Build and Shoot

Ive been playing AOS 1 year before it got released. I hated the full version and stopped playing. Jagex really ruined the game and made it virtually unplayable for me. I just want to know how AOS classic came to be? I will definitely get back into play the old AOS now that this has come along. How long ago was this created? I just heard about it on minecraft forums.
So anyways, I'm excited this is happening and I will definitely start playing AOS again.

It's a long and somewhat-convoluted story and it's been told before so I am going to give you a brief and abridged version.

Ben Aksoy, creator of Ace of Spades, sold the game to Jagex and went to work for them in the UK. Voxlap is based upon a software engine designed by Ken Silverman who appears to sort of frown upon commercial applications of it that don't involve giving him piles of money. The game client was re-written in OpenGL. Sometime around this point Ben started to realize that the game wasn't heading in the direction he'd assumed it was going to go in. He offered to buy it back. Jagex refused. Ben left Jagex after an incident involving source code on his hard drive that appeared to be missing, damaged, both or some other mysterious occurrence altogether. Somewhere around this time as well Jagex assumed ownership of the original aceofspades.com website and we were introduced to some new moderators from the Jagex team. They sort of rubbed the community the wrong way. Some of the old moderator-types such as Danhezee, izzy and StackOverflow got together and formed Buildthensnip Inc. LLC which is the entity bring the website you are on currently to you. Basically they pulled the beta out of the shitcan that Jagex threw it in.

I've probably gotten some details and timeframe wrong, and i have most certainly left some drama out. I also didn't mention a lot of hard work by the individuals mentioned above to keep the master servers going. But I'm sure some other folks can add more to it and correct what I've gotten wrong but that's sort of the basic shape of it in a nutshell.

BoL basically summed it up.

omg I actually recruited someone from the minecraft forums :)
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/177 ... spades-75/

Buffet_of_Lies wrote:

It's a long and somewhat-convoluted story and it's been told before so I am going to give you a brief and abridged version.

Ben Aksoy, creator of Ace of Spades, sold the game to Jagex and went to work for them in the UK. Voxlap is based upon a software engine designed by Ken Silverman who appears to sort of frown upon commercial applications of it that don't involve giving him piles of money. The game client was re-written in OpenGL. Sometime around this point Ben started to realize that the game wasn't heading in the direction he'd assumed it was going to go in. He offered to buy it back. Jagex refused. Ben left Jagex after an incident involving source code on his hard drive that appeared to be missing, damaged, both or some other mysterious occurrence altogether. Somewhere around this time as well Jagex assumed ownership of the original aceofspades.com website and we were introduced to some new moderators from the Jagex team. They sort of rubbed the community the wrong way. Some of the old moderator-types such as Danhezee, izzy and StackOverflow got together and formed Buildthensnip Inc. LLC which is the entity bring the website you are on currently to you. Basically they pulled the beta out of the shitcan that Jagex threw it in.

I've probably gotten some details and timeframe wrong, and i have most certainly left some drama out. I also didn't mention a lot of hard work by the individuals mentioned above to keep the master servers going. But I'm sure some other folks can add more to it and correct what I've gotten wrong but that's sort of the basic shape of it in a nutshell.

Thanks for the very in depth description. This is kind of surprising to me. Im glad AOS (old version) is available to us again.

Buffet_of_Lies wrote:

Ben left Jagex after an incident involving source code on his hard drive that appeared to be missing, damaged, both or some other mysterious occurrence altogether.

Such as said drive being smashed with a sledgehammer.

Buffet_of_Lies wrote:

I've probably gotten some details and timeframe wrong, and i have most certainly left some drama out.

There's plenty of drama. I think this is pretty much the main cause though (as linked on the forum archive):

AFAIK they demoted an admin once they found out he was backing up the forums.

TL;DR when Jagex read the bit saying "make sure it's not a hostile takeover", they misunderstood the "not".

I have secretly been writing a fair and neutral, yet still from my point of view history of Ace of Spades. It is designed to be a brief chronicle from day one to now. I am now at the point in the story where it becomes rather difficult to be neutral and tactful and tell the tale from my eyes.

HoboHob wrote:

BoL basically summed it up.

Was that post really necessary?

danhezee wrote:

I have secretly been writing a fair and neutral, yet still from my point of view history of Ace of Spades. It is designed to be a brief chronicle from day one to now. I am now at the point in the story where it becomes rather difficult to be neutral and tactful and tell the tale from my eyes.

HoboHob wrote:

BoL basically summed it up.

Was that post really necessary?

An idea would be to write the communities opinion, instead of yours.
Say, "the community was mostly displeased with jagex' decision to not have any support for custom servers".

Well, at least we got the beta back instead of the absolute trash Jeagex made.