Star Wars Epics forums

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Star Wars Epics (also known as Epics) is primarily a play-by-post roleplaying site, with forums dedicated to Star Wars discussion, as well as to media, culture, entertainment, and current events. The site is considered to set the bar as an independently owned and operated, unofficial, not-for-profit, roleplaying-centered Star Wars site, with a blossoming, entirely flame-free fan community. The use of the word Epics is not an attempt to exaggerate the quality of the site; rather, it is an attempt to show an aspect of the site's roleplaying quality that is unique to the genre: each member, from the original founders circa 1999, and everyone that has since joined, can trace their original characters from their first "introductory post" through one continuing massive story, up to today.

The staying power of Epics makes it one of the more-copied Star Wars roleplaying sites, and it has even, on at least a dozen occasions, had its rules and character bios appropriated by others.

The site utilizes the forum software of vBulletin, combined with vbPortal, with a Photo Post image gallery added in early 2006, all seamlessly integrated. As of 2006, the site is free to use, and there are no plans to begin charging users to participate, although nonregistered members may find their viewing privileges limited in nonforum areas.

1 History
2 Epics Culture
- 2.1 Memes
- 2.2 Quizzes
3 External Links

History

TheSciFiVine

Epics was born as "Star Wars Tales" (known at the time as Tales) on a site originally called Scifisites, which shortly thereafter changed its name to TheScifiVine. Scifisites was founded in 1997, and was one of many similar sites with different themes (science fiction, television shows) under one main parent site. Information is spurious regarding the exact date of inception for Tales; a best estimate is given as sometime within the year 1999.

TheScifiVine was a uniquely interactive site experience for its time: users were given a selection of popular science fiction or fantasy names (Solo, Evenstar, and so on), and registered a first name, becoming a part of that House or Family (House of Elf, Skywalker Family, and the like). Users could then participate in "family" discussions in a specific location created for those who shared the same last name, create a personal "home site" within the family, join message boards devoted to discussion of a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy topics as well as real life events, send and receive private messages to other users via pop-up "telegrams" (called "grams" by the members) or public messages via personal mailboxes, and roleplay in the various sub-genre groups (Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Star Trek, as well as cyberpunk, fantasy, or uniquely devised settings in special "admission only" groups). Tales was one such group, part of the Star Wars discussion forums. The two main forums of Star Wars Tales were the roleplaying area and Cloud City Cantina, a more casual area. Both of the original founding members had long since vanished from the site by the time the current staff began appearing.

Although some moderators were installed in place of the departed founders, they were essentially unofficial, due to what was to come next: Cybersites, Inc. came to the conclusion that their programming language of choice was becoming outdated, harder to debug, and generally cumbersome to manage. Rather than support this format any longer, they decided to combine their disparate "Vines" and launch a new site that would bring together all the various genres in one sharper-looking, all-encompassing site.

Their gamble failed miserably. Neither Cybersites nor TheVines exist today in any form except for archived pages. The members, unhappy with the new, improved interface, fled in droves, and when the original Scifivine finally closed (March 30, 2001), redirecting to the new Vines site, many had already set up shop on the then-fledgling ezboard network.

ezboard

Ezboard, unlike the more interactive ScifiVine, was simply a network of message boards, with none of the frills the members had grown accustomed to, yet this is where Tales members tended to congregate even before the ScifiVine's closing—in fact, whenever it went down, which happened quite often toward the end. Star Wars Tales established a forum in a much larger science fiction/fantasy crossover board called Multidimensional Space (known as MDS), run by various other ex–Vine Tales members. Tales stories were kept separate from the rest of the site, not participating in crossovers between genres. This forum proved to the board's most popular one, and around September of 2001, Tales members realized the group had become too large to remain humbly ensconced inside such a small space as one forum on an otherwise low-traffic board. The decision was made to make Star Wars Tales an independent ezboard. Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication, the entire Tales forum was deleted from MDS several months after parting ways.

Star Wars Tales remained on ezboard until May of 2005, growing slowly but steadily throughout the years, improving in form, vision, and function as the admins learned HTML, CSS stylesheets, and ezboard-specific coding, as well as learning what does and does not work on a Star Wars discussion and roleplaying forum in terms of diplomacy and community relations. During this time, the member count soared to over 1,100, an excellent count for any ezboard.

Then came what is known colloquially as "The Great ezboard Disaster of 2005" (details have been removed from ezboard), during which the entire ezboard network was hacked, with many boards losing some or all of their data, never to be retrieved because of the network's negligent backup procedures. Tales was somewhat lucky; only half of the posts disappeared, along with more than half of the member list. However, ezboard's lack of concern for the lost data, and its reluctance to refund its customers' money, soured many customers regarding ezboard's quality of service. This, in addition to the announcement that ezboard, similar to TheScifiVine, had also decided to cease support of its old, buggy, programming language and database system in favor of creating a new, improved network from scratch, was not encouraging to long-time Tales members, who had already watched the exact same venture fail spectacularly once before.

New Home

So, after two months of deliberation, and some calculations to determine whether ezboard had grown too expensive for the services it provided, the staff of Tales began the process of becoming an independent Internet entity. Despite some fears that the site would lose ezboard's precious member base, Tales set off yet again, in August of 2005, to its own domain and website, Star Wars Epics, renaming itself to prevent any legal issues that might arise from the Dark Horse comic of the same name.

As it turned out, there need not have been any worries about ezboard's built-in member base, as Tales, now known as Epics, has continued to grow substantially since leaving ezboard, gaining more members in its first independent eight months than had registered during an entire year of hosting on ezboard (approximately 275 new members per year).

Star Wars Epics is currently preparing to celebrate its first successful year on its own.

Epics Culture

Epics members generally use actors, singers, or anime cells to represent their characters, via their avatars—a visual representation of their original creations. Due to long-term usage of such avatars, and the necessity of using the same character avatars in "out of character" (OOC) postings, the members grow quite attached to their avatars. This tends to blur the line between OOC and "in character" (IC) posting; at times, members would be hard pressed to know with certainty whether a post (in what is technically an OOC forum) is IC or OOC, unless they have spent a little time lurking around. Despite this apparent drawback, the site has a very close-knit member base, and many consider themselves to be as close as siblings due to their meeting and interactions on and off Epics over the years. This is not to say that the site's members are cliquish; on the contrary, new members are welcomed enthusiastically, and are inducted into the site within their very first welcome thread, and treated as regulars that very day.

Memes

During this time, several site-specific memes have been established. A short discussion of these follows.

Complimentary Hot Tub and Gift Basket. This meme appeared out of one member's wish to welcome each new member in a unique way, thus offering the above. Originally an innocent welcome, the Gift Basket has grown to enormous proportions (and become quite noxious) as various somewhat lethal conraptions are added to it. The Hot Tub, in contrast, remains comparatively safe. Newcomers shouldn't worry, however, as all are warned of the potential danger.

Corran's Sofa. This meme is part of Corran's Penthouse (a lesser known meme)—the IC and OOC gathering place of Epics members. The sofa is used for snuggling, watching TV, jumping on, hiding under, or other, more adult purposes. Underneath it lies the hidden Epics Bunker (soon to be its own meme), where members go to hide from impending attacks or flame wars. Such things never actually come to fruition on Epics, but the members still like to be dramatic; thus, the bunker is still utilized, just in case.

Sam's Nail File. This meme was born out of a simple roleplaying post in which the character for which it is named killed her opponent via a nail file through the throat. It was referred to innocently in an out of character thread, at which time the reference began to show up all over the site, and now the very mention of a nail file is feared by all.

Solar Panels. Two members, posting IC in an OOC location, were accused of spending too much time in a supply closet, at which time one of them replied that he was simply checking the solar panels. "Checking the solar panels" has since become a euphemism for "making out" and the "solar panels" themselves usually refer to various body parts.

The Towel. A picture was found of a character wearing only a towel. It was posted in the gallery, and it exploded from there. The member who posted it became the Towel Girl, who now claimed the job of stealing everyone's towels, and members began posting gallery images of their characters either wearing or holding towels.

The Yuri Effect. One of the members (for whom this meme is named) saw fit to "wander in naked" to a newcomer's welcome thread (as per the blurred IC/OOC noted above). No actual nudity was witnessed or implied; it was strictly IC (see above); however, it soon became a habit to welcome all newcomers with a "naked" appearance by this member. Nowadays, the Towel Girl (also above) usually steps in to help the situation, by offering a towel she has stolen.