History of Total War Center

- parent article: The Total War Center

Overview

The Total War Center forums have a long and rich history, much of which can be traced back within the threads of the Curia. What follows is a summary of the major events in the site and forums history.

Note:

Some of the former Administrators or Staff members of TWC have created accounts of their times at the site:

• Mi Lucha by Siblesz
• The Chronicles of the Prince by the Black Prince
• The History of a Society by Belisarius.

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Origins

TWC was originally created by Emperor Paul Dacoste and co-founded by The Knight2100, under the name mtw.gamercastle.com, as part of the gamercastle network, that no longer exists. When GC closed down in 2003 it became the Total War Centre (note english spelling of name!) when it moved to an independent server, www.legiontotalwar.com in April 2003.

Early Days

The first year of independent existence was a quiet time for the site. It remained a small cozy and largely unnoticed community. It was known for being a haven of intellectual debate, and liberal moderation, at a time when larger fansites, notably the official boards and The Org were employing increasingly harsh policies. The intellectualism of the site attracted members away from larger boards where deep and informed debates were often interrupted or hijacked by what is referred to as n00bish posting. TWC's growth was slow during this time, but saw rapid rise as new administrative staff were brought in.

The First and Second Triumvirate

As real life issues increasingly detracted from the time Paul Dacoste was able to devote to running the site, its two moderators, Juan Siblesz (aka Siblesz) and Aden Lucas (aka the Black Prince) were given admin status and tasked with reforming and rejuvenating the site. Together with Paul, they formed an administrative Triumvirate. The biggest success of their leadership was the illegal hosting of video recordings of the BBC2 and Lion TV Production "Time Commanders". This show used the engine for Rome Total War, which was unreleased at the time, to recreate historical battles that teams of ordinary people could fight in in a Total War Style. As the show was unavailable in the US, there was great demand for images and recordings of it. Several British members of TWC made these available to the admin staff, which hosted them on TWC's server, and advertised this fact around the wider community. By the end of the first season of Time Commanders, TWC was one of only 2 websites providing the content, and greatly increased its membership because of this. It brought the website to the forefront of the community, though this also resulted it attracting the wrath of Creative Assembly and threats of legal action over copyright issues.

Due to increasing conflicts in administrative style between Juan and Aden, and continuing prolonged absence of Paul, a third member was brought on board to assist in the running of the site. Leonardo Esperon (aka Boris Pavlov Grozny) was another long standing member of the community and invited to take the job as the third member of the Triumvirate. This Second Trium represents the start of a golden age at TWC where the perfect balance between community size, popularity content and moderation was established. The Three admins divided the duties of running the site between them, with Juan dealing with website and technical issues, Aden running the forum itself, and having overall charge of moderation, and Leo arbitrating any issues between them, as well as overseeing a new concept on the site - The Curia (see elsewhere)

To summarise briefly, Leo wrote an created a Constitution for the site, known as the Syntagma, and a place called the Curia, which was to be the home of all Syntagma related issues. They also created an additional class of members known as Civitates who represented the most respected members of the site. The key idea behind the concept was that all members would be bound by the Syntagma, including the staff, and that the Civitates, through a form of democracy within the Curia, would have say over how the site was run. The first example of such input was the creation of a Signature and Avatar Policy by the Curia. Increasing conflict arose between Leo and Aden over the exact nature and implementation of the Syntagma, with Leo eventually resigning his post citing administrative conflicts with the "bureaucratic nature" of Aden. This proved to be the first step toward the forum Civil War.

Civil War

February 2004.

The First Civil War is probably the biggest misunderstanding in the forums history. The entire event occurred because a server maintenance email was sent to Paul not to Juan, and therefore no one who was active realised the server would be temporarily down for 3 days. When Siblesz and tBP realised the server had gone down, they thought it was the end of the world. That was mistake no. 1.

Each adopted different strategies for dealing with it. Siblesz attempted to get in contact with the hosts to find out what had happened, tBP and Trobalov, with help from Siblesz speeded up negotiations with Nox. We all knew the server rent would end in April, and we didn't have the funds to renew, so we'd all been in talks with RevolutionGaming headed by Nox to provide us hosting for the Forum. While Siblesz was attempting to get in touch with the current hosts, with a mind towards at least recovering the database, tBP and Trobalov were working on the basis that the Forum could not be restored and that they would have to start from scratch. Nox set them up with a server, uploaded invision on to it, and tBP set about re-creating the forum structure.

- - Incomplete Article - -

2006 - The year of the Crisis

Grimsta's Article

GrimSta's Polticial Helios edition happened back in January 06. It was an article featuring an interview with Belisarius which included a large attack on Simterical. Simterical Posted a reply, but things soon got escalated as a group of members led by Belisarius pushed for Sim's resignation from staff and as Pro-Curator. This failed as most civs voted in support of Sim. some now believe the whole incident was started by Bel for his own ends.

Not long after this, GrimSta and Lusted posted the Silly Party thread to lighten the mood. In keeping with its title, it was a very silly thread, including the Brussel sprout assassination squad.

April Fools

For April Fools in 2006 the staff decided to play a joke. The idea was to pretend a hated ex-moderator Crandar had returned and was returning to staff to deal with excessive trolling and rule breaking.

Every member of staff had a role in the joke. Several days before April Fools some cryptic messages were posted in the Curia. Then Crandar, his account being used by Asterix in a masterly impersonation, reapparead as a Quaestor. This was followed by some staff "fighting" that was staged for the Curia, and the "resignation" of several staff members including Tacticalwithdrawal, Seleukos(?) and Lusted. They were simply put in a new usergroup with the Senatorii badge but with all their staff powers. The Curia proceeded to go ballistic, and suppport began to rally against Crandar. A large list of people were put up for Ostrakon by Crandar, and staff, working together round the clock, pushed the joke further as several Curia members such as Belisarius got involved after working out it was a joke.

Finally, as things began to get out of control, and the joke began to spread to other parts of the site despite damage control done be members of staff such as Lusted, Justinian posted a thread revealing the joke.

Whilst most took the joke well, and the joke showed how united staff were in order to co-ordinate something like that, some did not like the joke and thought it showed Staff meddling with the Curia.

Passport Incident

Archer gave Ferrets54 a passport to the Curia without asking the Curia. This was so Ferrets could argue his case with the Curia. The passport was a new invention and Archer argued that it was within his power to hand it out to special cases for a short period of time.

Later on Archer approached Ferrets54 on msn, and suggested that he should make Ferrets a civitate under the provision that he would cause a shock in the Curia. Ferrets played along, and Archer then promoted Ferrets54 to what appeared to be a moderating rank. However, in reality Archer had simply invented a new rank with the badge and coloured name of a moderator that had no actual powers. Regardless, this joke was taken very seriously by some members of the Curia.

The Reforms

Mithras threatens to take away staff elections, Rule number one for the Curia created: When in doubt create a New Syntagma. Civitates booted from the Curia and replaced with an uber patrician class.

Staff Rebellion

-see main article: Staff Rebellion

The so called "Staff Rebellion" (or October plot) was an unsuccessful request by the Staff to try and make HorseArcher resign him form is position as Site Admin. This event took place from October 12 to October 14.

Besim Unleashed

Besim descended onto TWC and did many unpopular, unilateral changes. He deleted the Curia from general view and only after talking with many of the staff did he reinstate it. Unfairly banned and threatened to ban a number of users, including Professor420, who used the Wiki to get his message out (see article Of the Exile ), with the aid of members such as JP to help spread it. Besim eventually retreats at the urging of Archer, but his changes remain intact.

Triumph

Tuesday 16/1/07

• Staff removed by Ogre and HG made Admin
• Number of members banned a few hours later

Wednesday 17/1/07

• Former Staff decide to make own site, Lusted, Simetrical and Mimirswell head up this whilst imb39 pursues the sale of TWC
• The banning of members continues
• Justinian's Message was created by Justinian on the front page of this wiki

Thursday 18/1/07

• Members are unbanned but treated badly by administration

Friday 19/1/07

• HG removed and Horsearcher made admin, much like predicted by imb39
• Archer's Plot started by jp26991

Saturday 20/1/07

• After discovering their accounts were in Coventry Ozymandias and jp26991 begin to spam the forum with links to Archer's Plot using duplicate accounts and encourage others to do so. These members are also placed in Coventry and some members are IP banned.
• Using a duplicate account the spamming of the link to the new forum is started by jp26991 and a full scale spamming riot begins at TWC.
• imb39 buys the site late into the night and along with Simetrical orders a stop to the spamming

See Also

• Mi Lucha
• The Chronicles of the Prince
• The History of a Society
• Of the Exile
• Total War Center
  • The Curia
  • The Syntagma
  • The Ranks of TWC

External Links

• TotalWarCenter.net
• Total War Center Forums