Web Fed News Yearbooks - January 1998

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

The new year kicked off with a look back over the previous year, which we have reprinted in the Official News of this Yearbook.

Players started nagging about the Duke puzzle, and asking when it was going to return.

Hazed appeared at a question-and-answer session in the game allowing people to moan, gripe, complain and whinge at her. You can see the transcript of the session at http://www.ibgames.net/stuff/hazed.txt.

Finally, at the end of the month, something happened! We put in the billing software so that, although you were not being charged, you could see how much you would have been charged if we were. You could change your password and email address, find out a forgotten account ID or password, and read the Fed section of the web page without having an account.

Icedrake awarded four planets the Carpenter's Award: Vvxxnn's Venice, Wish's Mist, Feyd's Coldfire and Firestorm's Fahn.

Peache, Squire of Orchard, was granted a divorce from her missing husband Bluebeard, Squire of Aries.

RETROSPECTIVE

We can look back over 1997 and see if was a year of change and upheaval for Fed. At the start of the year, we were coming to terms with AOL's new flat-rate pricing and the enormous effect this had on Fed. Numbers rocketed and as a consequence problems, both technical and social, multiplied.

Half way through the year we were told that AOL wanted us to leave the system. After we had got over the shock, we decided the only way for Fed to continue was for us to set up on the Internet.

And so the move took place, although not as quickly as we wanted or expected. We're still working to get everything ready to start to charge for Fed - again, much later than we wanted or expected.

The last traces of Fedness have now been taken off AOL; keyword FED is no more, the message boards have gone, we are now truly independent.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank our loyal players for sticking with us during the chaotic transition to the web, and we look forward to many happy times in Fed during 1998.

LETTER OF THE MONTH

In recent weeks we have printed several articles about keeping your password secure, and this letter from a player (whose name we have concealed to save him, her or it embarrassment) simply reinforces the message:

"Hazed,

I know you probably can't do anything about this but please help me. Recently I was at my friends house who also plays fed and I went onto fed under my name...(xxxxxx)...with Zmudv3.16 The thing is that the Zmud saved my name and password.. alter on that week I got in a fight with my friend.... Later that day I tried went on AOL and had e-mail from my friend saying "what happened on Fed... you DDed! hahaha".... I know you probably can't get my charecter back.. But if you could please try to get him back... he was a PO and I dont care how far you get me... If you can get me to be a GM I would do anything... PLease help me as much as you can to try to keep Fed a fun game for everyone. Including me. And I also belive that such things like my incident should be fixed because Real life should not interfer with Fed life."

We must emphasize again that the security of your ibgames account is your responsibility, and if your character is damaged or DDed because someone else gets hold of your password, we won't repair the damage or reinstate the character.