A couple weeks ago I started a new site - MMORchive - aimed at gathering together historical information on MMOs; mainly text information in the vein of forum posts, IRC chatlogs, and general commentary on the genre by players and developers, but also screenshots of unique events and any other media related to the topic of MMO history. I find these things interesting; others seem to as well. And then there's the whole "If we forget the past we are doomed to repeat it" thing. It's been in "Benefactor Beta" for the past couple of weeks, and now that it has a reasonable amount of content, I'm making it more publicly known.

There's two reasons I'm posting about it here.

First, I thought people around here might find it interesting to read through what I have up there already (a good portion of it thanks to JamesVZ's contribution of links to EQ-related content). Now that I have at least a little content up there, I want more, which leads me to reason number two...

I need more content. There's a link there for submitting new things, and I'd hope that amongst the community here we have quite a few more items that would belong. If the site relies solely on my finding new items, it isn't going to be very interesting; there are too many games I've never played and not enough time on my plate. Contributed content will make or break (hopefully the former) the site. So, find posts, chatlogs, pictures, video (maybe) of interest, of amusement, of historical value, and send me an email.

The site is mmorchive - mmorchive.net - read, enjoy, and share your own bits of history.

I've been thinking for a while that something like this would be a really nice resource. Thanks for the time in putting this together. Best of luck to you.

mmorchive :: Ban Galore

That one should be required reading. The ultimate of knee-jerk reactions that really had the community in shock at the time. Also goes to show you what happens when you let your paying customers basically run free with the game rules and don't do anything about it until it hurts someone's ego. It's basically like Brad said it, any other mob and they would have been given a stern talking to, but the FOURtH WARDER? Instant ban. They didn't even kill it, I think they wiped at something like 30%. And then Blizzard bans them in WoW for somewhat similar reasons...lol. Blizzard, though, at least nipped it in the bud fairly early on and set a fairly clear, hard stance on exploiting mechanics and such.

One set of posts I've been looking for is the flame war between Tweety and Furor back on noows. Holy. Shit. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Lum the Mad kept a record of that one since it kind of made his company look bad. But man that thread had everything, accusations of shilling, rampant paranoia, dirty words, insight into the development of MMOs! Would be a shame to lose that one forever.

Also,

Hay guys.

I really miss LtM and it's community. Was a great site, was sad to see it dissapear.

Great site, keep up the good work

This line is priceless:

The famous ITZsploits

Oh man, lots of errors:

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It's a cool idea, but I think it really needs some more commentary. As someone who never played Everquest, looking through the posts about it often left me wondering what they were referring to.

I think the idea is that the user-generated comments below each post provide some context and discussion. Not sure if that'll happen, though.

As a EQ player (and of course hater), this is a nice blast from the past!

Oh. My. God. What a trip down memory lane. I know reading Tweety and Legacy of Steel's webpage back in the day were probably the most enjoyable things I took away from my EQ experience. Thank you for putting this up!

And this is the post that basically defines how I feel about gaming now. "get off the cross, loser, I need the wood" is one of my signature sayings, and I had completely forgotten where it came from.

Tweety died, but she reincarnated. She currently blogs at [url=http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org]>Eating Bees</url], which Lum hosts for her.

One of the former Lum the Mad writers, Rasputin, runs Online Gamers Wiki, which has a mission similar to mmorchive's. It's mostly an archive of the ideas of Lum the Mad community and its offspring.

It'd be nice. I never played EQ, much less DAOC or UO or some of the less famous MMOs, so providing real context will be difficult for me. If you have context to contribute, feel free to mail me about it and I'll quite possibly add it.

I'd like to see the comments providing context, but not holding out much hope. On the bright side, hosting seems to have settled down!