable platform to run on.  Pretty would be okay, but function > aesthetics as I am sure most of you would agree.  Heck, make the download free and charge us $1/mo. to play it online!

[Battlingmaxo]

@Romulus:

@Battlingmaxo:

@Romulus:

I hope that my post is clear enough, I have tried to explain my ideas, in english and maybe they are more complex than my english writing abilities.

Your english e benissimo.  Mi dispiace about triple A

Thank you! :)   (+1 for you!)

mille grazie

[bugoo]

The crazy thing is even when i play AA ‘live’ we use tripleA most of the time, as its a hell of alot faster, or AbattleMap displayed on me TV =), and I do own several AA games.

[Corbeau Blanc]

Completely stupid, I own almost all A&A version except aniversary which is sold out…

Triple A was great since we could play from far away against other folks in different countries!!!

Damn it, if I want to play the board game with friends I will do so with the boards but theses games happens once a year!

Finding opponents is hard, triple A was giving us this!

I’m totally angry  :x

[Lucifer]

Some important aspects here, Hasbro won’t be able to shut down TripleA completely, not if there is enough interest in it. What happens now is that the developing progress is stopped, but TripleA will live on. And this move will not help Hasbro as much as making a software version that most players prefer instead of TripleA, b/c some players prefer TripleA, some prefer Abattlemap, and some choose GTO. This move is just plain stupid.

If there is enough interest then TripleA will keep developing in another place than sourceforge.

Hasbro chose TripleA probably b/c TripleA is the toughest competitor atm.

The point is not that we love TripleA, b/c we don’t!, but many players think TripleA is the best A&A software platform, or a lesser evil until someone else creates something better.

[Veqryn]

@Cmdr:

Look, they shut down Dogs of War and that’s about as completely different a name as you can possibly imagine!  I still have a copy, of course, and the AI is WAY better than in TripleA (which sucks, IMHO) and the graphics were way better too, but that’s that.

I notice they went after TRIPLEA and not Battlemap. :P  I think the difference is that Battlemap is just a map with icons and the icons don’t really look like the ones you get with the boardgame.  On top of it, battlemap doesn’t have rules similar to Axis and Allies because it does not have an AI!

If you want my opinion, and you’re getting it no matter what, I kind of expected TripleA to be shut down because they shut down Dogs of War for the same reason.

PS: I would enjoy an “official” AA game to be released that had all variants of the game, an AI that didn’t use the tactics of a 5 year old, and a stable platform to run on.  Pretty would be okay, but function > aesthetics as I am sure most of you would agree.  Heck, make the download free and charge us $1/mo. to play it online!

One other advantage of TripleA was the ability to make your own maps and mods.  I haven’t done any yet, but I am learning Java right now with the intent to try one.

Second, can you either post or pm me a link to dogs of war? it sounds interesting and I want to see it

Oh, and the reason I like tripleA, is because the map comes setup for me, units are already placed, ipcs are counted for me, most of the rules are coded so that I don’t have to mess around with clicking a million times in battlemap

[Veqryn]

May I suggest people help petition please?

I have sent an email to the following emails:
corporateinfo@wizards.com
Hasbrogamespr@hasbro.com
hasbro_investor_relations@hasbro.com

And it said:

Dear Hasbro,
As a good customer and fan of your products, I would like to show you some of the good reasons that you should allow TripleA to continue existing, or alternatively, that you should co-opt the developers to make TripleA for you.
TripleA is free advertising.
As a freely distributed program, developed at no cost to you, TripleA is a form of advertising for your Axis and Allies board game products.  TripleA increases the desire of its users to own the various board games in real life, and also increases awareness of your different board game products.  Anyone who plays such games online will also want a copy to play against their friends and family in-person. 
TripleA does not compete with your board games. 
Almost all users of TripleA already own more than 1 of the board game products that are simulated in the program.  It takes a very hardcore player to be willing to play such games online.
TripleA supports your customer community, eliminating TripleA will alienate your customers.
Many of the users of TripleA are among your best board game customers and fans.  Most of them already own the products that they are playing with online.  By shutting down their attempts to reach out and form communities online, meet other players, share strategies, and play games online, you will be hurting or alienating your best customers. 
TripleA is an open source and publicly developed application, which allows for continuous development and support at no cost to Hasbro or its subsidiaries.  Attempts to sell such narrow applications have in the past been complete failures, resulting in a loss of equity and time for the company involved.  After their marketplace failure, these pieces of software were abandoned and no longer supported, despite their bugs, resulting in a bad image for the companies involved.  Instead of viewing TripleA as a threat, though it positively impacts your bottom line, you could instead co-opt the developers of it.  Since it is doubtful too many people would be willing to pay for software to simulate the game they already own at home, a suggested path would be to continue releasing it for free, but with advertising banners to provide some revenue as well as to increase awareness of other Hasbro products.  Opensource software saves significant money by having the customers and users do the development, support, and bug fixing for you for free.  With the time and cost it would take to build a new version from scratch, significant money could be saved by employing or even just tacitly supporting the developers of TripleA, who have already experienced all the major issues and bugs surrounding building such an online application.

In short, TripleA increases your revenue through its free advertisement of your products, as well as positively affecting your public image and providing support for an important and vital portion of your customer community.  TripleA should be allowed to continue being distributed, and/or the development of it should be co-opted by Hasbro.
Thank you for your time,
XXX

[Lucifer]

@ IL, the LL issue in A&A is not a different concept/principle than a boring tv-show, if you don’t like it don’t watch it.
Same as tech, if you don’t like it don’t use it.
Tech is optional in AA50, but not in Revised, but regardless of optional or mandatory rules, many players hate tech, b/c it’s completely broken, many of us like Revised and AA50 very much, as long as it is w/o tech.

And LL can also be seen the same way we perceive porn, we may not like it, at least many people dislike porn, but it’s not gonna go away. It’s as simple as don’t watch it if you don’t like it.

It’s 99% sure that when GTO get enough players that are very competitive who wants to play primary 1vs1, many of the players will demand a LL option. And there are many TripleA players who prefer regular dice, even if LL players are the majority.
Just for the record, I play both ADS and LL, even if I prefer LL.

[dondoolee]

By the way, is it just me, or on TripleA do the Italian AA’s seem hit on an extrodinarily high ratio when the Allies are SBRing Italy?

[Romulus]

@dondoolee:

By the way, is it just me, or on TripleA do the Italian AA’s seem hit on an extrodinarily high ratio when the Allies are SBRing Italy?

This is an historical issue… Italian A&A should hit only when scoring a 0…  :-D

I have a different experience in our games with TripleA and Anniversary: SBR bombing is very useful, the A&A shoot down really few bombers. However we play usually PBEM using the external dice roller not the TripleA built in dice roller.

[Nix]

This is bu*****t…

Since it´s impossiable for me to buy Axis and allies aniverary edition, i now can´t play that game at all… :(

So the logic is, don´t make new copies, disable the online option, present no new “solution/products”  wtf?

edit: trying to improve spelling a little.