SP Happenings #194 - 10 Years of Sorcerer's Place!

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If there's anything that's bound to make you feel old, it's round anniversaries. How does 10 years sound? Oh, it'll do...

As far as online communities go, we're officially old now, but old in a good sense. Few gaming communities manage to survive for 10 years and actually still show any signs of life and yet we're doing just fine, thank you. There's no denying it, things have slowed down considerably in the last few years, but much to my delight, people are still finding Sorcerer's Place useful, content contributions are still coming in and we're still working on various new projects and additions for the site internally; all in all, the cogs are still turning.

During the ten years of running SP, a great number of things have happened; some of them bad, but mostly good. We've gone through a second "Gold Box" era with the Infinity Engine games, which have provided us with plenty of fond memories to treasure for a lifetime. The current D&D games situation is far from rosy, but I expect a second resurgence cycle will come around eventually - and we'll be there to embrace it with open arms.

But I forget myself - the majority of you reading this probably haven't been around to see the humble beginnings of Sorcerer's Place, so our 10th anniversary is a good occasion for a bit of reminiscing...

In the beginning, Sorcerer's Place was basically my little personal website with a few sections for things I liked, like books and games... and the original Baldur's Gate was the one I happened to enjoy the most at the time. I was also one of the operators in the #baldursgate IRC channel on EFnet at the time. The channel had a large (transitory) population at the time and we tended to answer the same questions over and over again, and point people in ten different directions for all their walkthrough, guide, message board, editor, hack, mod etc. needs.

Obviously, it would have been much more practical if there was a single website we could link to that referenced all of that, right? Well, I thought so too... soon enough, sorcerers.net was born, starting with the coverage of the original Baldur's Gate and adding new AD&D games as they were being released from 1999 onwards. About a year after the site was born, I installed our first message boards software, and the community started to grow and evolve from there. Eventually we started posting news about the games we covered, moved away from EFnet to GameSurge for our IRC needs, went independent (we still are!), began hosting other websites (starting with WeiDU.org)... but obviously it's impossible to even begin to cover everything that's happened around here in 10 years in a single post that wouldn't be a mile long, so check out past site news archives and SP Happenings for more detailed historical accounts.

Many of our staff members have come and gone through the years, but all of them have given a bit of themselves to the improvement of Sorcerer's Place, so I'm thankful for having worked with all of them.

It's at times like these that I'm especially grateful to have a number of people on the SP staff who have been an active part of Sorcerer's Place and Boards o' Magick for years now, as well as happy that quite a few message board members who still post today (even if only occasionally) first registered nearly a decade ago. Online loyalties and interests are probably more fickle than anything else in this world with most people, so I have a great deal of respect for those of you who believe that Sorcerer's Place and Boards o' Magick are worth regular visits for years on end. All of you definitely motivate me to keep on working on SP a great deal, so here's to another 10 good years!

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Of course, no mid-2009 news post would be complete without a dose of lamenting about the financial crisis... truth be told, it's hit us more severely than anything else in the decade of SP's existence. Only about $250 has come in from donations to date this year, which, given the fact that our running expenses for SP and our hosted sites amount to more than that every month, is obviously a big problem. Couple this with the fact that our banner advertising revenue has gone down due to the decline in site traffic as well as the lowering of rates by the advertisers and we're in a right pickle.

This has resulted in my having to strike more advertising compromises lately than I would have liked and I expect I'll have to make many more in the future as well, but I'll do what I have to do to keep us afloat, you can be certain of that.

As a token of my gratitude to the current site supporters (SPS Account Holders) who have helped me keep SP and our small network of hosted sites out of the red so far, I have extended the subscription period on all accounts by 3 months to celebrate SP's tenth anniversary. Christmas comes early this year!

Additionally, anyone signing up for a new SPS Account (or an extension!) via a donation over the next 2 weeks (up to and including the 24th of June) will receive a free 2-month extension added to their account. If you've been waiting for a good time to show your support and appreciation for SP (again), this is your best chance! You can make your donation on this page. Thank you also to those of you supporting SP via other means - every bit of help is treasured.

 

You're welcome!

 

Thanks for the kind words, it's good to see you around again!

 

Thanks for the kudos, I appreciate it!