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ayenee

Ayenee

Ayenee was a chat-based freeform roleplaying community based in the user-created chatrooms in Yahoo! Chat's Arts and Entertainments section, which opened in 1996. The name Ayenee is a portmanteau of A&E (Arts and Entertainment). Yahoo later changed the name of their chat section to Entertainment and Arts, due to complaints by the A&E television network. Ayenee, however, kept its name.

Guidelines for the Ayenee community were originally posted on β€œKellindil's Site” in 1999. Ayenee's setting was a series of user created rooms; it was a free-form setting with elements of all genres present, from fantasy to science fiction. Sister realms of Ayenee included Nerima (In Yahoo chat's Anime and Manga category), Tenaria (In the Teen category), and Ecniecs (Science category).

Ayenee Banner

About Ayenee

Ayenee.org Logo

Ayenee chat RP was known for its diverse spread of characters. Players would choose and build often high-powered characters to give them an edge during in-game combat. To give these characters a place to play out their existence, users would create rooms like:

  • Forests & Lakes
  • Taverns & Inns (many)
  • Palaces
  • Caverns
  • The Slave Auction

Combat

With many characters being created with the idea of fighting in mind, battles were common. There were two major styles of combat used in chat. Type 1 (T1) was a turn based system, in which each player only controlled their own character, and couldn't force their opponent to take a hit. Users, instead, tried to create a situation where their opponent would be unable to avoid attacks, and thus were forced to be damaged. The laws of physics were often a deciding factor in whether or not an attack landed. Other rules governed the use of magic and weapons. Type 2 (T2) was a speed based system. Users would type out their attack and post it. Whether or not an attack landed was based purely on whether or not their opponent could post a message stating that it was somehow unsuccessful, before the attacker could post that the attack was successful. Both T1 and T2 had other rules to ensure more fair combat. T1, however, was the preferred method of fighting in Ayenee, with T2 being used, primarily, in some of the other sister realms.

Characters would often fight to the death. Many times, the character that lost the fight would be brought back to life, somehow. There were times, however, when no resurrection took place. For a short period of time during Ayenee's existence (from 1997 to late 1998), there was, actually, a separate graveyard website. Users involved in combat would save a transcript of the battle, and submit it to the website for review. A few of the more well known users were selected to be gravekeepers (GKs) and moderated the submissions. If it was determined that a character had been killed, it was general practice to not use that character in chat until a resurrection of some type occurred, which would also be submitted to the GKs for review. This system didn't last long, however, as too many people began ignoring the rulings of the GKs and playing characters that died without a resurrection.

In chat, many characters were often inspired by popular anime series and fantasy novels. These characters mixed and mingled, creating colorful and unusual sights such as Dragonlance characters fighting Sailor Moon characters.

There were also characters generated entirely from the minds of the players, which often made for even more unusual battles. It wasn't uncommon to see a cyborg fighting against a medieval style dragon. In fact, there was even a war at one time between two clans, the Guyvers (cyborgs) and CryClad (dragons), that played out that exact scenario.

Ayenee Message Boards

Over time, Ayenee members developed websites and a series of forums, which started as loosely connected topic-based forums and eventually merged into an integrated community.

Boardhost

Ayenee has a community of associated message boards hosted on BoardHost, which were used around the year 2000. They were the first known Ayenee boards where roleplay was conducted via forum-based play-by-post style instead of chat.

Ayenee main message board in 2001, from internet archive - broken images removed

These forums are no longer online but their addresses are presented for research purposes. You can find most of them on the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine at http://archive.org.

  • Ayenee 1)
  • Ayenee Non Rp Board 2)
  • Ayenee Assassins 3)
  • Ayenee Technology Board 4)
  • Ayenee Psionics Board 5)
  • Ayenee Magic Board 6)
  • Ayenee Chronicles 7)
  • Ayenee Artists Showcase 8)
  • Graveyard Tavern and Ancient Library 9)

Ayenee on ezBoard

In August 2003 (?), the community moved to ezBoard. The move essentially allowed all of the board from before to be merged into a common board. The board 10) is still visible as the Realm of Tears on Yuku.

Forums of Ayenee's board (and their descriptions) are presented below.

Main Forums

  • The RP Hall β€” General RolePlay discussion - comments, questions, surveys, RP announcements etc.
  • The Catacombs β€” Share your transcripts with other players for their commentary
  • Random IC RP β€” IC messages, stories, and general board RP not innately needed in a plot.
  • Character Profiles

Specific RP Settings

  • Hot Plots β€” Find out what's happening in RoT, or let others know what's going on with your plot.
  • Space War β€” A competitive game of interstellar conflict and conquest.
  • The Gateway Inn β€” The spot for characters to meet and mingle. A comfortable place and good food for weary travelers.
  • Ayenee Combat Club β€” Hit Me, I Like It Rough: Organized Combat Tournament
  • Sanctum City β€” Corporate/tech RP in a futuristic city setting. Fantasy Characters Welcome.
  • Ayenee IRC β€” Anything have to do with Ayenee IRC is found here!
  • Heaven's Tears β€” In which two flaming rocks fall from the sky, and fall into the wrong hands.
  • War for the Island of Tabmoc
  • Mini Plots

Topic-Based Forums

  • The Research Lab β€” A place to discuss, weapons, vehicles, and other implements of modern and futuristic technology.
  • Assassin's Guild β€” Hire a professional Hit-Man, or just some shmuck to do your dirty work. (IC only!)
  • Darkness Plane β€” Beware of vampires, demons and all things dead or just plain evil.
  • Planes of Power β€” Delve into the world of magic and arcanum obscurae in all of its forms.
  • Dungeons & Dragons β€” For D&D discussion. Campaign now being planned for Sundays, 5-9pm EST)
  • WiseWyrms β€” Here there be dragons

Non RP (OOC)

  • The Lounge β€” Any Non RP related discussion goes here
  • The Writers Nook β€” A place for creative writing and arts in general
  • The Reflecting Pool β€” A place for in-depth contemplation and discussion of Non RP topics.
  • Community Support β€” Questions and comments to Admin, Realm Master, and Moderators
  • The Test Tube

Self-Hosting

By 2004, Ayenee had moved to a new phpBB2-based forum on Ayenee.org, hosted by member Muutuuwon. It was the first Ayenee board to support subforums (via Extreme PHPBB, a modification/fork of phpBB2). Later these were upgraded to phpBB3.

Screenshot of Ayenee forums in February 2006 from Internet Archive

Its forums were as follows:

Ayenee Roleplaying

  • RP Discussion (OOC) β€” Out of character discussion of general roleplaying topics, plot organizing and recruiting, surveys, RP announcements ect.
    • The Mage's Tower
    • The Tech Board
  • General Freeform β€” All kinds of general RP in Ayenee.
    • The Dark War
    • Threads of Fate
    • World Of Darkness
    • The End of Time
  • Realms of Fantasy β€” General Fantasy RP
    • Eona Valley
    • Heaven's Tears
    • Planar Citadel
  • The Ayenee Capital City β€” A moderated general IC forum for the events of the Ayenee Capital City, tech or fantasy welcome.
  • The Farthest Reaches β€” General Science-Fiction RP
    • Rifts Multiverse
  • Mercenary Guild β€” The place to go if you need to hire any mercantile services. A cold-blooded killer, a tradesperson, or even a hot dog vendor to work the streets at a faire. IC Only, please.
  • Sikarra: Arena of the Fates β€” Battlefields of Ayenee: Organized Combat Tournaments. Register your character HERE.
    • Freeform
    • Swords and Sorcery
    • Total Tech
    • Magic Only
    • Melee Only
    • Open challenge.

Non RP

  • The Lobby: Check In Here β€” Hey! Are ya new here? Yeah? Well come on in and introduce yourself!
  • The Peanut Gallery β€” Any Non RP related discussions and general inanity go here.
  • Chronicles of Ayenee β€” A place for creative writing and arts in general
  • The Reflecting Pool β€” A place for indepth contemplation and discussion of Non RP topics of a more philosophical nature.
  • Support Forum β€” Post forum related questions and comments to Admin and Moderators, as well as suggestions for Community improvement.
    • News Posts

Downfall of Yahoo Chat

The user-created rooms of Yahoo chat were completely unmoderated and became increasingly filled with spam bots and adult content, including rooms with names suggestive of child exploitation. This led to sensational news reports, a lawsuit, an FBI investigation, and to advertisers dropping support for Yahoo chat. In response, Yahoo disabled the ability for users to create chatrooms in June 2005, throwing the Ayenee community into disarray. In August 2005 the various remnants of Ayenee (including Star Army) petitioned Yahoo to create new Ayenee role-playing chat rooms, but the petition was ignored entirely. By the end of the year, most roleplayers were seeking more friendly and functional places to roleplay.

Yahoo finally closed its chat site on December 14, 2012.

Aftermath

Without the ability to create rooms, new RP rooms couldn't be made. Around 2005, a great exodus ensued in which Ayenee's members moved to other roleplaying venues, primarily forums like those on Ayenee.org and Ayenee.com.

The community consensus is that the destruction of Ayenee, while tragic, also fueled positive change in the community by forcing roleplaying groups to organize in order to survive, spawning many thriving offshoot communities like this one.

Star Army and Ayenee

In 2000, Wes introduced Ketsurui Yui, Eve, and PNUgen Corporation to Ayenee. These would later develop into the SARPiverse in 2002. As PNUgen and Star Army developed, the growing community involved with Wes moved from forums on Network54 and ezBoard and eventually to StarArmy.com in 2003.

Star Army supported Anna, leader of the Ayenee.org community, by sponsoring it through advertisements for the Star Army website and through ezSupporter donations, and later direct donations by PayPal. Star Army had a prominent link forum on the index of the Ayenee forums.

In 2016, with the main Ayenee website being in desperate need of updating, Wes took over and moved the site back to its old URL. The community, once again, is growing into an active RP website.

Crossovers

Getting back and forth between the two universes was accomplished in-character by use of a Transuniversal Teleportation Drive. Major roleplay events involving both Star Army and Ayenee included:

1)
members5.boardhost.com/Ayenee
2)
members5.boardhost.com/Ayeneenonrp/
3)
members5.boardhost.com/Ayeneeassassins/
4)
members5.boardhost.com/ayeneetech/
5)
pub70.ezboard.com/bpsionics101
6)
members5.boardhost.com/Arachnid/
7)
members5.boardhost.com/Ayeneechronicle/
8)
members5.boardhost.com/Ayeneeartists/
9)
geocities.com/Dark_Scorpion_Fatali/tavern.htm
10)
previously at p219.ezboard.com/bayenee76882

Quality:
ayenee.txt Β· Last modified: 2023/12/20 15:23 (external edit)