NetStorm: Islands At War
| NetStorm: Islands At War | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Developer(s) |
Titanic Entertainment Ken Demarest Zack Simpson Jim Greer Tony Bratton Beverly Garland Chip Patterson Kelcey Privett Steven Moore |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | October 31, 1997 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
NetStorm: Islands At War is a real-time strategy Windows game, developed by Titanic Entertainment and published by Activision in 1997. Although a single-player campaign and tutorial missions are included, Netstorm is chiefly designed for online play, allowing for games of up to eight players.
NetStorm takes place in the world of Nimbus, a planet whose crust has been sent floating off into the atmosphere by the never-ending battles between the three god-like beings called "The Furies", representing Wind, Rain and Thunder. The people now live on small floating islands, each with its own high priest; their only link to their patron Fury. The islands battle each other in order to capture and sacrifice the priests of their enemies to their own Fury so they may gain knowledge and power.
A demo of the game was originally released by Activision on September 15, 1997, but a flaw allowed users to convert it into a full-version download. This in combination with the close launch date of the popular Age of Empires and lack of promotion by Activision meant game sales were poor.
In December 1997, fans discovered an unsupported built-in editor function within the game that allowed new custom content single-player campaigns to be created. A fan-based community centred on playing the game and designing new content emerged based at a fansite named "Island Sanctuary".
Unfortunately, the game contained a number of bugs that many players exploited, including the ability to knock other players out of online games (called "nuking") and to give themselves unlimited credits within the game. On February 4, 1998 Activision released a patch fixing many of the problems.
Activision maintained the official servers for a number of years, but the constant server crashing made player numbers diminish and the servers were closed down on May 28, 2002. Shortly after, fans of the game set up unofficial servers to keep Netstorm alive and the current server uptime is good. Additional unofficial patches have now been released which add several new options, allowing for more varied games.
Netstorm is considered abandonware by some, and can be downloaded at NetStormHQ and Netstorm World.
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