The Rise and Fall of the Last Emperor of TWC

[AngryTitusPullo]

The next stop worth to mention, was the deal with the RTR crisis of which later got blown out of proportion and changed the course of TWC history forever. I'm not sure, how much anyone knows about this...but what I know..

I would very much interested to know...

[Shaun]

Good read Archer.

I agree on the patch bit. Many members who are prominent now may not be aware of the siege bug in RTW and the '2 patch per game' policy of Activision when they complain about 'broken games' from CA. At least now we are getting more patches and not being left with a critically bugged game. Oh, and we are also getting more expansion packs - Alexander, anyone? I seriously hope that we get an Alexander style expansion for M2TW ... something which I really, really doubt that Activision would have authorised. However crappy you think that Alexander was, it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

[Lusted]

Publishers weren't switched from SEGA to Activision, SEGA bought CA and now own the company.

[Shaun]

Publishers weren't switched from SEGA to Activision, SEGA bought CA and now own the company.

Well, you know what I mean. Not that any of the business talk is actually important to the story, all that matters is that SEGA now publish CA's games.

[HorseArcher]

Publishers weren't switched from SEGA to Activision, SEGA bought CA and now own the company.

For that to happen, CA had to make and sign the agreement, since they aren't just slaves to throw around between publishers, and also SEGA had to offer a good money to have CA to leave Activision. Remember, primarly it is the software company, who chooses publishers, not the other way around.

[MCM]

This reminds me of my AAR style of writing

stay tuned for more......

Great read HA

[Simetrical]

For that to happen, CA had to make and sign the agreement, since they aren't just slaves to throw around between publishers, and also SEGA had to offer a good money to have CA to leave Activision.

Just to nitpick: Activision didn't ever own CA. It was owned by its founder, Tim Ansell. He then made the decision to sell the company to SEGA, which was his legal right as its owner, and he didn't have to involve anyone else in the company (although he might have, I don't know). SEGA also paid Activision, of course, to buy off any contracts it had with CA.

[Simetrical]

Well, it would be better than working on nuclear secrets.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

I'm going to say what we're all thinking... Crandar is your fault?

[Marshal Qin]

Damn. I blame the drugs, or living on another planet (China)

[Justinian]

I wouldn't point the finger at Spartan. He loved TWC enough to not seek to destroy it. If you blame anyone, you have to blame Crandar, and does anyone really think Crandar would go out of his way to help someone else if it didn't benefit him? Crandar wouldn't hack TWC for Spartan's sake.

[HorseArcher]

....so Anyway...


-Back to the time When Spartan was in control, Siblesz went to China, Sulla was climbing to the top and half of the forum members were banned or left on their own...


After the hacker attack occured and the RTR turmoil there was a large exodus from the TWC, when Spartan began the "police-state" and Marshall Law was in effect.

I won't go into details the deal with Boris, but what I know, he got into a fight with Crandar, who was advocating to make Boris step down or have the Staff demote him, due to his inactivity.
For this, Boris went a little crazy and he banned himself and deleted his account (I think that was his 2nd or 3rd time he did that) then came back later and started posting some crazy stuff, like the naked guy hanged upside down with a knife in him (or something similar) for which the Staff banned him.

(Maybe some people remember this more correctly, I'm don't know the small details)
Many people started to rebel and started to spam around in protest and as usual, various conspiracy theories started to rise around the remaining staff members.
This was the time when the 'ana' was established by Boris as one of the main creator , together with some other 'ex' TWC members.
I tell you the truth, I have visited the place like 3 times ever since, I just wasn't interested.

It was within a month (or 2), that Spartan signaled, that he was sick and he made the decision to step down as the sole-admin of TWC and handed his power over to Sulla.

Not long after, Sulla begun to rebuild the forum, which had a few breaks and I remember days, when we only had 10 or 20 people online, half of them only guests.
Mithras and the other guy (forgot his name) were checking on the place time to time and as far as I know, Sulla had to follow some strict lines of what was allowed and what not.
For example the "Curia" remained a hot topic and the Network Admins were highly opposing its re-opening and it took a while until it was activated again.
I remember, I wrote an email to either Ogre or Mithras, that it's crucial to open the Curia and it should be no problem if the moderators and the Staff keep a close eye on it.

I got to know some of the Staff members at the time, Simetrical (although I remember a conflict between Sim and Mithras) , and some others I can't remember their names right now, but many old-timers here probably remember the Sulla-Crew.

Sulla was very popular in the Curia, but soon after he declared himself the Emperor of TWC, there were some backfire from different directions, especially from the Black Prince , who had some conflicts with Belisarius at the time and although they both enjoyed being Staff for a shortwhile, their continuous fight within the staff (tBP Posting Belisarius' picture on Gay-dar) have gotten them dismissed from staff.

Me, on the other hand, I stayed away from politics mostly , I was focusing on moderating and modding around in the TWC modding forums and thinking up various ways to make TWC better (sub forum here and there).

Later on, (within a few months) Sulla begun to disappear for longer and longer periods of time. First, it started out as not being around for a week, then it went to weeks , then months.

Meanwhile, we had various discussions going on in the staff forum and they were halted in half due to Sulla's absence, we had no idea what to do.
Mithras showed up a couple of times but mostly did nothing but checked around on the forums, left a few words here and there, then left for months.

Then, we had a few staff members quitting and at the same time as the "Barbarian Invasion" expansion was closing in, we had an influx of new members signing up to TWC.

We started questioning what direction we should take, and as I was the most senior member of the staff at the time, I wrote a few emails to both Sulla and the Network Admins to respond.
One day, Sulla showed up and handed me the admin powers and declared me the new "emperor" of TWC , and this really took a while, not to mention they have never gave me any root-access to the site, beside the badge and 'almost' the same admin powers I already had.

Ok, next part, I'll be writing about the absence of the ON and how they came back and informed me on the chat, that they were about to delete TWC and disolve the entire OgresNet by the end of March, 2006

[Simetrical]

I won't go into details the deal with Boris, but what I know, he got into a fight with Crandar, who was advocating to make Boris step down or have the Staff demote him, due to his inactivity.
For this, Boris went a little crazy and he banned himself and deleted his account (I think that was his 2nd or 3rd time he did that) then came back later and started posting some crazy stuff, like the naked guy hanged upside down with a knife in him (or something similar) for which the Staff banned him.

(Maybe some people remember this more correctly, I'm don't know the small details)

Boris had deleted his account at least once, I'm pretty sure (you can see the old posts in some places, with the username showing up deleted). What happened in this instance was all of Hex more or less wanted Crandar gone, but Siblesz threatened to resign if he were removed. Finally, Siblesz agreed to remove Crandar if Boris resigned as admin, since he (Boris) had become very inactive but was clinging on to his badge regardless. Siblesz always felt that Crandar was necessary to bring in to cut down on spam and he did the right thing by keeping him, AFAIK.

Boris had made no secret that he wanted Crandar gone, and when Crandar got admin rights he messed with Boris' account. First of all, he deleted his signature and avatar, which were both animated images much bigger than the limits. Crandar had been instrumental in getting the sig limits enforced (he wrote a script to check every post and automatically trim them*― I like my solution better, which I stole from the Guild, although it doesn't check byte size like his did). Boris simply ignored the sig/avatar rules while he was admin, and once he resigned everyone was too respectful to remove them, until Crandar. Second of all, Boris' old username had been borispavlovgrozny, and after resigning he had it changed to Kazak borispavlovgrozny. Crandar changed it back on the basis that it was obnoxiously long.

So Boris got really angry and posted a rant in the Symposium, which included (for dramatic effect, I guess, I don't know if he set out to break the rules) some painting of a naked guy nailed upside-down to a tree. Someone, maybe Crandar, I don't remember, deleted it, and then he reposted it, it was redeleted and he was banned.

When Sulla came in and took over, he unbanned Boris and some others who had been banned, but left some rank removals in place temporarily for "****-stirring at the worst possible time".

This was the time when the 'ana' was established by Boris as one of the main creator , together with some other 'ex' TWC members.
I tell you the truth, I have visited the place like 3 times ever since, I just wasn't interested.

I used to visit the TWC thread, which was mostly friendly spam. I think I stopped when they locked it or something, when some of them felt the site was too TWC-oriented or something. I can't remember, it was like a year and a half ago or something.

Mithras and the other guy (forgot his name)

How could you forget Besim?

I got to know some of the Staff members at the time, Simetrical (although I remember a conflict between Sim and Mithras) , and some others I can't remember their names right now, but many old-timers here probably remember the Sulla-Crew.

I got into conflict with Mithras and also somewhat Sulla for being too power-hungry, as I recall. I repeatedly criticized Sulla for being too inactive and suggested more people be given administrative access, possibly limited administrative access, because during this time nothing bloody well got done in any reasonable timeframe if you had to wait on Sulla to do it. The implication that I would be suitable for such access was not necessarily absent from these suggestions. When I became a global mod later, I flat-out asked to be made admin, and in the admin elections (Beli vs. Justinian vs. me) I even asked Justinian to resign and ask that his votes be given to me.

All of this was, of course, because I perceived I would be able to actually run the damn site properly in terms of managing things technically, such as editing templates and writing plugins, and in this I think I was quite correct. In fact I think it was pretty soon after I became an admin that I got the appropriate permissions to upgrade the site, which I did, porting over Besim's old Rome skin. Which I could have done a year or more before, if I had been given the rights. In, I think, late 2006, you (Archer) told me the cPanel password, and eventually Ogre (or Besim?) gave me the root WHM password. I finally got root command-line access when Ian bought the site.

But enough of that, this is your history thread!

Sulla was very popular in the Curia, but soon after he declared himself the Emperor of TWC

He didn't really. He instituted a Consulship, which was what had been in place before him, basically, since the Triumvirate had been reduced to two when Boris left, with four Praetors (super mods). He was the one who first introduced the accursed idea of admin elections, with the Republican and Imperial Consul. So he and Spartan were the Consuls for a while, but Spartan was absent for ages. When Spartan was finally removed, Sulla promoted smack as Republican Consul, with a sham election (nominations open for a few hours, won by default with no one else nominated).

I think it was in this period (smack also became inactive fairly quickly, IIRC) that Sulla proposed a bill in the Curia to make himself Imperator, which the Curia passed. As far as I know this was all above-board, the Curia okayed it.

there were some backfire from different directions, especially from the Black Prince , who had some conflicts with Belisarius at the time and although they both enjoyed being Staff for a shortwhile, their continuous fight within the staff (tBP Posting Belisarius' picture on Gay-dar) have gotten them dismissed from staff.

Actually, tBP presented fairly convincing evidence that he didn't post the entry in question, or at least not as Beli presented it. Of course, Beli later admitted that he provoked tBP into posting it. I thought Beli resigned, and wasn't dismissed? I should look it up. It would be easier if you hadn't compulsively mixed all the threads from staff forums into Hex at some point*.*.*.

One day, Sulla showed up and handed me the admin powers and declared me the new "emperor" of TWC , and this really took a while, not to mention they have never gave me any root-access to the site, beside the badge and 'almost' the same admin powers I already had.

You got the cPanel password, which is as much as was reasonable with their shared-hosting setup. Any further access allowed control over the other sites on the network too (which they did end up giving me eventually).

[HorseArcher]

....so Anyway...



Ok, next part, I'll be writing about the absence of the ON and how they came back and informed me on the chat, that they were about to delete TWC and disolve the entire OgresNet by the end of March, 2006

Alright...I got some time, but no more than a few minutes, so bear with me..let me remember.

This is in a nutshell though...my memory is fading, time is flying..

So anyway Mithras came back and I asked him what's his plans from now on, are there any updates to come or re-design etc.., but instead he says, that the site will be wiped away, since ON has no more interest to maintain the place (or the server space) so I can have the site transfered to wherever I want to....if I wanted it.

So ..all about this, it was only me who knew on the entire site for about 2 months..I told nobody else, that this place is going bye-bye..but at the same time I tried to come up with a plan to save it.
So I went to godaddy.com and I registered a space on the server, costed me $47 from my pocket and I sent an email to Mithras, that whenever he is ready, the space is now available and instead of deleting the site, just transfer it over to my account and then I'll figure out what's next. I had the root password already and I had access to every single thing from ON so I was just waiting for a reply.

Instead of that..one day Mithras comes back and tells me they have change of plans and they are going to keep TWCenter, which was sort of shocking a bit and I felt like "where is my 47 dollars, I want it back"..but instead of asking it back, I had an entirely different idea.

I decided, I just can't rely on them anymore. So I figured that I'm just gonna hijack the place, if they switch between life-or death so easily, I figured, they wouldn't even inform anyone if the site would really get deleted, so I had the plan to keep the space available and if there is a good indication, that they won't keep this place anymore, I will transfer the files myself or ask someone to help me out. I think I did talk to either Symmetrical about this or someone else, I can't remember, if they have the experience dealing with this sort of stuff, since I was still a noob about file transferring on a server, let alone attempting a "hijack" at a particular time.

Anyway..nothing happened, but I was kinda dissatisfied with this whole thing and I just had the thought that this place will never go anywhere, if the ON just jumps in and out with 3-4 months of not showing up at all and tries to tell everyone what is up and how things should be.

I sort of lost all motivation to continue on and I was very frustrated at the same time and I tried to come up with something..what can be done. I have read into some other forums...which were once under Ogresnet (I think it was a very popular Half-Life forum) and I have read through what they gone through in order to "liberate" the forum from ON and what the webmaster had to go through along with denying acces to the ON network-admins, once they detached the forum from their grip. (Hey, no Offense to ON..if they are still around, I'm just saying how things are)
I think, it's fair to say, that most senior members were never really on a friendly terms with ON, especially after Siblesz era, and how things were changed during the "exodus" of the seniors, all with Boris and Belisarius and the Black Prince and some others, who have returned at a later point, but were never as loyal anymore, and of course, they didn't trust me either, which is fine... (lol!) .

Ok, so basically nothing changed..but I got a few kicks around from the network admins.....especially after noticing how the Curia was still running things and was a significant thing related to moderators and policy making etc...so I was basically told that "You are the webmaster, do something".
So what I did at another later point was, that I made the Curia invisible through the admin screen, which of course immediately caused outcries and picketing, but I knew that would happen, tried to just go along with , since I was frustrated myself. I kinda suspected, that real owner (Ogre) didn't really know what was going on on the site, not much he cared, so the real controllers were always Mithras and the other guy, and they did things on their own behalf , they were in real control, Ogre was just somebody who wouldn't really show up much anyway.
Back then, I was enjoying full power as the webmaster "Basilicus" or whatever it's called , basically there was no sharing of all my powers to anyone and I was instructed to do so, it has little to do with me (or what I wanted).
Anyway, so I knew my mods and half-admins weren't really satisfied with many things..not that I could help them anyway. If I step down, someone else gets the title of a full webmaster and nothing is really changed really , since he or she would just become a tool , a "yes sir" for the network admins, who don't even show up for 4 months and yet you gotta run this bloody place with all the requests and whatnot, while keeping in mind, that you aren't really in control, but a servant of higher powers.

So through the following months, I wasn't really the same anymore, although i made some controversial friends...such as Honor&Glory, who was kicked around quite frequently on various forum sections for saying whatever the hell he was saying, and I'm just such a person that I don't like people put out as a target practice, regardless of what they say or do. Of course HG felt that he found a good ally, and that ally was actually the webmaster TWC and we started chatting on MSN about all sorts of things etc. Belisarius long friend of mine was also present, but I don't remember him ever chatting with HG, he was more of just a friend, telling me about the Maltese experience of chasing Russian tourist girls and whatnot, while I was telling him about the Hungarian experience regarding girls and exes. With HG though..I talked about the forums and members and how things were going on TWC and how the politics and the Curia effects everything, even down to individual levels as a member TWC and what that means etc etc..

alright....to be continued at a later time...don't know when.. , when HG befriends the Ogre and ON hires another guy (can't remember his name) to be made a new network admin, and at a certain point I will get advised, that the Staff will be removed at once and I asked to return, after my own demotion from the staff to a basic member, which happened not much after the first revolt on TWC.

[Justinian]

Back then, I was enjoying full power as the webmaster "Basilicus" or whatever it's called , basically there was no sharing of all my powers to anyone and I was instructed to do so, it has little to do with me (or what I wanted).

Oh I remember, it was "Basileus"

[Nole4694]

Wonderful read dude, some of it is confusing because you don't go into too much detail but still... great stuff.

I love history, and its cool to learn about all this. I really hope you finish.

(btw about the last chapter, didn't you already talk about that? a couple chapters ago? See now I'm really lost lol)

[Belisarius]

Actually, tBP presented fairly convincing evidence that he didn't post the entry in question, or at least not as Beli presented it. Of course, Beli later admitted that he provoked tBP into posting it. I thought Beli resigned, and wasn't dismissed? I should look it up. It would be easier if you hadn't compulsively mixed all the threads from staff forums into Hex at some point . . .

The story hasn't yet been told in full but aden and I had a conversation about it later. There was always alot more going on then meets the eye. But- I didnt get fired, I was given a choice and i opted for resignation over castration.

[Simetrical]

Being asked for resignation is the same as being fired, you just don't get severance benefits.

[Belisarius]

Being asked for resignation is the same as being fired, you just don't get severance benefits.

I wasnt asked, I was told I would be asked unless I did something I didn't want to. He wouldn't fire me, I was too popular at the time.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Sim... I wonder if it would be possible to "declassify" some of the relevant archived posts in staff?