This one could hit Total War fans of the multiplayer scene hard. Gamespy closes soon.

[alQamar]

Hello fans of the multiplayer Total War scene,

Perhaps you haven't heard about yet but this is news is dead sure. Gamespy announced to close at the end of the months and with it the complete Gamespy Peer2Peer infrastructure being a home and host for decades and many games along Total War games, which are still actively played.

I have written a short article about this sad news, and a longer one on Steam's Rome Total War world players group:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...spy-shuts-down!

[riskymonk]

Here's an opportunity for CA to redeem themselves and save their reputation. Will they set aside a budget to host the multiplayer servers (I don't know the technical ins and outs so I'm guessing here) or will they save that budget to hire another actor to read lines from a piece of paper into a microphone and act as a concerned advisor? It's a tough one. Have a think about it CA, weigh up the pros and cons carefully.

[alQamar]

hi guys, I just launched Rome 1 just to see what happens to the causa Gamespy. The service will be shutdown in about 7 days. Just today the lobby is nearly dead. I've never experienced that in all the years. It really seems the MP community left the sinking ship as there is still no announcement from CA how they think to handle this event and how to preserve the MP mode for so many pre TW Empire games.

[GoTW Kubee]

Where did you read that the RTW lobby shuts down in 7 days?

[alQamar]

Well Kubee it's was announced everywhere on the net that Gamespy shuts down its services by end of June 2014. Just look it up. Some games will be saved by their developers like Civ 3 and Civ 4, some will end up with no MP support. I think the biggest controvesy is still Battlefield 2. First EA announced to save the MP feature including the boards, then they cancelled it a few weeks later. I am not up to date which games apart from Civ series will be saved. For Total War there seems to be no hope as SEGA / CA did not leave any message.

You can also lookup this preliminary inofficial list which games will be affected by that happening (also linked in the OP)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/commen...espy_shutdown/

[GoTW Kubee]

I remember reading about the shutdown, but it said that the games affected would shutdown on May 31st. I checked the next day (June 1st) and just now and in both instances the lobby was still online.

[alQamar]

strange I will test it tomorrow.

[GoTW Kubee]

It's definitely still online, but the competitive community has been dead for about a year or more now.

[alQamar]

wow I wonder why there were so many announcement about it and why Firaxis moved its games away from gamespy and recently I read that a community is hosting servers for Command & Conquer
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-07/c...e-alternative/

I do not see a need for all this if Rome 1 is still operating. CA still did not comment the end of Gamespy services.
When I connected to Rome 1, he still uses IGN servers:

http://whois.domaintools.com/69.10.30.243
http://whois.domaintools.com/69.10.30.240

The lobby still works. Very strange.

An Activision representative explained, "Activision won't be affected."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/...-games-at-risk

Well Rome 1 was published by Activision. This may be a reason.

[Guerrilla]

Pfft! Online multiplayer RTW is still working right now - and I've been playing online multiplayer M2TW most days for the past 3 weeks. So, what is going on?

[alQamar]

I don't know Guerrilla. It still works despite all the news. Perhaps SEGA inofficially made it possible. In Rome 1 the community is now very small. I think most of them already left before the shutdown (should have) happen.

[Lancy]

There's a bunch of people who play RTW on gameranger instead of GS now. A number of Russian clans like BiA are playing there now. Still very small though.

[Emperor of The Great Unknown]

M2TW online doesn't work anymore, when trying to connect to the lobby it just says connection lost.

[alQamar]

Thanks lancy and emperor for the feedbacks. Hail BiA!

[riskymonk]

M2TW online doesn't work anymore, when trying to connect to the lobby it just says connection lost.

Was just about to open a thread asking if it worked. Shame. We now know what will happen to rome 2 in 10 years time... left to die.

[alQamar]

Hi guys, I've downloaded MTW2 yesterday and it seems to be proven that the TW games published by Activision uses a different system than Medieval 2.

First of all Rome 1 MP still works but still uses IGN (gamespy) servers!
Different to Rome 1 you need to login to Gamespy with your Gamespy account to play MTW2 in MP. if you check the site gamespyid.com the most services of Gamespy seem still to be online, as the websites are. But logging in does not work.

In a summary the shutdown of gamespy seems only being limited to shut down the logins, whle all other stuff is still operational, even it should not be.

[GoTW Kubee]

Lancer I'd recommend removing the TWCC link from you sig

[alQamar]

Anyone tried Med 2? Another one told me logging in is not longer possible.

[GoTW Kubee]

As you may have heard, a few weeks ago the Gamespy servers had to shut down and it was no longer possible to play multiplayer on ROME and MEDIEVAL II. However we are happy to announce that players who own these Total War classics on Steam can now play multiplayer again.

Players who purchased the game elsewhere can use their existing Gamespy key to redeem the new Steam version. If you own the physical CD version of the game, the key should be included in the package, most likely printed on the back of the manual.
If you purchased a digital version from a distributer other than Steam, your key should have been sent to you on purchase of the game. If you cannot locate the key, please contact the distributer you purchased the game from.

It may take a short time for all Gamespy keys to be registered on Steam, if your code is rejected please wait 48 hours and try again.

Save files from previous versions can be copied from the “…\saves\” folder in the previous installation folder to “…\Steam\SteamApps\common\Rome Total War Gold\saves” or “…\Steam\SteamApps\common\Medieval II Total War\saves”.

Click on the links below for more information:
For ROME: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/132205
For MEDIEVAL II: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/132206

[alQamar]

Breaking news:

CA now announced they ported the multiplayer of Rome 1 and Medival 2 towards Steam!

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...lable-on-Steam!
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...lable-on-Steam!

Given from their postings you can add your retail CD Keys to Steam now, so you do not have to rebuy a licence if you have a non Steam Version.
If you have problems, please use the links to leave your reports there, please.