• Dec 12, 2000: The database entry for A D & D 3rd Edition has been renamed to Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Ed. All of the thousand or so profiles that were registered for the previous have been moved to the new one. For additional AccessDenied.Net 3rd Edition resources, you can check out the Player List, Challenge Boards, or Links Page.

• Nov 12, 2000: Got the Earth 2025 Utilities working properly with the new server. Some of the utilities are untested, but the rest work! Unfortunately, I no longer play the game so have little drive to do much other than get them working (i.e. not planning on adding features or more utilities). I would consider good suggestions though. I'm sure there are plenty of other things to automate.

• Nov 12, 2000: The Earth 2025 Utilities page is back up. Earth: 2025 is a "massively multiplayer turn-based web game" based on old BBS games like BRE and SRE (Barren Realms Elite and Solar Realms Elite). Each player controls an empire in a non-geographical universe and can interact with hundreds or thousands of other players via diplomatic, military or economic means. These Utilities were the first ones created to automate some functions in the game (especially information gathering) giving a bit of an edge. There is also some code for a non-functional bot player. They were created when I was running the ATH alliance in the main servers. I have not played the game in a long time, and have not tested the tools, so they might not work (probably some minor issues parsing the web pages for the game). For information on other web war games, check out the Web Wargames page. I felt this game suffered from a few problems. The large servers were dominated by the strongest alliances, but some of these were proliferated by players playing multiple accounts. The game mechanics also suffered since it was too easy to grow quickly to get an early advantage if you knew the right path, forcing you to play only certain strategies.

• Nov 8, 2000: The Western Michigan Gamers Guild has written their own filtered front end for interfacing with the AccessDenied.Net Gamer Database (with permission). Their Game Locator Service provides players in that area with a focused view on their primary games of choice, since the search tool can be imposing at first.

• Nov 8, 2000: AccessDenied.Net is sitting at #58892 out of 1018964 web sites in the WebsMostLinked.com database. This, is the top 6%. Back in April, this site was also in the top 6%, but there were only 320000 web sites in the database.

• Nov 6, 2000: If you are in the TX area and looking for a convention later this month, check out UncommonCon in Dallas running Nov 24-26: A Cultural Festival Featuring Comic Books, Role-Playing Games, Science-Fiction & Fantasy Literature & Art, Anime & Manga, and all Related Hobbies & Art Forms.

• Nov 4, 2000: Since Part 2 of the RPG Gateway contest was too hard, there are now some obvious and specific clues on (most of) the sponsors' web sites. You can visit the sponsors by clicking on their logos at RPG Gateway's Contest Page.

• Oct 18, 2000: AccessDenied.Net has upgraded hardware and is now running significantly better and faster. This upgrade comes courtesy of our host, ZeroHype. They provide web site design and hosting facilities, among many other things.

• Oct 15, 2000: RPG Gateway is hosting one of the world's largest on-line RPG contest giveaway with over $4500 in prizes! Sponsored by over 28 gaming industry companies and a dozen web-sites, the prizes include a PlayStation 2, $200 gift certificate, an E-Com Store Front, D&D 3e manuals, miniatures, T-shirts, Anime, and much more.

  There will be nearly 100 winners and all you have to do for a chance to win is surf our great network of sites! For more information and great prizes check out the contest.

• Oct 15, 2000: AccessDenied.Net now has a Legal Information page, including details on our Privacy Policy. Among other things, it states that AccessDenied.Net does not sell user information.

• Oct 14, 2000:

  AccessDenied.Net now has Search Boxes if you would like to put a player search tool on your website. Additionally, in providing support for the search box, you can now search for a particular game or city on the Query Page.

  AccessDenied.Net Player Search

• Oct 14, 2000: Updated the Link To Us page, and added a link to the Newsletter on the navigation bar. Please contact us if you are interested in a link exchange.

• Oct 5, 2000: RPG Gateway is starting a promotional treasure hunt contest over several websites in the RPG Network. It starts on the 15th, and features several thousand dollars in prizes.

• Sep 24, 2000: The Second Annual World Boardgaming Championships held August 1st - 6th in Hunt Valley, MD set an alltime paid attendance record, shattering the 1,000 player barrier that had stood throughout the decade of the 90s. Held in conjunction with Dipcon XXXV and World Dip Con X, the event drew dozens of gaming diplomats from overseas as the ranks of the four-heat Diplomacy tournament swelled to 141 players for the time-honored classic. Even so, it took a backseat to a more recent hit game as Settlers of Catan took top honors with a 175-player tournament. You can get more information about the WBC at the BPA page (Boardgame Players Association).

• Sep 21, 2000: RPG Gateway has just developed an alternate service for the old Webring.org servers that have now moved to Yahoo. You can use customized code and custom join pages as well as full featured administration: RPG Gateway's RPG Ring.

• Sep 17, 2000: Profiles with dead emails and no other contact information are being pruned from the database for the first time in a very long time. This has taken a long time because there was a bug with the pruning tool that would occasionally corrupt the database (so it would have to be shutdown to be fixed). This problem is now fixed and it is running much smoother. Approximately 12% of all profiles have dead emails, mostly from people who have changed ISPs. This suggests that 12% of all emails will "go bad" in a year period. If you are currently using an email assigned to you by an ISP, I suggest you get something more permanent (like Hotmail) that you can just have automatically forward to your current ISP email.

  Please report any bad data that you notice in the database.

• Sep 8, 2000: I was playing around with some a message board tool and, to test it out, added message boards to AccessDenied.Net. I wasn't planning of keeping it, but figured I will let people try it out - AccessDenied.Net Forums. If you would like to see a new discussion forum with a particular topic, send an email. This software took less than 15 minutes to get it up and running, so if you are looking for your own, check out Infopop.

• Sep 8, 2000: There are two new features on the edit form: Ignore Updates and Delete Profile. The latter one is pretty self-explanatory, Use the Ignore option if you do not wish to receive infrequent updates about the database and your profile. These updates are sent very infrequently, partly to let user's know the status of their profile, and mostly to catch dead emails.

• Sep 7, 2000: RPG Host has just installed a new Forum system. Come join the talk about the new 3rd edtion D&D!

• Sep 3, 2000: There is now a handy registration form to handle registrations for the newsletter and Challenge Board notifications. This replaces the clumsy and confusing email system. However, these requests are not yet entirely automatic so you must wait approximately a day for them to be handled. That step is coming soon now that the email bot has a standard way to interpret your requests. Here are a couple of example uses of the new form:
  • Sign up the for the Newsletter.
  • Sign up for Challenge Board notifications for A D & D.

• Sep 3, 2000: The email bot that used to handle lost password requests is now back up. Your requests will not be handled asap.

• Aug 31, 2000: AccessDenied.Net finally has its own machine (again) and has moved (again). Until the DNS changes have been made the website is still running on the old machine. To prevent people from making changes to the database that would be lost, the database is disabled on the old machine and there is a link to this new site. I apologize for the annoying extra couple of clicks you had to go through in the meantime to get here. AccessDenied.Net is still having its pipe provided courtesy of ZeroHype.

• Aug 26, 2000: Some additional Movies have been added - a couple of movies showing off the upcoming Windows strategy game Kohan set in a fantasy world. The newest movie is a fast-paced high-quality AVI showing some rendered animations and plenty of in-game scenes, showing off some nice spell effects.

• Aug 23, 2000: Troops links updated (Star Wars COPS parody). Almost all of them were dead, so they have been replaced with three new sites.

• Aug 21, 2000: Check out the new logo for AccessDenied.Net. It is a 200x100 image created for the RPG Gateway.

• Aug 21, 2000: The RPG Gateway website is up. This is the central site for the RPG Network. It doesn't have much right now, other a Top 100 RPG Sites and some links.

• Aug 21, 2000: Not all of the administrative emails are up yet - including the automated bot (which used to handle lost password emails automatically). This means that some requests like registering for challenge board notifications and newsletter have been bouncing. Also, lost password requests are a little slow on the turnaround. I have put stand-in emails, so those services should be working again until I get everything else in order.

• Aug 20, 2000: AccessDenied.Net is participating in a new RPG website network, connecting together several top-notch RPG sites. This is an excellent venture being organized by RPG Host. The Gateway site is not complete, but things are just starting. You will find the navigation bar for the RPG Network at the top of each page's main section. Pleaes note this is a temporary stand-in.

• Aug 17, 2000: One more configuration problem fixed - this time with file permissions. The Challenge Boards are working again.

• Aug 15, 2000: The CGIs are back up. There may still be some minor configuration problems, but otherwise everything is working.

• Aug 13, 2000: I apologize for the massive down time and inconvenience, but we had a nasty drive crash a few weeks ago. Everything was lost, and I was too busy with work to get things back up right away. AccessDenied.Net is finally back, courtesy of ZeroHype, but at a two month old backup. Unfortunately, that's two months of users and changes that have been lost. I wish I could contact all the new users from that period, but obviously cannot. Also, CGI services aren't back up just yet so the website is not fully functional.

  I hope to have the database back up tomorrow, but this is a temporary solution. AccessDenied.Net will probably move again to it's own machine. I would also like to try to get some time to see if things can be moved over to a better database system to speed things up and minimize data corruption.

• Apr 27: An interesting statistic from Webs Most Linked: www.AccessDenied.Net is ranked #18890 out of 329066 domains in the database. The database now has over 8000 profiles (although that includes stale ones).

• Mar 6: The Search utility has been changed in how it handles Times Available. Previously, it required that, to match your criteria, a profile must have all selected times available. Now, it instead will return any profile that has at least one of the selected times available.

• Feb 14: I apologize for the database downtime. Some errors were being repaired, and some other aspects were being made a little more efficient. If you ran into any errors in the last few days, they should be gone.

• Feb 3: The great purge: automated mailings have gradually started going out to everyone with a profile at AccessDenied. The update contains a summary of your profile, stats (how many signed up for each game, etc), and information on any obvious problems. One of the main reasons for this is to catch dead accounts. These updates are very infrequent.

• Jan 10: The entire site layout has been redesigned. Now, instead of the cluttered multi-line navigation bar at the top of each page except the main page, all pages have the same layout with the same navigation bar on the left hand side. This is a common web page format, and, while it increases the horizontal viewing requirements, it improves convenience and helps you reduce the need to scroll down on every page. We still need some more eye candy as the focus has been mostly functional. Check it out and please send in your comments!

Nov 30
Uproar is all about various trivia games that are free to play where you have a chance to win money, and have some special offerings for the next month including some new questions. If free stuff is your game, it is worth checking out. Seasonal changes include: all of their games now have a $250 weekly drawing. In Entertainment Blitz they are giving away 20 Hasbro board games per week. In Sports Blitz they will be giving out computer games every day, official footballs every week, and two tickets to the Super Bowl. Finally, Special Blitz will have holiday-themed questions and will give movie tickets out every day.

Nov 16
Warhorse Simulations has recently added a play-by-web Titan game (other games they have are Blue vs Gray, For the People, Hannibal, Paths of Glory, Successors, and We the People). The site allows you to set up a game and play it through the website, without requiring a GM. The downside is that it is up to the players to enforce most of the rules. They're looking for player feedback, and I think this an excellent resource for Titan fanatics who don't mind PBEM-style play (and it is more convenient than PBEM).

Nov 7
The database suffered a couple hours of downtime while a bug that was causing some problems was being repaired. It's fixed now. An additional problem fixed was on the query page - on some browsers the Computer PBEM list did not properly show up.

Nov 2
Dominion Games is a new fantasy roleplaying company. Their product, Dominion Rules, is an "Open Source Roleplaying" system under constant development. This product is offered free on the Internet, and you can submit ideas via the web site.

Oct 27
I have added a link Search for a Player by Name or ID to the Query page. Previously you had to use Get Profile from the navbar, so this is an added convenience.

Oct 15
Pulsar Games, is making changes to the core rules of Blood of Heroes. They are now taking suggestions, but only for a week. You can email suggestions to BOHideas@pulsargamesinc.com. They stress that you should focus on the rules and game mechanics and make general suggestions (for liability reasons). If you want to send a detailed proposal, you can use their Proposal Form.

Oct 14
Details have been added to the Web Wargames page about a new space-based web game, Interstelen, available in January.

Oct 4
We have extended our alliance with WebRPG to include RPG Host. Our database and challenge boards complement their extensive RPG resources: Archives, Links, Contests and even a Hobby Store. You can find RPG Host links in the navigation section of each page.

Aug 30
Check out TimeGate Studios, a new company working on a game with a refreshing twist to the standard RTS genre. Kohan is a fantasy real-time wargame that takes out the tactical resource gathering and unit micro-management inherent in most RTS games (i.e. he who clicks the fastest wins). Now you work at the strategic level and control troops through a real military hierarchy, letting your individual companies handle the tactics. Other features include managing lines of supply, diplomacy, trade, quests and heroes - which means the game includes an adventuring aspect as well.

Aug 14
In an effort to become more focused, and to cut out sections that are no longer updated I have removed the Demos section. In addition to this, the Hosted Pages section is being reduced, and may be eliminated in the future.

Jul 20
On the edit form the text box for adding a list of new games was changed into an input box, limiting users to only adding one game at a time to the database. I believe the games list in the database is sufficiently thorough to be able to impose this limitation. If you find you need to add more than a few games to the database, then either you are not looking properly at the games list, or you are going to add several games which will comparatively have very few registrants.

Jul 20
Added a description and link for Evernight, another online web war game.

Jul 11
There was some corruption in the database. It had to be taken down for several hours over the past two days, and unfortunately a few user records were lost (primarily those in the range 4020-4042).

Jun 22
If you are a big Diplomacy player, you may want to check out the 1999 World Email Masters Diplomacy Tournament. This is expected to be a very large tournament, but you need a team of 7 players to register. [original message]

Jun 16
Someone reported a bug in the Lost Password tool that caused it to fail on long emails (24+ characters), so some people were unable to get their password. This has been fixed. Thanks to Eric Freeman for reporting the bug.

Jun 8
The database is up to 3483 users, and growing at over 400 a month! Unfortunately, I have not been able to put in some of the planned features, such as a tool to list the newest additions to the game list. Until then, you'll just have to periodically go over the list to see if there's anything new you can add to your profile. Of course, there are already about 950 games in the database so anything missing is either very new or very unpopular.

May 16
The AccessDenied mail bot now responds to lost password commands immediately, so you should receive a reply within a few minutes. If you do not remember your password, you can try it out by entering your email on the following form.

May 2
The first step to automating the lost password process has been implemented. You can now use the following form to fill in your email, and the password for the account matching that email (if there is one) will be sent to it. Unfortunately the process isn't fully automated yet so you still need to wait a day or two.

Apr 11
Oops! The Game Links page was broken (you could not delete/add entries). This has been fixed so you can again freely add your game webpage URL.

Mar 3
Fixed up the Game Links page by removing the full game list box and putting it on a linked URL. The full game list box was useful for adding links for a game which was not on the links list. You can go directly to the Full Game List. There are currently almost 900 registered games total in the four categories. FYI, there are 60 countries represented in almost 2500 gamer profiles.

Feb 14
Any Earth: 2025 players should check out the Earth: 2025 Utilities. These utilities automate some tasks for you. They are useful for information gathering and comparison such as news and standings, or to send a message out to multiple recipients. If you know PERL you can also get the source code to make your own utilities (or better yet, a bot :) Note that when Solaria moved to Echelon Entertainment the utilities were broken indeterminedly, and they have just recently been repaired.

Feb 14
The SharePlay games section of Web Wargames has been updated. SharePlay now has 5 multiplayer web games.

• a graphical RPG (Panumbra, their biggest game)
• a space trading game (Space Merchant, in open beta)
• a space strategy game (The Magellan Conflict, suspended until at least June)
• a fantasy strategy game (Monarchy, recently moved to SharePlay)
• a graphical space strategy game (M.A.C.E., by the makers of Monarchy and currently in closed alpha testing)

Feb 6
Check out the BPA (Boardgame Players Association). This is an organization of boardgames that you can join, centered around the new World Boardgaming Championships in Maryland, July 27 - Aug 1 (formerly Avaloncon).

Feb 6
Here is a little plug about an interesting strategy puzzle game: "Tantrix.com unveils a new Java-based gaming web site - New Zealand's most successful strategy game. Tantrix takes only a few minutes to learn to play, but years of experience to master the advanced strategy. There is no fee for playing. You can spectate on a game in progress, challenge 'Robot' to a game, chat to other players and - above all - challenge another player to a match!   » Tantrix.com"

Feb 4: A couple of people have reported that the database pages crash their Netscape (4.5?) I am not certain what is causing this problem about the pages, and suspect it could be something specific to the configuration or other applications because I use Netscape 4.5 myself. If anyone knows what the problem is, please let me know.

Feb 3, 1999
There have been about 40 requests to add a new city to the database in the last 2 days that have failed because the database rapidly grew to the original limit of 1024 cities. I have just increased this to 4096 cities to be safe. So, if you were having trouble getting the database to take your city before, try it now.

Feb 1, 1999
Kozaar is a massively multiplayer space strategy game where set in a persistant world where hundreds of players can form teams, colonize planets, trade commodities, and of course, make some warfare. You are invited to answer a survey on the Kozaar news page that will enable them to evaluate the potential of an advertising supported release of the game along with the possibility of having premium accounts with extra benefits.

Jan 31, 1999
If you are interested, Q4 Productions is looking for beta testers for their new sci fi RPG, Q4.

Any complaints in advance?

Jan 9, 1999
Replaced the World Cup trivia blitz with Special Blitz. This applet will be replaced with a new trivia blitz every month. This month it is "First Things First", February will be "Game of Love" and March will be a special movie trivia bonanza. Also, some of these games will have major prizes including trips.

Dec 24, 1998
The search page has been fixed up to be much sleeker for querying a game or players of a certain basic game type. Now instead of one large listbox of the over 700 games, there is one per each game type. So, for example, if you just want to look for Quake players you only have to go through the list of network games (about 110). Additionally, this allowed me to dump the "[type]" which was added to each game name in the list. This saves about 5k (almost 20% of the original size) from the download size. The only downsides are that Unclassified games are no longer listed and that the annoyance caused by misclassified games will be emphasized (please let me know about errors so that I may correct them!) For example, Dungeon Keeper was classified as a PBEM game (it is a network game).

Dec 18, 1998
Civilization II Gold with multi-player is out, but, like Civnet, it does not feature a matchmaking service (anyone know if Mplayer, Zone, etc support it?) To make finding opponents easy you can do a player search here, or try posting your game on the Civilization II Challenge Board.

Dec 18, 1998
I noticed that this site, particularly the database pages, look much better with Netscape. Not only that, but if the edit page is too big for your connection and/or you have too many games listed, Netscape will display the edit boxes right away so you can make quick changes to your main data immediately, while IE waits for the entire page to load before displaying the edit boxes. This is particularly a problem if the banner sites are slow to responding - IE waits for the banner to finish loading before you can start filling out the form (like the quick edit form at the top of this page). Also, the text is smaller (like it should be) under Netscape so most of the pages fit better. I did only try IE 3, but just a little subtle opinion :)

Note that I did not properly close the quick edit form at the top of this page - so it may have just shown up as a blank on some browsers anyways. That has just been fixed.

Dec 13, 1998
More unpopular games in the database which have seen no activity for a while have been deleted, and replaced by many. Sign up to these new games if you play them or add links to any web pages for them.

• Ani-Mayhem CCG, Axis & Allies PC, Chronopia, Civilization II, Clan War, Crayon Yrails, Crimson Skies, Duke Nukem 3D Atomic, Everlasting, Final Fantasy RPG, The Great Rail Wars, Hemik, Kindred of the East, Legend Quest, Lost Empires, MBT, Monopoly Star Wars, NASCAR Racing, Record of Lodoss War RPG, Skill Quest, Talislanta, Terminal Velocity, Tribes, Wings, World of Darkness

Dec 5, 1998
Several unpopular games in the database which have seen no activity for a while have been deleted, and replaced by many new games. Sign up if you play them or add links to any web pages for them.

• 301 Moonlight Way (PBEM), Camelot, Guardians CCG, Half-Life, Legacy, Lords of Magic, Magetech, Monster Truck Madness, Monster Truck Madness 2, Railroad Rivals, Ramilogn (PBEM), Roads to Gettysburg, Shogo Mad, Space 1889, Star Ace, Waste World, We the People

Dec 1, 1998
WebRPG and AccessDenied working together. AccessDenied is partnering with WebRPG to provide gamers with even more online tools. AccessDenied's reference tools (for help in finding a game, new players or gaming links) are now connected with WebRPG's interactive community features (WebRPG Online to play RPGs over the net, hundreds of discussion boards, and chat). You can find WebRPG links in the navigation bar on every page.

Nov 30, 1998
Some of the newer games in the database - sign up for them if you play them or add links to any web pages for these games. I've highlighted some of the more popular ones.

• Acquire, Aquarius, Babylon 5 CCG, Battle over Britain (SPI/TSR), Blue Max (GDW), By Hook or Crook, Die By the Sword, Dragonlance, Front Page Sports Golf, Gammarauders Johnny REB, Jorune, Judge Dredd RPG, Legend of the Red Dragon, Manhattan, Medici, Mu, New World, Russian Civil War, Senzar, Shanghai Trader, Six Nimmnt!, Sniper, Space Opera, SPQR, Sternenhimmel, Stratego, Ultimate Race Pro, Ursuppe, Vampire: The Masquerade LARP, Warzone, Wizards

Nov 10, 1998
Removed the News link from the top of the navbar. Not a terribly popular link!

Nov 10, 1998
Added a summary for a new web wargame, Utopia. The political aspect of this game makes it stand out a bit and probably worth a try.

Nov 5, 1998
Many visitors to AccessDenied have downloaded the rolling demo for X (a space sim game with a bit more to it). If you thought the game looked pretty cool but were wondering if, like many other titles, it went Into the Shadows, think again. The game is still on the way and is now slated for Q1 1999. There is an FAQ and new screenshots at EgoSoft.

Also, fans of squad-level tactical games (e.g. X-Com, Incubation, Space Hulk and to some extent Rainbox Six) should keep an eye open for the upcoming Warhammer 40k game Chaos Gate. There is also a new X-Com game coming out which uses the Unreal engine, so real-time but first person. It looks like what Space Hulk 2 should have been. Let me know of any other games of this type, I love them all!

Nov 4, 1998
As you can see a while back I rearranged the banners (previously all the banners were for banner exchange services - GSA gives really good ratios) and added a pay banner, ValueClick. This web site costs money to maintain and everything is, of course, provided as a free service. The Trivia Blitz games don't really pull in anything significant, so if you spot something interesting on the banners check it out! There is definitely some interesting stuff - for example, Talk city has a $40,000 contest for home page design on their service. If you see any bland banners let me know and I can disable ValueClick from displaying them (maybe I should filter out all those hotmail ones?)

I recently installed majordomo to host an interesting game-related mailing list at someone's request. The Game Pioneers Mailing List (hosted in the free game pages section) is "dedicated to the proposition that there are many worthy games lacking only a core of players to get rolling. The purpose of the list is to coordinate the attack on games that can be played online." Details on subscribing/unsubscribing are provided at the above link. If you have any other cool ideas for using AccessDenied let me know!

Nov 2, 1998
Ack! I left for a trip for a few days on Oct 31 and accidentally left the main database utilities (edit form, query page) in a broken state. I had just fixed a bug but apparently had forgotten to rebuild and install the utilities - and only discovered this fact today on my return. So, the problem has been fixed and I apologize for the interruption in service (and that I could not respond to reports that it was a broken in a timely fashion).

Oct 14, 1998
On the Query Form USA is now at the top of the country list. However, note that if you are searching based on city and/or state you probably don't need to specify the country.

The Profile pages now contain the last time that user profile was updated, so you know if you are looking at an out of date profile.

Some other changes to the HTML code used for the Edit page have helped reduce the size again by about 10k.

Oct 10, 1998
The edit and profile pages (once you have loaded a user) have been updated to allow quick queries on city, state or country.

The size of the query results page has been drastically reduced. Previously a typical 18-user query not based on a specific game took up about 62kb, and a typical 94-user query based on a specific game took up about 51kb. Now it will no longer give the list of games for each user in the query results (by default) and the two queries now only take 10kb and 30kb. Also, for the query by game, it will now give a 3 character code for the skill level of each matching user.

The query page has been restructured to use up less space and make a bit more sense. There is also a new checkbox to turn on "detailed query"; it will give the original query results format (list all matching games for all matching users). Note that, if the detailed option is used, the original query results format has been edited to save about 20%. For City the query page no longer has the list box of all possible values (reducing the form size from 32kb to 23kb). You can either type in the name or if you are concerned with spelling you can click on Select From City List.

The edit page is still about 50kb if you have all the games types turned on. This may be broken up or restructed later on to reduce the size. The query page may also have the game list removed and handled similar to city. I'm not sure about these changes.

Oct 5, 1998
The database has been updated to allow for 1024 games (previously it was 512 but we hit that limit).

Oct 4, 1998
The puzzle Hall of Fame utility was broken (so would not accept solutions) and has just been fixed.

Sep 30, 1998
1825, 1830, 1835, 1856, and 1870 have been grouped together into one series called 18xx. If you were registered in any of these games you are registered in 18xx.

Sep 28, 1998
I have added two neat little javascript puzzles to the Web Games page. You may have seen the problems before, but if not you should try them out. If you solve a puzzle you get to enter your name in to the Hall of Fame! Check out both the Missionary Puzzle and the Bridge Puzzle. Do you have any other similar interesting puzzles?

Sep 24, 1998
Added 3 new pages: Edit Profile, Add Profile (new users), and Get Profile. These are single page forms for the main database functions - moved from the original database menu. The new add form is particularlay useful because it now asks new users for password and email right away, as well as for the types of games they are interested in (which cuts down on the total size of the edit page).

Sep 23, 1998
Added a new feature to the Game Links section: MetaCrawler search. MetaCrawler actually does searches on all the popular engines like Lycos and Altavista and returns the best matches.

Sep 15, 1998
Added a brief description and link to a new web wargame called Forgotten World. It is another turn-based one, this time with a fantasy setting and a java interface.

Sep 10, 1998
In an effort to keep the database size down, some of the older, less popular games have been deleted. These include Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Flintloque, Fringeworthy and Millenium's End. Let me know if you have any further suggestions or ideas to toning down the number of games in the database. The current limit is 512 games, and we have recently had several dozen new games added. I may up the limit if it looks like we need the room.

One interesting new entry in the database is Rainbow Six (Windows network game - homepage). If you like a strong mix of tactics and realism in an action game, and you have the system that can run it (fast machine, preferably with 3D card) then you definitely need to check out the demo. A must try for fans of Space Hulk, Commandos, Incubation, and X-Com, who don't mind games like Quake.

Sep 9, 1998
If you want me to post about any gaming conventions, just send an email.

Sep 4, 1998
Boardgame database news: to reduce the number of games in the database, all The Gamers series games were put together into one of four categories depending on the series. This shouldn't be too much of a restriction since each game within a series shares the majority of the rules.

The four categories are now SCS (Standard Combat Series: Afrika, Ardennes, Crusader, Stalingrad Pocket II, Yom Kippur, etc), OCS (Operational Combat Series: DAK, Tunisia, etc), TCS (Tactical Combat Series), CWB (Civil War Brigade series). Anyone who was registered in at least one game in the series is now registered in the appropriate categories. Each one now has from 10-25 players registered.

If you know any other players who aren't registered, let them know about http://www.accessdenied.net. Also if you know of any related websites for The Gamers' series (like FAQs), either let me know or you can enter them yourself in the links section. Aug 3, 1998
Among other aesthetic changes, moved the quick forms to the top of the page with the GSA banner to get a more compact layout. Also fixed the table width to 800 pixels. I normally test with 1024x768 but thought this might be better. Of course, I still test with Netscape so I'm not positive it looks the same under Internet Explorer. Annoying.

July 31, 1998
Moved the quick forms for Add/Edit to the top of the main page (from the sidebar).

June 29, 1998
A new web wargame, Archmage is similar to Earth: 2025 but with an emphasis on magic. Also added a summary of the game Space Merchant.

June 20, 1998

• In the spirit of World Cup '98, I have a added a new trivia game from Uproar - World Cup Trivia Blitz - it features recent questions about the tournament, as well as some history.
• Added a summary and link for a new web wargame, U-Planet. It is most similar to Earth: 2025 but there are noticeable differences.

• I extended the database navigation bar (quick links to Edit/Search/etc) to include Game Links, a jump to the database of webpages by game. This makes it more accessible. If you run or know of any webpages for any game in the database, please add it to the list! It's free and automatic.
• New things are added to the database everyday, especially new cities and new games - too many to bother listing here. However, I hope to in the future have a new utility to allow automatically bringing up a list of new stuff. Some of the more recent new additions are Unreal, Outwars, and the original Starship Troopers boardgame.
• Player Search bug fixed: unless you used the query form, searches on games with parentheses in the name were failing.

• You can now Register to receive a monthly newsletter about what's new at AccessDenied.
• A similar service is also available for automatically receiving email when new challenges are posted. You can register in Challenge Boards.

MARCH 17, 1998

Added a link to a pay web game, Hundred Years War

MARCH 15, 1998

Added official Quake 2 demo.

MARCH 11, 1998

New page on AccessDenied: Web Games information as ewll as one hosted game, Trivia Blitz

MARCH 10, 1998

Added patch 3.14 and Capture the Flag addon for Quake 2

MARCH 9, 1998

Added demos for Rising Lands (real-time strategy) and Spec-Ops: U.S. Army Rangers (first-person tactical game, requires 3Dfx)

FEBRUARY 28, 1998

Added Friends of Hannibal page to the hosted pages section.

FEBRUARY 23, 1998

The demos section has a new look. It has been partitioned into the Denied Dozens. There is a group of the top Strategy (and other) games, as well as a group of the top Action (and simulator) games.

Added several new demos.

FEBRUARY 9, 1998

Added a page containing some information on How to Link to Us?

JANUARY 22, 1998

The Gamer Database FAQ has been updated. The main addition has been a bit of information about ICQ #'s if you were wondering what that field was in your profile edit page.

JANUARY 21, 1998

Challenge Boards: You can now post a challenge for any type of game, not just network games. ie. if you are seeking players for an RPG you can put up a message with your email/ICQ and some deatils. To make navigation more convenient the Related Links (websites), Query Results (player list), and Challenge Boards are all interlinked to each other to give you the most information for any particular game you are interested in.

New in the Demos section:

• Incubation: new demo

JANUARY 17, 1998

Added ICQ # field to database gamer profile. Now you can enter your ICQ # and it will show up on the query results and your profile.

Added filters you can turn on the edit page to disable listing all the games of a specific type (RPG, Network, PBEM, Boardgame, Unclassified). By only displaying the types of games you are interested in this reduces the total size of the edit page.

New patch in the demos section:

• Pax Imperia: patch 1.03

JANUARY 13, 1998

AccessDenied facelift! The navigation bars have all been updated, especially redone in the database pages, and the front page has been redesigned, adding a couple of new sections: Links and Challenge Boards.

The Links page has several sections: links by specific game or Related Links, RPG Pages, PBEM Pages, etc. If you are interested in a link swap and you have a site related to gaming, let us know!

The Challenge Boards allow you to post information that you are (or will be) immediately seeking an opponent for any computer network game. You can specify a variety of contact information such as IP Address, ICQ # or e-mail. It is a powerful CGI based system that is also tied in to the Gamer Database, meaning you can quickly fill out the Post Challenge form given your database name or id #. Try it out here!