My first visit to the Apolyton site probably dates way back to 1999, but I was not a regular Internet user then. I wanted, however, to look at some news on the coming new civ-genre games, and Apolyton is where the search engine directed me. If I remembered the exact date, I would probably have it written down somewhere. Real visits to Apolyton, though, came in autumn 2000. I remember wanting some people to speak and play with, as I was pretty excited about the Call to Power game I recently started playing. Registration for the Apolyton forums then has to remain one of the milestones in my history of using the Internet.

What I saw then was a nice site, clearly providing a nice coverage of all the Civ games, and I also saw it has the forums. Lucky I was to spot them; for some other Apolytoners, it took much longer to find the forums. Back then, a bit under seven thousand users were registered on Apolyton, but I felt the site would grow later. I also felt the need to somehow contribute, mainly to reward for the countless hours spent playing Civ. Back then, I was mainly in the CtP section, and wasn't too happy to see the community isn't as active as I hoped. There were not too many posters, and many threads were often left with a few replies, if any. I had a really sad feeling then, especially when I looked at how rich the Apolyton CivII section is, with many old-timers and newcomers to play and discuss.

The CtP community started getting a bit changed about three weeks from when I registered, when my brain (I take no responsibility for its actions) came up with an idea that it would be good to arrange the multiplayer games in some sort of ratings, to have records of who the best players are. After looking more through the forums and the Apolyton's main CtP section, I saw that nothing like what imagined was done, and, admittedly, I was pretty surprised. So, I put my thoughts together, and posted the initial lines of how I imagined such a ratings system could work. Thankfully, the community reacted nicely, contributing ideas and suggestions, over the next few weeks something was finally hammered out. I would now like to take the chance and thank Quinns, who has provided me with continous help and ideas, the ratings wouldn't have been possible without him.

I was pleased to see that the CtP community now is a living one. Somehow, there happened to be a nice influx of newcomers, all pretty happy with the game, they got into the ratings, they got into the games. Over the last year the CtP community gained many new members. Finally, the Call to Power World Cup that currently is under way is another achievement of the community, with the very best players from Apolyton and GameLeague involved. The last year was also marked by Apolyton's new series of interviews, Faces of Apolyton, where I'm sometimes doing a thing :). Slight growth of the community lately has provided us with an ever-increasing scopes of statistics lists, thoughtful posts, interviews with own members and game designers, chats among the fellow forumers. I'd also like to add another thing to the list - spam. You know, if there was no spam on Apolyton, some of our moderators would probably just get bored.

The most important event of the last year is, in my opinion, the release of CivIII. After it was released, we could see some very interesting tendencies on the forums, first there was a huge amount of Firaxis and CivIII bashing, then most whiners quit, and what we're now left with is a nice community of players, modders and critics. Though some might be annoyed by the latter, they are generally a need - they keep driving Firaxis forward to releasing new patches, and nicely highlight weaknesses of the game. It's a great honor for all of us to see that members of the CivIII development team regularily browse Apolyton, sometimes even posting. Apolyton made release of CivIII a real Internet release -- the discussion between the gamers and developers is something new in the gaming world.

I thank Apolyton for all the joy provided, and wish ourselves to reach 30 thousand members for the next anniversary.