ORG Network

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The ORG Network is a series of websites established in 1998. All sites part of the ORG network end in .org. It has been suggested that ORG is an acronym for "Online Resource for Gamers". Many interesting things happen throughout the ORG Network. Here's where you can find some info on the various happenings:

  • Members - profiles of the ORG Network's wide variety of people.
    • Staff - the ones who hold the fort.
  • Culture - contains pages about the special life of ORG Network members.
    • Pranks that have been pulled at the ORG Network are in this category.
    • Productions made by the ORG Network and its members can be found here.
    • IRC - the real-time communication medium of the 21st century.
  • Sites - explore the sites that make up the ORG Network.


Contents

[edit] Sites Part of the ORG Network

The current list of web sites includes:

In the past, the ORG Network has also included these sites:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL ARTICLE

[edit] History

The long and mildly twisted history of the ORG Network is a tale which has involved thousands of people around the globe over the course of seven years, captivating some into a long cycle of returning visits, while only touching others with a quick, momentary glance. It begins with the initial creation of one of the most influential Starcraft websites of all time. Starcraft.org was originally created in 1998 from the merge of four websites. Combining the content and staff of four websites, Starcraft.org became known as the largest single StarCraft resource on the internet. (The Starcraft.org page has more information on the history of Starcraft.org.)

[edit] In the beginning...

The original ORG Network image.
The original ORG Network image.

The original owner of Starcraft.org was Mutant, and so it was him who first lead to the creation of the ORG Network. Officially, the ORG Network was created when Warcraft.org came into being at the end of 1999. Initially, Warcraft.org shared a lot of resources with Starcraft.org - they were run off the same host and same database, and Warcraft.org shared the Starcraft.org forums. As the months went by however, Warcraft.org became a site in its own right and was developed separately from Starcraft.org. It was at this point that the staff of Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org began to brand the sites as the ORG Network. Both sites had prominent links to each other made up of icons that represented the sites. An ORG Network image was also displayed next to the ads which appeared on Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org (displayed on the right). At Starcraft.org, there was a top frame that linked to other sites in the ORG Network, and also the programmers began to rename the scripts so they had the extension .orgnet - so for example, the news page would be found at http://www.starcraft.org/news.orgnet. Also, there was a consistent branding in the slogans of the two ORG Network sites - both sites used a tagline that sounded like "the number one source for all things ...".

[edit] Camelot joins the crusade

At the start of the year 2000, Camelot Systems, the world leader in StarCraft modding, joined the ORG Network. Camelot Systems remained very much autonomous however, and the relationship Camelot Systems had with the ORG Network was more of an affiliation. The forums for Camelot Systems remained entirely separate, and Camelot Systems did not exhibit the same amount of branding that Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org had to identify them as belonging to the ORG Network.

[edit] The rise and fall of Diablo

Later in the year 2000, the ORG Network expanded by creating its fourth site, Diablo.org. Just like Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org, the slogan for Diablo.org was "the self-proclaimed number one resource for all things Diablo". However, it appeared that Diablo.org quickly ran out of steam. By the end of 2000, Diablo.org had stagnated and after two years of non-updates, the site was taken down in 2002.

[edit] Hail the new king

Later on, Edgewize, a staff member at Warcraft.org, took over the reigns of the ORG Network from Mutant. From the moment he came in, Edgewize had great visions for the network, and that continues on into his reign today. At around this time in the year 2001, the two superpowers in the Starcraft website world, the ORG Network and the Legacy Network, decided to put their differences aside and work together to create a combined forum called BlizzForums.

[edit] Harnessing the vocal power of the Blizzard community

The combined investment of the ORG Network and the Legacy Network in BlizzForums lasted three years until about February 2004. After a struggle to maintain balance between the two networks occured, the ORG Network took away its share in BlizzForums and formed WarBoards.org - an independent forum for the sites of the ORG Network. See the WarBoards.org article for more information on how this happened.

[edit] Trouble in paradise

The year 2001 was the ORG Network's popularity peak - Starcraft.org was receiving 800,000 hits per month, which is approximately six times more than it receives per month as of 2006. However, this was when all of the ORG Network's original sites began to go downhill, and sometimes it is seen that the decision to create BlizzForums was part of the reason for the decay of the original sites.

When BlizzForums had been originally created, it was hosted by Starcraft.org. The forum software was coded mainly by Mystikal with some help from AJ. This was AJ's first appearance to the ORG Network, AJ had just been discovered by Mystikal. Very soon after this, a decision was made to switch to the vBulletin software for the forum and to move the forum offsite to www.blizzforums.com. This decision had much greater consequences than the staff had anticipated. Due to this decision, BlizzForums became a site in its own right and so it built its own visitor base, separate from Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org. As BlizzForums built an increasingly larger fanbase, people began to lose focus of the original ORG Network sites, Starcraft.org and Warcraft.org. Slowly, those original sites began to deteriorate and it seemed that very soon, the sites would be dead.

Starcraft.org was saved by an amazing coincidence. In November 2003, just over a year before Starcraft.org would be hit by a malicious worm attack which would destroy the site, BSTRhino came onto the staff of Starcraft.org and brought it back to life. This inspired the existing staff members Gibb and Mystikal to commit to creating the next generation of Starcraft.org, which would unknowingly save the site from certain destruction after the attack over Christmas 2004.

After WarBoards.org had been created, Edgewize planned to perform a giant revamp of Warcraft.org to meet with the release of World of WarCraft. However, due to immovable time and other constraints, this revamp has never seen the light of day, and it is not expected to occur anytime soon. As of April 2006, Warcraft.org has got a little bit of activity occuring on its front page thanks to the staff member Mr.Plow, and its map database is still being used daily. However, at present Warcraft.org is more of an archive than anything else.

[edit] And from the ashes

When WarBoards.org was created, it signified a new beginning for the ORG Network. Now that the ORG Network had its own freedom and community identity, the leaders of the ORG Network, AJ and Edgewize, were inspired to plan for future expansion. First, to create a brand that resonates as a real organisation, ORG was made to stand for "online resources for gamers".

Plans came into fruition in 2005 when the ORG Network expanded with two more sites. D2players.org was officially opened, headed up by Neo. Also, an existing site, FlagshipStudios.org run by Jeff, was integrated into the network. This shows that the ORG Network is expanding and moving forward, making the most of its new beginning.

[edit] To our destiny we sail

Now, four years after the creation of WarBoards.org, the forums are slowly beginning to reintegrate with the front-end sites that had been the center of attention until BlizzForums was created. In January 2006, the ORG Network toolbar was first introduced. Similar to the frame which appeared at the top of Starcraft.org's 2000-2004 layout, the toolbar makes it clear to everyone that there are five facets to the ORG Network, and provides a consistent way of navigating between the various sites. There are also talks about possible future site expansions. Finally, the Starcraft.org revamp is set to create the most powerful content management system ever used by Starcraft.org.

Nobody knows what the destiny of the ORG Network will be. We can only hope that the ORG Network will be around to captivate audiences and touch peoples lives in their passing glances for many years to come.

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