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SeabeeTim · 01-20-09, 02:09 PM

Bad news about Tanarus...

I'm old school Tanarus/Infantry, back when they first came out. I left them both when Sony sold out and started charging at the door. On my way out I told them all that pay-2-play would be the death of those games. In essence, I think I was right.

Obviously pay-2-play didn't work out so well for Sony, because they're free again, but they're also lying in a state of waste. I'm not interested in Infantry anymore, because when I left Infantry I found America's Army, which makes Infantry look like Pacman, but just recently, like, within the last 24 hrs, I tried to get back into Tanarus, and that's not working out so well for me.

It's been four or five computers, and three or four operating systems ago since I last played Tanarus. Tanarus has been all but abandoned by Sony, they still host it on their servers, but they're not supporting it anymore, I guess they're all preoccupied with their cash cows. The last time I played Tanarus I think I must have been running Windows '98, because, from what I'm reading on the Station forums, (A note from the Development team to the community), XP users are having issues with it. These days I'm running 64 bit Vista.

I tried downloading the game again--yesterday--(the old "LaunchPad" hasn't changed a bit, 'news' dated 2000), and just like it says on the forum, when I try to run the game, I get a black screen. Running off of an eight year old memory, I make some clicks on a black screen, and I almost get into the game, I hit a brick wall, but not before I make note that there are seventeen players in the game--that classifies as a ghost town IMHO. Seventeen players--I hope, for their sake, they're all in the same arena...

It's sad, Tanarus was an outstanding game, way ahead of it's time, but it depended on free play for it's population. It looks to me like about seventeen players, give-or-take a few, are keeping it alive, but the only hope I see for it is if someone else throws a few dollars at Sony to take it off their hands, updates the game to fix the many compatibility issues, and puts it back on the free market. I can't even imagine how those handful of players are still functioning in the world of Tanarus--as is, unless we're talking about people so far behind the times they're still running Windows 2K... I would love to play Tanarus again, but I'm not going to downgrade my system over it.

There's an upside to Tanarus, it used to be very popular, and could be again with a bit of maintainence and a good host. It will never be a pay-2-play worthy game, especially now that TV gamers have gone online, but a free MM game like Tanarus will attract a storm of cheap PC gamers (like me) which opens a lot of doors for advertising $$$. I hate advertisements as much as anyone--probably more--but I hate advertisements less than I hate paying for--anything.

So, unless/until something remarkable happens with Tanarus, I think I'll have to pass. Which is what brought me here, searching for the alternative solution. I haven't found it yet, but now I'm going to research this site a bit. I'm seeing some games here, are they free? Are they good? I'm downloading the latest version of America's Army, the patch didn't agree with my 64 bit Vista, so I have to do an uninstall, and redownload the whole darn thing all-over-again. In the meantime, I'd love to come across a good--free--MM sim game. What's good here?

Sorry, dude, I rant sometimes, waiting on a 1.5 gig download...

01-20-09, 02:09 PM	#2
SeabeeTim Nub Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 2 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Wow, where my journies take me... Bad news about Tanarus... I'm old school Tanarus/Infantry, back when they first came out. I left them both when Sony sold out and started charging at the door. On my way out I told them all that pay-2-play would be the death of those games. In essence, I think I was right. Obviously pay-2-play didn't work out so well for Sony, because they're free again, but they're also lying in a state of waste. I'm not interested in Infantry anymore, because when I left Infantry I found America's Army, which makes Infantry look like Pacman, but just recently, like, within the last 24 hrs, I tried to get back into Tanarus, and that's not working out so well for me. It's been four or five computers, and three or four operating systems ago since I last played Tanarus. Tanarus has been all but abandoned by Sony, they still host it on their servers, but they're not supporting it anymore, I guess they're all preoccupied with their cash cows. The last time I played Tanarus I think I must have been running Windows '98, because, from what I'm reading on the Station forums, (A note from the Development team to the community), XP users are having issues with it. These days I'm running 64 bit Vista. I tried downloading the game again--yesterday--(the old "LaunchPad" hasn't changed a bit, 'news' dated 2000), and just like it says on the forum, when I try to run the game, I get a black screen. Running off of an eight year old memory, I make some clicks on a black screen, and I almost get into the game, I hit a brick wall, but not before I make note that there are seventeen players in the game--that classifies as a ghost town IMHO. Seventeen players--I hope, for their sake, they're all in the same arena... It's sad, Tanarus was an outstanding game, way ahead of it's time, but it depended on free play for it's population. It looks to me like about seventeen players, give-or-take a few, are keeping it alive, but the only hope I see for it is if someone else throws a few dollars at Sony to take it off their hands, updates the game to fix the many compatibility issues, and puts it back on the free market. I can't even imagine how those handful of players are still functioning in the world of Tanarus--as is, unless we're talking about people so far behind the times they're still running Windows 2K... I would love to play Tanarus again, but I'm not going to downgrade my system over it. There's an upside to Tanarus, it used to be very popular, and could be again with a bit of maintainence and a good host. It will never be a pay-2-play worthy game, especially now that TV gamers have gone online, but a free MM game like Tanarus will attract a storm of cheap PC gamers (like me) which opens a lot of doors for advertising $$$. I hate advertisements as much as anyone--probably more--but I hate advertisements less than I hate paying for--anything. So, unless/until something remarkable happens with Tanarus, I think I'll have to pass. Which is what brought me here, searching for the alternative solution. I haven't found it yet, but now I'm going to research this site a bit. I'm seeing some games here, are they free? Are they good? I'm downloading the latest version of America's Army, the patch didn't agree with my 64 bit Vista, so I have to do an uninstall, and redownload the whole darn thing all-over-again. In the meantime, I'd love to come across a good--free--MM sim game. What's good here? Sorry, dude, I rant sometimes, waiting on a 1.5 gig download...