held out absolutely as long as we could, but it was finally time to make that decision." "...Along with our old servers, the ZoneFriends tool will be taking a long-overdue retirement. All of our remaining (and future!) multiplayer games will be integrated with MSN Messenger. So, wait, does this mean no lobbies? That’s correct, at least for now. The old lobby system was built into our earliest classic games, and is to current game technology what a biplane engine would be to a stealth jet: similar, but essentially incompatible." "...Officially, the Member Plus program has ended." In a series of public chats held with various administrators and developers of the Zone, MSN outlined its plan to shift its gaming environment into Windows Live Messenger, a more frequently updated client than the outdated ZoneFriends messenger used on the Zone. However, due primarily to MSN's inability to provide a timeframe for the expected replacement of chat lobbies, tournaments, and its Member Plus volunteer moderator program, thousands of players appeared at each session to express their discontent, and began an online petition in an attempt to stop MSN's scheduled changes. As with previous changes, however, MSN continued to stand firm in its commitment to the retirement of its services, citing outdated hardware and lack of economic viability for the old products. Although alternatives exist to the Zone for CD-ROM gameplay, many Microsoft game studios embedded Zone links and functionality into their games, including Rockstar San Diego' Midtown Madness and Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires game series. Ensemble only began their switch to an in-game matchmaking system with the release of Age of Mythology. Age of Empires III (2005) also had in-game matchmaking. Games as recent as Flight Simulator 98 and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds utilized the Zone's lobby system for matchmaking. For many such games, no replacement service has been announced. The first game in the Flight Simulator series to use in-game matchmaking is Flight Simulator X, released early 2007, leaving a gap of several months without MSN supported matchmaking services. Competitors The Zone's first competitors were AOL's Games.com, as well Mplayer.com (and its successor Gamespy), Pogo.com and Sega's Heat.net. Formerly, the site competed with other similar free-game sites, such as Yahoo! Games and msngames.org. Volunteers MSN's competition with AOL Games resulted in the creation of a Volunteer Program for the Zone, which AOL also offered. The idea was to have volunteers moderating