Almost seven months after taking on the managerial position of The Ultimate Civilization II Site, Dan 'The Emperor' Quick is suddenly thrust into a position to become its outright owner. DelPrete left the option open of Quick refusing the offer outright by not wanting to make an announcement either way himself⁵⁸. Although left unsaid between the two, the alternative to Quick's agreeing to become UCIVII's owner was the shutdown of the site. “If this had happened, I doubt it would have been disclosed that our association had come to an end first”, Quick reflects⁵⁹.

While DelPrete's wallet was able to afford a small out-of-pocket monthly fee to keep UCIVII running, Quick's is not. He is not yet the age of being able to legally hold a job⁶⁰ and he does not feel comfortable in approaching his parents to work out some sort of arrangement with them. “They were putting up with way too much as it was”, says Quick looking back⁶¹. “[Mike] had kept UCIVII hosted as long as he [possibly] could and being a high school student like myself the dollar figure [we were both facing] was not an affordable [sum]”⁶². Retaining the service of a different free hosting provider is therefore the only option left open to Quick to keep UCIVII from closing. However, no such 'standard' service presents itself that could accommodate the disk space let alone the bandwidth expenditure of the site without charge to its owner – if even at that.

Earlier in the year Quick had come across a gaming network hosting another leading Civilization II fansite. Less than two months prior, however, that site had left the network to be hosted on the owner's business website⁶³. The caretaker of the stranded fansite contacted the network's Founder and then-Chief Administrator expressing an interest to join the gaming family immediately⁶⁴. The offer is just as eagerly, but conditionally, accepted. Quick spends five of the eleven days UCIVII is offline, or nearly half the total period, uploading his site's content to the network's server. “[O]h, the days of 28.8K dial-up and limited access hours” ⁶⁵. Circumstances further demand an adjustment in his attitude towards not paying a cent out-of-hand for UCIVII's hosting. The amount: $40CA/month⁶⁶, a comparatively paltry amount to what was to be faced under continued hosting through Glubco.

For almost five months, DelPrete provides an automatic redirect from UCIVII's location during its time on Glubco to its address on the new provider's website⁶⁷. Ultimately this latest re-location would not prove to be UCIVII's last.     [... Previous]   |   [Next ...]   |   [Endnotes]