Community:Realms of Hyrule

Realms of Hyrule, as known as RoH, is a Zelda based play by post forum. Founded in 2003 by Mike "TSA" Damiani, as part of ZHQ2, the site has since grown into it's own website. Currently, RoH is within it's sixth incarnation, referred to as RoH6. The total amount of Role-Playing posts made by RoH's members to date is over 150,000.

History
All names presented are mostly in-game usernames.

Realms of Hyrule I
Realms of Hyrule was initially a joint project on www.zhq2.com by Mike "TSA" Damiani, Kevin "Hermit" Daniels and Melora. This side forum was created in September of 2003, which is when TSA began scouting for moderators, AKA, the Scribe Tryouts. In these tryouts, potential staff that TSA gathered from various places were given scenarios, in which they had to describe how they would act as a moderator. Several Scribes were selected to fill seats on the Council. As per average moderators, Scribes' main purpose was to enforce the rules, but as council members they also played a significant role in adding on to the foundations of RoH. On October 1st, 2003, Realms of Hyrule officially opened to the public. Beginning with IPB 1.2, many things about the forum were non-standard. From the layout, to the unique shop hacks and character sheets, down to the way it was run. As a result of zhq2's main forums already having a significant memberbase, as well as TSA's influence elsewhere, RoH received an immediate jumpstart. Most of its starting members had little if any past RolePlaying experience, but enthusiasm for Zelda ran strong, and the community quickly began to flourish. At this time, TSA was the main director of events, staff, additions, and otherwise. Hermit maintained the critical role of coding, skinning, etc. The Scribes aided in various projects, and kept spam to a minimum.

Late 2004 saw Phydeaux, a relatively new member who quickly earned the rank of scribe, being given Admin status. As Hermit was discontinuing from a heavily active role in technical duties, Phydeaux was chosen to help pick up the slack.

Realms of Hyrule II
At the tail end of 2004, many of the current staff, who had by that time cycled through several new additions, felt that RoH had begun without quite sufficient preparation and planning. They desired a new, fresh start to clear things up. This plan was accepted, and two of the scribes were elected by popular vote in the Council, and two by the general memberbase, to be the Core Four of Realms of Hyrule 2. These consisted of lord-of-shadow (future Webmaster of Zelda Legends), Marik (one of the early Scribes), Ryo (future Administrator), and Kiroku. In January of the following year, the original forums were set to read-only, and a new forum was created. Post counts were reset, and many members chose to create new characters, rather than re-starting old ones. A number of members were disheartened by the reset and left the community soon afterwards. Most members who were active in that time period agree that it was something of a mistake. Never the less, RoH2 was still largely a success in the beginning. More scribes eventually joined the Core Four, and Ryo was made an Administrator to learn under Phydeaux. Things progressed without much significant change until June 8th, 2006. As RoH had been recently hacked, TSA decided to change the forum software to SMF, as it had greater security at the time. However, SMF did not have a suitable shop hack, nor did the character sheets work anymore. This was the first step to RoH's largest and longest fall-out.

On account of TSA and Hermit's decreasing amount of activity over the years, the Council desired to become independant of what had recently become The Hylia (previously zhq2). TSA felt that RoH had grown into something on its own, and paired with the fact that he was heavy at work on The Hylia, he did not begrudge the Council of their desire to separate. In fact, he purchased the domain realmsofhyrule.com for RoH's use in August, and re-routed the old links to it.

While this was seen at the time as a step in the right direction, time would soon reveal that the staff did not have the means or experience to handle RoH on their own. For well over a year after the change to SMF and a new domain, RoH's memberbase became stale. Without the direct connection to The Hylia, there was no way for new people to find RoH, and as with any community, old members will eventually say farewell. Only without any new faces, everything became a cycle of the same old scribes and the same basic events in the RP. It was in this time that many veterans gave up on the site ever recovering. Phydeaux also resigned from active administration, mostly due to a job that left little time for RoH.

Ryo was left at the forefront to lead a Council that had gradually become corrupted. In the fall of 2006, he cleaned out the Council, and selected a new batch of Scribes that would remain mostly unchanged for a year. Early on in the new Council, an offer was arranged to buy RoH from TSA. The price was split between 3 Council members, and Ryo prepared to change the registrar of the domain and move to a different server. However, a squabble broke out concerning future administrative policies, words were misunderstood, and Ryo ended up resigning, due to a lack of trust. Ecxelior, who had been a scribe for quite some time, and also happened to be Ryo's younger brother, was nominated as the replacement Administrator. Although Ecxelior did a good job at moderating, leading discussions, and coming up with exciting new ideas, he lacked any knowledge of running and updating a website. No one on RoH, aside from Ryo, had any knowledge concerning FTP, cPanel, or html, nor did they have a complete understanding of the ACP. One new addition to the Council, Blaine, who had been one of the original Scribes, and also a cousin of Ryo's, became interested in learning how to do things such as edit the site pages, make new skins, and anything else relevant to running a forum. He slowly but surely gained knowledge and experience, and was eventually elected to be the next Admin when Ecxelior decided to step down in September of 2007.

Realms of Hyrule III
Since Council numbers were low, nominations for new Scribes began for the first time in a year. Ryo was one of the two chosen to return to the Council. With his aid, Blaine learned even more, and quickly decided on a radical solution to bring RoH out of its slump. With much of Ryo's help, he directed another revamp. Convinced that RoH needed another fresh start (although this time post counts were kept), RoH3 was created. Some rejoiced at the change, while others criticized the action as being another reset to solve problems. RoH3 saw a much larger council, with many older members recruited literally overnight by Blaine and Ryo, Ryo having been re-adminned by Blaine. In many ways a success, the 3rd edition of RoH was not without problems. SMF was still the forum software, and as such the Battle System remained inoperable. Also, a few quarrels amongst the council members served to separate the Scribes in terms of ideals.

This new Council continued to pursue methods of reviving RoH, as the revamp had done nothing to gain new memberflow. One such method was affiliation. Being able to update the site pages, they reasoned that affiliation would be the only way to put RoH back on the map. Several affiliations were made, however, one of them made all the difference.

At the beginning of 2008, Blaine, and a new Scribe, Thanatos, began re-designing the website layout, since it was very outdated and bland. They felt that this was a crucial part of making RoH attractive to new people. Before it had finished, however, Blaine abdicated his position as an Admin, partly because of tensions within the Council, and partly because he wanted to focus on the RP.

He was brought back on as an Admin shortly thereafter, along with Kas, another of Ryo's cousins. In talking with Mases, owner of Zelda Dungeon, Ryo was able to get RoH put on ZD's new Allies list, and acheive a great deal of exposure. After this, RoH finally began to see an increase in membership again.

The new layout for the site was finished on March 27th. On April 28th, both Ryo and Blaine retired from the council entirely, leaving Kas with the reigns. However, due to disagreements about the direction of RoH in the next few months, the two of them organized a takeover.

Later called the Will Scarlet fiasco, the takeover was made possible because the two ex-administrators still retained cPanel access, in order to make updates if they wanted. On the night of June 27th, they used cPanel to de-scribe the council, and they made other users Scribes instead. An account called Will Scarlet was made the Administrator, in order to mask the true identity of Blaine. The takeover received a harsh reception from most of RoH, and those responsible for it decided to revert the council to its previous condition, and pass it off as a joke. The whole affair was without question in bad taste. Blaine later conceded that he had been an enormous jerk, but the damage had already been done.

On July 10th, due to feeling as though she'd been severely wronged, and wanting to get back at Ryo for his involvement in the Will Scarlet fiasco, Kas deleted all files on RoH. RoH2, RoH3, the site, and anything else vanished. Thanatos changed the password on cPanel to disallow her continued access, and he and others gathered together those who still wanted RoH to exist. In defiance of an act that should have clearly pointed out the end of Realms of Hyrule, they laboured to reconstruct whatever they had lost.

Realms of Hyrule IV
It was at this point that the caretakers of RoH's future decided to go back to IPB. Pooling together their funds, they purchased an IPB license. Luckily Blaine had saved all of the site's files to his computer, and Google's caching system allowed the recovery of many important topics. Thus, while a heavy amount of history was lost, much that was thought lost was regained, and RoH lived on. Surprisingly enough, the re-opening of RoH, RoH4, was met with remarkable activity. Though it is not entirely clear why RoH4 received so many new visitors, some suspect that it had to do with ZD posting about the return of RoH, and also the fact that Zelda Universe decided to affiliate with RoH, posting about it on their site. RoH4 was officially opened on July 15th, with Blaine and Hizashi as the Administrators, and several returning Scribes, such as Deion, The Lost Soul, Marik and Ryo. New Scribes included Abrecan Eyndrill, Shadow Girl, The Soulless Wanderer, and the most recent, Sanvaer. With the advancements of IPB, such as a Shop system and chat integration, this new Council was able to create something unimagined previously. Realms of Hyrule's 4th edition is widely considered to be the most successful since the original.

In January of 2009, Blaine made a move to increase security by restricting cPanel access to a single person, believing that his position, which had been asserted more by others than himself, allowed him to do so. The move was sorely taken, and various members of the council accused him of simply wanting to have his way. A motion was made to have Ryo buy RoH and become the new head Administrator. Rather than cause more strife, Blaine abdicated his position on the Council, leaving Ryo and Hizashi to manage things.

Realms of Hyrule V
Realms of Hyrule IV was becoming fast outdated; both in terms of story lines and forum software. Deciding that a new server was needed, along with updated forum software, Realms of Hyrule IV was shelved and Realms of Hyrule V was born. Administered by Ryo and Hizashi, Ryo soon left the council leaving Hizashi to manage the site. Ownership was also passed to him. Despite the successful launch of Realms of Hyrule V, the site was hacked and the database lost. Hizashi came to the decision that it was best to leave Realms of Hyrule go on an indefinite hiatus rather than rebuild.

Realms of Hyrule VI - Current
One year on from the closure of RoHV, the former members banded together to create a petition to reopen Realms of Hyrule. Hizashi, now renamed Souseiki, banded with Kiroku (Will Mitchell) to create Realms of Hyrule VI. Operating on the same forum software as V, v.6 is very different from all of predecessors. VI operates in the Ocarina of Time and Majaora's Mask world, using its map and details to sculpt the forum. As well as a change of scenery, new systems were put in place, included an RP-Battle System designed to allow a character evolve in strength and skill as they increase in their participation and role playing experience.

It is currently still operating.