Do you remember when...?

[dskluz]

I remember when my airline ID of 2402 was considered high...I joined AM in the old 2000's round (that would have been in August of 07) and then I also played in the 1950's round. Even funnier, back then my airline name was Jupiter Jetlines...then I changed it to Lake Superior Airlines (and ever since world 3 it's been Superior Airways.) I remember everyone was so eager for multi-worlds then...the AM community really boomed in mid-2008 in the time leading up to multiworlds and the few months after multiworlds. Good times... There was the pink website, and then the intermediate green one. I don't know, ever since the start of private worlds things just seem fractured in the AM community, it makes me pine for the good old days of last year.

[StephenM]

The busiest time for AM was nearly 2 years ago I think, back when we are on shared hosting. My favorite time for AM was back when we had less than 100 players, and I knew virtually every one of them. I got great enjoyment out of it then, but I also nearly went insane because it was so buggy it took 2 hours every morning fixing items from the night before!

Edit; After checking, that time 2 years ago was the first peak, with the second occurring after Multi worlds and again after Private Worlds.

[Vamerica]

i feel the greatness of AM was lost in Private world. Even though all of us hated the competition back then, and wee so happy about private world and multi world to get rid of a lot of competition, i bet we all miss the competition now. It's to easy without it.

[CHR]

I think it had a good balance of competition when it was just multiworlds (no private worlds). There aren't enough people in the public worlds anymore. But private worlds do allow you to make interesting scenarios.

[Cheung Airlines]

I joined AM in the middle of the last pre-MW world (i.e. 80s world). I was flying from HK to Middle-east / West Asia with ATR-42s or 737BJs. Looks pretty stupid to do so, but it was of great fun to compete with a larger airline in SZX.

[pck]

I joined AM just at the end of the 2000's round. I was based in Svalbard/Longyearbyen (if anyone knows where that is! ). I was renting a 777-200LR to fly to Penang when my DOP was like E20 000! Crazy me.... I miss old AM, especially the hot pink Stephen loved Multiworlds were good, except private worlds..... I guess multiworlds wasnt as great then when we first though of it. its still a good game though!

[StephenM]

Well if we got rid of private worlds, we would probably have to make Airline Mogul pay ware. I'm not prepared to do that. Thats the other side to having them there.

[CHR]

I suppose the real problem is that, even if one comes up with a suggestion to get people into public worlds, if there are more people in public worlds, there are less people in private worlds, and as the private worlds make the money, AM would have no money to operate on.
Anyway, if private worlds were scrapped, and people had to pay to use AM, it is likely that usage would decrease so much that it would negate (or make worse) the initial problem of low player numbers in public worlds. There is no real reason to get rid of private worlds.

Getting more people to play AM would fix the problem though!