Playtester Credo. Before we start, some quick thoughts about playing the Imperial Wars Open Test Games….

DON”T HACK US PLEASE
We do think that the game is fairly well protected on the database end and any changing of the game code will almost certainly not be accepted by the database. With all this said, we aren’t quite ready to test on this level. Yet.

SUBMIT VS SAVE
When you Save the move you have made, you are saving your position in the game, not notifying the server than your move is over. The game will automatically advance when all 16 turns are Submitted. So if you meant to Submit instead of Save, go back and do that. There is no other difference in Save, everything you have done and saved will be in your move. If the deadline passes your Saved move will be used in the Universe turn.

COMMUNICATION WITH OTHER PLAYERS
There is an RPG aspect to Imperial Wars. We hope that you will take advantage of it and bring your character to life. However, you don't have to role-play to have a great time playing IWars. it is really up to you. We do expect and demand that we all always use common courtesy in communicating with other players in the game. Don’t let your emotions or your character ever carry away your better judgment.

ANONYMITY – YOUR CHOICE
The communications are set up to be anonymous. Using the u#-playername@iiwars.com email account you will only be known as your Player Name in the game and your Screen Name outside of the game. You may decide to give other players your actual identity, visit each others house, have lunch, fly across the continent to meet with each other… That’s fine, even likely and ultimately, up to you. Whatever each player chooses to do is up to each player to decide for himself or herself. But we take seriously the promise of anonymity and we design it into every aspect of the game so that it is your option to break your anonymity if you wish.

INSTANT MESSENGERS
We invite you to set up Instant Messenger or AIM, America Online’s Instant Messenger until we get our internal messenger working. We have also added Trillian, which is a multi-access Messenger, if case you just want to have one messenger that will talk to AIM, IM, ICQ, IRQ & Yahoo Messengers. We have set up links to them at the Playtester Downloads web page. if you do set it up, try to reflect your character name but since we try as much as possible not to tell you what to do, it is always up to you. We expect to add in-game IM soon. Until then, Messengers are operated outside the game.

CONTACTING A GE (GALACTIC EFFECTUATOR)
To begin, it will be the core development team available to help you. You can email us at ge@intelgames.com or post on the Web Forums.

THE PLAYTESTER FORUMS
Your best bet for a quick response is the Web Forums, Playtester Forums. But you must be a registered Charter Citizen to read them. There are now a number of players who are getting very familiar with Imperial Wars and will be happy to help you with game hints and strategies as well as the GE's.

YOUR FEEDBACK
We always will welcome your comments, criticisms, suggestions and rants. Your impressions and feelings are just as important as the specifics that you may want to communicate to us.

CONTACTING OTHER PLAYERS
As you meet other Players in the game you will probably want to contact them. To get in contact, go to the War Room in your Imperial Wars game client and find the Players List button. Any new players that you have met will be on this list. Actions that you can take regarding these players will be found by pressing on the icon that represents the player.

A shortcut is to click on any World owner in the World symbol to reach that player’s screen. The Players List can be accessed from this screen as well.

EMAIL

Mailbox
Each player will have a unique mail address based on his or her character name – U##-playername@iwars.org. So if you are in Universe 100 and your name is Marvin The Martian, your email address will be U100-MarvinTheMartian@iwars.org. If your character name has spaces they will be eliminated in the name. Though email is not case sensitive, the upper case letters help make the name easier to read.

Accessing your game mailbox
You can access your mail in 3 ways.

1. In the War Room using the Check Mail button.
2. On any Player screen that has a Send Message button.
3. Directly, at http://sqmail.iwars.org. Use your mail configuration above, and your account password.
   

In Conclusion
We hope you enjoy Imperial Wars while we continue to work on it. We have worked long and hard to bring it to you and you will usually find us right in the games with everyone else right now. We are very excited to bring it to you. Yes, we do expect to charge for playing Imperial Wars one day. First, for our families and ourselves so that we can continue to work on this very unique game and more ideas for it and other games that we think you'll like. But also, for the protection of the spirit of the game itself. We will play these test games and hope they work out okay but a small investment in the game turns makes the game 100% more enjoyable for everybody involved. We will appreciate your help in testing IWars and we will respect you in our community as contributing members when we reach that moment of commercialism. Thanks.