Following is the body of an e-mail I sent to Hosem, to help convince him to come play in the Beta Test Game. After reading this he did come and check it out, and later told me I should post this on my web page. So, here goes! Please be kind, it may not be 100% factual, but as far as I know... this is the brief evolution of Tradewars.

Gary Martin developed Tradewars as we know it today aprox 12 years ago.
Gary contracted High Velocity Software (HVS) to port the game to MBBS Platform for multi-player.
HVS owned the rights to the MBBS version of TW, and made changes to the basic game that Gary did not approve of. Releases 2.0 - 2.03a
HVS supported TW for aprox 8 years, and stopped supporting or fixing bugs about 2 years ago.
Gary contracted John Pritchett to port the door game to multi-player on the Trade Wars Game Server (TWGS) platform.
MBBS players balked... there were too many differences!
Eleqtrizi'T suggested that John P create a MBBS mode, sysop configurable, that would change a few of the settings i.e. rob/steal factors, mega rob, to behave more like MBBS
Apri 1, 2000: John Pritchett of Epic Interactive Software (EIS) buys all rights to Tradewars 2002!
Today the TWGS version of Tradewars is still in Beta, but very close to a final release.

"E-mail to Hosem a.k.a. Anthrax sent Feb 23, 2000"

I know at first site of a twgs game to an MBBS player seems rather queasy. Just want to give you a little background on the game and highlights of some of the developments over the past couple of years. First off... twgs is the classic door game ported to multi-player... the way the game was originally intended by Gary... with some minor changes to bring it up to MBBS player standards. HVS made changes not authorized by Gary.

TWGS actually stands for Trade Wars Game Server, which is the creation of John Pritchett, to bring the door game to multi-player. It is a server program that does not need BBS software to run, although if you do have bbs software, it can run on that also. Basically, all one needs is a dedicated TW server machine and a static IP to put a game on the web. Cost of the twgs software is only $80! There are tons of games popping up all over the place... not all of them have the hardware to run large games without too much lag... but it's getting there. Eleq probably has the best twgs hardware right now.

Gold is the equivalent to TW-Pro editor plus! Not only can you do all the edits you could with TW-Pro, but you can also edit in alien races that have their own homeworlds! And they defend them too! :) The AI (Alien Intelligence) react much as a player does, not at all like the wimpy aliens on stock games. Gold games can also support up to 20k sectors!

Twgs basically has 4 platforms... classic door, classic MBBS, Gold door, and Gold MBBS.

Twgs MBBS is an option at big bang. What it does is change a few of the door characteristics to behave more like MBBS games... Rob/Steal factors are exp/21 instead of exp/30, mega rob is enabled, ports max out at 32k rather than 64k. There were also some major changes made to the Battle Odds... those are still not as simple as they once were for MBBS, but definitely not has harsh as they once were in the door game. Battle odds were a universal change for both door and MBBS.

There are plenty of "cosmetic" differences too. If you want, check out this site: Beta Test Game this is where I was posting bug reports, and differences between twgs and mbbs when we were in the tweaking the mbbs option phase. Versions 3.11.11 - 3.11.16. Twgs is up to version 3.11.24 now, but most of the more recent releases have revolved around trying to solve a problem involving how extern runs.

Some of the nicer "cosmetic" differences... Hail instead of paging... you can maintain a private conversation without having to initiate the page with each msg....we did that last night. As long as you don't have to access the command control, you can sit and talk. You can also talk while on SD.... Fed Com, SS, or Hail... comes in handy when you know there is enemy lurking in the sector above. One other nice one... you can place over 50k figs in a sector only if it does have a planet in it.