http://www.webdiplomacy.net/faq.php Scroll down to "Can I donate?"

When I want to play Austria v France, I go to Olidip. Other than that, I stay on this site.

Oh, Olidip also has PM notification, which is really nice.

I used to go to playdiplomacy to play the variants, but now there's variants here so I have no need to stray. Kestas I'm sorry!!! I'll never cheat on you again! you know I love.. diplomacy.

goondip had email notifications.

variants available on olidip are great. I'm playing on stabberfou.org aswell though i dislike their interface, they do have a clickable map... and email notifications, and they allow your enter incorrect orders...

i'm only played there because of the world cup, we really need to get this site ready to make a decent bid for hosting the world cup next time...

Is there an Irish team for the World Cup Orathaic?

@tj - I'm massively in favour of adding point&click orders - AS AN OPTION.
Not to replace the current system in any way, but to be able to offer it would cater for everybody.

@Orathaic - webDip 0.6x had email notifications. Kestas removed them, I think because it was just flooding peoples inboxes, and massively increasing server load.
Perhaps a better option would be an rss feed?

A long time ago, I tried out Bounced, since way back in the day (circa 2007) this website (still named phpdiplomacy) had not even properly implemented the rules yet.

However, I didn't like Bounced very much. They properly implemented the rules and you could find some very serious players there, but the interface was just so cumbersome and clunky. Also, since they took themselves so seriously, every game needed to have a human gamemaster to oversee things and coordinate pauses. One time, when playing in a couple of games for a tournament, the gamemaster went ahead and paused the game for 2 months without even first consulting with the other players. It really ruined the whole tournament as roughly half of the people promptly CDed when the game eventually resumed.

@figlesquidge, Wow, that RSS feed suggestion sounds like an awesome idea! Each game could have it's own public RSS feed link for notifying subscribers of phase changes and public messages. Also, each player account could have its own private RSS feed (basically create an RSS feed link with random characters at the end to prevent guessing) to notify a player about when he gets a message in any game he is in. Private RSS feed links for particular games could also be implemented in that fashion, but that may be a bit redundant.

Taking a look at the dev forum, it looks like kestas is already onto the RSS feed idea. So, I won't bother posting it under the suggestions again.

@tj218 - I've wandered from this site for a little while, but nothing else compares, to be honest. It's great exactly how it is now so the improvements on kestas's docket will only make this a better site.

@seriousham, yup, there is an irish team, i got the last place on it.

yeah, i'm not really that pushed about email/rss, i am actually happy to check my game here when i'm online.

Though i know some people would prefer alternatives...

@yebellz What tournament was this?

I learned to play on Bounced, and also GMd a hundred or so games there. In
general, I actually like their interface better: the GM system allows a lot more control of game options, there are a lot more game options to begin with (you can have different turn lengths for retreats, movements, and adjustments!), and MadMarx would love how seriously they take anonymous play over there. Once the game began, the two options I miss most are being able to type my orders and being able to send press to any number of the other powers at once (for example, as Russia, you could send a press to AI or to F or to EFGI or broadcast). I also think their maps are easier to read.

That said, the community here is much bigger, the site generally runs smoother, and if you get passworded games, the level of play is approximately equivalent. I would really love to see text-based orders, however. It would cut down on the number of times I misorder in every live game I play!

I just started playing the World Cup on Stabberfou . . . clunkiest interface ever, and I still haven't figured out if my orders are actually going to go through yet.

@peterwiggin: it was the "Anderson Press Tournament". I was in games: APTGame3Main, APTGame5, and APTGame8. I ended up CDing since the huge delay kind of put me off and others had left as well. I feel badly about abandoning the games, but I just wasn't very happy with the situation. I think the GM should have consulted with the players to figure out whether replacing one player would have been better than delaying for several months, which lead to the dropping of several players.

Bounced does have some nice advanced features. The variable phase lengths, power preferences, and draw bits are really nice. I would imagine that the GM does have a lot of control, but it doesn't seem like it would be more than what the mods could do here, should they intervene. Of course, getting a mod to intervene in a game on this website isn't necessarily desirable or quick.

It's a difference of philosophies between the two sites. Bounced gives you a lot of advanced features and players take it very seriously (especially with the strict anonymous play and GMing). WebDip keeps things a bit more simple, but it's definitely more beginner friendly and fosters a more casual environment. The community here is also much larger and more vibrant as well. I think the nice, intuitive interface is a big draw.

By the way, I was away from WebDip from early 2007 until mid 2010. I really love all of the amazing improvements and how the rules implementation fully passes DATC now. Kestas has done a great job building this site, evolving it over the years, and fostering the community that it has.

Yeah coming back this summer after having been away for a few years was a nice surprise. I still hate having to use a mouse to enter orders though . . .

GMs on Bounced were very limited in what they could do to detect or punish cheating. I could look through moves and presses, but then if I thought there was something fishy, I had to email CRS, who I think is a professor at some college in California, who would eventually look into it. As for the tournament . . . that was the one where everybody decided they wanted to kill me, I believe.

Your record says you have only one finished game on Bounced . . . I'm guessing you didn't stay there very long?

Oh I played a game or two on playdiplomacy when it was still relatively new . . . I couldn't understand their maps, and the order input frustrated me. Then they started expecting people to pay money . . .

I would never cheat on webdiplomacy

Does this mean I'm technically cheating on Bounced?

No, you're cheating on us with your ex :)
PlayDip is ridiculous

playdip IS ridiculous. i played 4 games there and solo'd THREE of them.

o.w.h +1

@peterwiggin (this post is solely about Bounced)

No, I didn't stay very long at Bounced. I had finished my first game and I was starting to get use to the interface. I thought I had gotten myself set up with a few nice games, then I got the rug pulled out from underneath me when all three games got unexpectedly paused for a few months. It completely ruined the games as many of the players (myself included) had lost interest. I was completely disenchanted with the website. Originally, I thought it was a just annoyance to have to go to the trouble of finding a GM to preside over every game, but after that, it seemed like a GM could easily do more harm than good.

If you are saying that a GM has very limited powers and has to email the lone site Admin/Creator to do anything about cheating, what's the point of having GMs anyways? Why require someone to baby sit on every game? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just have the players themselves email the site admin if they think something fishy is going on? What's the policy with pausing? How come one player can request a 3 month pause and get it without any consultation to the remaining players?

I do get how a GM could be useful in mediating draws/results, but shouldn't that be an uncommon case? Wouldn't it make sense to get the attention of a Mod if needed but otherwise just let the players involved try to settle things? It is nice that Bounced has a "draw bits" feature, but some may argue that it's not necessarily capturing the proper spirit of the game.

Overall, I just felt that the need for a GM for every game made playing at Bounced way too cumbersome.

Wow, I just checked out stabberfou's "Try the Interface" demo game. It's pretty neat that they have something like that, but my god, that interface is just so damn cumbersome.
If anyone is curious, check it out here
http://www.stabbeurfou.org/EssayerPartie.php

Looking at these other sites, really makes me realize that Kestas did a great job making this site simple and usable.

The GM system allows games to deal with people who miss orders without just issuing NMRs. When somebody is late, the GM can wait for them, or, especially if they've been repeatedly late, replace them and put their position up for grabs. There is also the option to have NMR games, where powers who miss the deadline hold, which is how things work here, but in practice that's rare. The net result is that games are slower but more balanced.

As a side note . . . the replacement positions fill because on Bounced, replacement players don't put any of their ranking points into the pot but still gain points if they win or draw. I think they would have put in come from whomever they replaced.

This site was built from the base up in php.

Older sites were based on mail/email play, where you sent in orders in writing and a gamesmaster adjudicated them.

Automating the read orders and adjudication was a big step i think... but the site was built in pieces, with clickable map being new and poorly implemented (if you ask me)