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Today is the 3rd aniversery of the day that the Apolyton Refugees, during the great server crash of 2003, followed a link from the imarton.net "forum" to a haven in the great dark, http://www.mzocentral.net.
This is an except from MasterZen's own experiance of the crash and the exodus
MZO still has a thriving community, who have recently entered a team into the Civ4 InterSite Democracy Game. MZO has forums for Civ and a host of other games. MZO also has discussions on News, Politics, Science, Art and many other topics. And of cource, there is a spam forum, for things likel posting when your drunk, etc...
MZO is currently at the startup stage for a new Civ4 Reality PBEM, where the audiance decides who of the different players of the game, get replaced. The players must entertain, with regular reports, on the status of their Civs, to keep in the game. They also have immunity challenges that they must face, to have immunity from being voted off for that round. As the Civ3 version was a great amount of entertainmant, the Civ4 version also promices to be just as great, even better.
Here is to a great site, that was there for Apolyton, when the crash had happened.
E_T
This is an except from MasterZen's own experiance of the crash and the exodus
Bang, Boom, Crash!
5 days later tragedy hit. Waking up I went to do what I usually did: log on to Apolyton and spa...err, surf for a while. But on this day, April 22, 2003, there was no apolyton. There was nothing. Only a notice that the site had crashed and it would be moved to a new server and could take days to come back online. Tragedy!
A few hours later, a link appeared to another site from the owner, http://www.imarton.net. Immediately most people moved over there and started posting. That forum however, was very rudimentary, no smilieys no avatars, just text. Accustomed to at least see the avatarized representations of ourselves, that forum looked funny, faceless. We felt like refugees basically, locked in each other's cell, unable to see anything, other than listen to each other. It was hilarious. Bascially during that morning most people just spent joking around, lamenting the fate of their home on the internet or just simply "checking in". Imarton.net was thus dubbed the "refugee camp" for all the displaced people at Apolyton looking for a temporary online home.
Then it hit me. What if I posted a link to MZO so people would move over during the crisis? My forum was fare more visually appealing than the faceless forum of imarton.net. Of course, I honsetly had no clue that people would actually decide to stay and post more than once. Why would they?
As morning turned into noon, the unthinkable happened. Registrations! Lots of them! People started flocking here, mostly by word of mouth and by posting the link on other threads on imarton.net . The strategy forum folk, guys like Theseus, Dominae and Arrian were some of the first to come. And what did they do? Start succession games! The Civ3 demo game community also came, led by folks like Togas, UnOrthOdOx, Shiber, Konquest and many other. Most of the Spanish forum also came and registered, guys like Chilean President, Manya and Alfred Palacios (known as El Awrence at 'poly). In one day, exactly 47 people registered on MZO, still a record.
A community had formed.
5 days later tragedy hit. Waking up I went to do what I usually did: log on to Apolyton and spa...err, surf for a while. But on this day, April 22, 2003, there was no apolyton. There was nothing. Only a notice that the site had crashed and it would be moved to a new server and could take days to come back online. Tragedy!
A few hours later, a link appeared to another site from the owner, http://www.imarton.net. Immediately most people moved over there and started posting. That forum however, was very rudimentary, no smilieys no avatars, just text. Accustomed to at least see the avatarized representations of ourselves, that forum looked funny, faceless. We felt like refugees basically, locked in each other's cell, unable to see anything, other than listen to each other. It was hilarious. Bascially during that morning most people just spent joking around, lamenting the fate of their home on the internet or just simply "checking in". Imarton.net was thus dubbed the "refugee camp" for all the displaced people at Apolyton looking for a temporary online home.
Then it hit me. What if I posted a link to MZO so people would move over during the crisis? My forum was fare more visually appealing than the faceless forum of imarton.net. Of course, I honsetly had no clue that people would actually decide to stay and post more than once. Why would they?
As morning turned into noon, the unthinkable happened. Registrations! Lots of them! People started flocking here, mostly by word of mouth and by posting the link on other threads on imarton.net . The strategy forum folk, guys like Theseus, Dominae and Arrian were some of the first to come. And what did they do? Start succession games! The Civ3 demo game community also came, led by folks like Togas, UnOrthOdOx, Shiber, Konquest and many other. Most of the Spanish forum also came and registered, guys like Chilean President, Manya and Alfred Palacios (known as El Awrence at 'poly). In one day, exactly 47 people registered on MZO, still a record.
A community had formed.
MZO is currently at the startup stage for a new Civ4 Reality PBEM, where the audiance decides who of the different players of the game, get replaced. The players must entertain, with regular reports, on the status of their Civs, to keep in the game. They also have immunity challenges that they must face, to have immunity from being voted off for that round. As the Civ3 version was a great amount of entertainmant, the Civ4 version also promices to be just as great, even better.
Here is to a great site, that was there for Apolyton, when the crash had happened.
E_T
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