Anyone who ever played the SF/WoX series online has to recall how horrible the DirectPlay networking interface worked over routers. The networking protocol was designed for LANs and worked okay when each PC had its own unique public internet address, but just a few years later, everyone was using routers to share high speed internet among multiple PCs and support wireless. Network Address Translation (NAT) is the protocol used by routers to allow local PCs with locally assigned network addresses to share a single public address. Firewall software (and hardware settings on routers) was designed to block unwanted incoming internet traffic as well. These technologies wreaked havoc with the simple server/client communication requiring open two-way communication, with the client needing to be able to scan for hosts, and the host needing to accept requests to join from new clients.   The solution SFP1/WoV/WoE/WoI players relied on for overcoming this problem was a free Virtual Private Network (VPN) server system called Hamachi. Hamachi allowed all of the computers that wanted to play to be assigned addresses that made it seem like they were all physically connected to the same switch -- which is exactly what DirectPlay prefers to have a good chance of working correctly. However, Hamachi's business model didn't appear to work so well since most people got what they needed using the free version. Years later, the company that bought them still exists, LogMeIn or something like that, but the simple, free VPN software known as Hamachi is long gone.   Now, here I am nearly 10 years later trying to stir up Third Wire SF series multiplayer. I have succeeded in hosting via Hyperlobby and configuring my router to overcome NAT/Firewall problems, but it would be much better if Hamachi was still around to help those less capable of configuring their modern hardware and operating systems to run 13 year old games.   I found the answer and it worked pretty well last night: https://www.evolvehq.com/ Evolve is a mix between the old GameSpy/Hyperlobby style chat rooms, Hamachi VPN rooms, and Teamspeak voice chat. People who played SF series online typically ran all three types of programs. Evolve provides a single application that easily gets the job done without needing any expertise in configuring routers and software. One successful night isn't much of a track record, but it was a great start :)