This section of Amf's Introduction To Furcadia will attempt to explain how Furcadia has developed over time. It's important to realize that the Furcadia of today is not the Furcadia that has always been.
In the beginning... there was DragonSpires, and it was good... or so I've heard (Never actually having played DragonSpires, I can only base my opinion of it on what I've heard from others). DragonSpires was a MMORPG, much like Furcadia, and it was from this game that Furcadia was modeled. There were differences between Fucadia and DragonSpires, of course. One of these differences was male and female avatars. In DragonSpires, there were different avatars for the male and female players, whereas Furcadia only has different portraits to distinguish between male and female characters. The creators of Furcadia decided to do away with avatars of differing sexes because, so they say, they found that on DragonSpires, having avatars for different sexes promoted sexist comments and harassment. Personally, I don't see how taking away the difference between avatars is supposed to me from calling some girl a "dumb slut", but, whatever. At any rate, from DragonSpires came Furcadia, and the original Furcadia is what's known as OldFurc
The Maps-
When Felorin and Talzheimer first ripped off... I mean... created Furcadia, there were 5 main maps: Main, Algeria Island, The IC Area, The Jigsaw Joint, and Theiropolis. Each of these maps was home different sorts of people. These types of people are RolePlayers, PersonaPlayers, and Chatters
Main (better known as Meovanni, nowadays)was the heart of OldFurc, being the place where users were automatically transported to when logging on. It featured timeless hangouts, such as Mycroft's (better known as "the bar"), "The Wisdom Tree", "The Canal", Digo Market, and Equine Alley. Back then, a person was refered to according to where they frequently hung out (Someone who hung out at the canal was a "canalfurre". Someone who hung out at Mycroft's was a "barfurre"). Main was a place where RP was "off limits", so it was usually the hangout of Chatters, PPers, and OOC RPers. Any RP done on Main had to be kept low-key, otherwise you'd get ejected.
Theriopolis (Therio) was a place dominated by RPers. It had it's own - albeit small - bar, and a place, known as the "DragonBridge", where RPers could go and chat ICly. OldFurc was the golden age of Therio. In those days, it looked much different than it does now, and the general RP population rejected the changed layout of NewTherio (as the Theriopolis of today is called), when NewFurc went up in '99.
Algeria Island, the place where people upload their own maps, hasn't changed much since OldFurc. In fact, it looks exactly the same nowadays. Every sort of person on Furc used Algeria to upload their own maps for RP, yiffing, or just to show off their DragonSpeak skills.
The Puzzle Place was much like the maps for puzzles and games that they have today. In short, it sucked. The only valid explaination that someone would have had for entering the puzzle place was that they were going to yiff there.
The final main map of OldFurc was the IC Only Area, which attracted the same people as Therio. People who've only been around since NewFurc have never heard of the IC Area, and have no idea what it looks like. This is because it was done away with, when NewFurc went up. It was, effectively, the sewers beneath Main, being an underground area whose entrance was located near Equine Alley.
The People-
Most of the users on OldFurc were RPers, many of them having originally come from DragonSpires. There were were five spiecies to choose from (Dog, Cat, Mouse, Horse, and Ferret), and two genders (male and female). The twinks were few and creative, the Owsla were even fewer and less injust (This is not to say that they were "just" by any means, only that they were more so than they are now). It was a good time for Furcadia and Main, a time when Mycroft's was filled with intelligent people, rather than it's general populace of today. A time when RPers weren't so factioned and separated.
The Quirks-
OldFurc wasn't perfect, nothing is, but they were lovable imperfections. If you ever log onto NewFurc, you'll note small buildings all over the place called "Message Centers". They still don't work right, but they were a waste of space on OldFurc. They were, as my former friend Korthos has pointed out, "beartraps for newbies". This is because once you entered one, there was no escape without logging off of Furc and back on again. Another "feature" of OldFurc was the lagstorms. We've all experienced a slowing of our computer's functions from time to time, but the lagstorms were a widespread affliction, where an entire map on OldFurc would lag out, making it take ten minutes to have a five sentence conversation. Also, back on OldFurc, any time that a new user logged on, a message be sent out to everyone on Furc, saying "[*]"genericusername" has logged onto Furcadia for the first time!" *wipes a tear from his eye* Ahh, good times.
It seemed like a good idea, didn't it? Sure; add some maps, get a couple new servers. What could go wrong?
I'll tell you what could go wrong. They could fuck it up, that's what. They killed the IC Area, and revamped Theriopolis, for starters. Bad move. So much for crowd-support, Fel.
New Stuff-
On the plus side, with NewFurc came all sort of new stuff. People suddenly found that they could sit down without having to have a pillow under them, all they had to do was press ctrl-l. What's more, not only could they sit without a pillow, avatars were given a new position; a laying-down position. Some people still haven't grown out of playing with this new position. Furthermore, Fel and Talz finally paid up on the winged avatars that had been promoted to and paid for by users since years earlier on OldFurc. On top pf all this came new maps as well...
The Maps-
Even though Fel and Talz scrapped the IC Area and the Jigsaw Joint, and totally screwed up Theriopolis, they shelled out a whole mess of new maps for people. The new maps are as follows: New Haven, The Acropolis, Furrabia, Goldwyn (aka the Dragonlands), Challenges (Which took the place of the Jigsaw Joint), Club Dusk 'til Dawn, Furrabia, the FurCon maps, and The Imaginarium.
The Quirks-
As though the dead spirit of the IC Area came back for vengence, Equine Alley suddenly developed a bug which created ghost-characters of people in the alley whenever they spawned onto Meo (as further eveidence that this is a vengeful spirit, and not just a bug, I'd like to point out that this still hasn't been fixed). There was also a bug which caused winged rodents and musties to appear in place of people when they logged off. These rodents and musties would have the same color-code as the people that they took the place of.