DesertiaRP Community History

[Col. StaR]

- The History of Desertia RP -

*** Original Des ***
Q1 2007: After some hassles with Medieval RP, Stingwraith told his closest buddies that his next work would be a simple modification of DarkRP to replicate Desertia. Desertia at the time was an idea that Stingwraith had circulating in his head to take place on a desert planet centered around a science-fiction theme. It was a small modification for our small group of close buds, and it was awesome. Using the first LS systems and GMOW, we got Oil Farms running, trading posts erected, and had to be ever watchful for the Thief Lord.

(On one instance, John Winters and Patrik Ayers rode in on a hummer to attack the Thief Lord at his hidden ranch. Good times...)

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*** Early Des ***

2007:
Early testing for a larger Desertia gamemode occurred, stirring up a small but worthy community with it.

Spring 2007: Desertia's Release. Desertia was fully released on a server-wide scale. It was a small but significant first step for the community and gamemode as a whole, even if the maximum number of people on at one time was 6 at best.

July 2007: Desertia more or less goes gold, becoming official with sections on the NoobPhobia clan forums and publicly releasing.
Later on in that year, a leaked version of Tacoscript was released on FacePunch: Stingwraith acquired it and modified it greatly. The gamemode became more invigorating, and ultimately better.

Q4 2007: A Garrysmod patch renders the current version of Tacoscript destroyed without hope of repair. Desertia went into a state of emptiness, as it lacked life to interact with. The community became a ghost town, and only a few die-hard Desertia fans stuck around and crossed their fingers.

Q2 2008: Early Public Betas of Cakescript were released, something that we had wished for for quite some time. Desertia was quickly remade, and life quickly rushed back to the once-dying gamemode. Good times flourished through the server, and the community grew to its highest at this point.

Q3 2008: Another release of Tacoscript further propelled Desertia into popularity, but it ultimately spelled out problems soon to occur.
Tacoscript brought with it several enhancements, among them SQL support and player Stats. The SQL had a tendency to lag and sometimes crash the server, being hosted off of Stingwraith's computer. Stats were a tremendous problem, as supercharacters were becoming more and more abundant without a sign of stopping; soon, the supers had their own superiority of Desertia, and the average joe, the person Desertia was most aimed at, just couldn't keep up.
As supercharacters began to rise in numbers, so did Stingwraith's growing interest in including supernatural based roleplay that was geared primarily towards the supercharacters. The arcs were often unrealistic, overblown, and would shun anyone that wasn't powerful enough to be involved. Stingwraith began looking into developing a second RP community in NoobPhobia alongside Desertia called OldenRP, to be an outlet for said ideas. Despite this, the administration began to split into factions while some supported Stingwraith in the concept of Desertia including supernatural elements while the majority shunned it. In-fighting spread amongst the administration and many began to tear at the others throats.

8/30/2008: With the desire to have a better forum than the previous, the original NoobPhobia forums were left and the official Desertia InvisionPlus forums were created.

9/12/2008: Not within a month of the forum move, Stingwraith leaves the community to the rest of the administration, and bans himself from the forums, after formally announcing his decision to cease his association with Desertia in favor of finalizing OldenRP in a fantasy-setting.
Desertia-Olden Split. The people who practiced and favored the fantasy-oriented RPs left Desertia with Stingwraith to create OldenRP, the sister community of Desertia that stands to this day. Conflict and poor judgment would occasionally occur on both sides for years to come as the communities experienced a time of cold-war as most of Desertia blamed OldenRP for taking the majority of it's population with it. The months to follow were hectic at best. With fewer than 10 people still sticking by Desertia, no server, no gamemode, and interest at an all-time low. Ryaga, who quit NP earlier in 2008 due to the fantasy elements, and the members of RawrRP (Ryaga's personal vision of Desertia.) decided to rejoin and help resurrect Desertia. A server was provided, as well as a gamemode, and a group of players we were glad to have back on-board. The NoobPhobia clan was officially dissolved, and Desertia became known as DRX: The Desertian Redux Community.

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*** Old Des ***

Q4 2008: Ryaga hosts Desertia.
With a large majority of the population still gone into OldenRP, Desertia scraped by with a decent population, but the RP itself was varied at best, often interrupted by bouts of OOC minging. A few members still visited Des, but were often caught up in Private RPs that occurred in secluded areas and refused to let anyone else join, creating a secluded group of powerful supercharacters and side stories. In order to combat this, Ryaga campaigned actively against supercharacters, but eventually he would grow sick of it all when his words went unheard.
The community, for reasons including a lack of consistent RP, administrative apathy, community inactivity, and Olden's allure, begin to become less dedicated, and slowly the overall population begins to decline until the server stays empty.
Ryaga attempts to pass several reforms which would limit characters' skills to prevent too much bad-assery, but they are ineffective.
Eventually the server broke due to Gmod updates, leaving it in a state of use, but terrible disrepair. A few fixes are made.

9/29/2008: Ryaga leaves once again due to personal boredom, leaving Desertia without a host once again.

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*** Intermediate Des ***

Q1 2009: Cuddles, a previous member, comes back and offers to help get Desertia on its feet again with a new server and script.
Des gains a bit of a rebound, having a new server and a fixed script. A few previous members begin to trickle back to Des, and for a while it relives its previous glory. However, the same problems, such as rampant private RP, overpowered characters, and inactive admins cause a gradual decline in community population once more over the year.
A few attempts were thrown around to reinvigorate RP, including ideas of new factions, new settings, and even new story arcs, were tossed around, but never reached full fruition.

Early Q4 2009: Col. StaR became temporarily inactive in Desertia, leaving the already ineffective 'council' government without a leader or any sense of direction. Within a few days of StaR's disappearance, an administrator named Kelland declared himself the ruling administrator of Desertia and began to rampantly promote friends to positions of power without increasing productivity. BladeZero, Cuddles, and DrakoWulf would later work together to get the appeal of the other administrators and remove Kell from the community within only one week of his dictatorship. The administration attempted to reform itself, but the council idea still remained and nothing changed.

Q4 2009: EarthRP, a private RP between BladeZero, Col. StaR, and DrakoWulf begins as activity on the server falls to exactly these three. This extended-universe side story follows an adventure within the DesertiaRP universe, and it would ultimately prove focal in Desertia 2's creation.

12/21/2009: Cuddles leaves due to personal boredom, choosing to move onto, "better things" and taking his server with him.

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*** HGN Des ***
3/9/2010: Persuaded by Afromana, Col. StaR decided to join the HyperGamingNetwork, since they offered a server and a script for free to the grounded community. The HGN administration offered Desertia to maintain it's personal freedom and semi-independence, promising too not become to active in it's affairs.
The initial reception was ecstatic and very well received, but after a string of administrative disagreements , HGN administration intrusion on Desertia's affairs, poorly conducted RP, veteran-vs-new player conflicts, and a mess of confusing mistakes, Desertia was asked to be shut down.

4/23/2010: HGN closed their doors to Desertia RP.

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*** Desertia 2 ***

April 2010: Discussion begins with Blade and Drak over how Desertia SHOULD have been, including in-depth discussions about the universe, the governments, and how normal life would function.
Later on, discussions begin to turn serious, and would plan on remaking the community.

7/6/2010: New Forums created. The previous forum host, InvisionPlus, was plagued by DDoS attacks and severe downtime, which prompted them to put up a trouble-some captcha-screening system in order to view the page. In order to avoid this, and to truly start anew, the decision was made to create new forums, using Forummotion as a host.

12/31/2010: Opposing Forces RP, aka EarthRP, is finally concluded. The RP not only inspired the elevated level of RP that is now mandatory, but also kept the ideas, universe, and RP of Desertia active and vivid. Development for Desertia begins in full swing.

4/29/2011: The first Closed Beta test for Desertia 2 begins, and an invitation is only extended to returning players, members of the Dev team, and special VIPs.

6/11/2011: Desertia Community Restarts