Ten years ago, in March of 2000, Microsoft Research (MSR) released “The Best Game No One Played,” Allegiance.  But, this space flight FPS, come RTS with managed economies was played.  You’re either the commander or a player.  Think StarCraft or HomeWorld where your units don’t HAVE to listen to you, and then imagine being one of those units.  Two years later, when MS decided to pull the plug on the game servers, such was the dedication of the community that Allegiance didn’t die.

Sound familiar?  We’ve seen the same thing from many games.  Tribes, Quake, etc.  You can name plenty of games that have continued for years and years.  So is Allegiance any different?  Is it just another in a string of old games that will eventually die?  No.

In 2004, Joel “Solap” Dehlin (a key developer of Allegiance during his MSR employment) secured the release of the source code for the Allegiance community.  Development began in earnest and today, Free Allegiance is on it’s fifth release of the game engine and the eighth version of the “community core” (think game rules/factions, etc).   There is a roadmap for development and the community as a whole constantly reviews and revises this development.

Again, how is this different?  Haven’t we seen this time and time again?  No, we haven’t.

The difference is community.   This community is organized.  You don’t find 50 different versions of Allegiance.  There is one.  You don’t find 300 mods that break each other.  Every “officially” released mod works with every other mod.  And perhaps that’s the right word, the Allegiance community is official.  The hierarchy within the community is so rock solid that you just can’t believe it.  There have only been two (2!) community heads in ten years (Pook and Tigereye).  There are “schools” (Allegiance Flight School, AFS, and Cadet, CDT and Allegiance Command School, ACS) that run on scheduled intervals to help new players learn the intricacies of the game.  Show me a combined, organized community with a proper business-like attitude (about a game) surrounding all official releases of Quake/Tribes/any non-commercial game and I’ll still one up you with the Allegiance community.  Players who “get it” don’t leave.  They just don’t.  This is why Allegiance is solid.  The core community is loyal, almost to a fault.  Each Sunday afternoon you’ll find massive, highly skilled squadron matches being played.  Many of the players in these squads were playing during the BETA of Allegiance, in 1999 or 2000.  They still live and play competitive matches, under the same names with many of the same players today.  If that’s not enough, every day the Allegiance forums (not to mention the game itself) are alive with the amazing discussions of unbelievable intelligence.  Lawyers, doctors, priests, professors, engineers, artists, this community is filled with intelligentsia.  I would wager that the Allegiance community has a higher IQ than the entering class at MIT this year.

The Allegiance community is one of the most amazing groups of alpha males (and alpha females!) who live, breathe, sleep, eat and play Allegiance.  So do we have anything to celebrate?  Oh yes!   For more information on the ten year month long celebration of Allegiance, check us out on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Also, be sure to visit our Wiki or our forums, the official news.fao website, Allegiance Sports (the podcast dedicated to Allegiance), oh .  . . and don’t forget, join us in game.

Imagine flying around in a beautiful space shooter with nebulae and 3d sound and beautifully rendered, high-poly ship and station models where all of the enemies (and friendlies) actually have brains and can do unpredictable things. Imagine being in space with 30 or even 100 of these other players and duking it out with tons of variable loadout choices. That’s Allegiance: Beautiful graphics and large-scale multiplayer space action. Simple as that.

Well, except for the squadron part. Allegiance was built for squadrons from the ground up. Pre-recorded quick comms. Strategic commands. Wings. Squadrons. Wingman commands. We did all of that stuff and more to really make it advantageous, nay, necessary to be successful as a team. So that’s Allegiance: Large-scale, beautiful space action game for squadrons. And that’s really it.

Well, except for the strategy part. You may have heard me say it before (and Rob mocks me unmercifully), but I’ll say it again for those who weren’t paying attention. Imagine playing a game of Age of Empires or Starcraft where YOU are one of the units. Ain’t that just a cool concept? So squadrons take on a new twist because you have a group of other warm bodies that you’re working with to accomplish a team objective (Conquest, Prosperity, Artifacts, CTF, Deathmatch). Several on your squadron might form the Alpha wing that harasses the other team’s miners. Others form the Delta wing, which defends your miners and buildings. Still others form the Foxtrot wing which acts as a quick strike force and can mobilize to help one of the other two wings when needed. And one guy becomes commander and spends the whole time managing investments, choosing the technology path for the team (to get you better stuff) and commanding the battles from the 3rd person, RTS view of the game. OK. So that’s Allegiance: “Beautiful, squadron-based, large-scale multiplayer Space Action game, where you’re one of the units in an RTS.” We coined an acronym for the game type and genre: BSBLSMSAGWYOOTUIARTS. We’re hoping it will catch on.

–Joel Dehlin, original Microsoft Game Developer (more historical info on the FAO Wiki) ]]> http://news.freeallegiance.org/welcome-to-allegiance/feed/ 0 http://news.freeallegiance.org/freeallegiance-is-it-really-free/ http://news.freeallegiance.org/freeallegiance-is-it-really-free/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:23:10 +0000 FreeBeer http://news.freeallegiance.org/?p=82 [...]]]> We’ve all been there.  You hear about a game claiming that it’s free.  Cool!  So you head over to the download site, install the program and start investing some time in trying to learn the game.  Then you hit a wall – you discover that the “free” is true but only in the sense that it’s free to try.  There’s a catch:  you are either limited in how much time you can play, or you’re limited by how powerful you can get, or you can’t get the “special items” unless you fork out some money.

FreeAllegiance Is Free

At FAO (FreeAllegiance.org) we don’t do any of that.  We are truly free.  We do not charge for access ever.  Period.  End of Story.  Really! You are free to play 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We do not give out “special powers” or <wink, wink> special consideration in the game for people who choose to donate money to pay for the servers. (And no, we don’t harass you to donate – no annoying pop-ups or reminders or anything like that. People who donate do so freely because they get so much enjoyment out of it.)

So What’s the Catch?

Free Allegiance takes time to learn. Seriously. While you can instantly jump into a ship and fly it around the 3D environment (you don’t have to deal with learning ship mechanics such as flaps or landing gears, etc.) you’re not going to be effective in the game until you learn about the game dynamics – such as which ship you need to be in at any given time during the game. And that takes time to figure it out. (Don’t worry though, we love to teach new people about the game.)

If you’re looking for a game that you’re going to be instantly good at, then Free Allegiance is probably not for you. But if you want to play a game that puts a premium on teamwork and skill, then definitely check us out!

What is Allegiance?

Allegiance is not easy to describe. It’s not like any other game you have played. It has many elements of other games, such as on-line multi-player, 3D graphics and gameplay, an economy to nurture so you can research and improve your tech, etc. It is very much team-oriented. Players fly different types of ships, interchanging them as needed to support the team’s goal. Many roles, many circumstances, always changing, always dynamic.

This is not your Dad’s First-Person Shooter!

As a team-based game every player, regardless of skill or knowledge, has an important role to play. Players work together, under the direction of a Commander, to win. There’s nothing sweeter and more exhilarating in the gaming world than when a team jells together, working against the odds, to punch through an enemy’s defenses to kill or capture a strategic base. Played well, Allegiance will get your adrenaline pumping.

It’s Free!

Yes – free. As in there is no payment required to play. The download is free. The sign-up is free. The gameplay is free. Just sign up, download and play! Really!