About PLAYdiplomacy.com


PLAYdiplomacy.com is intended to be a useful supplement to the published game. It is not intended to replace it. A gaming library is a valuable collection that you can derive much pleasure from. There is no way that this site could duplicate the experience of playing a beautifully designed board game with friends.

Diplomacy has been published in the United States by Games Research, Avalon Hill, and Hasbro; the name is currently a registered trademark of Hasbro's Avalon Hill division, now owned by Wizards of the Coast. Diplomacy has also been licensed to various companies for publication in other countries.

We strongly urge you to pick up a copy of the original board game Diplomacy if you want to play on this website.

For more information:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/diplomacy


PLAYdiplomacy.com codebase

The inaugural version of PLAYdiplomacy was built from a combination of bespoke development work and a number of Open Source projects including early diplomacy code such as Diplojuge, phpDiplomacy and the Ken Lowe judge. PLAYdiplomacy went live at the end of 2007, but as its popularity grew rapidly it soon started to experience major problems; site and game stability were degrading significantly, problem resolution and maintenance were extremely difficult and there were major gaps in functionality.

In 2009 an extensive redesign and development project started to address the issues, including a complete rewrite of the Diplomacy adjudication mechanism. This new version of PLAYdiplomacy has now evolved into an online diplomacy site with the reliability, integrity, scalability, functionality, usability and maintainability expected by modern gamers.

But PLAYdiplomacy has not rested on its laurels. Development work has continued unabated. Some of the key PLAYdiplomacy developments introduced with this new code base include

  • A DATC-compliant adjudication engine with a brand new design to resolve Diplomacy phases efficiently, effectively and accurately
  • An ELO-based player rating system to rate players' results based on the strength of their opponents
  • New variants such as Ancient Med, 1900 and Versailles
  • Special support for friends wishing to play together
  • Facilities for using PLAYdiplomacy as a teaching aid, already being used in hundreds of school classes
  • Player classes based on the level of commitment players show to full participation in games
  • Automated fault tolerance and fault avoidance at the individual game level
  • Countless usability and playability improvements courtesy of a steady stream of user suggestions for changes and additions

PLAYdiplomacy has in excess of 130,000 registered users worldwide and has hosted over 80,000 games. It is also the most popular online Diplomacy site as rated by web tracking service (Alexa).

Ownership and management

PLAYdiplomacy.com is created and owned by Jan De Volder (Volo Media).

Development by Super_Dipsy and Rick Haywood (Running Man).

Developed in cooperation with Board Game Lab.

This website is managed entirely by volunteers. Thanks goes to:

  • Avalanche, rick.leeds and super_dipsy, administrators
  • The entire Moderator team
  • Map makers Tobold, TheCraw and SaltySailor for creating the new maps
  • HaCKI, code security tester


Contact:

Please send all comments, suggestions, error reports, complaints, and threats to [email protected].

Volo Media Ltd
Tas-Sellum Residence
612, Tunnara Promenade
Mellieha, MALTA