So, when was Jazz 2 multiplayer most popular?
 

Just today I was reading some very interesting history article on Cracco Clan website, which made me ask:

When was actually Jazz Jackrabbit 2 online most popular? Was it in 2000 ? Later?

In numbers, these days I guess there are allways from 7 to 30 players online. How was it in the past?

I first started playing Jazz 2 online in 2007 or 2008 and I think there were slightly more players back then than nowadays. I was very young back then so I don't remember it clearly.

I don't really have stats for Jazz2Online as a whole, but the JCF was most active in 2006 (January 2006 had over 10000 posts). That doesn't necessarily say much about how many people actually played the game, though.

The most active time I recall I had in JJ2 was late 09/2010. I haven't played online for many years though, so I'm likely not very accurate. I heard 2000 was an active year.

For years (if I recall), JJ2 couldn't even connect to the list server without manually editing the Windows Registry (or patching Jazz2.exe). I was pretty surprised when the list servers started working again. Anyone know how that happened?

But anyways, I think I remember JJ2 activity being almost non-existant for a while. 7 to 30 is a high number compared to how it was back in... I dunno, 2004? Is that correct? I just remember seeing 1 or 2 servers and maybe one of the servers -might- have a few players in it. One of which, was a very active player named "Idle Server" :P.

But yeah, having the list server up again has really benefited things... I kinda wonder how active things would be if the server never went down.

I think over the years, the European players gradually become more active than the American ones, so that may not entirely be accurate. I'm not sure which years the list servers went down, though.

My honest best guess for total player population is after release in 98 to 99 when list server went down and in 00 list server returned until 2001 JMMB was deactivated. I think plus created a notable revival around 2008 as well.

Record in player population would've been right after the game released in '98. I remember checking once or twice as a kid on my dad's dial-up and saw at least a multi-page list with plenty of populated servers.

I recall a big decrease in players happened after the official listserver went down and you had to manually add Burger/Becky's listserver address. Then eventually Nimrod continued this trend by setting up another unofficial server. I'm not sure when this all happened, I was rarely online back then. I do remember seeing usually no more than 1 or 2 servers online at a time. And most were locked clan matches, locked duels, or if you're lucky an open hotel. :p

Then eventually Nimrod contacted Rod & Cliff (?) from Epic and managed to arrange a redirect for the official listserver to his unofficial one. Basically, using vanilla JJ2 nowadays will still try to connect list.jazzjackrabbit.com which will then be redirected to Digiex. This relatively simple change made JJ2 way more active and resulted in more newbies discovering online play. ;-)

And there was much rejoicing ;)

and they lived happily ever after. :7

Oh come on, Monty Python reference not gotten?

I won't wave my finger and say yay, if that's what you were expecting. :o

I believe something like 2000-2004 when I was gameleader for CC there were alot of clans and the community was very active

Heh. The year 2000 :)

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