It's been a little quiet lately which is OK - I know how these things ebb/flow over the years. I tend to get hit with nostalgia during this time of year and did some poking around the old archived site. I found a "shard history" page that appears to have been buried and lost to time. There are some very interesting details about the early days of our shard that I think are good to preserve. I also think we should update it to present day - anyone want to help with that?
World of Dreams Shard History
The World of Dreams was founded in the August of 1999 by 4 people: Dundee (Lead Admin and Developer), Shade (Player Relations), and Preacher and Aviendha (who hosted the server and also acted as GMs.) The shard was initially named Tel'aran'rhiod, which is the 'world of dreams' in the Wheel of Time, a series of books by Robert Jordan (though the shard was in no way based on the books) and ran on Sphere, an Ultima Online server emulator. The shard soon moved to POL, another UO server emulator that was significantly more customizable than Sphere, and the name was changed to simply The World of Dreams.
After a while, Preacher and Aviendha chose to leave the shard, which was quite nearly the end of the World of Dreams. Fortunately, though, Mithril stepped up and became the shard's new host. Unfortunately, he was only able to host the shard for a short time because of the loss of his high-speed internet connection. At that time, Arcanum came on the scene and the shard was saved from extinction once again.
Things continued normally for quite a while after that, until finally Dundee's need to create simply became too large to be satisfied by the World of Dreams. He handed the title of Lead Admin over to Arcanum, and the title of Lead Developer to Drocket, who was previously the Assistant Scripter. Shade turned the reigns of Player Relations over to Sebastian, who had previously been a seer and later a GM. Dundee and Shade then went on to create Ackadia, a shard dedicated to having fewer GM-imposed restrictions. This new shard was also hosted by Arcanum.
In time, Dundee was offered a job with Verant/Sony working on the game Star Wars Galaxies and had to give up Ackadia. Because there was no one else qualified at that time, Drocket also became the Lead Developer of Ackadia. Eventually, the stress and demands of two shards simply became too much for Drocket and Arcanum both, and so in September of 2001, it was decided that Ackadia either needed a new host and developer, or it would be left to fade into the mists. Fortunately, Morgan was there to take up the shard, and Ackadia continues to live on.
In August 2002, Arcanum, weary from years of work on behalf of the shard, decided to step down as Host and Lead Admin of WoD. Laephis became the new host, Sebastian was promoted to Lead Admin, and Siobhan (formerly a GM) became Player Relations. For a short time, in August of 2003, Tajina took over as host because of connection problems. Laephis later found another, better connection and returned as host. Things have continued quietly since then.
Only the future can tell what waits next for the World of Dreams...
