Lately everyone keeps realizing that this RP isn’t something that is totally new. No in fact this RP had started out nearly 4 years ago on a small website community that had a section for RP’s. Of the active RP’s at the time, this was one of the top 10 used. Now here’s the story behind .hack//Integral

Quick Jump
2000 » 2001 » 2002 » 2003 » 2004 » 2005 » 2006 » 2007 » 2008 » 2009

2000

• In Summer of 2000 at the message board Animegamers, a forum for anime and games in general is created by End of a Shadow on the newly released BBS system known as Invision, back before it was later referred to as InvisionFree.
• Winter of 2000 Animegamers gains traffic and at the request of the users, offers a small fora section for text role-playing.
• That same time a user and long time friend, GameStar, at Animegamers challenges to see the owner End of a Shadow create a role-play.
• End of a Shadow creates a role-play based on Halo at some other forum called “Anime Adrenaline” that he regularly attended.
• The Halo role-play shows no success and thus End of a Shadow began to think of a RPG style role-play.
• End of a Shadow once again creates a role-play, but this time combining 2 RPG series into 1, the basis of his story was based on Ragnarok Online and the newly debuted anime series known as .hack//SIGN.

2001

• This role-play is hosted on Animegamers but at that same time Animegamers switched BBS engines over to phpBB and the name of the site changes to ALTIMIT during 2001.
• Of the dozen role-play’s performing on ALTIMIT, the RO and .hack// hybrid role-play immediately becomes a hit with majority of the site members participating.

2002

• Summer of 2002 The World BBS, a proboards site, owned by Aura is joined by End of a Shadow proposing to turn their community to a phpBB based site in order to increase their popularity and possibilities.
• Fall of that year The World BBS finally merges over to phpBB.

2003

• Throughout 2003, the hosting of The World BBS gets passed around server to server along with the domain name.

2004

• First quarter of 2004, Shadow adds in his RP onto The World BBS’s active role-plays.
• Late Spring of 2004 the role-play by End of a Shadow is noticed by the hostee Keitaro and End of a Shadow is given the offer of making an entire separate website for the role-play on a different domain hosted by Keitaro, End of a Shadow accepts the offer and begins production of a text-based MMORPG message board site on the www.zefie.com domain and forum community.
• Summer of 2004, The World RP (TWRP) is born and started, the game becomes a quick success reaching over 200 users with countless adventures, staff, and active events.
• During Fall of 2004, The World RP hits a critical break down when a former player of the game was banned and secretly had 2 active users at The World RP copy all material of from the rules, to the posts, to the layout structure, staff names, and even the users to be used on his site all because TWRP banned him for not following the rules on numerous occasions and he felt he could of ran the site better himself.
• The World RP is copied down exactly for every word and a movement of user theft occurs behind mailers and traffic of both sites merge evenly then steadily declines together till eventually both sites die down with minuscule participation.
• End of a Shadow shuts down The World RP shortly after Halloween of 2004. Deleting all online files, all databases, and all back up files mirrored online and offline from existence.
• The World RP no longer exists (both copied and the original) and never made it past it’s 4 month running session.
• Thanks Giving of 2004 a user Insydius purchases a webspace and domain for his Insyder Online project and begins an industry specifically for games by game players.

2005

• Early Spring of 2005 a user Lara-Su wishes to re-live the joys, the fun, the eager participating players of playing at The World RP.
• 04 Feb 2005 08:27 pm, Edan is born along with Effie, both recreate The World RP from scratch and for the time being dubbed it ALTIMIT formally for its birth origin site and begin contacting the former staff and players of TWRP to rejoin in the reincarnated site.
• ALTIMIT becomes a hit on the Insyder Online server, all former players return back and greater than ever which leads to the site’s massive success, and is greeted by the ever popular Cherry Blossom Event.

2006

• 22 May 2005, ALTIMIT is finally given an official title, .hack//Integral
• Spring of 2006, a member of the GM staff team decides to get personal with the staff and wipe out majority of the data from the site. The culprit is caught and fired from the team. It becomes notably to the point where to clean up the mess would require tweaking and rethinking.
• Later that season, The World sections are rebuilt and vastly improved regardless of the setback set by the former staff member.
• During the reconstruction act, many new projects begin and arise as the re-emphasis of the Support Team and subdivision teams of the AKs/GMs known as the Sapphire Knights led by Finitevus and Sienna Knights led by TheHackMan.
• With the new found groups and teams, progression flourishes enough so that new features become available daily, activity becomes unformiddible, participation is exponential, and users flood the roleplaying and RPG market to no ends, truely a day of times.
• 20 Feb 2006, Alexxis.t3h.5cr33m0 is Integrals 1,000th registered member during what would be known as the era of battles.
• 15 Sep 2006, phamsta is Integrals 2,000th registered member.

2007

• Between Winter 2006 and Spring 2007, the site encounters many down times to the point it is noted by the hosting company as using up too much server CPU allocated amount and the unexpected news that either Integral would have to cripple itself or advance to a bigger server one suited for itself alone.
• March 13th 2007, a day in which Integral could say “GU” or Grow Up in it’s true sense, on this date Integral grew so far and wide that no Shared Host specs or company could provide Integral with enough resources to keep it contained and available in which the site changed over to a Dedicated Host package running it’s own server online allowing many possibilities and potential to excrete from this investment.
• 13 Jan 2007, ME626 is Integrals 3,000th registered member.
• Along with this breaking updates and improvements, Integral decides to adapt to newer bigger projects such as the creation of the Integral Wiki, a seconardy online wiki solely specific discussion towards the dothack series.
• On June 3rd 2007 the third mistress system administrator, Rego, had retired from Integral after being apart of the project from it’s original creation at Animegamers.
• On June 5th 2007 Integral decides to secure itself, improve itself, and ensure equal quality for the forum and it’s users by switching over from phpBB back to it’s roots with the Invision Powered forum software and the name of the creator Edan ceases no more and switches back to the old alias Insydius on the site.
• During the reconstruction and loss of public members, the support teams and subpar groups are either officially disbanded or merged to other existing teams.
• As of June 8th 2007 Integral is acquainted with an old familar and former system administrator who had supported the name Integral at TWRP.
• The avatar system on July 11th takes a bold new change by switching systems from a very limited and outdated system to a more modern and customizable system which here and now is referred to as Character Models.
• After months of planning and delegation, .hack//Integral finally adopts it’s very own webcomic under the management of the user Sora which can be seen on the forums.
• After nearly a year of not utilizing, .hack//Integral focuses in on it’s former website INTegration on June 26th 2007 to bring back the organized and useful dothack specific information and content without the use of databases.

2008

• Games of the Arcade return on Jan 4th.
• The modern and current Integral turns 3 years old on February 4th.
• Gallery total images reaches over 2,000 on February 7th.
• Gallery surpasses the 3,000 images mark on March 3rd.
• Affiliation applications began for the first time on March 12th.
• March 28th the front page gets an whole facelift.
• Rion is awarded Nuke Usagimaru in becoming dothack for March
• Gallery surpasses the 4,000 images mark on April 8th.
• Upon the end of April, Integral begins a shopping store to capture memorable quotes onto T-Shirts at our CafePress store.
• Forum administrator Sora and team begins foot in creating an offline world known as Integral High Academy.
• Bebbo is awarded A20 in becoming dothack for April
• On May 1st, the administrators get together to hold the first ever Podcast, hosted by the admins of course.
• Namine establishes the first ever Ventrilo server the first week of May.
• Sora becomes winner of being Integral’s first ever Popularity Poll on May 15th.
• satski is awarded Moonstone in becoming dothack for May
• Zaxh is awarded Crim in becoming dothack for June
• July 10th, Integral is added to the Twitter network.
• Integral Wiki moves to wiki.dothack.org on July 22nd.
• Zoë is awarded Hokuto in becoming dothack for July
• September marks the date when the forums gets its Intrepid theme.
• The forum posting bot returned on Sep 21 under the alias of Aina to handle out additional automatic PM’s.
• Towards the end of September, Projects Origins and Reminisce are constructed and released to show the way to today.
• Evelyn is awardeded Mimiru in becoming dothack for August-September
• 2008 Staff Elections begins on October 4th.
• Referals return on October 18th.
• Our beloved Media Gallery section returns on October 27th.
• On October 28th, Integral hosts an unusual event where those who won, had their avatars used in the forums header image.
• Dteen is awarded Balmung in becoming dothack for October
• Shana is awarded Mistral in becoming dothack for November
• Integral Wiki direction and leadership is handed to Oroton.
• The new RPG System The World NeXT releases on December 16th.

2009

• Tsuma Shi and luna win the names Haseo and Alkaid respectively for the month of December in the first ever duo gender name giveaway.
• On New Years Integral takes it’s first steps into downloadable MMO clients by founding the Independent Gaming Division group for that purpose.
• January 4th, Integral reaches 6,000 members.
• Integral joins the popular social network communities Facebook and MySpace on January 5th.
• The first ever Media Divsion which specializes in radio and podcasting is created on Jan 21st.