The original concept of MMOTales was simple - blog about your gaming adventures. According to Mr. Basil, it was a place where “gamers could interact with each other”. The site’s main userbase was primarily focused on MapleStory, if not completely. Designed by Mr. Basil using his primary template it went through two phases. One was the antique turquoise look, and the other was a shiny version. If it could be simplified, I would say that it was a collaborative blogging site. I would compare it to digg.com, except for MapleStory blogs.
As time passed, people deviated from the original “gaming” focus, and started writing more general blogs. Fan-Fiction emerged to be a popular choice among readers, and so we had a surge of writers. MMOTales had an active user-base of around 100 members at any time, with an active 50 members who regularly posted.
Of those 100, we had new arrivals per day, and those who left, well, left completely. After Profil3.com came out, supposedly the ‘sister’ site of MMOTales, Mr. Basil decided that Profil3 was better than MMOTales. Profil3 still exists to this day. To be frank, it was essentially a revamped MMOTales with advanced IDs and groups. We were urged to move there by our leader, Mr. Basil. However, the place didn't appeal to the core MMOTalers who have already decided to stick with the old site - the new site being too complicated to navigate through. MMOTales shines in that aspect, because it was simple. Blog. Forum. And that was it.
After a while, when Mr. Basil realized that MMOTales was simply leeching off his ‘limited’ resources, he decided to shut that project down. It was now left for the dogs, and what remained of the community that had established connections managed to link through Live Messenger. A heated conversation followed, and we decided to move to the MMOTMS (MapleStory Private Server) boards for a day, and then to mmotales.proboards.com, created by Tarheel.
The forum board was very lacking however, because it was not MMOTales at all.
A separate project began under two occasions. Damyrc's bare-bones project, coded up from scratch, was a very simple site with a blogging feature that worked. Another one was by Vusys, who was a mysterious person at the time. The previews he put up however were magnificent, and reminded us of the old site - rightly so, since it used the exact layout Mr. Basil had used for mmotales.com. There were two problems with this. First, the design is “stolen” from Mr. Basil, and because he was a control freak, well, we couldn't get anywhere with that. Second, Vusys could legitimately be sued for intellectual copyright, and Mr. Basil has shown his ability to take down what he claimed was his by force. Therefore, once VuTales was under a stable condition, it was only released for the 50 or so members that managed to gather using MSN or Proboards.
At this point, VuTales was only discovered via word of mouth; therefore, the user-base barely grew. We've seen perhaps the entry of a few users, whom never stayed for long. Mr. Basil, after discovery of this site pushed Vusys to take it off public eyes. Seeing this as trouble, Vusys obliged. VuTales V2 went into heavy development, which was to be built from "scratch".
A few months passed.
A few weeks.
A few days.
And on 25/10/09 VuTales.vuii.co.uk was finally reborn into what it is right now.
There are several severe advantages of V2 over V1, and over MMOTales.
The first is multiple browser support.
The old one did not support Internet Explorer, which was a crucial factor in the success of sites due to a majority of the people (unfortunately) still using Internet Explorer. The second is VuTales allows blogging of any content. Although MMOTales had blogs about personal life, it never truly explicitly stated it. By doing so, VuTales expands its potential userbase dramatically.
Finally, the admin of VuTales is not a complete nutjob, which helps. A lot.
However, VuTales V2 suffers from some light performance issues, which some browsers have trouble handling. Also,
areas of the site are slightly cluttered (this issue has been addressed); perhaps a lighter version could [still] be possible in the future?
Technical issues aside, VuTales is a great foundation to something that could turn out to be, in a word, awesome. We should not be afraid of newcomers, because we are a community that's already well established. A few trolls here and there should not be able to tear us apart that easily. VuTales is what MMOTales has evolved into - a better and stronger site. Overall, it is much more chic to look at.
VuTales took the best of both worlds - advanced features such as Fragments, and Friends, from Profil3, as well as the simplicity of MMOTales, and smashed them through a particle accelerator, forming an entirely new entity.
VuTales is neither MMOTales nor Profil3, and so should not be compared to them. It'd be like comparing Apples to Pikachus. And that just doesn't work.
If the so-called “fanciness” of the new site displeases you, well, it's either this, or a DMCA notice. It's time to adapt people, or be left behind. Appreciate what we have here – a new home, built for free.
Good job, Bryan.
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