Please try playdip. Just try it.

DO has sincerely requested that you all try it. I think everyone's path is clear.

Yes. Best interface best players and it doesn't burn my eyeballs out

Playdip at one point stole Kestas's code without crediting him and while we've worked that out with them at 1 point or another, I'm personally still a tad bitter about it, and the way they have illegally charged their members for years since that violates copyrights on the games doesn't help. Please note this is 100% only a member opinion and not an official site view.

*insert passive aggressive unnecessary semi racist anti gendered remark here**
Welcome to webdio: here is your free balloon and picture of Capt. Brad.

Yes, it is the best. I tried a couple others and the interface/activity/competition didn't hold serve. Sad the live games have died down, but 1v1s add opportunity there.

The interface makes me want to cry. I mean, the community seems genuinely better but I'd rather fight with you fuckers and play on this website.

tried playdip. it blew. left. will only play here.

I made an account on playdip. Then I ate a biscuit. The biscuit was buttered

Brainbomb buttered a biscuit. Then he bit it. Playdip bites.

This again?

Look, i've played extensively on both and they've both got their pros and cons. I don't really understand the value in painting another sight with such a wide paintbrush, of course there's going to be clever features that come from other sources. There's a lot I love about WebDip, the community is undeniably more active right now and i do find it easier to play with this interface on mobile. On the other hand I love PlayDips notification system, immediate updates to rankings, and emails and forum posts you can still review or easily search through longer then a few days after you get them. Both have fun (different) variants.

Interface in general is just one of those things that i notice people every single time seem to strongly prefer whatever they first learned on and are most familiar with. WebDip players think theirs is superior and PlayDip think theirs is. It's completely subjective.

I don't know or care about all the behind the scenes history, but i do know Kestas is absolutely credited on PlayDip's site but in terms of the violation of copyright by being commercial, there's really almost nothing left from that original open source. Aside from being based on the same game there's really zero similarities in the site, Super Dipsy has gutted the original code and completely rebuilt it all.

I say embrace the variety and play at both (or even all three with vDip). Contrary to popular belief you don't have to pay a cent there if you're content to play less then three games at a time and limited to some of the variants.

In my honest opinion, it's too padded of an experience. Too many buttons for this and that. Very crowded interface until the thin guise of "new, exciting, better, features."

I find the title of "playdiplomacy" pretty funny because I feel like out of all the diplomacy sites I know, it takes the longest and the most effort to actually navigate the site to actually "play diplomacy"

I hate it when yoyo is right. #fuckyoyo

I think the copyright issues aren't about the code but about Avalon hill's copyright on the actual game. We are tolerated because no one is making money or something like that

I actually started there I think or pretty close, but the misorders seemed too frequent for me there

I think Ogion' issue with playdip is they may be too conservative

Yes that parts true, misorders are more frequent there as here they make it a lot more fool proof in that you can't really set orders to illegal areas. I like that here since i play on mobile phone and tend to actually misorder more here, while i appreciate there the option because it makes for an interesting layer of 'intentional' misorders and especially useful in signalling things in gunboat. Not better or worse, different.

As for the 'crowded' interface, again pros and cons. It's WAY easier there to search archived and i go crazy here how many form settings don't persist across paging. It's good here everything is laid out easy on the landing page, but on their defence you get a lot of information sent directly to your email and you can clink the link in that email to go directly to the game. Everybody just gets frustrated because when their trained intuition based on familiarity is challenged, but that's not a justifiable reason to label something "worse". It's like Windows users for longest time shitting all over Mac because it felt so awkward to them regardless of how well thought out they were.

I agree with VI. It's a matter of choice.
PlayDip's forum is far superior in terms of features. Although, for me personally, I like the simplicity of WebDip's.
PlayDip's messaging system is superior in some regards to WebDip's. As VI pointed out, your messages never get compiled into a long list crossed with messages from all powers as you talk more. It also lets you message multiple players at once, which is nice. Again, I prefer the instant messaging style here, but that's probably simply because I'm used to it.
The orders interface is terrible. I can't really defend it.
Again as VI pointed out, the ability to order impossible moves. It's not necessarily better or worse, but just different.
As for the paywall, personally I dislike it, but the merits are obvious. It allows them to actively pay to maintain their site rather than relying on potentially unstable donations.
At the end of the day, they both let us play Diplomacy. That's all that really matters. Anything else is just extra.
All that being said, WebDip is our home. I'd say that for the most part, that's what keeps us here rather than features.

Although I do have to say that it seems soloing is easier on PlayDip. I've played only a singular game over there and I ended it with 18.

@VI, you misunderstood the copyright problem I meant. I mean the game is owned by Hasbro, so charging people money to play a game they don't own any rights too is just outright illegal. And if Hasbro ever sued them they'd be in a world of legal problems.

Perhaps you're right, i admittedly don't think too much about that side of things and can't really can't say i've ever factored that much in to my decision of where i play.

To be fair though, they've got 594 premium players making the income at $14100 annually so we're not talking big numbers after expenses and re-investment into development. It's somebodies pet project of something they had a passion for who's at best managing to line his pockets with some small potatoes cash to justify the time they invest in it. It's not demonizing worthy and i doubt something Hasbro would see worth litigating over. I have to assume if ever decided they wanted to bring Diplomacy into the online world themselves they'd just end up stomping on all these sites over the use of the trademarked name and game.

It is extremely unlikely that Habro will ever move to start their own Dip play site. The audience, unfortunately, is not big enough and it is too difficult to monetize, since there are a multiplicity of free sites and PBEM groups available, based in jurisdictions too numerous to mention. Hasbro also has the recent example of Paradox's Dip forum crashing and burning along with their computer game (and I say this with some regret, as I was a play tester) to dissuade them.

I agree that's it's highly unlikely for hasbro to launch a web based version of diplomacy. The user base is way too small. While the development of the game would be inconsequential to them in terms of cost, there's really no revenue outside of advertising--who knows that may persuade them someday

@VI and everyone else, according to this: http://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=54011
After you have been on the site more than a month non-premium can play five games concurrently.

@jmo, I have talked to Kesta about this a bit a few years back, and someone from PD. According to Kesta, the code originally used was published under an older licensing model that really didn't protect it. They only needed to have a link giving proper credit, which they do. But, it is stand-alone that you cannot get to from site pages.

Being in IT, when I found out. I was unhappy with the situation.

Apparently, Avalanche hired a programmer(s) to do the original site and they are the ones the mislead him about the originality of their work.

As VI pointed out, the code has been modified greatly since then. Plus, it is under complete rewrite to improve the game interface, especially for mobile use.

You know what put me off? Join a game. Wait for others to join. Confirm after everyone joins. Wait for others to confirm. If someone doesn't do it on time, go through process again.

Holy Hell, just start the game when you have 7 players and send an email.

Ťry this another one http://www.backstabbr.com

@H, the mechanism is ponderous in these tournament situations. But, for normal games that may sit for a couple of weeks, having a ready to play confirmation process helps to mitigate in game drops.

@curupira, Yes, I like the backstabbr sandbox greatly.

@Hapapop - They do that because they're really driven to try to fight the number of NMR's that occur, so in that sense it's not a horrible idea of a feature, but i get what you're saying about the wait being a drag. Probably better ways to do it but all sites seem to have challenges with how to resolve that problem. I will say I'm very much a fan of their setting option to reset the game if there's any NMR in the first round with the culprit punted and especially like that the first round is always doubled as i used to really like 12 hour round games but wouldn't dare attempt it here not knowing if a game may begin 2 minutes after i go to bed and wake up to a handful of hours left in the first Spring round. I'd probably enjoy that feature a lot less if i was one of these shmucks who enjoys 7 day round games.

Just took a look at Backstabbr. Very cool sandbox, good recommendation curupira!