October 4th, 2009
8:29PM Pacific Standard Time

A great many events have happened since the year or so I joined MechScape World and became an admin. Those events have come and gone, and assuredly, many more are yet to come. The purpose of this report is to give a brief history and summary of the past year gone by in official terms and to offer you my hopes and goals for the future of this website.

October 2008, The Acquisition
I acquired the website from it's former owner, Josh/Redfire, who was a good friend at the time. He acquired it from Daniel. At first, I was extremely hesitant to help Josh with the site. I denied becoming a moderator for at least a week. For me, at the time, my job was more important and I have been involved in many forums and communities before. Trying to establish myself in a community, particularly in a Jagex-related community (I thought I had washed my hands of them when I quit RuneScape in 2007) was not on my list of things I wanted to do. As a favour, I signed up and began helping out. Many people didn't like me or my style of running a forum. I was too liberal, too laid back, I didn't punish people enough, and some said I was downright rude and unprofessional. Well, this passed, as all things do, and I was able to acquire the website officially and focus more time on it. For a good chunk of the fiscal year I would be able to barter my skills to keep the website on a dedicated server at no cost.

October-December 2008, The Art Contest
One thing I brought with me to MechScape World was my annual art contest, complete with prizes. You can see the results here, and if you're a registered member, you can view the entire archive of entries.

Entering 2009
From the beginning of January onward Jagex would decide to open up a little more and communicate with us. Ren was able to get a few calls from the company itself. As a past and current critic of Jagex, this to me was a giant step forward. The former secret society would be more open and vocal about developments. While that didn't fully placate me, I saw it as an improvement in Jagex's overall attitude towards it's fans.

March 2009, Meeting Adam Tuckwell
Inch by inch the opportunities to gather exclusive information was opening. It came as a total shock and surprise that Jagex would actually want to speak with the owner of a fansite! In so many ways, this was immensely ironic. The fact that I for so long hated Jagex for ruining the game I loved would actually give me a chance to meet with them, the irony was filling up my mind. But, I couldn't let my past feelings hold me back from offering MechScape World's members with so much information. So, near the end of March, I went and met Adam. At first I was extremely speculative, wondering if the person I had talked to was even part of Jagex - or some troll trying to pull my leg and make me look like an idiot showing up in a Starbucks. Maybe they had hidden cameras. Whatever it was, I had it going through my head. Nope! It was real, it offered me and the website a good amount of information, a beautiful poster, and made Ren jump up and down enough to hit his head on the moon.

April Fool's Pliigi Invasion
When the staff was discussing what we should do for April Fools, I was already way ahead of them. Small eggs appeared in everyone's signature. As days went by, these eggs evolved into cute bubbly creatures that everyone just had to pet, and then into reptillian monsters that took hold of the staff's very souls. I'm a great fan of doing strange things to my members, so I hope you had fun and I hope we'll never see those gruesome monsters again!

Various Concepts
Throughout the year, Jagex has tried to be as open as strategically possible. We've received several concept designs and even an MP3!



.... That doesn't sum up the brief history of MechScape World, but there's so much more to say! So let's move on.



By now a lot of people are getting disappointed at the recent lack of information. This is where the actual State of the MechScape World speech begins. I'll take you through some of the accomplishments MechScape World has had, goals and future developments that will hopefully keep you here for months and years to come!



Cold. Hard. Fish --- Facts

• From October 1st, 2008 to September 30th, 2009, MechScape World has had 666,032 unique visits, 4,603,393 pageviews, and a total of 591 different people searching for "space pie" to get to our site.
  
  
  
  
• MechScape World has gone from barely 8,200 hits a month to almost 60,000! That's amazing, and a 630% increase!
  
• MechScape World has donated $420 to various charities as of Fiscal Year 2009.
  
• MechScape World is the first MechScape / Stellar Dawn fansite. It was created on October 23rd, 2007 by Ren.
  
• MechScape World was the stated reason that Jagex decided to become open with Fansites.
  
• User Donations totaled $362.37 for FY2009. Paypal fees took away $25.69 of it.

Future Events and Goals

By now you are wondering what I've got in store for your future. Short of everything, here are a few happenings that will be happening soon:

MechScape World's Birthday Party
How do you celebrate the fantastic birth of a phenomenon? By overstating every single glorious event in it's history! The very essence of fansites is the members and the content, and we're going to reward both! Stay tuned for cutting the cake, eating the cake, and putting chickens on heads... October 23rd...

Halloween Party
Some kind of Skype or Stickam costume party on the 30th and 31st. :)

Community Week
Like you, I think it's been a little stuffy in here. Sometime in November we'll organize a Community Week where we'll have theme days, contests, Skype chat sessions, Stickam sessions and an in-game (RuneScape) event. Perhaps, even prizes.

Return of the Community Quilt
You're thinking "what the hell?.. oh that, yeah, what happened to that."
I can tell you. I got busy, things got in the way, and I wasn't able to get it done. Look on the bright side, if you're a new member, you still have time to get a quilt square in! Check here for more information and just send me a simple PM with your square in it. I'll get around to making it someday!

Second Annual Art Contest
-

New Website and Upgrade to IPB 3
Sometime in the coming months, MechScape World will be switching to a new website and a new set of forums. This isn't coming "soon", as there's a lot of work yet to be done, but I hope to finish before 2010.

My ultimate goal for MechScape World is to keep the site as open and informative as possible, to create the best tools/calculators for the game, and to continue the groundbreaking philanthropy and weirdness that's made MechScape World the top MechScape fansite! I'll put aside useless politics and the damaging rivalries in favour of free-moving information. I want to keep MechScape World from becoming bound in it's own rules and guidelines, to create an atmosphere not of fear, but to encourage questions, debates and to even poke fun at the admins from time to time. This community will be 100% open and I hope that once we grow to a large size we are able to retain a great user-to-user relationship.

Reserved for FY2009 Report. Expected by Wednesday.

Pretty cool. I found it funny that we recieve hits from people searching "Space pie" into a search engine :P

Haha, Nice one Poultry
I was waiting for this..
Looking forward to the birthday party and community week!

YAY! skype

How interesting . I was also wondering what happened to the quilt a little, but that can wait.

New website? :p

That's odd, I was actually going to offer to redesign the main site at some point because I thought it was quite... erm... 'old-fashion', I suppose. If you need the assistance of a professional web designer, let me know. :)

Can't wait for the stuff that's coming up! :)

I love MechScape World forums.

When I first registered I honestly didn't intend to be a regular. My main intent was to get a little extra information. I think the biggest reason for this is maturity level of the community. I really hope it will stay this way once the game is actually released.

To be honest, I wasn't actually that interested in MechScape originally. Although, after hearing how much emphasis they're placing on the storyline I've somewhat changed my mind.

I'm looking forward to the birthday party.

How many users do you usually get on Skype? If it isn't that many, making an event purely on Skype may not be the best way to involve the whole community.

I'm still excited though. I should really try to make it to these events considering I've almost finished the Uni year.

That was interesting, and by the looks of it, it isn't even done yet, or maybe my head isn't screwed on right. I'm still wondering if we are going to change our name to Stellardawnworld.com. I know that we own that url, but are we going to officially change everything of ours from MechScape World to StellarDawn World?

I have no easy answer for that. First we must have confirmation that Stellar Dawn is the name of the game, then we need time to choose a suitable replacement. Stellar Dawn World is the obvious choice, but I'm not too happy about using that name. We'll see what happens.

I personally think Stellar World is a good name.
Or, we could keep the same name but make our slogan "the original Stellar Dawn fansite"

I would like to make it official that it was because of PC why I'm still around. <3

@DjIceman, We are one step ahead of you.

StellarDawnUniverse ?

As how jagex said they first started with making the universe then develop the game....

W00T @IPB 3

This was a good read indeed, can't wait for the future

I'd better go buy a headset.

Hmmmm sounds great! Nice work!

haha this is epic.

Later, I'll post some more fun search engine hits we get, since everyone seems to like reading them.


Say it ain't so, bro.

Seems like I'll be missing out

Nice job PC. It was enjoyable, informative, and it makes me wonder what's in store for us in the future.

I love the plans for the future, especially the Halloween and birthday party, as I loved the April Fools event. Nice stuff to look forward to.

Well If you love it so much why aren't you on?
Check here for peoples usernames e.t.c

Anyways, Back on topic. Dj, I belive the new design has been in the works for quite a while.
I remember the old, old site. Well I can't remember what it looked like but it was um, different to the current one!

It was very very dark website. Looked horrible IMO. But now it is all good and I love this new site.

Nice read.

Expect it to continue like that lol.

I have to honestly say I was the exact same way.

Looking forward to the upcoming months with events and the like, and wanting to see some of those laugh-able search terms.

Oh hey, there's a familiar name . I'm happy to hear they think they have a great storyline too, but Jagex thinks everything they do is awesome, so I'm not letting my hopes get up too high. RuneScape has a fantastic backstory, but that's more because of its pacing than its actual content, which isn't terribly original.

Anyway, community stuff sounds like fun. I do hope to participate.

And - space pie???

Putting chickens on heads? I'm in.

Aurga, please don't quote a giant wall of text or pictures next time...





I've been working on something the past week during school, and I think if I ever get a chance to scan and greatly color it, I will use it for this contest.
Just hope the colored version will look better than the penciled version this time around.

- I think I'll consider getting a Skype, with all its events everyone keep typing about.
- I look forward to the Community "Kilt"'s completion.
- And whoa, I didn't know you had just became an Admin when I joined the forums!

Anycase, I look forward to all the things to come.

Oh and uhh... what's the news on that Badge Making thingy?

I've had a great time so far, made a few good friends here. :D

I'll try and be active in some events<3

Great post PC. I loved the information you gave us and the events that are to happen down the road. I'm glad I'm a part of this family and I'm looking forward to contributing as much as I can, in the coming months and even years. Let's all work hard down the road to benefit MSW. :)

Very nice. Interesting to see hits from space pie to...

Moving on, when you upgrade to IPB3 please do not use the default skin. Default skins make the website feel second class, nothing really Unique about it. It also makes you think the owner put little to no effort in it.

If you could make the default skin look like the website that'd be ideal, IMO.

Way ahead of you
http://www.mechscapeworld.com/tediouscoders/layout/starbucks/index.php

I think you summed up what I love about these forums pretty well! Simply put, this is the best online community I've ever been a part of and I hope I can continue to be an active member for years to come.

Long live MSW!!!


Edit:
Oh hey, what a perfect 300th post!

Ah, look forward to seeing it when it's finished.

Yea, same. I try to piss her off as best as I can with my political views.

You can't imagine how many times I wish I could slap people across the internet.

Now, for some more fun search hits!

• This is between October 1st 2008 and Sept 30th 2009
• "Sex" was searched 121 times.
• "Ren off mechscapeworld naked" was searched 168 times. We are currently the #1 source for naked Rens.
• "Max loves mechscape world" was searched 102 times.
• 89 people are currently failing to find Jagex's prostitute related game, "MethScape".
• 72 people want sex with me.
• Lots of people are bored, "MehScape" gained us 423 hits!
• Only second to PoultryChamp, Bluemagic176 is the most-searched member on MechScape World, with a whopping 310 hits!
• Just about everyone wants to know when it's coming!
  

Very interesting.



Wow!





Sounds awesome.



Yay.

I do. What about it?

102 People got to this site by searching that. That means your special, or you've been telling heaps of people that you love Mechscape.

I love MechScape! *rips shirt off and runs around the end of the highway outside my house screaming at the top of the lungs*

Go Pliigi Invasion.

indeed, and what is up with the jagex castle one? i don't think that is even for real.

EDIT: PC: about that skin, if it is the for real skin you may need to change some of the text colors on user pages, the text is red as well as the background. Also, how did you get the whole website into that format? Just copy and paste the whole site into new css?

Laura, once our site sees the activity burst from mechscape's release, what will you do about our blue names?
After a few months, 1,000 posts won't be super rare, and we'll have a sea of blue.

Have you thought about upping the blue name once mechscape is released to 2,000 posts, 3,000?

or maybe closing the gap between the +++ members and ++++ members and adding some more cool colors and stuff.

You'll have far from a sea of blue.

The thing is, you may have 5,000 active people on the site. Of that, maybe 1,000 will register. Maybe 400 will post. Even less will post and post often enough to get 1,000 posts. (Forums are not everyone's cup of tea, most people skip over a forum on a fansite, and even if they are interested in it they are even less interested in the posting and community aspect of it)

I wouldn't worry about it. There will be an increase in activity but the increase will not be permanent.

Anyway, in a sea of gray(new members) there will be a small enough amount of blue.

I've also seen a fansite forum when a game is released. Ranks would be the last thing on my mind when thinking of potential problems.

if we do well we may end up better than say zybez, at zybez people just utilize the tools and maybe glance at the forums. If it seems that there is enough invested in the community then maybe people will come and actually participate instead of just utilize. (Idea: we place all of the tools and calculators inside of the forums instead of in separate non-forum related pages, forcing people to at least look at the forums... but that may be kind of harsh.)

That is harsh.

You should not force someone to do something they would not be interested in. (Especially if you want to retain users, in terms of a website)

That's why I skip over forums that "require guests to register" - I'm not registering to see your forum or use a feature! Same with forums that require an admin to validate your account.

Anyway, if they want to utilize then by all means let them. That's the whole point of having tools in the first place, more so the point on a fansite.

It's not like blue names should be elite or anything... besides, 1k posts is still quite a lot.

Cheers Mechscape World, here's to another good year!

What a great read.
You're a really good writer.

I can't wait to move over to IPB3.

And space pie...hahaha! I can't believe that many people have searched for space pie and found our site. I can't wait to bite my teeth into some tasty pie once Stellar Dawn is released.