Even a stopped clock is right twice a day; and even Slarty will finish a project twice a year. Or part of a project, anyway.
Here is the first part of my long-touted (I won't say long-awaited) History of the Community. This part is the actual History, and describes the evolution of the Community over the last 15 years:
1995-1997: Prehistory
This is the period during which Jeff Vogel published the Exile Trilogy. Neither the present community nor its precursors existed during this era; nonetheless, it is the setting of the genesis story for the community, for it was the Exile games, and most importantly, Blades of Exile, published in late 1997, that caused the community to come into existence.
1998-2000: The Blades Community
Although these years predate the Spiderweb forums in any of their incarnations, but a vibrant community sprang up around Blades of Exile and the hundreds of users who designed scenarios and shared them online. In early 1998, the ITW Forums became a popular place for scenario-makers to congregate. Later that year the Lyceum was created and became the hub of meticulous and creative scenario design.
The two years that followed are often thought of as the Golden Age of Blades. A huge number of revered scenarios were released during this time. As the community revolved around scenarios, its most prominent figures were designers and webmasters: names like Brett Bixler and Alcritas. This was also the era of the original Arena, hosted by Aceron and then Akhronath. The only users still around from this era, to my knowledge, are Stareye and Lilith.
In the second half of 2000, Spiderweb Software cut its support for BoE significantly as it began to focus on the new Avernum line of games. Around this time the ITW Forums went down. But it was another development that truly changed the community at this time.
2001-2003: The Old SW Era
In 2001 Spiderweb created its first message board system, known as the Ikonboard. The Ikonboard was very similar in appearance and function to even today's forums. Its culture was very different, however. When the Ikonboard was created, its community emerged from a primordial soup of Exile and Avernum players of all ages, but especially a lot of pre-teen boys, into which the scenario designers of the Lyceum often ventured.
The boards were tumultuous during this time. Mods came and went — there were 25 in the course of these 3 years — and although the community was generally friendly, ad hominem insults, spam, and crudeness that would not be tolerated today were commonplace. Nonetheless a common culture began to emerge and many people felt close ties to the boards. The boards were full of humor: BEEP, News at 11, Nephil vs. Slith, Xian Skull, and a host of other forum "classics" stem from this era.
Around the end of 2001 the Ikonboard was replaced with the original Spiderweb UBB. A number of new moderators appeared, and Drakefyre was given the first non-Spiderweb admin account. There were often tensions between members (moderators included) who had different views of what the boards. Some moderators even used their positions to harass other members. These conflicts were well symbolized by the creation of the first two major satellite forums, first Desperance, and then Polaris which was created as a "Conspiracy" and bulwark against Desperance.
Much of this primal activity took place in the Misc. forum. Eventually the tides turned against the more abrasive moderators; this was evident first in the demodding of TM, Scorpius, Alec, and Djur, and more clearly in the eradication of the Misc. forum itself at the end of 2002. General conversation was redirected to General, with an expectation of greater courtesy and cleanliness that was often, though not always, met. During 2003, the General forum was fileld with a huge number of RPs, far more than in any other era, and the RP became one of the chief ways in which members interacted and cultural elements were propagated.
Throughout this time the BoE community continued to flourish, although there was not the same volume of legendary scenarios as there had been earlier. The BoE community was alternated encouraged by user-run contests and other developments, and slowed by events such as the Solberg controversy, the Blades MegaSite fiasco, and eventually, Jeff's preliminary announcements about Blades of Avernum.
2004-2006: The Middle SW Era
In early 2004, Blades of Avernum was released. It received a furiously mixed reaction from forum-goers. Jeff had taken pains to engage the BoE community in the design of BoA, but many members were not happy with the result, and still viewed Jeff as a traitor from the drop in support for BoE years earlier. This was the Sundering of Blades; conversation about BoA was primary in the forums, displacing even the RPs in General, and initial excitement gave way to fierce disagreement over how to regard BoA and indeed Spiderweb itself.
The two other games released during this era, Geneforge 3 and Avernum 4, were by far the most maligned of their respective series, and contributed to the negative sentiment some older members had against Jeff. During the course of this era, there was a slow trickle of these oldbies who departed from the community, sometimes with an angry parting screed, but more often with a gradual, unexplained disappearance.
BoA was a commercial failure, but G3 and A4 were not, and indeed brought many new members to the boards. Additionally, the pre-teen boys that had been so vocally dominant in the Early SW Era had grown a few years older. As a result the culture shifted in a more thoughtful direction. The Middle SW Era is characterized, more than anything else, by this mixture of older and newer members. As time went on the community began to seem like more and more of a Community, with zealously followed traditions and even formal rites like Aran's Monthly Stats.
In 2006, this convergence of old and new came to a head in more ways than one. On the one hand, it was probably the most social period of the forums. Spiderweb Chats took place regularly, and unlike the Room 3 chats of earlier days, they involved a broad cross-section of members. In General, Spiderweb-specific memes were actively generated, centering around metaphorical depictions of members, custom titles, matchmaking, comic strips, and perhaps most notably, the beginning of Dikiyoba's Episodes. At the same time, General became home to extensive debate threads discussing everything from the nature of love and marriage to the nature of scientific peer review.
Conflict with Jeff also came to head in early 2006, in an incident with Ash Lael now known as Ashby-gate. After this point, the remaining oldbies began to leave the forums in greater numbers, while Jeff took a step back and, in large part, ceased visiting the forums. Most emblematic of all was the final banning of Terror's Martyr in the summer of 2006. TM had been the most controversial, and among the most prolific, presences on the forums since their inception. Between his ban, the departure of many other older members, and Spiderweb's shift in focus away from scenario design engines, the culture of the boards began to shift again.
2007-Present: The New SW Era
The end of 2006 was a time of much change. Spider, the mascot of Spiderweb Software, passed on. Polaris died. Salmon led a Conspiracy to inundate the boards with spam, which in fact caused spam to become less tolerated, and led to the cancelling of the Monthly Stats. People held chats to debate whether or not BoA had a future. And Spiderweb released Geneforge 4, a game that was very well received by the community, being described as a fresh start and as seeming full of life.
In 2007, Polaris was replaced by the third major satellite, Shadow Vale. It is not just on that account that I refer to the first three years of this era as the Age of Shadows, however. Many older things had recently passed away and were replaced with new things that seemed but a shadow of the old. The memes in General became increasingly a matter for self-spectating. Comic strips and novellettes were gradually replaced with posting games. The debates became less common. TM seemed to be replaced in many ways by ET, who was also very funny, but somehow much less beloved.
Early 2007 also saw the addition of a new crop of mods, none of whom were oldbies. Drakefyre had mostly departed by this point, and under Stareye's banner the mods became somewhat stricter, while the boards became somewhat friendlier and significantly cleaner. The UBB.threads "upgrade" in 2008 enhanced this shift as it expanded the spheres of influence of all the mods. It also led to the creation of the fourth and final major satellite, the Calamity Refuge Forums. CRF sucked many of the board's youngest members away; in practice, it became more like the Misc. of elder days, which also contributed to the general rise in expectations of courtesy for posts on the forums.
The Age of Shadows also references some deception that took place during these years. Several members had secret alternate accounts that received heavy use, including banned iconoclasts like TM and ET. And out of the posting games had become popular on General sprang Slarty's brainchild, the Darkside Loyalist Witch Hunts, which involved each player having a secret identity. The second one was infamous for being the largest activity ever organized among the community, for generating replies faster than has otherwise been seen, and also for ending prematurely in an angry cloud of fighting.
The Witch Hunts had several consequences. Least direct, but most important, was Ephesos's exploration of more social RP formats, eventually leading him to run his Labyrinth campaign in late 2009. Labyrinth became the template for AimHack, a new and much livelier format of RP that multiplied repeatedly and became the most widespread event on the forums.
The end of 2009 also marked the banning of the last major alternate accounts. Thus, I identify that time with the end of the Age of Shadows and the beginning of the Age of AimHack. In many ways, the boards have remained remarkably static in the years since 2009. The culture has shifted less than in previous years, the list of mods is unchanged, and many of the users who posted heavily in 2007 or 2008 are still around. This is a very different situation from what you would see if you looked back 4 or 5 years from 2007; and so, in my analysis, the New SW Age continues through the present day.
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I am indebted to Stareye, Lilith, Alorael, and others for sharing their memories of the older time periods. If something above is inaccurate, however, it's probably my fault; I've only just completed this draft, so corrections and other feedback are welcome.
