The org's TEN YEAR anniversary...

[Kurando]

Hey Mods, Ex-Mods, and Ex-Admins, Tosa, and most importantly org patrons; I was just wondering if anyone realized that totalwar.org is on the verge of it's 10 Year anniversary! Is there anything pending to celebrate this milestone; maybe a mainpage announcement or something?

It's ancient history now, but Dan, myself, and few other melon ranchers started the site in earily April 1999. We got rollin about a year or so before the S:TW demo was released, and I'll be darned, it came to me the other day that it's just a few weeks shy of 10 years ago that it all came together.

I think The Scourge, nokhor, Nelson, and myself are the last holdouts from the 90's, but there are so many great folks hereabouts now. -It's good to see that even after all this time das org is still going, stronger than ever!

[Husar]

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

You could invite everybody to your userpage and offer some cookies(the virtual ones) if you want to celebrate.

I guess ten years on the internet is quite some time, to think I myself have been here for more than 6 years.

[Martok]

Holy crap! I hadn't thought about that, but you're right.

Hard to believe this place has been around for nearly a decade already. Seems like yesterday when I was just a lurker (and later on a newbie poster) who didn't know anything of Japanese history prior to the late 19th century. How times have changed!


By the way, good to see you, Kurando. Despite having heard quite a bit about you these past few years, I wasn't sure if you were truly real or just a legendary/mythical figure. Welcome back!

[bamff]

10 years? That is worthy of note alright!

Something like that ought to be celebrated in some way - but how?

[Veho Nex]

So you can send the money to me and I'll take a vacation for the lot of us.

[Quintus.JC]

Definitely a cause for celebration, I'm sure someone's got a bright idea about how to celebrate this even properly.

Kudos to Kurando, Dan and all the other fine fellows who started this site.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Maybe we can put together some special badge for this occsion ?

[Quintus.JC]

Maybe we can put together some special badge for this occsion ?

A temporary bagde for this festive moment is possible, but I suppose a permanent one is out of the question.

[LittleGrizzly]

Ten more years!
Ten more years!

Seems like just the other day i signed up as a angry 15 year old who knew everything. Since then the .org has taught me alot and helped turn into cycnical 22 year old who realises his limitations. I think i should end this as i begun it.

Ten more years!
Ten more years!

[Pannonian]

Who's darkman9?

[InsaneApache]

I had an account here about a year or so before my present persona. No idea what the user name was, never mind the password.

I think I did, maybe two posts in all and then just lurked. I seem to remember Kurando as an admin. I might be wrong, it was a long time ago.

Anyroad, here's a cheers to Dan, who set the ball rolling along and for all those who took it upon themselves to take on the baton of one of, if not, the best discussion board on the t'interwebs.

Take a bow from a grateful friend.

IA.

[Andres]

The Org is a wonderful place and the founders should be very proud of it

[Monk]

The K-man himself!

Respect.

I had no idea we were getting so close to the 10 year mark. In internet years that officially makes us the old man yelling at people to get off the lawn. I'm actually pretty content with that.

[Gregoshi]

Ten years is hard to believe. All hail the Great Makers. Thank you for planting that seed all those years ago. It has blossomed into a beautiful thing.

[CountArach]

Wow, that's brilliant! The Org has maintained a constant level of high-level conversation and has avoided severe controversy during almost the entirety of that time. The maturity levels for such an old site are astounding!

Bravo Org! Bravo Orgahs!

[HopAlongBunny]

I see 10 more in your future

[Beefy187]

10 years? Wow! Huge thanks to the founders for making the one of the finest forums in the world

We should make a happy birthday Org thread and all post a happy birthday Org song simultaneously. That will be rather interesting

[LittleGrizzly]

I would be impressed if we all managed to post anything simultaneously... and even more impressed if they all went through and posted at the same time without problems...

Something should be done though!!

Im just really not sure what...

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Nice to see one of the founding fathers.

[pevergreen]

It is kur-rater!

[Papewaio]

I lurked at the site for quite awhile before joining. I have to say that Kurando and Co. definitly made the site worthwhile.

Khan7 is one of the older hands that I miss... wonder what happened to him?

[JAG]

Blimey, 10 years. I remember visiting the site well before I even visited the forums, let alone join up. It was always the site I went to first for anything regarding STW, it was superb. Patches, advice, multiplayer news - whatever you needed to know, it was all there. It is also great that it is still going strong.

If I ever go to the org now it tends to be in the backroom, but still - this place rocks and is still so good.

Lets hope it continues and there should definitely be some celebration - somehow - of the start of the site.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think we should celebrate by flooding some random site and having a spam party...

[Monk]

I think we should celebrate by flooding some random site and having a spam party...

It's funny you should say that because that's exactly the opposite of what I want to happen.

[Prince Cobra]

I see 10 more in your future

Only 10 years more for such a nice place!

[Caius]

I've been granted the title of SM, yet I do not know why, because those guys did a lot of things for the org that we know today. Some kind of "Medal of Valour" they got the right to deserve one.

For the newbies we welcome,
The mafia games we play,
the Kingdom of Love and Peace,
its counterpart, the Kingdom of Hatred and War,
The Mead Hall where we write to show that we can write, and what can we are capable of,
The Aphotecary, where there were psichiatrists (sp?) of computers
the Tech forum where we share our geekness,
The Entrance Hall for having a Holy War against Camels.

Lets remember the generation of orgahs who made the site, the generation that followed the founders and those SM that made members want to change. Lets remember George Orwell and 1984, for it's great book, and founder of the 1984-ish jokes (repleace nonperson Drisos with Chocolate raise 0.5 gr. Doubleplusgood in one of the threads). Lets remember those mods who had to leave. Lets congrat Tosa and his group of moderators. Lets remember all.

Long live the org. It will.

[Kagemusha]

We definetely need somekind of 10 years birthday event. I wonder what the exact day of birth might have been?

[Kurando]

I wonder what the exact day of birth might have been?

Good question... According to my desktop records the site DNS mainpage officially opened Friday April 2nd, 1999. And the message board that we all know and love, The Sword Dojo, (now known as The Guild), officially opened April 14th 1999.

I retro-fitted a few of the membership join dates when we switched the board to vBulletin 1.0 in summer of 2000. We did this to facilitate the memebership explosion we experienced pending the release of Shogun Totalwar in June of 2000. For the first year we had a different ezboard message board that was red, green, and black in colour, and the original vBulletin 1.0 board was babyblue; the current board colours were adopted somewhere around 2003, but the old blue colour scheme was carefully preserved and still exists in the Guild's current Sword Dojo.

I remember for the first year before the demo was released we tried to stay focused on History and Strategy, the Art of War and whatnot; if fact, believe it or not, there was no off-topic content allowed on the board (not even frontroom-type stuff). ;) Surprisingly members were okay with this and we didn't have many problems moderating, but there were probably only a few dozen active posters before the demo came out so it was much easier than you might think to keep things on track.

totalwar.org got a big break earily spring of 2000 when some patrons from the UK somehow talked the Creative Assembly Team into giving .org a hands-on look at the demo. Richie and the rest of the CA Team were really good to the us, and our guys who got to see the S:TW Beta kept us inspired and on-track during the game's pre-demo days.

Interestingly in the earily days we had an arch-rival site "www.plannettotalwar.com" -There were some cool guys over there, but we managed to stay ahead of them and eventually .org became established as the place to be. At the time I think planettotalwar.com had a reputation as a "players site" and .org had more a reputation as an "info site", but we had good info that's for sure. Guys like PUZZ3D understood the mechanics of the game very intimately and helped a lot of people out. Also we had some serious historians, great modders, and apt story writers here at .org and they pulled together to keep forum content interesting.

So that's how it all started, but that's only the smallest fraction of how it got to where it is now. We owe the real thanks to Tosa and company. And most especially to the patrons; without whom this whole endevour would have amounted to nothing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the old gal. ;)

[Sasaki Kojiro]

It's funny you should say that because that's exactly the opposite of what I want to happen.

You want people from another site to flood the org and spam it?

[Togakure]

Thinking about how the Org could celebrate ... what about a creative project of some sort, that might add value and dimension? There are so many diverse and talented people here, and it seems, some who would like a "tangible" way to celebrate. What better way than to make, to improve, to share in a "labor of love?"

Just an idea that came to mind.