I worked on ITW for years... and I'm serious, sadly. My characters flourished in its easy, freethreaded base. I saw Maroq grow and bloom on InsidetheWeb. I saw my black dragon gain a mate, have children, have massive fights, nearly die, spilt into three separate entities, attend parties, witness weddings, and eventually fade into the background. He was an amazing character, one I'm truly blessed to have imagined.
InsidetheWeb harbored thousands, if not millions, of carefree and hardworking roleplayers, forum freaks, and community chatters. However, they sent owners this letter in late 1999.
Dear InsideTheWeb message board owner,
Since January 1997, InsideTheWeb has provided free message boards to online communities. Our goal has always been to offer an easy-to-use and technically superior format for threaded discussions. Though we have hit a few bumps along the way, we feel we have succeeded in that ideal.
As some of you may know, internet advertising revenues have fallen to extremely low levels over the past several months. Supporting a community service such as InsideTheWeb is impossible without a secure source of funding and we are being forced to close our doors. While there are certainly other means of generating income, we do not have the ability to address them without sustaining significant losses in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, as of March 5th, we will be shutting down all InsideTheWeb message boards. Because you have worked hard to build your message board, we have provided you with a feature in the control center that will allow you to save your board's contents to your local computer. To access this feature, simply login from http://www.InsideTheWeb.com, select "Download Board Data" from the drop down list, and click "Go!". Next, just click each button for the type of data you wish to save.
We sincerely appreciate your patronage and support and hope that you will be able to find another forum that can meet your needs. We have thoroughly enjoyed talking with many of you over the years and wish you the very best. It is people like you that made InsideTheWeb the best message board community on the internet! Thank you!
Regards,
InsideTheWeb Customer Service
Amazingly, old roleplayers and newbies alike had no where to turn. Their home was being shut down. I was one of the few who refused to completely merge into the new world of ezboard and the like. Eventually, this and my schoolwork caused me to leave the boards and stay fully in reality.