Adam_ 1,034 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 other than yourself who do you think contributed the most / had the biggest effect on zybez from start to end ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W13 12 Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 (edited) 17 minutes ago, True 2k8 said: I vaguely remember you being banned from Runescape, is that true? Why were you banned? Was it a.. strategic hit from Jagex.....? I was banned with no reason cited, and then unbanned and then my account got "stolen" (I can't imagine how) - but i'm guessing it's RuneScape's faulty account recovery system. And I have no idea who owns the "W13" character now in RuneScape or what became of it. I don't have access to it anymore. 18 minutes ago, The End said: Were you still involved in the day-to-day management of the site in any capacity after selling the site to Curse? In early OSRS, Zybez was basically defacto GE (with no GE in game) with people buying/selling using that exclusively. Did the site get record traffic then and make a fortune on ad revenue or were the numbers much lower than RS peak in the mid to late 2000s? How did the Zybez database breach (I believe in ~2011) occur? 1. Yes. I had to get MORE involved after selling to Curse. I was literally working full-time doing it from their office in Huntsville, Alabama. 2. To be honest, ad revenue was never high enough to even pay two people's salaries. It was always just enough to pay server rent and I'd take some to augment my job. It was only near the end before selling to Curse that it made enough that I could quit my job and focus on Zybez full-time. 3. Things like that happen. Even to large banks, etc. Many of us were inexperienced with security etc. but we did take many measures. 18 minutes ago, Lavigne said: Hey, I used to be a CL in clanning (MVP). I remember you trying to get me out of neg rating when really I should have been banned lmao. Only a couple of questions 1) Do you regret selling to Curse despite the financial gain 2) Why are they being spastics and not giving you the old forum DBs back so we can read old posts. Are the hosting costs really that shit? 1) Not really. It was the right move at the right time. Zybez had doubled in traffic every year until 2009 and after 2009, it went into a downward spin. So, I saw it coming and got out. 2) There's literally no ad money and if they have to send a developer or someone to fix something for even 2 hours, it costs more than the ad money for the whole month. 19 minutes ago, Adam_ said: do you think you'll find your way back to playing rs / could you see yourself playing again realistically? and if yea, what do you think you'd do ingame? I doubt it. I might hop on now and then, but it has really lost its magic for me. 21 minutes ago, Adam_ said: are you surprised that out of the few clans left, some don't actively use forums or even have them ? I had no idea. 21 minutes ago, J0ey said: thoughts on other fan sites? sals tip it etc For the most part, it was healthy competition and some mutual respect. Unfortunately, little to no communication. In retrospect, I'm not sure why we didn't speak. 21 minutes ago, Adam_ said: are you at all surprised that there isn't really a central forum hub the community let alone clans use anymore? I have no idea about this. I'm surprised people still use forums lol. 21 minutes ago, Applerune said: cool to see you around - can you disclose how much $ you made from Zybez (either thru ads or sale?) or is there still some sort of NDA involved etc? Thanks for doing an AMA! To be honest, in retrospect, it was sold too cheap. It had potential to raise funds from investors and become a large collection of fansites. But it was a big fish eat small fish world then. I had a lot of existential crisis. The game could just flop and Zybez would sink with it. Another fansite just gets better and steals all the traffic. Or some bug just crashes the server and nobody comes back after its fixed. etc. It was enough to make a 20-some year old me think I'm the luckiest guy in the world for a while. It was sad too since Zybez had been a huge part of my life. It helped that Curse hired me for a year or so to "run" Zybez. So I wasn't totally out of the picture. 22 minutes ago, Adam_ said: do you know anything about wee man and what are your thoughts on him if so? Yes I know/remember Wee Man 😄 I logged onto these forums and saw his name and immediately thought, "Is that THE Wee Man?" 22 minutes ago, Adam_ said: why did you pick the name w13 My first name's initial and the 13 is my date of birth. And my mother's maiden name and SSN are... 23 minutes ago, Hatebreeder said: How do you feel about @Wee Manselling IPs? IPs don't mean anything now that we're all using VPNs. Edited January 1 by W13 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John 263 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 thanks for the AMA! Who was your favorite mod across the whole site? Was it really a full time job to maintain the mods/forums themselves? What would you have/could you have done differently to keep Zybez up and running in these current times? @etheroxx on Twitter for GFX needs 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@True 2k8 3,223 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 What were your impressions @Brian aka Ghjjf and Damage Inc's forums? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elder Jr 7 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 What are your thoughts about the new direction Jagex is heading with OSRS and the community led updates? Its miles away from the direction when you were an active player Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@True 2k8 3,223 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 Any crazy story about a scummy Zybez mod/admin that never hit public? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@The End 2,069 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 Sounds like you relocated from Canada to Alabama to work with Curse, which I guess was part of the deal. How was the move, and how was living in U.S. different than Canada? Do you manage/work on any websites now (e.g., personal projects)? Are you surprised to see OSRS (started in 2013) still thriving after 10+ years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W13 12 Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 9 minutes ago, John said: thanks for the AMA! Who was your favorite mod across the whole site? Was it really a full time job to maintain the mods/forums themselves? What would you have/could you have done differently to keep Zybez up and running in these current times? 1. It's so hard to say. So many people contributed, at different times. I really respect Ben (Ben Goten) and No1 1000 as people who contributed to the forums as well as the site in many positive ways. They're also very smart guys. 2. Curse made a full-time job when they decided that rather than improving Zybez, they want to redo the website's underlying coding. Despite my resistence, they pushed for it. I tried to sneak in new features, shed some dead weight, and focus on improving the forums. But, it was tough: wiki-based sites were advancing at light-speed, Jagex was hell-bent on killing fansites, and players were shifting to other games. 3. It's easy to look back and say, "I should've done this instead," knowing how the future has played out. In an ideal world, if I had a crystal ball and lots of knowledge, I'd have raised start-up funding for Zybez in the 7-digits. I'd have diversified to other games (I attempted this many times but never succeeded btw). And basically end up with a games news site with Wiki-style guides. Anyways, even that would've been short-lived. Now ChatGPT is going to kill those Wiki-based sites too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@True 2k8 3,223 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 I remember when the forums went toast they were supposed to stay up as a view-only archive.. and like a year later it was redirected to the RS wiki or something. Any idea why/what happened? The read-only forums were cool to keep around 😭 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W13 12 Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 (edited) 6 minutes ago, The End said: Sounds like you relocated from Canada to Alabama to work with Curse, which I guess was part of the deal. How was the move, and how was living in U.S. different than Canada? Do you manage/work on any websites now (e.g., personal projects)? Are you surprised to see OSRS (started in 2013) still thriving after 10+ years? 1. Yes. I relocated to Alabama for a year. And then back to Canada. And then to Indonesia for med school. And then to Malaysia for my masters degree. And then back to the USA to work. 2. Websites? What are those? 😄 I'd like to get involved in startups again. It's fun. Websites/apps are just vehicles to get there. It was never about making websites. Making websites was a necessity. I do try to do little side projects now and then... most of them fail. I'm thinking of doing a coffee bean brand. I am a coffee aficionado and spent some time in Indonesia where good coffee is grown. Maybe it's just an excuse for me to get Indonesian coffee here in California. 3. Yes. It is surprising. 12 minutes ago, True 2k8 said: Any crazy story about a scummy Zybez mod/admin that never hit public? All forgiven and lost to the sands of time. 🙂 15 minutes ago, Elder Jr said: What are your thoughts about the new direction Jagex is heading with OSRS and the community led updates? Its miles away from the direction when you were an active player I have no idea what they're doing, sorry. I'm totally out of the game. 22 minutes ago, True 2k8 said: What were your impressions @Brian aka Ghjjf and Damage Inc's forums? No idea but those names are familiar to me. Edited January 1 by W13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Venenatis 850 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 When Runehead was popular I would use it for my community clan. I want to say around 2008-9 my Antivirus started detecting worms/trojans/spyware from it. One of them was called Trojan.onlinegames.Password stealer. Many people talk about how great RH was, but I was always curious if anyone had an experience like me. I had to completely reformat my PC so it wasn't a false positive. Have you heard anything about this? I know it's not Zybez but I would think that others would have had a similar experience and it traveled through the grapevine. JaGex always said to avoid fansites because of account security which seems reasonable enough. But I think you're saying it was more so related to greed, true? Were there any porking scandals behind closed doors at Zybezz? The people need to know .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J0ey 3 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 do u play any games anymore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W13 12 Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 2 minutes ago, Venenatis said: When Runehead was popular I would use it for my community clan. I want to say around 2008-9 my Antivirus started detecting worms/trojans/spyware from it. One of them was called Trojan.onlinegames.Password stealer. Many people talk about how great RH was, but I was always curious if anyone had an experience like me. I had to completely reformat my PC so it wasn't a false positive. Have you heard anything about this? I know it's not Zybez but I would think that others would have had a similar experience and it traveled through the grapevine. JaGex always said to avoid fansites because of account security which seems reasonable enough. But I think you're saying it was more so related to greed, true? Were there any porking scandals behind closed doors at Zybezz? The people need to know .. I remember detecting some sort of malicious code on RuneHead. Somebody had found some exploit and uploaded it to steal passwords, etc. I had made my own antivirus which was very simple: just show me the last-modified files on the server. And I started seeing some files I didn't recognize. Again, security breeches happen, and can happen to anyone: casinos, banks, governments, etc. And I'm sure they've happened to RuneScape.com itself - possibly covered up to prevent people freaking out and the bad publicity. For the most part, we tried our best to keep users safe on Zybez. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@True 2k8 3,223 Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 Why and how did you start Zybez? Did you use any other fansites or during your Zybez time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W13 12 Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 Just now, J0ey said: do u play any games anymore Not really. But I was playing Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition a lot sort of recently. Believe it or not, I still fire up Transport Tycoon Deluxe every now and then. I do want to play an RPG again... but they're massive time sinks. I can't do another grinding game again in this lifetime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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