History

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Revision as of 00:49, 13 December 2019 by Para Para (talk | contribs) (new intro and versioning)
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Hattrick was launched in August 1997. At that time of the first release, his game designer, Björn Holmér, was the sole developer of the match engine.

In the beginning of 2000, after Season 7, Extralives AB was founded and in team they began development from scratch, with an all new graphical interface, shaping the game as it is today.

In 2009 there were up to 990,000 human users in Hattrick, the maximum number ever recorded so far.

Hattrick is been voted the Most Favourite Simulation Game of 2011!

At the beginning of 2012, Hattrick joins Zattika, a games publisher focused on social and mobile gaming. Surprisingly, but to the relief of many users, Zattika sells Hattrick back to the old owners in 2013, only a year after his purchase, due to financial problems. The development of the game goes on, but unfortunately in this period some well respected and known colleagues such as HT-Klas and HT-Tjecken have to say goodbye.


Versioning

  • The beta release (Hattrick 1) lasted only seven weeks (or rounds), and all changes to the team were made by submitting a HTML form with the user's username and password, meaning that the user never actually logged in to the interface.
  • The release was re-coded and Version 2.0 (Hattrick 2) was launched. Hattrick expands to 680 teams, Allsvenskan, division 1, division 2 and division 3 are created.
Season 2 also saw the first ever international match, between Sverige and Danmark, with Danmark winning 1-2. This match was relatively meaningless, however, since the teams' players were clones of each other.
  • A third version (Hattrick 3) was released the following season. This release marked the debut of friendly and cup matches. On February 2000, it supported the first translation ever of the whole game, from Swedish to English (future translations will be completely done by LA volunteers).
  • Season 7, which began in July 1999, marked some real progress in the game with Hattrick 4 so that managers could set their players' individual tactics (such as offensive or defensive) and also change their formation from the fundamental 4-4-2 and choose team attitude (at the time the game allowed you to choose between play cowardly/play it safe/optimistic/all out attack).
  • ExtraLives were formed in the beginning of 2000 and quickly got pregnant with V.5, which where conceived, with remarkable small complications, about 9 month later. //HT-Björn
  • In 2002 is time for a Match engine renovation: Hattrick 6 adds National Teams, International Friendlies, Special Events, Weather and Tactics. Starting from here, the game witnesses an incredible growth in popularity, almost reaching the million users in the next 7 years.
Animated history of Hattrick's expansion (season 1 - 31)
  • In 2010, after 8 years of honored service, the old V.6 engine retires. This is not an official new ME release, but the changes to the simulation are such that we can talk about a total makeover (expecially in regular chances distribution during the match).


Seasons

Note: The date shown is the first day of the season - the Sunday before round 1 in the series.

Season 1 (1997/08/30)

  • Hattrick is born.
  • 16 teams in Hattrick.
  • Two test series are played in 7 rounds.
  • This is how HT logo looked like

Season 2 (1997/11/23)

  • HT2! A new and dynamic Hattrick wakes up after a long break due to re-coding and a move to the portal passagen.se.
  • The new release allowed for a total of 680 teams and added a few features still available today, such as the transfer list and a league pyramid though teams' positions in the series were determined by random selection during the offseason.
  • The first national team game ever is played. Sweden – Denmark 1-2. The Danish team where a clone of the Swedish player wise.
  • A new type of transfer system is implemented (before you could bid on any player and if the owner accepted the offer the transfer was made).

Season 3 (1998/04/05)

  • HT3
  • Friendly matches and cup matches are now playable.
  • Big problems with the servers during the silly season, Hattrick is down a few weeks.
  • Hattrick expands to 1704 teams. Division IV is created with 128 series.
  • Cup and training games are introduced, Zakrock Rooch are the first cup champions in HT.

Season 4 (1998/07/26)

  • Special training features such as training types beyond general, stamina and set pieces.
  • Thanks to the new special training Per Emilsson (57216) in Juveby IF goes through the roof of the match grading system, and as the first and only player ever he gets the grade “saint” – it was a kind of impossible dummy value HT-Björn used if the impossible should happen.
  • The week after Per Emilsson where declared a saint the grade system was changed !'s where added after the maximum 5 stars.
  • The new grading system was; 0, H, HH, HHH, *, **, ***, ****, *****, *****!, *****!! And so on.
  • Added an expanded set of in-game skill levels.

Season 5 (1998/11/15)

Nothing in particular happened this season according to the history books.

Season 6 (1999/03/14)

If something extraordinary really happened this season it didn't make it into the history books.

Season 7 (1999/07/03)

  • HT4
  • Individual orders with repositioned players where introduced!
  • New tactical options were added (Before you could only play 4-4-2 with “Normal” settings).

Season 8 (1999/10/24)

  • HT5 was released, roughly nine months after ExtraLives AB were formed. It brought to the game new remarkable features as Live matches and Specialties.

Season 9 (2000/02/13)

  • The community are moved from passagen.se to Delphi forums.
  • HTSCB, the first external site with automatic generated statistic, is created.

Season 10 (2000/06/04)

  • Hattrick’s classic design is buried.

Season 11 (2000/10/05)

  • The launch of HT5 added features such as live matches, (which replaced the matches that previously occurred during downtime each night), instant transfer processing, 15 different player skill levels including the current peak level "divine", and the "stars" system for player performance rating.
  • Hattrick added more nations beyond Sverige: Argentina, Deutschland, England, France, Italia, México (originally as Spain), and USA. Users who had previously played in Sverige and new users alike filled these nations' new leagues.
  • At this time the game had a capacity of roughly 12,000 users.

Season 12 (2001)

  • At the beginning of Season 12 teams were placed in the same series as they finished and the promotion/demotion system was established.
  • Spain was renamed to México.
  • New leagues: Nederland, Norge.
  • Hattrick Supporter was launched before Season 13.

Season 13

Season 14

Season 15 (2002)

  • The launch of HT6, in January 2002.
  • The developers create the special events, a concept very familiar to every manager today.
  • Also added the first official national teams, and with it World Cups and international friendly matches. The first World Cup was held in Nippon and Hanguk at the end of the season, with Sverige beating England 4-0.
  • V. Division in Deutschland.
  • HT6 did not solve the growing economic problems within the game, however. The developers resorted to giving out 200,000 Euros (or the equivalent in each country's currency) to each team to boost the in-game economy, which had entered the equivalent of a depression.

Season 16

Season 17

Season 18

  • VI. Division established in España, Nederland and Deutschland.
  • New leagues: Bulgaria, Cymru, Israel, Slovenija (because of an error their first season is called 'season 2').

Season 19 (2003)

  • VII. Division in Nederland.

Season 20

Season 21

  • VI. Division in Chile, France, Israel, Österreich; VII. Division in Argentina, België, Deutschland and España.
  • For the first time, the Hattrick universe is restored from a backup: Black Friday happens before round 3 on November 28th, 2003.
  • New leagues: Al Maghrib, Bolivia, Ecuador, Føroyar, Nigeria and Paraguay;

Season 22 (2004)

Season 23

Season 24

Season 25 (2005)

Season 26

Season 27

Season 28 (2006/01/01)

Season 29 (2006/04/23)

  • Announced more than a season in advance, the league reform was completed during the off-season prior to season 29, in April 2006. At this time, the game's membership was 800,000 strong and the largest countries had swelled to over 60,000 users each, or 12 levels. The league reform intended to solve the problem of league pyramid capacity, since the growth of larger leagues, such as Nederland or Sverige, had made it necessary to add a new pyramid level almost every season. Before the league reform, the league pyramid only expanded in size from division 1 to division 6; pyramid levels in division 6 and below were all comprised of 1024 leagues.
Levels 8 and 9 would now double in size to 2048 leagues, and 10 and below would increase to 4096 leagues. Following this restructuring, all bot teams at that time were relegated to the bottom division, replacing them by promoting extra teams from lower divisions.
  • Between rounds eleven and twelve, there is a long downtime of about 70 hours. For the second time, the HT universe is restored from a backup (see the article on Black Friday).
  • New leagues: Al Iraq and Azərbaycan.

Season 30 (2006/08/13)

Season 31 (2006/12/03)

Season 32 (2007/03/25)

Season 33 (2007/07/15)

Season 34 (2007/11/04)

Season 35 (2008/02/24)

Season 36 (2008/06/15)

Season 37 (2008/10/05)

Season 38 (2009/01/25)

  • Conditional substitutions was introduced.
  • Long shot tactics was introduced.
  • Transfer market regulation; you can't transfer list a player more times than he has played games for your team.
  • Squad limit of 50 players.

Season 39 (2009-05-18)

  • More accurate match ratings including the full effect from confidence, confusion and pulling back.
  • The team confidence effect was lowered.
  • A new HT-Live with Re-live was introduced.
  • The possibility of managing your team by SMS was removed.
  • For added security, from now users are able to have a login name different from their nickname.

Season 40 (2009-09-06)

  • Hattrick launched a Facebook application.
  • Managers can list their favourite teams with a small new feature.
  • All bot teams from level six and below started to demote to the lowest division at season's end (and teams with active managers started taking their places to spice up the competition).

Season 41 (2009-12-28)

  • The distribution of basic chances in the game engine is changed, making some chances exclusive for each team, to improve the balance and reduce the variance in the game. This also enabled a better handling of the counterattack and pressing tactics.

Season 42 (2010-04-19)

  • A new match engine that is not based on 4-4-2 and can handle all formations without having to reposition players.
  • New regular chances distribution system.

Season 43 (2010-08-09)

  • Faster training on many skill levels, but also slower on high levels.
  • End to longer injuries: when a player gets injured, +4 is now the longest the injury will be.

Season 44 (2010-11-29)

  • General (form) training type is removed.

Season 45 (2011-03-21)

Season 46 (2011-07-11)

  • All users get access to the basic training report.
  • Match order form is improved with a rating predictor.
  • Letting two players swap positions on the pitch also becomes possible.

Season 47 (2011-10-31)

  • The loyalty makes perform better the players in your team for a long time.

Season 48 (2012-02-20)

Season 49 (2012/06/11)

Season 50 (2012/10/01)

  • Autobidding for transfer market.
  • It is possibile, through Offerwalls, to earn reward points to get Supporter and Credits without having to spend real life money.

Season 51 (2013/01/21)

  • Hattrick Supporter Platinum, Gold and Silver.

Season 52 (2013/05/13)

  • An alternative competition with a faster pace for those who want more action: Ladders
  • Zattika sells Hattrick back to the old owners.

Season 53 (2013/09/02)

  • The community in the anniversary vote requested and gets to dismantle the Golden Goal rule.
  • Youth teams will no longer have a week off during the senior teams' season break.

Season 54 (2013/12/23)

  • CHPP applications are allowed again.
  • New Ladders for Federations tournaments.

Season 55 (2014/04/14)

  • Introduction of the season friendlies (no more training advantage for teams playing qualification matches). More play-offs and play-outs added in the lower divisions to make more matches matter for a longer period during the season.
  • Supporters can now play more than one tournament at a time, with no limitation to their own country tournament.
  • Injury history of your players.
  • New staff system.

Season 56 (2014/08/04)

  • Redesigned of Cup system and additional Divisional Cups for the lower divisions (to let more teams enjoy the experience of a meaningful cup run).
  • Is being increased the prize money for winning a tournament and also at earlier stages of the Cup.

Season 57 (2014/11/24)

  • New mobile web and redesigned iPhone and Android apps.

Season 58 (2015/03/16)

Season 59 (2015/07/06)

  • Match report shows all chances in the games after they have been played.
  • Now you can chat with members of your series, with your match opponent or within a federation chat room.

Season 60 (2015/10/26)

  • Staff system gets an update and from now on your staff will be given contracts.
  • At last, HT-Time is abandoned and now you can choose your time zone and finally being able to follow your matches without having to calculate how much time difference there is with where you live and Central Europe.

Season 61 (2016/02/15)

  • Players and reports show levels above "divine".
  • The mentor system is improved to make the experience even better for mentors and mentees.

Season 62 (2016/06/06)

  • New Live Viewer (also added a chat) provides interesting and updated stats during the match.
  • With the Team Analysis tool, you can quickly analyse the previous matches of your upcoming opponents.

Season 63 (2016/09/23)

  • Match Replay.
  • Improvements to youth team, such as the training results available immediately. Scouts no longer present you 17 years old talents in youth academy or 19 year old players in scouting network.

Season 64 (2017/01/16)

  • Hattrick International is a whole new league, it will crown themselves the first champion in some 6 seasons time.

Season 65 (2017/05/08)

  • Match order page with new visual design and a lot of new functionality (such as being allowed to bench 7 substitutes) to help setting up a good lineup.

Season 66 (2017/08/28)

  • Introduced Generation Trophies, an international competition where managers face off against other teams that got started in around the same time.
  • New training page was launched, giving better planning tools and more detail about what factors impact training.

Season 67 (2017/12/16)

  • New Framework for Specialties & Special Events: the key points of the change is a new, more transparent way to generate Special Events, big tweaks to the effects of all current specialties, two new unique player roles (Sitting Midfielder & Power Forward) and, finally, the introduction of completely new speciality.
  • A new individual order: Man Marking.

Season 68 (2018/04/09)

Nothing happens.

Season 69 (2018/07/30)

2019 (Season 70, 71, 72)

  • New leagues added: Ethiopia and Congo joining Hattrick in season 73.

2020 (Season 73, 74, 75)

  • Managers who want a more realistic-looking can now select a new set of faces for their players.

External Links

Retrieved from "https://wiki.hattrick.org/index.php?title=History&oldid=401104"