RPGCHistory - Page 4

Now firmly entrenched in their new digs, RPGC continues to update. Hiryuu finished his Musashi shrine on July 28th, and on the same day Rirse and PKT_Paladin announced their completion of a Tenchi Muyo RPG shrine. Also at the end of July Dragon Ninja completed a Non-RPG humor subsite, full of silly pictures and other things. August kicked off with Orakio completing yet another Phantasy Star shrine, for Phantasy Star 2. And in mid-August Teran added a shrine on Ultima 1, and Flintedge joined the staff on the same day with his Legend of Legaia shrine. A few days later Orakio continued his torrid shrining pace by completing one for Shining in the Darkness. The close of August brought about the Phantasy Star Gaiden shrine by Hiryuu.

September changes began with Mr. Saturn beginning an RPGC Games subsite, where he would host and run various game show type events for the visitors. It was short-lived however since soon after Sat would have to take a far more reduced role in working on RPGC due to school and real-life, so that section lay dormant for quite a while. On September 9th RPGC was finally able to unveil its Romancing Saga 3 shrine. Lunaris had worked on it for years, but it didn't get completed until Kagon and him found each other and teamed up for it. They both then joined the staff.

Also in September, Sinistral, Rahvin and Dragon God continued to update the Sountracks Reviews section, by this time there were now 5 STs reviewed with more being completed as time went on. In this late summer-fall period Cidolfas began a series of "guests" hosting the mailbag. Everyone from staffers like Lunaris and Megaman984 to game personalities like Ozzie or Lucca of Chrono Trigger fame pitched in for a few 'bags. It only took Orakio six weeks, but on October 2nd he finished the Shining Force CD shrine. Right on his heels came Jutta, who joined the staff with her shrine on Might and Magic 4 and 5.

Up to now, Merlin had been solely covering RPGC's server expenses. This hadn't been much of a problem, but by the fall RPGC was getting more and more popular and our bandwidth costs were increasing. Thus, various staffers tried searching around the Internet for potential advertisers. Around October 10th, Merlin finally tracked down a suitable one, focusin.com, and with Saturn's help the new banner (and later pop-ups) appeared all over the site. Focusin was helpful in its time, RPGC finally started to make some money and at least get most of its old debts repaid, but the increasingly higher and higher amount of pop-ups, many of which were of objectionable content, largely led to a souring of a relationship between the site and their advertiser (not that focusin ever responded to email questions once we signed up).

Right after the advertising started, more updates were made. Orakio completed yet another shrine, for Warsong. RPGC also changed their layout for a few days around Halloween with a "Soylent Green" themed layout, courtesy of Megaman984. Most of November was spent juggling our site over six different servers (BN handled this) for bandwidth reasons, but at the end of the month we had some updates. Nineinchnails stopped working on the links and affiliates pages, handing these duties over to Kagon. Also, Nikki Neko joined the staff to work on the Fanart section with Flintedge. Ms. Saturn was retired due to a lack of time to work on it. Flintedge himself later had to drop this section, leaving Nikki as its sole maintainer besides Zero, who did HTML work. Lastly, Zeppelin began an RPG News section for the site, but after a few months he ran out of time to operate it, so that project was scrapped for the time being.

Orakio kicked off December with yet another shrine! This one for the Legend of Zelda: the Ocarina of Time. On December 11th Hiryuu added another shrine of his too, this one for the Crusader of Centy. Later this month Orakio finished his quest to complete 10 shrines with his Landstalker shrine. He originally thought this would be his last shrine, but he has not stopped working. A couple days later SG_TheMusician was brought into the staff to maintain a Fanmusic section, he would later change his name to Skankin' Garbage. RPGC also temporarily hosted the webcomic OnlineLife for a few days, drawn by former staffer Spoonybard.

Previously in RPGC's past they ran a "Millennial Fair," a series of updates and sections coordinated around the changing of the millennium to the year 2000. In December of 2001, we decided to bring back the section as an annual end-of-year updating bonanza, signified by a wintry background used for the duration of the Fair (late December to early January). There were many significant updates during this period. Cidolfas added a shrine on Star Ocean. Kagon added a Lufia 1 shrine (Sinistral contributed to its completion). Megaman984 added an RPGCarols subsite, which had parodies of Christmas carols using RPGC personalities and events. Even Macc updated with a FARTS update!

The Fair continued rolling on as Sephiroth Katana added an entire new section, RPG Reviews done by him. He reviewed around 40 games and has a few more planned. More Soundtrack Reviews were added (a 3-person one for Super Mario RPG to commemorate the MF), Orakio opened his subsite -- the Orakian Hideout, and Cless Alvein joined the site during this time period with his E.V.O.: The Search for Eden shrine.

RPGC also rebuilt our own versions of some of Jim's old shrines. First Cidolfas completed a shrine on Final Fantasy 3. To cap off the very busy MF period, Rogue Paladin Trian rejoined the staff (he had left a while ago) with a Translation section, Hiryuu added yet another shrine (Legend of the Ghost Lion), and Merlin gave his job of maintaining shrine submissions to Cidolfas, he still maintained the job of adding new staff. Around January 4th Megaman984 reverted the layout to the old one.

The next addition to RPGC was a spriting subsite, run by Drak and Megaman984. The next major thing to happen was that RPGC decided to purchase themselves some professional boards. Rather than use EzBoards, which were filled with pop-ups, were down sporadically and were even hacked, Merlin bought Vbulletin's webboards and set them up. They've been very successful as we continue to customize them. Kentar also gave the duties of running the Poll to Cless Alvein, who was able to update more frequently. Then in the beginning of February Merlin handed the newsletter job over to Hiryuu, who has done a better job of it until he turned it over to Cless Alvein in December of 2002. Also in February RPGC added shrines on Faxanadu and the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Metal Babble joined the staff for Faxanadu, and Orakio completed the Zelda shrine). Sadly however, Kentar decided to leave RPGC on February 16th due to a lack of time to work on the site; Skankin' Garbage took over his Final Fantasy Adventure shrine.

Ryuuhi then joined the site at the beginning of March with a shrine on Front Mission 1, and Orakio finished yet another Zelda shrine, for the Legend of Zelda: The Adventures of Link. Another shrine that Jim used to run was then completely rebuilt by RPGC, as Kagon and Orakio completed an FF2 shrine. Then, longtime fanfic contributor and all-around well-liked gal Weiila joined to help (i.e., run) the fanfic section with Mazrim Taim. Deathduelist then joined the site on March 7th with a Ys 4 shrine; just days later Cidolfas joined the ten-shrine club along with Hiryuu and Orakio with his shrine on Live A Live.

Cidolfas meanwhile had been doing the mailbag steadily ever since Macc gave it up. But after fifty 'bags Cid decided he just couldn't keep doing it for the time being. Kagon, Dragon God, Skankin' Garbage, and Megaman984 decided to platoon the bag together, updating once every two weeks rather than one week; Dragon God would later drop out as a mailbag worker. Lastly, on March 22 Rirse opened up his Twisted RPG Theatre subsite.

RPGC's first birthday post-Jim was quickly approaching, and a few events were planned around it. Before the official birthdate though, Orakio finished a shrine on Vay and Last Cetra joined the staff with a Deep Dungeon shrine (Hiryuu did its html). To kick off the party RPGC welcomed a new staffer, Kero Hazel who has a shrine in the works and is contributing to Soundtrack Reviews. Macc Maverick completed the final shrine that Jim had done, Castlevania 2, plus Cless Alvein opened up a Starcraft subsite to continue our anniversary updating. Plus there were a few other updates, things such as the Quotes Archive, Translation section, and Soundtrack Reviews all got major additions. So our first year went by very smoothly and without major disruption.

Another two shrines were added to our coffers as Black Ninja completed a Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete shrine, and Orakio put up his 15th shrine, Shining Force 2. Then Jutta added a shrine on Lufia 3 on April 22 and then Red Comet joined the staff with his shrine on Mobile Suit Gundam Cross Dimension 0079. And Crotanks closed out the March additions by joining the staff with his Dragon Ball Z: Legend of the Super Saiyan shrine.

In early May, Cidolfas had learned a good deal about PHP by now and started applying it throughout our site. Soon it was used in lots of places, such as our main-page update system, the updates archive, and the join page. It would eventually spread to the system pages and the developing return of the RPGC Database. Also in early May the work that had been done on Dragon Warrior 7 shrine by Sinistral, Kagon, and Mr. Saturn was uploaded. Later that month Dalton of Zeal joined with his Super Ninja Boy shrine and Hiryuu finished off his Glory of Heracles 2 shrine.

June was a rather slow month in terms of new additions to the site (plenty of existing sections were being updated however), but then in mid-June Hiryuu announced a FF4 Hard Type shrine, which was donated by Nezzer of Atma Games fame. Hiryuu maintains it until Nezzer shows up again. Teran then completed a shrine on Ultima 2 on June 17th, Crotanks added a Dragon Ball Z: Super Gokuden shrine, and Orakio completed yet another Zelda shrine, this one for the Oracles of Seasons/Ages Zelda game. The Duke joined the staff with his Megaman64 shrine at the end of June and at the beginning of July Rogue Paladin Trian added a shrine on Magic Knight Rayearth.

On July 7th Merlin announced on the main page that RPGC would be leaving its host of more than a year, AllWebCo, and switching to Rackshack.net. This was not due to any problems with AllWebCo, RPGC had simply grown to be too big and too popular for that host to continue supporting us. Thus, Merlin then bought a new dedicated server from Rackshack.net, and he and Black Ninja began to work on it. In the meantime a couple new shrines were added: Kagon finished one for Dragon Warrior 6 and PKT_Paladin finished his Sailor Moon: Another Story shrine. Around July 17th, having completed most of the configuration of the new server, Black Ninja shut down ftp on the old one so that the entire layout and other changes could be done without risking anyone losing any of their work. Since the FFC was going to rejoin RPGC's server (Cid had bought his own webspace for the FFC during the preceding summer) Cid shut down the Compendium in mid-July and then pitched in to work on the new server's PHP. So, after days upon days of work, deluging Rackshack with technical support mails, and many cans of Mountain Dew RPGClassics opened up at its new server around the waning days of July.

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