'Souls Detailed OOC History

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  1.   1.  Founding (2001)
  2.   2.  Early Years (2002-2003)
  3.   3.  Early Middle Years (2004-2005)
    1.   3.1  2004
    2.   3.2  2005
  4.   4.  Middle Years (2006-2007)
    1.   4.1  2006
    2.   4.2  2007
  5.   5.  Late Years (2008-Present)
    1.   5.1  2008
    2.   5.2  2009
    3.   5.3  2010
    4.   5.4  2011
    5.   5.5  2012

1.  Founding (2001)

Souls was founded on November 18, 2001 by Sie, Natalie, and Jenn. The three of them got together in an AIM chatroom and threw together ideas.

They were inspired both by Sie and Natalie's earlier time together on chatroom wolf roleplaying games, such as Charmander31's Pokemon Chat, where they played in loosely organized wolf packs named simply, such as Storm, Poison, and Fantasy Star, as well as Sie's time spent at the first incarnation of the Wild Wolf Society. Sie basically wanted to start her own game like it was oh-so-popular to do back then, and so she recruited Natalie and Jenn since they were frands, and the three of them got together and made an Ezboard for it and a Geocities website.

The name "Bleeding Souls" was actually inspired by the Staind song Break the Cycle, the relevant lyrics of which are "So now the waves they have subsided/And my soul is bleeding."

The three founding administrators had their three characters and founded three packs--Sie played Stormy Blackwolf and founded Storm, Natalie played FiresideRubyWolf and founded Silent Dawn, and Jenn played Moondust Wolfen and founded Shadowed Stars.

Originally, when 'Souls was founded, it took place approximately fifty years after the demise of the humans and was set in the future, approximately 2050. 'Souls was founded as a werewolf game -- it was never exclusively for normal wolves, although the term "Luperci" wasn't truly introduced until later, and it took a long time for various aspects of the Luperci to come together.

2.  Early Years (2002-2003)

  • Very early on, it was totally against the rules to play more than one character, though that ended rather quickly. Secondary characters were allowed by roughly mid-2002, but prior to the inception of the secondary character clause it was a total bannable offense for people to be caught playing more than one character (even though it never really happened).
  • At several points during our earlier years, we had extremely fanatical Christians fling themselves at our OOC forums and plead for our souls or something. No, seriously. XD It happened at least twice that there is record of, probably more times than that. It was probably the red and black layouts or something.

3.  Early Middle Years (2004-2005)

3.1  2004

  • In March of 2004, 'Souls moved to souls.acetonic.net (defunct) because Sie was finally able to afford her own domain, yay! Perhaps we would have purchased a domain for 'Souls at this point, but Ezboard's Gold Community was extremely expensive, and that was about all we could afford at some points.
  • 2004 brought the advent of the pack icons as well as the wolf and werewolf icons still used in user titles today. Packs made prior to 2004 that were defunct when the icons were begun -- Silent Dawn, Celestial Hollow, and Shadowed Stars -- do not have icons because of this, since there's no point in adding them retroactively. XD Silent Dawn was supposed to have a sun icon, but it was disbanded before that could happen.

3.2  2005

  • Early 2005 was when we started allowing permanent third characters and we slowly expanded those rules over time, but prior to this we had a two-character maximum with a temporary third character clause in case of plots or other things. Character restrictions existed until maybe 2006 or 2007, where it was customary to only play four characters maximum -- eventually someone realized that different people are capable of different activity levels, and people were henceforth told they could play as many characters as they could reasonably handle (with permission).
  • This was also the point at which we decided to more heavily integrate Luperci-type things into the game, and went more in-depth on their appearances and the like. I think we also renamed the werewolf forms from normal, halfling, and shifted to Lupus, Secui, and Optime. :o We may or may not have officially named them Luperci, or that convention could have existed prior to 2005 -- not entirely certain! Of course, 'Souls was always a werewolf game -- it's just as time went on, the species, lore, and so on and so forth surround it was strengthened.
  • Because Syemv showed up on the coast late in the year, we also decided what the rest of the world was like and established the difference between the other continents and Europe and began to expand the scope of the game slightly, taking into account the rest of the wide world and the werewolves originating from those places, as well.
  • 2005 was a good year for contests, containing both Fireside Stories and Poetry Slam contests at different points in the year. There were lots of contests this year, a'yup.

4.  Middle Years (2006-2007)

4.1  2006

  • 2006 and 2007 were dark and stormy years, ooohooohooo. 2006 was stupid and filled with lots of dumb drama because 'Souls was filled with a bunch of whiny emo teenagers. XD The game had several random and loud drama-splosions, none of which deserve to be gravedug -- of course, we should all look back at 2006 as an example, and remind ourselves never to delve into such pettiness and trivial matters again, hear hear.
  • 2006 was also when Sie started having house troubles and couldn't administrate the game as solidly anymore. The rest of the 'Souls Assemblage at the time, as well as the moderation tier, kept the game running as well as they could -- but with an administrator MIA and various problems exploding all over the board, it was a rough time for everyone.
  • In April 2006, the game's basic premise was altered slightly: when the game was founded, it was set in 2050, 50 years after the human's death. However, nobody actually used dates like "2052" or anything and it was generally just played as if it was present-day anyway, so the 'Souls Assemblage voted to change the timeline officially, with humans dying out in 1988 and the game taking place in present day. Hurrah!
  • In May of 2006, website hosting was switched over from Netrillium to 1portfolio.

Ezboard Move

2006 was also the year that 'Souls began to contemplate moving off of Ezboard. Ezboard had announced their change and eventual switch-over to a new "Yuku" system -- naturally, this displeased the vast majority of 'Soulsters, who were already vaguely dissatisfied with the Ezboard system for various reasons. Not only was this ominous switchover lurking, but for many years now, 'Souls members had been chipping together for the Ezboard's "Gold Community," which was a way to keep the board advertisement-free and enable various features (sticky topics, chat feature, HTML enabled, etc). Seriously, we paid $170 for six months of gold in July of 2005. |:

Various users complained that other games had moved to other platforms and remained successful -- examples were the Wild Wolf Society, which had reopened on Invision and was doing rather well for itself. In general, most games around this time had begun to migrate to other hosts, among them phpBB, IPB, InvisionFree, and so on and so forth. Various users pointed out that the features 'Souls was paying out the rear end for were available for free on some of these forum hosts.

After much discussion and debate, it was eventually decided that 'Souls would move to InvisionPowerBoard, and we went and purchased the newest version of it, letting our last Ezboard Gold Community purchase cycle down into meaninglessness.

4.2  2007

  • In March of 2007, 'Souls was moved to InvisionPowerBoard 2.2.2. There were various problems with this board -- in general, it was not as widely disseminated and used as InvisionPowerBoard 1.3.1 Final. Bug fixes, mods, etc were more difficult to find for the newest version and it was needlessly complicated. 2007 is not a very well-remembered year for this reason: IPB 2.2.2 was eaten alive or something. Server problems caused it to go down and it was not able to be resurrected after the switch to IPB 1.3.1.
  • In December of 2007, hosting was switched over to Surpass.
  • 2007 is also where there was one failed plot for the board -- the Gamma7 plot. There were supposed to be humans showing up and doing stuff, but it petered out for various reasons.

5.  Late Years (2008-Present)

5.1  2008

  • Following some unnecessary drama, the 'Souls Assemblage made many quick decisions that eventually led to April Fool's Day 2008, which resulted in many changes on the board, including a new game name, a revamp of how packs were handled to promote a further segregation of IC/OOC affairs and a major territory change. For the most part, members seemed to accept these changes readily and integrated well into the new rules and guidelines.
  • The Roleplay Guide received many updates, including a new layout.
  • In October was a Icon Hunt, which was Halloween themed. The domain name was also officially changed from bleeding-souls.com to soulsrpg.com.
  • December saw another new Yearbook and another round of Secret Santa!

5.2  2009

  • In January, a crazy murder plot was launched. Though it would be several months before its completion, it was deemed to be mostly successful in its unique IC involvement and utilization of the Wiki.
  • April had the Drunken Sailor Contest.
  • In June, a new HTML template was introduced, including a long-requested feature: the automatic hiding of profile elements that are empty.
  • July saw another Christmas in July event! In August, Update Your Profile Day was introduced.
  • A last-minute A HaLOLween Contest was launched with the first-ever tangible prizes to be mailed out to the winners.
  • The Time Warp Contest was launched in November and carried through to December.

5.3  2010

  • 2010 started out with a bang with 'Souls Super Writing Month in January, which had a grand total of 13 winners![1] Wow!
  • In February, we announced some new rule changes after a lot of preparation and discussion. In March, we had a St. Patrick's Day icon hunt and launched a site map with links to absolutely everything on 'Souls. In April, we updated and expanded the map, launched our sixth Create-a-Territory contest and updated the rules, splitting it into two pages.
  • On 14 May 2010, the rules regarding auxiliary characters were changed. For the longest time, players were allowed one character by default on 'Souls -- on this day, the rules were changed to allow two characters by default (after six weeks and forty-five posts with the first character).

5.4  2011

  • 2011 again kicked off with 'Souls Super Writing Month, another success, in January, which had a total of 14 winners[2], hooray!
  • The joining procedures also changed, requiring new members to join as a loner before posting a thread to join a pack! Libri also joined the SA in 2011.
  • Fireside Stories happened again! Wheee!!!
  • 'Souls also turned 10 years old on November 18th, resulting in a new skin, a new wallpaper, a survey, a trivia quiz, an icon hunt, a special new catacombs, new kiritars, and a birthday raffle!

5.5  2012

  • The new year started excellently with 'Souls Super Writing Month in January, with a grand total of 15 winners [3]! Wow! On top of that, there was a fun IC event - the Winter Festival!
  • Mel and Marit also joined the SA in the beginning of 2012, and Sunny was added as a Mod Intern!
  • New NPC procedures were added, including the introduction of the three types of NPCs accepted at souls (active NPCs, canine/companion NPCs, and youth NPCs).
  • Unfortunately, on August 6th of this year, the entire 'Souls board went down and loss 4 days' worth of data from the board, including posts, profile edits, postlog edits, and more.[4]
  • James of the 'Souls Assemblage also stepped down from administrator to moderator at this time,[5] eventually leaving the baord all together. However, soon after, Raze was promoted to a moderator!
  • A superfun Matchmaker Contest went underway on September 7.
  • We changed boards from IPB to phpBB in October of 2012.