Great victory for Wesnoth

[ivanovic]

In a major victory for open-source gaming, the Battle For Wesnoth project has been chosen to replace Microsoft's tired "Age of Empires" franchise. Months of secret negotiations among release manager Nils Kneuper (aka Ivanovic), senior developer Eric S. Raymond, and executives at Ensemble Studios and Microsoft led to the deal. "Raymond was particularly helpful in developing the terms," commented Darl McBride, the former head of Santa Cruz Operation recently brought in to manage Microsoft Games.

"We're very excited," Raymond confirmed. "We particularly wanted to see Wesnoth multiplayer go up on Xbox Live. What better way to increase awareness of Battle For Wesnoth?" Access to the existing Wesnoth servers will still be available until June 1 2008; players will be charged a small monthly fee.

Raymond and Kneuper declined to disclose the full terms of the deal, but Raymond admitted that they do involve a substantial amount of money. "We have a plan to use it wisely," he said, "beginning with hiring some real artists."

According to Kneuper, another clause of the agreement commits the Wesnoth project to migrate all its documentation to OOXML, which is expected to be approved by ISO tomorrow. Kneuper observed: "We are very pleased to be at the front of this important development in international standardization".

Discuss and celebrate this great victory with us in here.

Update: For all those who have not realized it so far: This was just a joke. Happy April Fools Day!

[AI]

SCO group != Santa Cruz Operation, but whatever

[Lartza]

Not so related to the topic, but came to my mind that don't never ever make Wesnoth commercial or I will be sad for the rest of my life(and many others) You have any commercialism plans?

[Rhonda]

Raymond and Kneuper declined to disclose the full terms of the deal, but Raymond admitted that they do involve a substantial amount of money. "We have a plan to use it wisely," he said, "beginning with hiring some real artists."

I would suggest to spend the money on sound effect artists mainly, given some recent feedback of a player I received. Innocently playing wesnoth at full volume his sister came into his room during some battle sequence asking what kind of porn he was watching. Depending on family environment this can have deep impact on the user's personal sexual development process, believing they would have to grunt like some ork; an impact we would hopefully want to avoid.

[NinjaWursti]

This is just amazing! Congratulations to this great victory! Monthly Fees arent in my interests, but it's okay when it helps you.

By the way: ...

[Iris]

In a major victory for open-source gaming, blah the blah.

I also participated in the deal with my marketing speech and influences in Microsoft Chile. Why didn't you mention me?

ps. This is the last time I work for you.

[Kryzyzkowski]

[Flak]

Way to go Wesnoth!

I think I'm going to be buy into the Xbox market for this.

[uhlyk]

hahaha, i started to be angry but...
well done

[dontano]

Yay!...? *maybe*

[Chris NS]

If the documentation is migrating to OOXML, what provision are going to be make for those of use who don't have easy access to OOXML readers?

[Chris NS]

On second thoughts ... after taking into account local time differences, is the time of this post before 12 noon?

[Jovycos]

Will it be still a fully free game?
It will use Microsoft-Standards (OOXML)? And then you will use DirectX and all these commercial stuff?
What will Microsoft do, except from standardization and getting all the money?
You will be dependent and not free!
You don't need them, you have great Artists willing to work for you for free, OpenSource needs only helpers working for free.
You can earn money but you don't need those Microsoft-Bastards!
You have mentioned Age of Empires? What is with Age of Empires?
Have you ever seen the miss happened third version?

Linux won´t be still supported? Cross platform-Ideas?

[thorongil]

is this an April fools joke? if it isn't, i'm really glad that Wesnoth is getting such publicity

[CarpeGuitarrem]

In a word...