Last November, Activision Blizzard shut down the online master servers of many of the older games they had acquired the rights to in their purchase of Vivendi Games. One of those games was Tribes 2, the sci-fi multiplayer shooter from the now defunct developer Dynamix. The game was first released back in 2001 and three years later was re-released as a free download. However the shutdown of the online master server a few months ago meant that the game was unplayable online.

Now some enterprising fans of Tribes 2 are attempting to relaunch the game online with TribesNext. It's basically a third party patch that allows online play via a new multiplayer server. Since all of this is basically off the books it's currently unknown if Activision Blizzard has an issue with this game. Still if you have a copy of the free download you might want to check this out.

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So yeah, I don't know if you guys ever played starsiege tribes at all, but it is fucking badass.  And now it's essentially freeware.  GET ON IT.  I recommend the mod Meltdown2.  A bit of a learning curve, but a really cool experience once you get into it.  A lot of fun, a lot to do, and pretty fast paced.

GET ON IT.

www.tribesnext.com

I've been playing this for the past few days. Tribes was one of those games that really came into being before online shooters became stereotyped so badly. The learning curve is steep, very steep. This is one of those games you have to embrace it's unique values because it plays a lot more like say... a constant speedrun video than a run and gun shooter. The whole game usually revolves around CTF over a heightmapped terrain so you often are bouncing around to try and pick up speed. The better you get at it, the faster you go. Also there are vehicles and other fun additions, base building and in general it's a very complex shooter. The community is picking up steam again with a lot of old people coming back around now that tribesnext has hit the big reddit/digg sites, so give it a try!

We used to play Tribes on the handful of freedays we got in my CS class in high school, just because it was one of the only games that ran nicely on those machines.  It was really fun, it'd be interesting to play again since it's probably been at least three or four years since I've played it.

If anyone wants to get on and play together, IM me.  My AIM sn is fullyautomaticoz.  And my tribes 2 handle is Kachak.

I used to play the hell out of tribes in middle school in computers. We'd randomly just yell at each other with insults like "YEAH! Suck MY DICK!" and shit like that. I got way too many referrals that year. Never touched tribes 2 though. But if it plays anything like the first one, I'm game.

It's a solid multiplayer FPS game based mainly on team games like Capture the Flag and Zones. It was made a pretty long time ago and was released as a free download after awhile. The sequel, Tribes 2, was also released as a free download but taken off Sierra's site(?) I think. So a full version is hard to find.

It's set in the future with fancy weaponry like a disc launcher and green mortar.

wasn't one of Tribes' defining features the inclusion of jetpacks? Like, I thought a big part of the series was learning to use your jetpack to maneuver and get across the large maps? I always heard it was the "deep" FPS franchise, because it had an actual learning curve and not just RUSH ROCKET LAUNCHER/TWITCH REFLEXES like most FPS games.

but I've never actually played a Tribes game. Fancy that!

I remember sucking ass with the jetpacks, that's all.

It's a solid multiplayer FPS game based mainly on team games like Capture the Flag and Zones. It was made a pretty long time ago and was released as a free download after awhile. The sequel, Tribes 2, was also released as a free download but taken off Sierra's site(?) I think. So a full version is hard to find.

It's set in the future with fancy weaponry like a disc launcher and green mortar.

Tribes 2 is available in full here: http://www.tribesnext.com/downloads

We established that, I believe. Well, I think we did.

Sweet, I'm definitely playing this. I loved Tribes 2 back in the day, nothing like getting a good ski path going and flying through the terrain. Sucked they limited the amount of free keys they gave out for Tribes 2, but now that doesn't seem an issue. I love how almost every weapon in the game (except the sniper rifle) is a projectile weapon that you have to lead your fire with. Combined with extreme mobility the jetpack adds to the combat, you really have to think more about where to fire instead of PUT CROSSHAIR ON ENEMY AND FIRE.

who is actually playing at all?