Waiting4Oblivion's First Birthday

A look back

It seems like a short time to us, but it's already been an entire year: on December 11th 2004, Waiting4Oblivion first opened up for business. Originally, it was meant as an extension to my signature on the Elder Scrolls Forums: I had a list of links to recent interviews and previews, and that list grew to big to fit in that signature any longer, so I needed some other place to store them. Because I like everything tidy and separate, I went to register a domain, and after only a few minutes of reflection decided on the name "Waiting4Oblivion.com". Seemed fair enough, after all, that was what I was doing. I was bored enough to try and make that link collection of mine look a bit better than a random geocities page, and eventually found myself ending up with a basic, yet -I thought - elegant design.

After a while, I added google ads, just to see how many people stopped by every day - google gives you lots of statistics for that. The site slowely grew from a few 100 pageviews a day to just over a 1000. At the same time, I was approached about hosting Fan Fiction on the site, by no others than Alexander and Sinder Velvin; we decided to join forces. Soon after that, Darkwing joined up with us. With the three on board, a content management system was necessary, so I made one. The site was redesigned, a few more people joined, and we started our own forums, carefully making sure not to spread our visitors over too many subforums. Then of course, we needed even more helpers, so we added a few people we trusted as moderators, and we grew and grew and grew.

It soon became a seizable amount of work keeping the site going, but our effords were rewarded well: we were invited by Bethesda to attend E3 and see a demo of Oblivion. We went, and it was absolutely fantastic. After that, the site just kept growing and growing, to dimensions I never would have imagined. A few statistics for your amusement:

• over 2,000,000 page views (impressions)
• over 400,000 visits
• over 17,000,000 hits
• over 1.7 Terabytes transfered (that's over 1700 GB)

A few words of gratitude

Of course, all of this is not the work of just one (or for that matter three) individuals. A lot of people have worked very hard on this site, and for that, I want to thank them:

• MorganTheFay, artist
• Ambberfox, artist
• Om, artist and main html minion (not responsible for the mess that is W4O right now ;))
• Trey, former moderator
• Warsgoth, former moderator
• Wolfie, junior chat operator
• Minque, moderator
• Burntsierra, moderator
• Scrooluse, moderator
• Momaw, moderator
• Epy, editor and quotinator
• Rane, editor and FAQ maintainer
• Darkwing, editor, our 3D guru
• Sinder Velvin, ex-editor, Bestiary coordinator
• Alexander, editor

Aside from those that have actively participated in the daily affairs of the site, I would like to thank all those that have stayed with us through thick and thin: our loyal forum users, the people who send us emails and PMs notifying us of news of all kinds and sending us their appreciation and love; the webmasters of the other fansites to which we have an excellent relation; and of course the fine people over at Bethesda Softworks for making such excellent games!

The future

Many have asked us in the past what would happen to the site after the game is finally released. We've only vaguely hinted at the continued existance of the site. Today, we'll reveal a few more details concerning that. First of all, yes, the site's name will change. We have already registered a new domain for this purpose, and this new domain will come into use on the very day of Oblivion's release. The old site will continue to function and be available, but will feature a link to the new site on every page.

We do have big plans: Aside from everything that's already here, we will add a massive amount of additional downloadables, as well as a mod database to which everyone can make contributions. We will offer mod hosting to everyone who has a forum account here, and many other features I think you will find most helpful and interesting. More about that will be revealed at a later time - can't go shootin' off all my powder on one day :D

Well, I guess that's all from me for now. I do hope that you'll continue to enjoy this site. Again, thanks for sticking with us :)

- Stargelman