MG’s HISTORY WITH CHAT

WE’VE COME A LONG WAY BEFORE GETTING HERE

Don’t want the history? Just want to chat??

Don’t want the back story of MG and our varied experience in numerous chat platforms? We get it. We want you to join us as quickly as possible, too. Here’s the TL;DR: We tried tons of platforms over the years – none of which worked out for one reason or another. We’re now hosting our own on the Matrix decentralized network.

Quick links on how to get started:

We’re (sort of) Still on Discord

Although our primary platform is on the Matrix decentralized network, we still maintain a presence on Discord, with all of our rooms on Discord bridged to their Matrix equivalents.

We recommend joining us on Matrix instead of Discord, but we extend an invitation on Discord as well.

Note: Some of our Matrix rooms are not bridged on Discord. Specifically, the “Smack Talkin'” “Randomness (NSFW)” and “Politics” rooms which could be interpreted as a Discord terms of service violation. These rooms remain civil and fun, but Discord’s policy is vague in certain areas. So, we don’t take the risk.

MG, Chat, and Building Communities

MultiplayerGamers has a long history of utilizing chat rooms as a means to connect with gamers, guilds, clans, gaming groups, encourage the growth of gaming communities, and simply enjoy playing games with people.  I mean, we’re here to actually play games, not just talk about them.

This is the brief long history of our experience on the various chat platforms that dot our past, and more information on our present and future.

The Beginning… Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

IRCAt the dawn of MG, we were on Internet Relay Chat on the AnotherNet chat network. From there, we belonged to various other IRC networks as they came and went. This was by far our longest running chat experience in MG history. IRC served us well from the 90s through the early 2000s. It still has a very warm place in the really old veterans of MG’s hearts.

We rolled our own. It didn’t go well…

Really, and we mean REALLY, old version of the MG web site.

We have always had the notion to host our own platforms, make our own rules, and command our own destiny.  To better serve our community we needed our own chat platform too. When web-based chat solutions became more viable (sort of), we hosted our own chat system on this web site. Admittedly, the technology wasn’t great. There were no moderation options, there was no pretty interface, and the web page that displayed the chat “room” did not update in real-time. We’re talking real dark ages of the web here. The system evolved over time and became better and better, but the Forums were still the hot-bed of action when it came to users engaging one another on MG.  Most of the time, live-action chat was left to in-game chat on games like Quake or via voice on Roger Wilco and Teamspeak.

The “Modern” Phase…

Uh…. Slack??

Enter the age of…. Slack! Yes, we were on Slack. This lasted about a year. It was a brief time, much like these few sentences about it. It wasn’t our best move, but in many ways, it helped send us on the path that lead us to where we are today, but more on that later. There’s really not much more to say about Slack for gaming (what were we thinking?)

Discord

Hello Discord! (“Wait…what happened to Slack??” – Anonymous MG’er!, “What’s Slack?” – Another anonymous MG’er) We heard of this new fancy gaming chat service called Discord. We were shocked that it was free with no hitches (this was before Nitro existed). Discord was our home for a few years. Great times! Unfortunately, in our opinion, Discord grew too large, too quickly. As such, Discord (the company) was forced to modify their Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, Code of Conduct, and all the other mumbo-jumbo that comes with explosive growth. In a nutshell, we didn’t agree with some of the terms, and felt it was time to move on again. We wanted something that we could integrate chat with streaming, forums, and guides. So…

Guilded ….er…. Roblox??

Guilded! We joined Guilded in June 24, 2021. It checked every mark – a decent ToS, tons of features, and our beloved Discord chatbot “mgbot” only needed minor modifications to migrate it over. Transitioning to Guilded was pretty easy. Migrating all our guides, calendar events, and so forth was very straightforward.

Well…in accordance with our history with chat systems, this didn’t end well either. Guilded (the company) was acquired by Roblox (the company) in August 2021, less than 2 months after we joined up. For nearly 3 years, Roblox more or less left Guilded alone. In fact, many much needed functions and features were added during those years. We watched cautiously, carefully, and with careful optimism as new announcements came out. Then, nails, meet coffin. Roblox announced a change to Guilded that would drive countless communities away. In order to login to Guilded, as of July 2024, you were required to open a Roblox account and login via the Roblox service.

Roblox may be a great game, but we don’t play it.

Nobody wanted this.

Well @%$^!

We’re Doing it Ourselves Again! So… What is Matrix?

To quote the matrix.org web site, “[Matrix is] an open network for secure, decentralized communication.”  In a nutshell, Matrix is a collection of chat servers, across multiple communities stretching all around the globe. There is no central management of the network.  Any organization can host a Matrix “homeserver” and connect to the rest of the world with it.

Why Matrix? MultiplayerGamers has had a history of “hosting our own” for decades. This is true for our web site, e-mail, and game servers, but there’s never really been a viable, modern, self-hosted chat system.  If you’ve read this entire page, you’ll see we’ve tried to “go it on our own” several times, with not so desirable results. Well, here we are again, going for it again.  This time, however, we’re finally there.

For information, including connecting to us and how to connect to our official channels on our own Matrix homeserver, see the links on this page.  For details on Matrix itself, matrix.org has a very good documentation repository available.