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Type of site | Gaming |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | IGN /GameSpy |
| Created by | Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen |
| URL |
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| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | April 27, 1999 |
| Current status | Inactive, last updated August 13, 2012 |
Planet Half-Life (often abbreviated toPHL) was a gaming website owned byIGN and its subsidiaryGameSpy. Maintained by a voluntary team of contributors, the site was dedicated to providing news and information aboutHalf-Life,Half-Life 2 and relatedmodifications and otherValve titles. It was founded by Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen and was at one point the largest of an array of GameSpy-run gaming websites known as thePlanet Network. Following GameSpy's closure, the Planet Half-Life website still remains accessible, but seems to have ceased updating since August 2012.
Planet Half-Life's content consisted mainly of a news wire on its front page. Stories on updates, patches, press releases and events related toHalf-Life and just about anything else concerning Valve are posted on an almost daily basis. These stories are also mirrored in the site'sforum for reader comments.
In addition to the news, Planet Half-Life hosts extensive, in-depth collections of information regardingHalf-Life,Half-Life 2 (along withPortal),Counter-Strike,Team Fortress andDay of Defeat. These sections cover overviews of each game as well as any official expansion packs related to them, as well as going over their storylines, important characters, enemies, weapons, cheats, walkthroughs, and, in the case of the multiplayer games, map overviews and strategies. The information found on these pages is original work drafted by the staff writers and senior editors collectively (although without any individual credits given, unlike other articles found on the site).
A major feature of Planet Half-Life, and all otherPlanet sites was its publicforum. These forums included boards ranging from general discussion to technical help.
In August 2007, the forums changed format to comply with GameSpy's ForumPlanet standard (theIGN SnowBoards system), removing some outdated features and adding many new ones, such as a dynamic news box that streams in late-breaking news from not only PHL, but all other planet sites as well. This also changed the registration process for the forum, from a per-planet account basis to a network-wide, global account basis. At this time Planet Half-Life's sister sites Planet Fortress and CS.net were officially unsupported and their forums were to be merged into PHL's, although this process lasted over a year before it was complete.
Planet Half-Life ran public game servers from 2006 to its shutdown, hosting 24/7 map rotations forCounter-Strike 1.6,Counter-Strike: Source,Day of Defeat: Source,Half-Life: Deathmatch,Half-Life 2: Deathmatch andTeam Fortress 2.[1] The PHL servers were maintained by Wolf Servers.
In addition to public servers, Planet Half-Life also has aSteam Community group.[2] The group still exists to this day, although the last post was on January 4, 2010.
In June 2006, Planet Half-Life began its ownwiki project based onMediaWiki.[3] The PHLWiki contained over a hundred articles dealing with fictionalHalf-Life characters, creatures and locations in an in-universe, encyclopedic form as well as real life articles on mods, player terminology and strategy guides. Before being announced publicly, most of the existing pages, particularly articles making up the fictional encyclopedia, were written by PHL staff writers. The PHLWiki has since shut down.
Planet Half-Life also offeredfree web hosting forHalf-Life themed websites. The web hosting was regulated throughGameSpy, though the address of hosted sites were subsets of the Planet Half-Life domain. This was a major attraction of the site in its early days and many originalHalf-Life mod teams took advantage of the offer. However this feature has not been utilized nearly as much since the release ofHalf-Life 2. A directory of the old sites still exists, although most have been abandoned by their creators.[4]
Planet Half-Life has been running since April 27, 1999. Since then, it has undergone numerous format changes, both in content and aesthetic. The following is a timeline of major changes[5] and other events.
