Actually, 'Traveller: 2300' was NEVER intended to be part of the 'Traveller' universe and was never advertised as such. It was a "sequel" of sorts to 'Twilight: 2000', hence the title of the game ('Twilight: 2000'... 'Traveller: 2300'... see the pattern?) which also pertained to the year that the games took place in - 'Traveller: 2300' was set in the 'Twilight: 2000' universe, only 300 years later.
A year after 'Traveller: 2300' came out, the GDW staff came out with a newly-named version ('2300AD', admittedly to stop the 'Traveller: 2300'/'Traveller' confusion) in which the staff cleaned up a lot of rules errors and typos, and added a lot more info (each alien race got its own section, weapons and items got illustrations, etc.). In my opinion, 2300AD was definitely worth upgrading to from 'Traveller: 2300'!
Unlike most posters here, I started playing 'Traveller: 2300'/'2300AD' because of 'Twilight: 2000', NOT because of 'Traveller'/'Megatraveller' (my very first experience with the Traveller universe will come soon with 'GURPS Traveller'
). To this day, I would STILL play a game of '2300AD' (and even 'Twilight: 2000 version 2.2', for that matter
)... although I can't find anyone else who still plays those games.
-G
P.S. = Although 'Space: 1889' (ANOTHER game that I enjoyed refereeing... it came out a year after '2300AD' was released
) followed the same naming pattern as 'Twilight: 2000' and 'Traveller: 2300', it was NOT set in the same universe as the other two. Just thought I'd get that off my chest.
[This message has been edited by Goodsport (edited 27 June 2001).]