SW-Fans History

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History

Logo of SW-Fans.Net

SW-Fans.Net (often shortened to SW-Fans, SWF or simply ' Fans) is one of the oldest Star Wars play by post RPG message boards on the Internet. While the website was originally begun as a place for box office discussion relating to the release of Star Wars Episode I, SW-Fans.Net quickly grew to include areas for general Star Wars discussion, as well as turn-based roleplaying.

SW vs. Titanic

In October/November of 1998, the Episode I branch of Countingdown.com went live following the official lineup at Mann's Chinese Theatre in LA, spearheaded by Star Wars fan "Brandon". Countingdown.com had forums for different states and cities for organizing local lineups. Many of these people would eventually find their way to other message boards as the greater Star Wars fan base began to spring up around the Internet.

Originally, the website and forum were named SW vs. Titanic and were hosted by the larger Jawa Fortress website from late 1998 into early 1999. As the name implies, the original website and message board were dedicated towards the tracking of the box office performance of the new Star Wars film, in particular in relation to James Cameron's Titanic, and was founded by a group of friends and Star Wars fans led by "Jason".

Change in Name & Move to ezboard

When Episode I opened on May 19th 1999, board membership swelled. Debate about box office became more intense, and many trolls stirred up trouble. The inability to ban members on the original message board saw the site move to the ezboard forum system at the end of May, where membership continued to grow. Shortly afterward, the original SW vs. Titanic website was retitled as SWFans.Net and became an individual entity separate from the Jawa Fortress website. With the change in name, the website and forum were still dedicated to box office tracking but now also focused on Star Wars news in general.

Beginnings of Roleplaying

In June 1999, the first signs of roleplaying began to appear, prompting the idea for new forums on the message board dedicated to this new development. "Itala Marzullo", self-proclaimed Sith Master, began a thread entitled The Sith Council, in which people officially join the first major roleplay-related group on the board. In response, "sirdizzy" began a thread entitled The Jedi Council, and founded the first Jedi group. In both groups, the initial ranks were determined by knowledge of Star Wars and the number of times having seen the original films. Roleplay became more of an influence on the boards, as a rivalry and recruiting war between the two groups built up.

Formation of CoruscantCity.Net

On July 10th & 11th 1999, 2 appointed moderators, "The Lounge Lizard" and "C0untryB0y", were stripped of their powers by Jason for editing the posts of several board members who had been accused of trolling. A dispute between the administration team and many members of the board arose concerning the demotion, as well as the concern that the website founders were not doing enough to keep troublemakers in check. The dispute was never settled, leading to discussion among several of the more active members about leaving and forming a new message board.

Lead by board moderators "Rmiao" and "Jonathan", approximately 30 of the forum's more well-known members announced on July 12th 1999, that they were leaving in favor of a newly formed message board hosted on ezboard, later to be known as CoruscantCity.Net. The new board functioned in a similar manner as the original SWFans.Net board, hosting areas for box office analysis, general Star Wars discussion as well as roleplaying. Most of the leaders of the Jedi Council and Sith Council were part of the move.

Following the split, some members who remained on the original SWFans.Net board decided to restart the roleplaying amongst themselves. Some, led by member "CMJ", refounded a new Jedi Council, which was later renamed The Jedi Order. Similarly, another Sith group was also established by "Darth Sidious" and "Mara Jade1" titled the Sith Council, later taking the name of The Sith Empire.

CoruscantCity.Net and SWFans.Net continued to function separately into October of 1999. CoruscantCity.Net eventually switched from ezboard to UBB, but both forums swelled in membership as roleplaying began to dominate. People often posted and roleplayed at both boards. As time went on and members of both forums continued to interact with each other, the left-over animosity surrounding the split faded as well.

Reconciliation of the Jedi Groups

Due to constant interaction between the roleplayers of the 2 boards, the leaders of the Jedi groups at CoruscantCity.Net and SWFans.Net collaborated and decided to unite, reconnecting the two boards through roleplay. The Jedi Council of CoruscantCity.Net and the Jedi Order of SWFans.Net become one, founding the Greater Jedi Order (or GJO) in November 1999, which still exists today in an altered form. The group continued to roleplay on both boards, though eventually SWFans.Net would come to be used as the primary board. Roleplaying at CoruscantCity.Net eventually faded away entirely, although an active community still exists at the site.

Message Board Goes Solo

Throughout the remainder of 1999 and through the year 2000, both the website and the message board prospered. By 2001 however, Jason and the other administrators of the SWFans.Net website had grown tired of continuing with the place, and decided to close the website. As there was still an active membership on the SWFans.Net forums, it was decided that ownership of the name and board would be handed over to the board administrators.

From ezboard to vBulletin

SWFans.Net continued to exist in its message board form through 2001. However, by mid-2001 the administration and posters had grown dissatisfied with ezboard, primarily due to the decline in quality of ezboard's free product, the increase in use of pop-up advertisements, and the expensiveness of switching to ezboard's paying product. As a result, plans were made to move the forums from the ezboard network, despite the attempts of the ezboard staff (including ezboard's founder) to try and convince the community not to leave. It was decided that owning a vBulletin message board was ultimately cheaper and a better fit for the forums. After moving from ezboard to vBulletin on September 19th 2001, the forum registered the domain name of SW-Fans.Net (now with a hyphen "-" in the name) and continued to grow as the release of Episode II drew near.

After the move from ezboard, there were still a few issues to be ironed out. Some of the non-roleplaying posters who frequented the replica props forums at SW-Fans.Net decided that they wanted their own message board, and departed on friendly terms. Links were maintained to and from the two boards for about a year, and the Replica Props Forum still exists.

Classic 'Fans

Classic SW-Fans.Net was a place for movie lovers, Star Wars fans, and roleplaying fanatics. The roleplay emerged organically from the players, and the threads were full of fun as well as the occasional prank or two. In addition to the Greater Jedi Order and The Sith Empire, other roleplaying groups soon cropped up, including The Galactic Empire, and the New Republic. In addition, The Sith Council returned to SW-Fans.Net (having previously left with the formation of CoruscantCity.Net), although it would not dominate as the primary Sith group as before. The Gungan Council (founded by "General Ceel" and "Clegg Holdfast") was one of the early roleplaying groups at SW-Fans.Net as well, but due to differences in opinion the board decided to form their own roleplaying universe centered at their own message board. They are still going strong today.

Many of the roleplayers operated personal ezboards for roleplay and out of character (OOC) discussion, in addition to the main SW-Fans.Net board and the group boards.

Rules were created to reign in those that might abuse the free-form play by post style, including god-modding (such as players attempting to destroy planets in a single post). Infiltration between groups quickly became a problem as posters with multiple accounts would use them to gain access to rival groups in order to learn their secrets. Infiltration was soon a bannable offense. Other primary rules included no character killing, assassination, or maiming without prior consent. Non-player characters (NPCs) were fair game when it came to a quick (or messy) death, but characters which were roleplayed through a specific screenname were the product of too many long hours for their creators to bear the thought of anyone killing them off without permission.

Current 'Fans

Screenshot of SW-Fans.Net as of July 2006

Forum Structure

SW-Fans.Net is split into a number of categories, each containing forums dealing with a particular area of discussion, and some even containing sub-forums with further break down discussion areas. Over the years, many forums have been added or removed, depending on the traffic and support particular areas received. The latest major update of the board's structure occurred in January 2006.

'Star Wars' Section

This is the oldest category on SW-Fans.Net, dating back to the original forum that existed on the original SW vs. Titanic website. Initially beginning with the forum dedicated to discussing box office matters, the section quickly expanded into other areas of general Star Wars discussion. As of 2006, the following forums are available:

  • Star Wars Amalgam - for the discussion of anything Star Wars related.
  • Star Wars Box office & Other Media - for the discussion of box office matters as well as general discussion of film, music and the arts.
  • Collecting - for discussing Star Wars collecting, as well as other areas of collecting.

'General' Section

This category is dedicated to general discussion not necessarily related to Star Wars, although it is still welcome. Currently, the forums that exist within this section are:

  • General Discussion - originally the Out Of Character forum for roleplaying, in 2005 this was converted into a general discussion forum unrelated to roleplaying matters.
  • General Gaming - for discussion of Star Wars video gaming, plus video gaming in general.
  • Operations & News - for discussion related specifically to the operations of the SW-Fans.Net site and for news items. It contains 2 main sub-forums:
    • Communications - for the administration to make announcements as well as for fans to make comments, suggestions or report problems with board or account operation.
    • Portal News - for current events relating to the Star Wars Universe and other subjects.

'Creative' Section

This category houses the forums dedicated to roleplaying, which for many years has been the most popular pastime of members of the message board:

  • Starving Artists' Apartment - for artists of all types to come together and share their artwork.
  • Roleplaying - for all roleplaying matters. It consists of 3 main sub-forums:
    • Star Wars Roleplaying - for fans to roleplay within the Star Wars Universe.
    • General Roleplaying - for roleplays not contained in the Star Wars universe.
    • RP Discussion Forum - for roleplayers to meet and discuss roleplaying matters out of character.

'Roleplaying Groups' Section

This category was established in May 2002 after many of the major roleplaying groups moved to SW-Fans.Net from ezboard. Although they occupy space on SW-Fans.Net, each group still has its own independent administration separate from the main SW-Fans.Net administration team. Each group consists of a number of sub-forums related to group discussion, training, roleplaying and general conversation:

  • Cloud City - not a traditional group, but a set of roleplaying forums set in Cloud City, Bespin.
  • The Jedi Enclave - a loose gathering of Jedi from around the galaxy.
  • The Sith Order - the main Sith group.
  • Empire/Rebellion - consists of 2 main sub-forums:
  • Dark Mosaic - contains 2 main sub-forums:
    • Kuklos Ataxia - a secretive group of Dark Siders, based on Onderon.
    • Black Sun - an organized crime syndicate.

Recent Developments

Roleplaying Reset

In May 2005, prior to the release of Episode III, the board membership decided to reset the main roleplaying timeline. Since its inception in 1999, SW-Fans.Net had never had an official timeline set down, allowing players to pick and choose the timeline they wished to roleplay in. Unfortunately, 6 years of roleplaying had led to confusion as to who was roleplaying when, as well as issues concerning the ownership of planets and claims on particular parts of the Star Wars galaxy.

As a result, the reset resulted in a single timeline that all characters and stories would exist within. The timeline was set so as to follow immediately after the Battle of Endor (as seen in Return of the Jedi), however notable differences were set out for the aftermath of the battle:

  • All major characters seen in the Star Wars films were assumed to have died in the battle (to prevent roleplayers claiming film characters).
  • The Death Star II was assumed to have survived (though severely damaged).
  • The Rebels had not been victorious and had been forced to flee from the battle.
  • The Empire had suffered huge losses but still managed to survive (although the Emperor and Darth Vader had both been killed).

The end result was an attempt at balancing the sides in the conflict and paving the way for a new storyline to develop from the end of the films.

The reset also forced some roleplaying groups to alter themselves to fit in with the new timeline, such as the New Republic changing itself into the Rebellion. The most notable alteration was that of the Greater Jedi Order, which could not exist at the time of the films, and so was retitled The Jedi Enclave and was revisioned as a loose gathering of Jedi that had hidden from the Empire.

Addition of General Roleplaying

In addition to the reset, the roleplaying section was expanded in January 2006 to include a general roleplaying area. This section was added to allow roleplayers to roleplay in different scenarios and settings separate from the standard Star Wars setting that had prevailed since 1999. Several different settings were established, the most popular being the World of Darkness roleplaying setting.

External links

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