Splatterball

Splatterball (or "Reg" as it was often referred to, meaning "Regular" to denote its difference from it's provisional and eventual successor "Splatterball Plus") was a popular paintball-style online game provided by AOL (America Online) and GameStorm (Mythic Entertainment) services beginning in 1997. The game, developed by Mythic Entertainment, the creators of the popular MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot was one of the first successful massively multiplayer online shooters. Splatterball was a capture the flag format and was played in one of four virtual arenas: Splat Lake, Splat Park, Castle and Splat West. Players could score team flag points by keeping the flag on base, and could score personal points by shooting other players with various virtual paintball guns (the Pistol, the Burst Gun, the Balloon gun and the Rifle). The type of paintball gun utilized was a personal preference, though most highly ranked players preferred the Balloon gun. Splatterball later had a sequel known as Splatterball Plus on a separate proprietary gaming service run by Mythic Entertainment. Originally Splatterball was available through America Online, using keyword "Splatterball". AOL users could log on and were charged by the amount of time they played, which was then directly billed to their AOL account. British residents did not pay for Splatterball in the same way, instead they paid roughly 1 pence sterling a minute and it came directly off their phone bill. At roughly 60 pence an hour the toll was generally the same as their United States counterparts. Splatterball became extremely popular for about three years and managed to generate a huge following. The Splatterball message boards on AOL were heavily frequented and active, creating a feeling of community amongst the players, followers and fans. It was this close-knit community which kept people coming back. Splatterball was a modification of Mythic's "Magestorm" and initially contained identical code with several modifications. This development made possible by the suggestion of Mythics Mark Jacobs. The splatterball client software was roughly 7mb big and on average took 25-30 minutes to download via dialup through AOL's service.

Squads

A squad could be formed by any player. A denotion of which squad you were part of was initially represented by acquiring a character rename to attach a prefix or a suffix or both.

Examples (Squads chosen to represent different styles of tagging):

S_Name_X (A player belonging so Splat Xtreme) Name^IK (A player belonging to Immortal Killers) SF_Name (A Player belonging to Splat Force)

Initially the Prefix or Suffix was down to squad preference, however changes in Squad rules restricted players to only use either a Prefix or a Suffix, not both. Additional changes in squad naming rules required an updated Squad Roster to me emailed to the designated Squad Co-Ordinator or Renamer, eventually named "SPLAT_NAME". This rule was set in place to prevent fraudulent name changes and to deal with the volume of renaming requests a game op would receive whilst online.

Squads would generally follow a heirach. With the President or Co-Presidents being the Squad Leaders, and several other designated officials such as Vice Presidents, Captains and other ranks. Squads would often offer trials, or probation to new members before inducting them into their team.

A Squad would generally keep close contact through AOL's community message boards, Instant messenger and Email systems.

Boot camp

Boot camp was a provisional message board area on AOL's community message boards. A new squad would have to apply to join boot camp and pass a months probation before being promoted to the Splat Barracks where they would also be inducted into the Official Splatterball Ladder.

To successfully pass Boot Camp a team would have to demonstrate sportsmanship, orderly conduct, adherence to in game Terms of Service, correct protocols when dealing with official Splatterball squad issues and good bookkeeping, essentially keeping up to date rosters.

Splat Barracks

Splat Barracks was essentially a community message board for fully inducted and official squads. Squads would have to adhere to the same terms of service as Boot Camp however under less scrutiny. A team was rarely removed from Barracks unless repeated Terms of Service violations occurred, the team disbanded or players were found to be Hexing/Cheating.

Ladders and Tournaments

Fierce competition due to the formation of Clans (Squads) led to the introduction of an official Splatterball Ladder. The ladder consisted of 20 or so teams who had proved their commitment to the game as a serious squad by demonstrating that they were active through AOL's community message boards. After graduating from "Boot Camp" a squad would then be inducted to the bottom of the ladder.

Throughout the lifespan of Splatterball teams SF (Splat Force), M (Malice) and FtP (Fi Theta Psi) were notably dominant. Towards the end of Splatterballs life, particularly after the closure announcement, the rules of the ladder were taken less seriously, and with members using aliases to play for other clans, the Ladder closed with SX (Splat Xtreme) finishing top despite this squad being a consistent 7th place in the ladder over the past two years.

Splatteball's official Ladder was generally hosted on a Game Operator's AOL member webspace, this operator (known in game as a "SPLAT" denoted by their in-game prefix and bright pink colouring) would generally administrate the ladder and deal with all correspondence, disputes and updates. The site was generally of poor quality however contained adequate content.

In addition to a regular ladder, events were held however relatively infrequent. Notable events include:

July 4th independence day Tournament where players would face off against in game OPS (SPLAT's) mimicking British vs American conflict during the American war of Independence. This event was often criticised by the British community for generally trivial issues such as not being able to play as the British, in addition was deemed as nationally insensitive.

Splat West Tournament - This tournament was a traditional team vs team conflict in a less popular map named "Splat West". Splat West's lack of popularity was possibly due to the size of the map and odd layout.

Elite Status

Elite Status was essentially a title given to Splatterball Squads who had demonstrated notable success, dedication to the game and very good in game etiquette both on AOL community message boards and in the game itself.

Elite Status squads would be gifted an AOL Keyword and official AOL area for their squad. Elite status was notoriously difficult to achieve. After the closure of Splattball it became apparent that "Elite" squads often had Game Operators as members, suggesting that there was some sort of fix, although this was never proven.

Memorable "Elite" Squads include:

- SOLO (SOLO) - Fi Theta Psi (FtP) - Splat Force (SF) - Splat Bombers (SB) - Degeneration X (DX) - Splat Warriors (SW) - Malice (M)

The End of Splatterball

In 2000 Splatterball players were notified that the game was to be removed from service. Later that year Splatterball was removed as an AOL game and the entire AOL gaming area outsourced to EA (Electronic Arts) much to the despair of the 400+ membered Splatterball community.

An attempt was made by several enthusiasts to purchase the rights to use Splatterball and run it themselves, however Mythic would neglect to let go of this game as it contained code used in some of their other developments.

Late in Splatterball's lifespan, the game suffered serious playability issues due to both its aging interface with the AOL servers and its exploitable bugs. Mythic Entertainment, likely desiring to diminish its reliance on AOL, neglected to properly address the major issues and eventually suspended support.

With evident inadequecies surfacing, such as the transatlantic latency rates, billing issues, fraud and hexing, Splatterball on AOL was disbanded and Splatterball Plus, the games immediate successor, came to life through the Mythic Entertainment website. On Mythic's site, players could enjoy unlimited play for a flat fee of around 10 dollars a month. Splatterball Plus, however, had a palpable lagged pace, diminished playability and lack of AOL marketing support. As a result, Splatterball Plus never enjoyed anywhere near the popularity or notability of the original classic game.