sorry for the repost of some of this stuff: have added some things......( I was in middle of editing other post, and my time ran out dang it all )
before AOL, some bills were 700/800/900 to 1200 a month combined for gameplay and internet connect fee...........
some bills for AOL AW gameplay still easily hit 700/800/900 dollars until it went to one price for as much as you wanted in a month......
AOL did not start advertising Air Warrior until the 3rd Quarter of 95' and then shortly there after it was opened up for "The Land of the 1,000 dweebs" ( <---- did I get that right? )
Crisis / Genie was the big cahuna and winter of 95 had the AW Winter of 95 Lecture Series......
er um, got to mention our modem speeds here, I had 900/1200/2400 I remember thinking the 4800 baud rate modem I got was kickarse.......
when AW went live on AOL early part of 96, you paid $2.00 an hour of play for the game, and it was called AW4W ( Air Warrior for Windows ) originally then became AW1 then after AW3 came out they reloaded it calling it AW Classic.....
AW2 was short lived, I do not even think it went open, I remember flying AW4W and testing AW II on Gamestorm when Gamestorm came online...
you only saw people like Brooke, Boozr, Subby, Mute, Rapier, Snowman, Dragn of the muskies, Tiff+, DD, Chick, Mayhem, Mage, Dose, Glint, culero, Merch, Moss, Mir+, WrW and most old time players from DOS days playing on AW II.....then BIG WEEK came along and AW III was opened up to the masses......then both people from AOL and from Gamestorm came together right near end of AW III and Gamestorm when it went to AW Millinium version and EA came on the seen....
most knows the rest......
most other grizzled vets can fill in the details I left out......
edit: btw when I made my 1st post here, I thought the thread starter was asking about Aces High Squads ( I only listed some squads that had been around along time before AH but are still in AH and was here in AH's beginning...I know I did not get them all, and most of the squads I listed mainly flew FR, I do not know that many RR squads, even though they # of RR squads I am sure grossly out weighs the # of FR squads from back then )
before AWIII , you would be doing good to get 20 people in the FR Arena at the same time......RR arenas had 2 ( ETO/PTO), then they had 2 of each , then they had 3 of each while FR arena had either ETO or PTO, and it switched monthly, until they finally gave FR 1 of each......then for BIGWEEK the BIG PAC map came and both FR and RR had the BIGPAC, but RR still had more arenas, and then and then and then.............. .....
anyways. Thank God for hitech & Pyro and Aces High......... their would be alot of lost souls out there if it wasn't for HTC......
my 1st flight in Aces High beta, 1999 Nomde and hitech and Brooke was telling me how to take off.I remember you walked from the tower to the hangar to pick your P51D, then you had to taxi to the runway....I got up in the air and tryed to fly in formation like with hitech and some other character whos name fades me at the moment,...I got lost on some terrain that had these DEEP DEEP valleys and it was wide open spaces....... I remember Nomde trying to direct me toward the AH BBS boards while I was ingame, the text scrolled so fast I never got it all wrote down LOL....it was fun to walk around back then from the tower to the OClub to the Map room to the Hangar and stuff........sometimes wish they still had that in the game..........
handle was TequilaC , until The Damned moved to Aces High in mass then I switched back to my usual TC ( from AW & WB & wwiionline) * the Damned still play other games to this day, Everquest/Everquest II, Diablo, WOW, Ashrons Call?, America's Army, Tagretware's TK & TR, WarBirds, wwiionline, IL2 forgotten battles,Fighter Ace and a lot of us are always checking out and testing new games that come online.......
Augey, JD, Ptero, GMan, Lugs, Wind and others are still around but not really active in Aces High..our members they show on the Roster for Aces high is just about 1.3rd of all Damned total at my last recollection we were near 300....
in past years of the 21st century we did gracefully lose 2 of our very respected teammates Buzzard and KGann...........
it still hits hard and even upsets me to see some other person flying Buzzards call sign in the game..........sometimes I wish HTC would lock and reserve certian game ID's to never be used again...........this is probably to much to ask for though..........
dang what a long rant, my apologies for wastin internet bandwidth........just got on a roll........
