Without a doubt, good FreeSpace sites are disappearing. The Terran Tactical Database, one of the premier sites among the FS Community from the beginning, was taken down about five weeks ago. IceFire's recent on, off, on-again, off-again series trying to decide whether or not to close the doors of the FSC was next. And now me, as I took down the FreeSpace Empire to integrate the good features of the FSE with the Chronicles, and join the staff here. I am sorry that I had to disappoint at least the one person on the List, and probably many more. These drastic changes do not go without reason, and they do not involve a quick decision about what to do.

Some of you, who have not designed and maintained a website completely by yourself, will never know how hard of a decision it is to take down the site that you spent countless hours working on. It was unbelievable to me when I heard that Gowron of the TTD and IceFire of the FSC closed their sites. They, as well as I, were basically the founders of the Internet FS Community. IceFire probably played the biggest part, as he organized several chat sessions with Volition and Interplay. Gowron also had a large role. They both spent entire days organizing like squadrons, creating ship-viewers, amassing ICQ contact lists, and gathering the latest news.

But for me, the choice was more difficult than I had originally thought. It was nice to come home from eight hours of work to relax in my chair, and read my email. It was really fun to reply to those messages inquiring if this feature was there, or what cool weapons do we get, etc. It was kind of like being the all-knowing professor. And then I got a super offer from Battle-Zone: they wanted me on their network. They wanted my site so bad that they were willing to host my domain for free, and all I had to do was pay for InterNIC. I graciously accepted their offer, as I could see the hard work pulling together.

Last week Monday (8/3/98), I took a look at my work over the past 6 months, and I could see that the design of my site was lacking things that so many others have now. I figured I had two choices. I could have spent more hours and add the things lacking (time I no longer have), hire staff to help manage the new workload, and generally create a headache for myself. Or, I could shut the place down, give way to the fresher sites out there, and take a back burner from the spotlight of the community (I wasn't content with that though =p ). You now know what my decision is. I have no complaints whatsoever about BGN's service to me and my site. I made several new friends, and I even learned some new things. But now as I switch over some of the things from the FSE to the Descent Chronicles, the domain finally comes online ( http://www.fsempire.com, if you want to see it working), and I find myself asking "Do I really want to do this?" Not only do I leave a great opportunity and a great deal of work to try to stake at another, but I leave the many new friends that I made. My only wish is that I stay in contact with them, although they probably won't want to, since I'm not "on their network" any longer. But, now it is done, the entity erased, only the memory of what was once there and the bad hyperlinks pointing to it, remains.

All work for nothing it seems, as described in a email message that I got a long time ago, when I was first starting to design the FSE. It went like this:

"Why do you spend so much time copying news from other websites, in the effort to get more hits or get more prestige? Just sit back, wait for the game to come out, get the patches, play on the Internet, and be happy!"

I never replied to that message. In fact, it is still sitting in my Inbox, kind of taunting me. I read it every once in a while because it asks a good question…why do I spend so much time? What is so great about making websites? I found the answer, about two months after starting the FSE, in another email message….

For webmasters (at least for me), there is no greater reward than that single email message, amid the tens to hundreds of messages, from that one fan who types three pages on how much they love coming to your site, or how much they like how your site looks. A single message like that can make it all worth it, and that message DID for me.

I realize now that what I ultimately wanted to do was make a one-stop shop for every FreeSpace need. I believe that I did a great job accomplishing this goal with the FSE, before the final release of the game. But now, the community is changing. There is more emphasis on missions and functionality, than on latest news on the release or the awesome features. That was what happened to the TTD, the FSC, and the FSE. We fulfilled our goals by serving the community with endless streams of information, but that stage is over with now. But although our time has come, I still have the chance to do what I wanted to do in the first place: Serve the FS Community by making a site (namely, the Descent Chronicles, now) a one-stop shop for every FreeSpace need. Gowron also had a similar choice, but it seems he would rather move on to bigger and better things (which is not bad). As I said before, IceFire has taken the same path as I, and joined up with the Descent Chronicles to keep helping out the community.

To put it all in a nutshell…to all of you fans out there, keep those nice comments coming, and don't fret when someone shuts their site down. There is always someone behind the HTML code making a difficult decision, there is always a good reason behind it, and there is usually another great site out there. But if not, CREATE YOUR OWN! You will find website creation is one of the most enjoyable yet twisted hobbies available to the computer junkie. =p

Comments? Email them to Remora (remora@volitionwatch.com)

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