Game History

Please note that this article is currently being worked on. If you have any information to share, please contact Doctor Know.

Just like any other long-running online game, HoboWars has an extensive game history.

Unless otherwise noted, all dates are according to HoboTime (GMT +10).

Updates that are struck out were either changed, overwritten, or removed by another update later on.

HoboWars

The one that started it all.

2005

Events

• August 2005
  • 8/10/05: Albert Nguyen (a.k.a. meek) created the first piece of in-game artwork for HoboWars, which was the old header image for the Battle! page. It was added to the game on the same day it was created.

2006

Updates

• March 2006
  • Major
    • 3/??/06: The option to create a new gang for 500 points at Gangs Alley was removed.
  • Minor
    • None

Events

• December 2006
  • 12/4/06: The HoboWars servers crashed and went down for three days, preventing anyone from accessing the game. When the servers were fixed and brought back online on December 7, 2006, everyone started from a restore point made 24 hours prior to the crash. Anything acquired during the 24 hour period after the backup was made (such as money, tokens, points, stats, SGHM purchases) vanished, and the Message Boards were wiped clean and the contents of the Help Wiki were erased. Additionally, any new players who signed up during that 24 hour period lost their accounts and had to create new ones in order to play. This event became known as Black Wednesday.
• ????? 2006
  • The 2006 Bummys ended.

2007

Updates

• September 2007
  • Major
    • 9/07/07: Stat graphs were added, allowing players to track the rate of growth of their stats over a period of, at most, 30 days.
  • Minor
    • None

Events

• January 2007
  • 1/??/07: Ed and Oli hit the game with a phishing scam that compromised many HoboWars accounts, especially those of newer players. They spread around a rumor that there was there was a new HoboWars server, and provided links to a website that mirrored the HoboWars login page. Whenever someone attempted to login through that fake page, they would get a notice that the new server wasn't up yet, and their username and password got stored in a database that Ed and Oli used to gain access into other players' accounts.
• February 2007
  • 2/24/07: Ed and Oli used malicious Javascript seeded into HoboMail messages to snatch the address bar off of any player who viewed their jumbled mail messages, and used that information to compromise various players' accounts. Although the message boards were protected from Javascript attacks, the HoboMail message system was not, and, therefore, even the accounts of older players and staff members became compromised. Fortunately, the HoboMail message system is now protected against such Javascript attacks.
• August 2007
  • 8/06/07: The HoboWars staff began to crackdown on abusers of the Mass Money Creation glitch (a.k.a. the "mmkk" glitch). Around 25+ players were jailed for exploiting Piggy Bank withdrawal abbreviations such as "k" for thousand and "m" for million. Whenever a player withdrew, for example, "10kkmm" dollars from their Piggy Bank, they would withdraw 2.1 billion dollars, even if they did not actually have that much money in their Piggy Bank. To make matters worse, the fabricated money was randomly sent around to players, making it a nightmare for game staff to track down the sources of the fabricated money.
• December 2007
  • The 2007 Bummys ended.

2008

Updates

• June 2008
  • Major
    • 6/30/08: The Hospital page became protected by the anti-refresh feature, which prevented players from F5 healing.
  • Minor
    • 6/28/08: A new profile system was added.
    • 6/29/08: The "Gang Blacklist" feature was added to gangs, allowing gangs to prohibit certain players from joining them.
    • 6/30/08: The ability for gangs to set a minimum attack/defense requirement for donated weapons/armor was added.
• July 2008
  • Major
    • None
  • Minor
    • 7/01/08: The "Gang Hitlist" feature was added to gangs, allowing gangs to hitlist certain players or even entire gangs.
    • 7/02/08: The "Gang History" feature was added to individual players' profiles, allowing gang owners and players with the "Invite" permission to see an individual player's personal gang history.
    • 7/04/08: The "Gang Poll" feature was added to gangs, allowing gangs to create polls for its members to vote on.
    • 7/05/08: The ability to delete gangs polls was added.
    • 7/05/08: The ability to view old gang polls was added, and gang news item notifications for newly created polls were also added.
    • 7/06/08: A dropdown menu for the "Country" field for the new profile system was added, and a bug in the DOB field was fixed.
    • 7/25/08: Player's Hobo IDs were added to gangs' Hall of Fames, and the ability to leave a reason for declining an application to a gang was added.
    • 7/25/08: An "Age" column was added to gangs' member lists, and gang news item notifications for altering gang hitlist entries were added.
    • 7/25/08: The ability to save/archive HoboMail messages was added.
    • 7/25/08: The gang hitlist feature was updated to automatically save players' search preferences.
    • 7/26/08: Friend request news item notifications were updated to show the name of the player, and if they accepted or denied the friend request.
    • 7/26/08: The ability to edit journal entries was added.
    • 7/27/08: Gangs' member lists were made cleaner-looking and sortable.
    • 7/27/08: The ability to search through your own SGHM listings and recent market activity was added, along with the ability to search the SGHM itself.
• August 2008
  • Major
    • 8/02/08: The Arena Elite were added to the Old Man's Arena at the Corner 7/11.
    • 8/06/08: Lotto Land was released.
    • 8/07/08: A few Lotto Land updates were released: the minimum lotto duration was changed from 1 day to 2 days, the ability to view the lottos you created was added, the max price of a lotto ticket was increased to $100,000, the cost of creating a lotto was made dependent on the current number of active lottos, and some columns were made sortable.
    • 8/07/08: More Lotto Land updates were released: the ability to view the lottos you have participated in was added, the ability to view lottos exclusive to your current gang was added, new tax rules were added, lotto names were updated so that they could include dollar signs ($) and commas (,) in them, and the back room was added.
    • 8/12/08: The City Planning page was released.
    • 8/??/08: Northern Fence was added to Suicide Hill.
  • Minor
    • 8/02/08: The ability to edit your gang poll vote with 5 minutes of casting it was added.
    • 8/02/08: The "Gang Hitlist" feature was updated to cost 50,000 gang experience and 50 points, just like the "Gang Armory" feature.
    • 8/02/08: The ability to create a default role for gang members was added.
    • 8/03/08: Archived HoboMail messages were made exempt from the "Delete Last 10" and "Delete All" mass deletion methods.
    • 8/07/08: Gang news items were updated to contain links to players' profiles, gang profiles, etc., when needed, and gang donation limits were raised from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000.
    • 8/07/08: The ability to explore the City with the arrow keys was added.
    • 8/08/08: A Lotto Land bug where winners were not getting the appropriate amount of winnings was fixed.
    • 8/08/08: The ability to view all of a player's journals was added.
    • 8/08/08: The ability to compare gang members side-by-side from the Hall of Fame and Member List pages was added.
    • 8/08/08: The option to ignore rat and food encounters while exploring the City was added under the "Explore Settings" preference.
    • 8/08/08: A typo on the Docks page concerning the awake gain of Naans was fixed, and watched threads on gang boards of gangs you are no longer in were updated to no longer give you notifications.
    • 8/09/08: Players' mailboxes were tuned up to provide better and faster performance, and a search feature for players' mailboxes was added.
    • 8/09/08: The ability to assign a colored gang board name to a gang title was added.
    • 8/11/08: The ability to reject multiple friend requests was fixed, and the whole friend request system was optimized.
    • 8/11/08: The "Gang Mass Mail" feature for gangs was released, and class-sitting in Cart Racing was no longer allowed.
    • 8/11/08: Begging multipliers were updated to also affect begging stat gains.
    • 8/11/08: The ability to see the last 10 things you bought on the SGHM was added.
    • 8/13/08: The ability to leave a reason for kicking someone out of a gang was added.
    • 8/13/08: A link to your Piggy Bank was added to the begging result page.
    • 8/13/08: The "Invite" link on the Gang Applications page was updated to directly invite that player to the gang.
    • 8/13/08: Gang history values were updated to show up as red when they are negative.
    • 8/13/08: Gang member titles (and the gang members who hold them) were updated to show up on the Gang Information page.
    • 8/13/08: Players' mailboxes were updated to also include the HB-TML quick buttons.
    • 8/13/08: The gang title "MB-Edit" was added to the list of gang titles, allowing gang members with the title to edit gang board threads and posts.
    • 8/13/08: The "ordering by total pot" bug in Lotto Land was fixed.
    • 8/13/08: The ability to donate to lotto pots was added.
    • 8/13/08: News entries were added to lottos.
    • 8/13/08: An age and level restriction on creating new lottos was added to Lotto Land, preventing players under level 25 and less than 100 days old from creating new lottos.
    • 8/13/08: The lotto system was update to provide you with a notification when you don't win a specified lotto.
    • 8/13/08: The "check all" button was added to the Trolly page.
    • 8/14/08: Introduction messages were added to Lotto Land.
    • 8/14/08: The ability to end your lottos was added.

Events

• April 2008
  • 4/01/08: Minister Ruiner stepped down from his role as Minister and quit HoboWars. What was initially thought of as an April Fools' joke turned out to be the exact opposite.
• June 2008
  • 6/??/08: Daniel Durante (a.k.a. Daniel D) became a Governor and programmer for HoboWars.
• ???? 2008
  • The 2008 Bummys ended.

2009

Updates

• June 2009
  • Major
    • 6/18/09: The City Planning message board was added.
    • 6/26/09: The Intro Adventures were released.
  • Minor
    • 6/23/09: The "Drinking" stat graph was added, and an issue with the "Intelligence" stat graph was fixed.
    • 6/23/09: The round length limit of War Chamber battles was increased from 5,000 to 10,000.
    • 6/24/09: The bug that allowed you to have the same exact name as another player was fixed.
    • 6/30/09: The ability to add Candy Cigarettes to an Empty Cigarette Pack one at a time was added, and the Awake gain from consuming a Pack of Candy Cigarettes was reduced to 50T.
• July 2009
  • Major
    • 7/07/09: A new battle script utilized by all in-game battles was introduced, and a few changes were made to the Uranium Enriched status effect.
  • Minor
    • 7/07/09: Drinking stat was added to gangs' member lists.
• August 2009
  • Major
    • 8/04/09: The Skill Shop and its related side-adventure were released.
    • 8/20/09: A few changes to various skills were made, and the price of all skills was greatly increased.
    • 8/26/09: A few changes to skill mechanics (such as firing rate and Can Cannon interaction) were made, and the overall power of skills was reduced.
  • Minor
    • None
• September 2009
  • Major
    • 9/08/09: The experience wall beggars previously hit at level 615 was reduced significantly.
  • Minor
    • 9/15/09: The experience gain from begging at City Hall was changed to no longer be half the normal gain (100%).
    • 9/29/09: The ability to toggle signature visibility on the Message Boards on and off was added.
    • 9/30/09: The "T Used per Day" stat graph was added.
• October 2009
  • Major
    • 10/21/09: Two new Loompa Land wishes (#23 and #24) were released.
  • Minor
    • 10/02/09: The round length limit of War Chamber battles was reduced from 10,000 to 6,000, the damage done in WC battles was redesigned to ramp up a bit more quickly, and the WC lineup screen was set up to be drag-and-droppable.
    • 10/04/09: The "Most Awake Used in a Day" leaderboard was added to the Top Hobos page.
    • 10/06/09: The War Chamber battle script was updated to account for only the Attack and Defense boosts of Levelable Gear.
    • 10/08/09: Battle logs were updated to be viewable for at least 24 hours after they've been created.
    • 10/13/09: The player attack ranges were changed to ±200 your current level.
    • 10/13/09: The restriction on attacking players in the same gang as you was removed, and a 20% experience tax on and the inability to gain gang points from such fights was added.
    • 10/21/09: Begging reports were updated to display both the base amount and multiplied amount after the money gain section whenever any kind of money multiplier is applied.
    • 10/21/09: A whole lot of new Sidebar links were added to the list of Sidebar links under the Layout Selection option.
    • 10/23/09: The "Highest Beg" record in players' Living Areas was updated to be accurate, although previous records had to be reset in the process; additionally, a new "Highest Base Beg" record was added, which does not include multipliers or other bonuses, whereas the "Highest Beg" record does. It was also made so that whenever a previous record has been beaten, a notification appears in the begging report.
• November 2009
  • Major
    • None
  • Minor
    • 11/03/09: A new War Chamber Battle Field page was created, which combined the features of the old Battle Ladder and Battle Field pages.
    • 11/14/09: A new HB-TML tag that embeds YouTube videos in message board posts and a few other places was added, along with the option to toggle Youtube video visibility under MB Settings.

2010

Updates

• June 2010
  • Major
    • 6/15/10: The new-and-improved Bernard's Mansion was released.
  • Minor
    • None

Image Gallery

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The first piece of artwork by Albert Nguyen for HoboWars.	The front page of HoboWars circa September 2010.