Community:Zelda Dungeon Community

From Zelda Wiki.org

The following is a collection of various parts of the Zelda Dungeon community and history.

Contents 1 Site Staff 1.1 Webmaster 1.1.1 Duties of a Webmaster 1.1.1.1 Site Duties 1.1.1.2 Forum Duties 1.1.2 Current Webmasters 1.1.3 Previous Webmasters 1.1.4 How to become a Webmaster? 1.2 Staffer 1.2.1 Duties of a Staffer 1.2.2 Current Staffers 1.2.3 Previous Staffers 1.2.4 How to become a Staffer 2 Forum Staff 2.1 Administrator 2.1.1 Duties of a Administrator 2.1.2 Current Administrators 2.1.3 Previous Administrators 2.1.4 How to become an Administrator? 2.2 Super Moderator 2.2.1 Duties of a Super Moderator 2.2.2 Current Super Moderators 2.2.3 Previous Super Moderators 2.2.4 How to become a Super Moderator? 2.2.5 Future Promotions 2.3 Moderator 2.3.1 Duties of a Moderator 2.3.2 Current Moderators 2.3.3 Previous Moderators 2.3.4 How to become a Moderator? 2.4 Arbiter 2.4.1 Duties of an Arbiter 2.4.2 Current Arbiters 2.4.3 Previous Arbiters 2.4.4 How to become an Arbiter? 3 Special Ranks 3.1 Hylian Knight 3.1.1 Duties and Privileges 3.1.2 Current Hylian Knights 3.1.3 Previous Hylian Knights 3.1.4 How to become a Hylian Knight? 3.2 Hylian Noble 3.2.1 Current Hylian Nobles 3.3 ZeldaWiki 3.3.1 What Does A Zelda Wiki Member Do? 3.3.2 Zelda Wiki Forum 3.3.3 Zelda Dungeon Zelda Wiki Users 3.4 Fansite Worker 3.4.1 Current Fansite Workers 4 The ZD Alliance 4.1 Concept 4.2 Associated Websites 4.2.1 North Castle 4.2.2 Zelda Classic 4.2.3 PureZC 4.2.4 Zelda Elements 4.2.5 Zelda Comic 4.2.6 Zelda Reorchestrated 4.2.7 Realms of Hyrule 4.2.8 Zelda Wiki 4.2.9 ZeldaBlog 4.3 Unconfirmed Websites 4.3.1 Zelda's Secret Ocarina 4.3.2 Legend of Zelda.com 4.3.3 Zelda Chronicles 4.3.4 Zelda Almanac 5 Couples of ZD 5.1 Caleb and DisappearingMist 5.2 Alder Dragon and Lenora Dragon 6 Forums 6.1 History 6.1.1 Early Forums 6.1.2 1st Generation - Zelda Legacies 6.1.3 2nd Generation - PhpBB 6.1.4 Legend of Zelda.com 6.1.5 Zelda Legacy - Chamber of Sages 6.1.6 3rd Generation of Forums - vBulletin 6.2 Attacks 6.2.1 Summer 2007 Hacking 6.2.2 Omena 6.2.3 August 2009 6.3 Features 6.3.1 Shoutbox 6.3.2 Video Podcast 6.3.3 Arcade 6.4 Controversy 6.5 General Discussion 6.6 Mature Discussion 6.7 War on Spam 6.8 Shoutbox Restriction 7 History 7.1 Conception 7.2 Layout 1.0 - The Early Days 7.3 Layout 2.0 - HTML Conversion 7.4 Layout 3.0 - Hosting Issues 7.5 Layout 4.0 - New Co-Webmaster 7.6 Layout 5.0 - Green Return 7.7 Layout 6.0 - ZeldaDungeon.net 7.8 Layout 7.0 - Community Forums 7.9 Layout 8.0 - New Heights 7.10 Layout 9.0 - Big Surprise 7.11 Layout 10.0 - Short Lived 7.12 Layout 11.0 - Bright Lights 7.13 Layout 12.0 - Failed Mergers 7.14 Layout 13.0 - Video Content 7.15 Layout 14.0 - Phantom Growth 7.16 Layout 15.0 - Sprite Layout 7.17 Layout 16.0 - Dungeon Alliance 7.18 Layout 17.0 - Video Podcast 8 Site Mergers 8.1 Zelda Chronicles - November 2005 8.2 Zelda Compendium - October 2006 8.3 Zelda Legacy - December 2006 8.4 Legend of Zelda.com - February 2007 8.5 Zelda Chronicles - May 2007 8.6 Zelda Relic - January 2009 9 Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast 9.1 Topics of Discussion 9.1.1 News and Content Updates 9.1.2 Featured Thread Discussion 9.1.2.1 Topics 9.1.3 Question and Answer 9.2 Special Podcasts 9.2.1 Spirit Tracks 9.3 Special Guests 9.4 Hosts 9.5 Times of Podcasts 9.6 After Hours 9.6.1 Other Guests 9.7 Name That Tune 9.7.1 Zelda Edition 9.8 Zelda Dungeon Hangman 9.9 Zelda Dungeon Trivia 9.10 The Amazing Gameplay Adventures 9.10.1 Bomby's Adventures 9.10.2 Mases's Adventures 9.11 Mases's Pokémon Gym

Site Staff

Webmaster

Webmaster is the highest ranking that one can achieve at Zelda Dungeon. They have access to the entire website, including the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Duties of a Webmaster

Webmasters at Zelda Dungeon do anything and everything that is needed at the website. The following is a detailed list of everything that a Zelda Dungeon Webmaster does on both the Site and the Forums.

Site Duties

• Write Content - Simple game content such as character, enemy, and item guides for the Zelda games.
• Produce Quality Strategy Guides - Complete walkthroughs with screenshots, artwork, maps, and more.
• Video Specialists - Provides complete video guides for Zelda Dungeon for the Zelda games.
• Layout Coordinators - Responsible for creating and gathering new ideas for layouts at Zelda Dungeon.
• Provide News - Updates on any big news in the Zelda or Nintendo that is relevant to Zelda Dungeon.
• Managing Staff - Webmasters work with the site staff to help them create quality content and guides.
• Podcast Coordinators - Work on the Live Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast which airs roughly every two weeks.
• Diplomacy - Webmasters are the spokesmen of Zelda Dungeon to the outside Zelda Community.

Forum Duties

• Role Models - Newer or younger members, as well as Forum staff members can look up to Webmasters for advice on the ways of the forum.
• Rules - Webmasters are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Administrate Forums - Webmasters are also forum administrators and have full access to the forums.

Current Webmasters

Currently Zelda Dungeon has three active Webmasters: Mases Hagopian, Caleb Simpson, and Dabombster.

• Mases has been a Webmaster at Zelda Dungeon since the sites creation on August 19th, 2001. Mases actively takes part in all Webmaster duties at the website and is the primary diplomat of Zelda Dungeon.

• Caleb joined the staff on March 17th, 2007 and later that year on August 26th, Caleb was promoted to a Webmaster position. Caleb is active creating new content and strategy guides for the website. He is also the brains behind several of the recent Zelda Dungeon layouts.

• Dabombster joined the staff on May 8th, 2008. He was promoted to his Webmaster position on April 1, 2009 because of his work and dedication to the site. Many thought that this promotion was nothing more than an April Fools prank.

Previous Webmasters

• Cartoons joined the Zelda Dungeon staff on May 3rd, 2003. After working on game content for several months, Cartoons got the promotion to a Webmaster role where he kept it for several years. Cartoons was responsible for much of the Ocarina of Time, Oracle of Seasons, and Oracle of Ages content when he worked at the site, but much of this content has since been replaced. Cartoons began taking a smaller role with site in 2006 and it was in early 2007 where Cartoons stepped down from his Webmaster role. Cartoons still remains a member of the staff, serving as a staffer where he is the resident 'tech guy'.

• Avenged, also known as Chrono, joined the Zelda Dungeon staff on two separate occasions. Originally joined on November 14th, 2005, Avenged worked on a variety of pieces of content and also created several Zelda Dungeon layouts. Avenged left in June 2006, to bring back his own Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. Avenged soon returned on May 15th, 2007. He remained a webmaster for several months until once again leaving the site to resurrect Zelda Chronicles in August of 2007.

How to become a Webmaster?

Webmasters are chosen by the current Webmasters of Zelda Dungeon. Webmasters are usually those who begin their way as a content contributor or content specialist and through hard work and dedication, gain the respect and trust of the Zelda Dungeon webmasters. They must have close communication and a tight bond with the current Webmasters in order to even be considered. It is unclear whether a member of the Zelda Dungeon Forums can work his way up to a Webmaster role, but is something that is open for consideration in the future.

Staffer

Staffer is rank on the Zelda Dungeon forums which signify that a member works for Zelda Dungeon. Users are designated to be Staffers by the banner on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Duties of a Staffer

On the Zelda Dungeon Forums, staffers have no precise duty. However, staffers are given access to the private Zelda Wiki, Hylian Hero, and Administrative forums, where they can voice their opinions on topics that are being discussed. Most staffers do not have a position at the forums, but are still viewed as forum leaders.

Current Staffers

Currently Zelda Dungeon has eight users that are a part of the staffer usergroup on the forums.

• Josh - Joined the staff on October 10th, 2008.

• Kybyrian - Joined the staff on October 20th, 2008.

• Yumil - Joined the staff on January 15th, 2009.

• Zenox - Joined the staff on January 20th, 2009.

• Alder Dragon - Joined the staff on February 11th, 2009. Alder Dragon was formally an Arbiter at the forums before taking a hiatus. Since his return he was promoted to a Hylian Hero and is now a staffer.

• Brandikins - Joined the staff on March 31st, 2009.

• Shnappy joined the staff on October 3, 2009.

Previous Staffers

Zelda Dungeon has had numerous staff members over the years. However, since the creation of the staffer usergroup, there have been no retired Zelda Dungeon staffers.

How to become a Staffer

Anybody can apply to be a staff member at the website. Their acceptance is based on their past credentials, ability to write content, ability to generate new ideas for the website, and dedication to their work and the website. As soon as a member is hired as a site staff member, they are given the staffer rank on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Forum Staff

Administrator

Administrator is the second highest ranking that one can achieve at the Zelda Dungeon forums, appearing behind only Webmasters. Administrators have moderation powers over the entire forum as well as the shoutbox. Additionally, administrators have access to the forum administrative panel, which gives the user numerous powers over the forum. However, exact powers and responsibility differs from administrator to administrator. Users are designated to be Administrators by their red user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Duties of a Administrator

Administrator consist of some of the most loyal members of Zelda Dungeon and the forum. While they have the powers that a Super Moderator has, they are not responsible for actively moderating the forum, but rather, they take part in the administrative and behind the scenes work of the Zelda Dungeon Forum. Also, Administrators are expected to be responsible, as any other moderator or arbiter etc would be expected to, however these are expected to NEVER abuse their power, and doing so will mean consequences, including the possibility of losing their rank.

• Rules - Administrators are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Hylian Hero Forum - Administrators have access to the private Hylian Hero forum.
• Administrative Forum - Administrators have access to the private Administrative forum and are able to voice their opinions on all issues in relation to the day to day activities of the Zelda Dungeon Forums.
• Shoutbox - The same capabilities that Arbiters have within shoutbox.
• Moderation - Administrators have moderation powers over the entire Zelda Dungeon Forum.

Current Administrators

Below is the list of the current Administrators at the Zelda Dungeon Community Forums:

• Caleb
• Mases
• Mr. Mosley, formerly Darklink01, received a promotion to administrator in October of 2009. He has replaced the now inactive Cartoons.

Previous Administrators

Zelda Dungeon has had a few Administrators in the past. The first generation of forums was created and administrated by MetalMallow, a member who is no longer involved with Zelda Dungeon. During the 2nd generation of forums before there was a Webmaster category ranking at the Zelda Dungeon Forum, Mases was an administrator. Mases however, was not actively involved in the administration of the forums, and was just given this position based on his Webmaster role at the website. Avenged, also a webmaster of the site during this period of time, was given an Administrator role at a point in time. Cartoons, was also an administrator.

During the 3rd generation of forums, in the later spring and early summer of 2008, Avenged was temporarily given his Administrator rank back, and a new administrator joined the team in Dabombster. These two administrators were promoted because Mases wanted to move away from active duty in handling some of the frequent issues of the forum. This however, did not last long, as after a few short weeks, Avenged had left the forum and Dabombster had grown inactive in his role, eventually reverting to his prior role as a Staffer on the site. Cartoons also gave up his rank of administrator in September 2009.

How to become an Administrator?

Administrators are chosen specifically by the sitting Administrators and Webmasters. Prior to becoming Administrators, members are usually in a Super Moderator position at the forum. Administrators must be in close contact with the high ranking members of Zelda Dungeon and the Zelda Dungeon Forums in order to be considered for the position. The qualifications are assessed on an individual basis, but the two major credentials needed to become an administrator are intelligence and loyalty.

Super Moderator

Super Moderator is the third highest ranking that one can achieve at the Zelda Dungeon forums, appearing behind only Webmasters and Administrators. Super Moderators have moderation powers over the entire forum as well as the shoutbox. Users are designated Super Moderators by their blue user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Also, Super Moderators have slightly mroe power than a normal Moderator, so therefore, like said above, of a higher rank.

Duties of a Super Moderator

Super Moderators consist of some of the most active members at the forum, and they have several responsibilities. When a member reaches Super Moderator status, they are also assumed responsibilities that are given to Arbiters as well.

• Role Models - Newer or younger members of the forum can look up to Super Moderators for advice on the ways of the forum.
• Activity - Super Moderators are usually members who frequent the forums at least once per day.
• Rules - Super Moderators are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Hylian Knight/Noble Forum - Super Moderators have access to the private Hylian Knight and Noble forums.
• Administrative Forum - Super Moderators have access to the private Administrative forum and are able to voice their opinions on all issues in relation to the day to day activities of the Zelda Dungeon Forums.
• Shoutbox - Responsibility and the capabilities that Arbiters have within shoutbox.
• Moderation - Super Moderators have moderation powers over the entire Zelda Dungeon Forum.

Current Super Moderators

The Zelda Dungeon currently has two sitting Super Moderators in power in linkman8 and Vincent.

• linkman8 - Joined the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon Forums in 2005 and later that same year became a moderator. After registering at the 3rd generation of Zelda Dungeon Forums, linkman8 kept his Moderation position. In early 2008, linkman8's dedication to Zelda Dungeon was rewarded when he was promoted to Super Moderator status. Linkman8 continues to be a valuable asset at the Zelda Dungeon forums and can be found at the forums on a daily basis.

• Vincent - Vincent joined the ZD forums when they were first switched over to vBulletin. Before acquiring this position, Vincent was a Hylian Knight.

Previous Super Moderators

Prior to the current generation of Zelda Dungeon forums, there was no such group of Super Moderators, but rather, all moderators were in the same grouping. However, as the 3rd generation of forums began to grow, the Super Moderator group was formed and became distinctive from the moderator group.

• Onilink89 - Joined the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon Forums in 2005. After being a member of the forums for a long time, Onilink89 was bumped up to a moderation position in 2006. After registering at the 3rd generation of Zelda Dungeon Forums, Onilink89 earned back his Moderation position. In the final days of 2008, Onilink89's dedication was rewarded when he was promoted to a Super Moderator position. Onilink89 continues to be a valuable member of the forum and is currently one of the top posters on the forum.

• Avenged was a former Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon prior to earning his ranking as a Super Moderator of the forum. Avenged remained a Super Moderator at the Zelda Dungeon Forums for 7 months until May of 2007. At this point, after several small incidents involving Avenged and a few registered users, talks of removing Avenged from his Super Moderator position. Eventually, Avenged stepped down from his Super Moderator position and was thought to of been leaving the Zelda Dungeon Forums. However, he returned briefly as a Super Moderator and even an Administrator for a short period of time, before once again taking a leave of absence. During the last few months of Avenged's forum staff position, his Super Moderation status was called into question by several Zelda Dungeon Forum members because of unfair treatment of several users and the breaking of some of the Zelda Dungeon Forum rules. The delayed removal of his Super Moderation position had much to do with the past Webmaster position that Avenged held and his close relationship with the Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, Mases.

• Blackice_cc became a Super Moderator, but shortly after his reward, said that he wanted his position removed and was lowered to a Hylian Hero on the forums.

How to become a Super Moderator?

Unlike several of the lower rankings in the forum staff, Super Moderators are chosen specifically by the standard Super Moderators, Administrators, and Webmasters. To be eligible for promotion to a Super Moderator position, the member must first have become a Moderator of the forum.

Future Promotions

The next step up in line for Super Moderators is to reach the Administrator position, as Mr. Mosley demonstrated.

Moderator

Moderator is the fourth highest ranking that one can achieve at the Zelda Dungeon forums, appearing behind only Webmasters, Administrators, and Super Moderators. Moderators have moderation powers over a specified section of the forum. Users are designated Moderators by their orange user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Duties of a Moderator

Moderators consist of some of the more active members at the forum, and they have several responsibilities. While it is a higher ranking than the Arbiter status, not all moderators are given Arbiter powers as well.

• Role Models - Newer or younger members of the forum can look up to Moderators for advice on the ways of the forum.
• Activity - Moderators are usually members who frequent the forums a couple of times per week.
• Rules - Moderators are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Hylian Hero Forum - Moderators have access to the private Hylian Hero forum.
• Administrative Forum - Moderators have access to the private Administrative forum and are able to voice their opinions on all issues in relation to the day to day activities of the Zelda Dungeon Forums.
• Shoutbox - Some moderators have responsibility and the capabilities that Arbiters have within shoutbox.
• Moderation - Moderators have moderation powers over the specified section of the forum.

Current Moderators

The Zelda Dungeon currently has five sitting Moderators in power: Hanyou, Inflexus, Smitie, and Petman1325.

• Hanyou - Moderates the Mature Discussion section.
• Smitie - Moderates the General Discussion Section.
• Petman1325 - Moderates the Zelda Games section.
• Basement24 - Moderates the Zelda Games section.

Previous Moderators

The Zelda Dungeon Forums are now in the 3rd generation of forums. Over the previous two generations, we've had numerous moderators that are no longer members of the new forums, or are members, but are no longer moderators. Unfortunately, a complete list of moderators of the 1st and 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums are not available. Here is a rough listing of previous moderators.

• Zeypherlink
• Zero
• serotonin_wraith
• Silent Lion
• Spirit Reaver
• Majora
• Josh

How to become a Moderator?

Moderators are chosen specifically by the sitting Moderators, Super Moderators, Administrators, and Webmasters. To be eligible for promotion to a Moderator position, the member must first have become an Arbiter of the forum.

Arbiter

Arbiter is the fifth highest ranking that one can achieve at the Zelda Dungeon forums, appearing behind only Webmasters, Administrators, Super Moderators, and Moderators. Arbiters have moderation powers over the shoutbox. Users are designated Arbiters by their dark green user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

Duties of an Arbiter

Arbiters consist of some of the more active members at the forum, and specifically, ones who participate actively in the Zelda Dungeon Forum Shoutbox. While it is a lower ranking than the moderator status, some, but not all moderators also have Arbiter powers.

• Role Models - Newer or younger members of the forum can look up to Moderators for advice on the ways of the forum.
• Activity - Arbiters are usually members who frequent the forums a couple of times per week.
• Rules - Arbiters are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Hylian Knight/Noble Forums - Arbiters have access to the private Hylian Knight and Noble forums.
• Administrative Forum - Arbiters have access to the private Administrative forum and are able to voice their opinions on all issues in relation to the day to day activities of the Zelda Dungeon Forums.
• Shoutbox - Arbiters have the responsibility of moderating the shoutbox.

Current Arbiters

The Zelda Dungeon currently has seven sitting Arbiters in power.

• Dabombster
• Hylian Hobbit
• Lenora Dragon
• Petman1325
• Smitie
• Ver-go-a-go-go
• Y2K3

Previous Arbiters

• Josh
• Kybyrian
• Alder Dragon

How to become an Arbiter?

Arbiters are chosen specifically by the sitting Arbiters, Moderators, Super Moderators, Administrators, and Webmasters. To be eligible for promotion to a Arbiter position, the member must first have become a Hylian Knight at the forum.

Special Ranks

Hylian Knight

Hylian Knight is a ranking that members can achieve at the Zelda Dungeon forum. It signifies that these members are role models for newly registered members, and people that can be looked up to. Users are designated Hylian Knights by their purple user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

However, once one is A Hylian Knight, they are expected to behave like one. This means that rule breaking or not obeying Hylian Knight duties may mean they can lose their rank. Hylian Knights have duties, which is why failure to obey them can have one's rank removed. Along the same lines as this, being good just to get the purple Hylian Knight color and then not obeying any duties will have it likely removed as well.

Duties and Privileges

Hylian Knights are not members of the Zelda Dungeon Forum staff, but they do play their part in trying to help improve the overall quality of the forum. Below is a list of duties and privileges that are involved with having a Hylian Knight Ranking.

• Role Models - Newer or younger members of the forum can look up to Hylian Knights for advice on the ways of the forum.
• Activity - There is no clear definition of what is considered active, but Hylian Knights are usually members who come by the forums a few times a week.
• Rules - Hylian Knights are those that have a firm understanding of the rules and rarely ever break them.
• Private Forum - Hylian Knights are members that have access to their own private forum which is not moderated.
• Promotions - When the site is in need of new Arbiters, the forum staff looks specifically at Hylian Knights.

Current Hylian Knights

Currently Zelda Dungeon has 14 Hylian Knights but this number can be deceiving. All Arbiters, Moderators, Super Moderators, Administrators, and Webmasters are also considered to be Hylian Knights, but because of their higher ranking, they are not on this listing. Below is a listing of current Hylian Knights.

• Akiranon
• DarkLink0602
• Hylian Hobbit
• Inflexus
• Kazumi
• Knowlee
• Kybyrian
• Mike Pothier
• Shadsie
• ShellShocker
• Shnappy
• silent lion
• Vincent (Swiftblade)
• Zeruda

Below are a few users that are part of the Hylian Knight usergroup, but since they have a ranking already higher than it, Hylian Knight is shown as a secondary usergroup.

• Caleb
• Cartoons
• Dabombster
• Hanyou
• Hylian Hobbit
• Inflexus
• Mases

Previous Hylian Knights

While Zelda Dungeon is in its 3rd generation of forum communities, the Hylian Hero ranking was created within the 2nd generation. There were numerous Hylian Heroes at this time, of which only a select few went on to become Hylian Heroes at the 3rd generation of forums. Also, upon the launch of the 3rd generation of forums, most members that came from the old 2nd generation forums had automatically been given Hylian Hero, which at the time changed the significance. All this has made it a bit difficult to list who were all the previous Hylian Heroes, since some were removed during the 2nd generation forums, some never joined the 3rd generation forums, and some 3rd generation forum Hylian Heroes were since removed months ago.

How to become a Hylian Knight?

New Hylian Knights are chosen by all members who are already Hylian Knights, or those who are Zelda Dungeon Site or Forum staff members already. The criteria for becoming a Hylian Knight mainly has to do with the quality of posts the user makes, as well as how well they get along with the average user. Total number of posts and how long a user has been a member of forum are taken into account, but they are secondary factors. Asking to become a Hylian Knight actually decreases your chances of becoming one.

Near the end of each month, a ranked member can nominate a user to become a Hylian Knight. Just before the end of the month, these members are voted on in a simple 'Yay' or 'Nay' fashion. Then for those who are accepted, on the 1st of the month, they are promoted to their new status at the forums.

Hylian Noble

Hylian Nobles are a new group at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. This group was created when the forum staff decided to make some much needed changes to the usergroups.

As of June 2009, it is a new usergroup that has been created. Hylian Nobles consist of members who are leaders of the Zelda Dungeon Forum Community. These members are prime role models for all new and younger members of the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Nobles have a firm understanding of the forum rules and are expected to treat all members with respect. Additionally, the main separation between Nobles and Knights, is that the Hylian Nobles act as diplomats of the Zelda Dungeon Forum Community. They hold the burden of being a representative of the Zelda Dungeon community, both within the actual forums, and outside the forums. Thus, Hylian Nobles are held to the highest standards in terms of their character and the quality of their posts. In order to become the Hylian Noble, a member must have been registered for at least 10 months, must have been a Hylian Knight for 5 months, should have at least 300 posts, and must have nearly unanimous support from all current Hylian Nobles, as well as Forum Staff members.

Current Hylian Nobles

• Alder Dragon
• Axle the Beast
• Blackice_cc
• Chargewithsword
• DisappearingMist
• El Bagu
• Kitsu

Below are a few users that are part of the Hylian Noble usergroup, but since they have a ranking already higher than it, Hylian Noble is shown as a secondary usergroup.

• DarkLink01
• Lenora Dragon
• Linkman8
• Onilink89
• Petman1325
• Smitie
• Ver-go-a-go-go
• Y2K3

ZeldaWiki

Zelda Wiki is a usergroup at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. The group lists members who are a part of the Zelda Dungeon community and are also active in helping out the Zelda Wiki. These members are distinguished by their light blue user color on the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Something close to this color was used before to distinguish Staffers, which have now changed to a much darker color. However, if a user has a ranking of Hylian Hero or higher, they are instead signified by that respective color, and above their rank, the next lowest rank will appear. Zelda Wiki members are also given the ability to post in the Zelda Wiki Forum at Zelda Dungeon.

What Does A Zelda Wiki Member Do?

Zelda Wiki members, as said above, are members of the Zelda Dungeon Forum Community, who help out editing the Wiki. They can be recognized on, Zelda Dungeon, by the light blue color of their signature. However, the Zelda Wiki color is not permanent Zelda Wiki members must at least edit maybe once or twice a month at least, to show they are part of the Zelda Dungeon/Zelda Wiki Project, or they will be removed from that user group.

Zelda Wiki Forum

Upon becoming A Zelda Wiki member at Zelda Dungeon, a ZeldaWiki member will gain access to the Zelda Dungeon Forum, which can only be posted in by Zelda Wiki members, to avoid spam. In this section, Wiki members will discuss, areas of the Zelda Dungeon wiki that need to be edited. When told of a section that needs editing, one or more Zelda Wiki will usually edit that page, however, some ZeldaWiki members, such as the one writing this, edit pages because they think they are too short, or need corrections.

Zelda Dungeon Zelda Wiki Users

Members of the ZeldaWiki group at Zelda Dungeon:

• Aerostella
• Ando
• bellum
• Mandi
• Master Link
• Matt
• Melchizedek
• Neo
• Ninten*
• Steven
• The Goron Moron
• Zenox

Below are a few users that are part of the ZeldaWiki usergroup, but since they have a ranking already higher than ZeldaWiki, ZeldaWiki is shown as a secondary usergroup.

• Alter
• Blackice cc
• dark_link01
• DisappearingMist
• Josh
• Mases
• Shnappy

Fansite Worker

A Zelda Dungeon Fansite Worker is a member of the ZD forums who owns or works for an existing Zelda site. Fansite workers' names are in a pinkish purple color and have a compass next to their rank.

Current Fansite Workers

• Abyss Master
• Alexander
• Arctic Fire
• Autydi
• Cody
• Deku Lord
• DekuLink
• ebuch
• F3
• Gravity
• Hammer Bro. Mike
• Judai
• Killswitch
• Last Hylian
• Lysia
• mario
• Menelaus
• Nathan
• Tappy
• TheKingofHyrule
• TheManInTheMoon
• Thewindmaker
• thirdprophet
• Twilight Prince
• WithTheDawn
• Xizor
• Zeldatwilight
• Zeypherlink
• »-LasT-ChaNcE-«

The ZD Alliance

The Zelda Dungeon Alliance was a grouping of Zelda websites that was formed by Mases at Zelda Dungeon during the Spring of 2008.

Concept

The Zelda Dungeon Alliance was first announced on February 24th, 2008 and at its original creation, it had several purposes. At Zelda Dungeon over the years, several small Zelda sections of the site were created for miscellaneous projects. One of these was a page for fan artwork, another for a sprite comic, a section for fan submitted music, some miscellaneous articles and editorials, and much more. These sections of Zelda Dungeon were often times very poorly done, rarely updated, and were not kept up to date at all. Mases wanted to get rid of these poorly done sections at the website, while also providing this unique content for the fans.

The goal was to provide updates from the websites that were a part of the Alliance and post them at Zelda Dungeon. This would allow the staff of Zelda Dungeon to provide constant updates on a relatively often basis, while doing little of their own work. It would also give the fans of Zelda Dungeon interesting material to look at outside of the standard game guide updates that the staff make. Lastly, it would promote the unique content that is found in the online Zelda community.

Associated Websites

When the project was first announced, Mases stated that there would be 8 websites that formed this alliance. On March 5th it was announced that the alliance would expand to cover more than 8 websites. Mases did not officially state how many websites were to be a part of the Alliance, but upon the release of Layout 16, 10 slots were made available for alliance sites.

North Castle

North Castle was the first site to be announced as a member of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. When Mases first announced the alliance on February 24th, 2008, he also introduced North Castle. North Castle offers an archive of 100's of fan fictions and 1000's of fan created pieces of artwork. This, along with several other unique fan features at the website, made it a perfect website for the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. Since the launch of layout 16, North Castle has been the most featured website of any of the alliance websites. North Castle is updated on a monthly basis, with the update usually occurring between the 20th and 25th of each month. Following the update, Mases makes an update showcasing 3-6 pieces of fan artwork from artists who recently submitted material to North Castle. Mases has also featured other section at North Castle, including a fan submitted video series known as Ask Princess Zelda, a listing of Zelda collectibles, fan submitted top 10 lists, their Zelda Books section, and a You know you've been playing Zelda too much if... portion of the website. North Castle is one of the few remaining websites that is still part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance today.

Zelda Classic

Zelda Classic was the 2nd website of the alliance and was announced on March 5th, 2008. Zelda Classic is a well known website, dating back to the late 1990's. It was originally created with the idea of making the original Legend of Zelda playable on the computer. This was soon accomplished and the website then took on different goals. ZQuest was released soon after, which allowed fans to create their own fan created games that could be played on Zelda Classic. The website also offered over 240 downloadable quests at the time of the announcement. Zelda Classic was certainly a unique website, and Mases originally planned on updating whenever updates were made to the Zelda Classic software. Additionally, Mases planned to occasionally make updates explaining how to use Zelda Classic and perhaps someday even create a fan game himself. Unfortunately, constant updates on Zelda Classic never did occur, and only one alliance update was ever made for Zelda Classic. On June 2nd, 2008, Mases made an update explaining how to download Zelda Classic, and gave a brief description of what came with the original download, including BS Zelda. At the launch of layout 17, Zelda Classic was removed as a member of the Zelda Dungeon alliance.

PureZC

PureZC was the 3rd website announced as part of the alliance on March 9th, 2008. PureZC directly related to the previously announced website, Zelda Classic. PureZC, or Pure Zelda Classic, was a website dedicated to showcasing fan created quests for Zelda Classic as well as providing the tools needed to create a fan game. At the time of the announcement, PureZC had over 200 fan made quests that were available for download. Additionally, PureZC had over 60 tile sets and over 1000 loose tiles that could be used for a fan game. Within the PureZC forum, there were also several fan games that were featured at the forums and were given their own forum section.

The original idea of including PureZC into the alliance was to update on a monthly basis, showcasing one of the many fan games at PureZC. Each month at the forum, there was a Featured Quest of the Month. Mases had planned to update at Zelda Dungeon each month and give a short write up of the featured game. This never worked out, because a lot more effort than originally expected was required in order to be able to write up a reliable report of the fan game. It went against one of the principles goals of the alliance, which stated that Mases wanted to get consistent updates at Zelda Dungeon while doing minimal work. Thus, after its announcement, PureZC never received an alliance update. It was removed from the alliance at the launch of layout 17.

Zelda Elements

Zelda Elements was announced as the 4th alliance website on March 14th, 2008. At the announcement of the website, Mases believed that Zelda Elements would become the official hub for Zelda related news. Zelda Dungeon was not going to be posting standard news updates any longer, but rather, linking to Zelda Elements for all its latest news. Additionally, Mases became a registered news poster over at Zelda Elements. If Mases found some unique news to report on, Mases would report it on Zelda Elements, and then update at Zelda Dungeon with the news from Zelda Elements. In addition to news, Mases had also planned to feature Zelda Elements for much of its Zelda Informer, such as the sections in regards to Zelda Cameos, Guide to Hyrule, orHow to Make a Zelda Fansite.

After the launch of layout 16, when the alliance was implemented, Zelda Elements had been going through some rough times and very little Zelda news was flowing in. Thus, Zelda Elements never actually received an alliance update and at the launch of layout 17, Zelda Elements was removed from the alliance. A few months into layout 16, Mases abandoned the idea of not having Zelda news updates, and news updates resumed accordingly.

Zelda Comic

Zelda Comic was the 5th website announced on March 18th, 2008. At the time of the announcement, Zelda Comic was a long running active Zelda Sprite Comic dating back to March of 2002. The sprite comic used sprite images from the original Adventure of Link, but also included sprites from various other NES games such as Kid Icarus and Bubble Bobble. In addition to this, Mario, the creator of Zelda Comic, created his own custom sprites from Zelda related characters that appeared in later games, such as Sheik.

When Zelda Comic was announced, it was believed that it would replace the poorly done Zelda Sprite Comic that was currently in place at Zelda Dungeon. For the previous two years, Zelda Comic had been making new comics on roughly a monthly basis, which Mases believed would be a great addition to the website, having one update per month. Unfortunately, this never came to fruition, as Zelda Comic went into a long hiatus before the launch of layout 16, not releasing a single update during the lifespan of layout 16. Zelda Comic did have one update made in an alliance fashion on April 8th. Zelda Comic had added two comics at the beginning of April, before going on their hiatus, and these were posted at Zelda Dungeon. While still on hiatus, Zelda Comic was one of the four websites that remained a part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance after the launch of layout 17.

Zelda Reorchestrated

Zelda Reorchestrated was the 6th website announced as part of the alliance on March 22th, 2008. Zelda Reorchestrated, ZREO for short, was a well established Zelda website dedicated to orchestrating several of the Zelda songs and soundtracks that had been made available over the years. ZREO had been adding new tracks on a weekly basis prior to the announcement as part of the alliance and was soon changed to bi-weekly updates.

ZREO only was given three updates on Zelda Dungeon during the lifespan on Zelda Dungeon. On May 31st and July 13th updates were made about individual orchestrations were added, and on August 22nd, for the release of their Sound Escapes Volume 3 album. The reasoning for the lack of updates based on ZREO had much to do with it being difficult to get Zelda Dungeon fans to find the orchestrations. The orchestrations that are added to ZREO are part of an embedded box that includes all the music from the corresponding soundtrack or game. Mases felt it could be confusing to those who were not actively apart of ZREO to find the mentioned soundtrack, and that fans would end up listening to just random tracks, rather than the ones that Mases mentioned. Thus, the purpose of showcasing new tracks seemed irrelevant and updates were dropped. ZREO has remained a part of the alliance with the transition to layout 17, despite the fact that ZREO does not recognize the link that Zelda Dungeon provides.

Realms of Hyrule

Realms of Hyrule was added on March 28th, 2008 as the 7th website that was part of the alliance. Realms of Hyrule was a popular is a popular forum based role playing game that is based around the Legend of Zelda series. Users could create their own character and interact via roleplaying with other created characters by other users. The created characters had different races and all had distinctive attributes. Your character could also move around the world map that was given by Realms of Hyrule. The site is truly unique, and that is why it was chosen as a member of the alliance. However, Mases soon realized that it was hardly the type of website that could have consistent updates from Zelda Dungeon. Thus, the end result was that it only ever got one alliance update on July 19th, 2008, stating that the website had returned after some downtime. Realms of Hyrule was removed from the alliance at the launch of layout 17, but remains an affiliate of Zelda Dungeon.

Zelda Wiki

Zelda Wiki was the 8th website announced as part of the alliance on on April 23rd, 2008. Zelda Dungeon had previously been a supporting website of the Zelda Wiki, but after some time off due to some of the behind the scenes political issues, Mases decided to formally rejoin the Zelda Wiki and also included them into the alliance. This was part of a bigger goal of trying to get the Zelda Dungeon community more involved with Zelda Wiki. This did not work out as Mases originally imagined and it wasn't until early 2009 where the Zelda Wiki became integrated with the Zelda Dungeon fan base. During the Alliance days, Mases was making updates for when new articles became featured at Zelda Wiki. These news posts did not draw much attention from the fan base at the time, and they did not cover anything exciting or interesting for the visitors. Thus, Mases only ever made two alliance updates about Zelda Wiki, both occurring in June of 2008, two weeks apart from one another. The Zelda Wiki was temporary removed from the alliance at the launch of layout 17, but had since been listed once again as one of the four websites. Mases does not actively make updates concerning the Zelda Wiki, but the Zelda Dungeon Forums have become more integrated with the Zelda Wiki.

ZeldaBlog

ZeldaBlog was the 9th and final alliance website that was added to the alliance on May 2nd, 2008. ZeldaBlog had been a popular website started years ago by The Missing Link of The Grand Adventures. It had closed down in 2007, but it had relaunched just around the time that Mases formally announced them as a part of the alliance. ZeldaBlog was one of the prominent websites of the alliance during its early few weeks. The goal was, every two weeks after a few articles were posted to the ZeldaBlog, Mases would make a post at Zelda Dungeon promoting these posts. Mases would give a short summary of the articles but also give his take on the topics that were being discussed. Mases ended up making two of these sets of updates, just weeks after the release of the alliance. Unfortunately, ZeldaBlog did not last long during its relaunch in 2008 due to server problems at its host, LegendOfZelda.com. ZeldaBlog remained an alliance website into the 17th layout, as there was still talk of Darth Citrus of Exploding Deku Nut bringing it back online. However, the website was removed from the alliance a few months into the 17th layout.

Unconfirmed Websites

There were four websites that at one point or another were talked about as possible members of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. For one reason or another, they never did come to fruiting.

Zelda's Secret Ocarina

Zelda's Secret Ocarina, or ZSO, was a website dedicated to the rare findings within the creation and the actual Zelda games. In particular, ZSO had a lot of information in regards to BETA Ocarina of Time, including screenshots, analysis, mod hacks, and much more. The staff of ZSO were also interested in contributing detailed articles regarding the BETA portion of Ocarina of Time and other Zelda titles. Talks of including ZSO as an integral part of Zelda Dungeon began happened in the Fall of 2007, months before the first ideas of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance were thought out. ZSO was even announced at Zelda Dungeon at the launch of layout 15. ZSO was hacked during late 2007, and a few planned relaunches of the website never did come to fruition. Even at the launch of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance, there were only 9 websites, in which Mases planned to announce ZSO as the 10th website once it was ready to go. Unfortunately, it never did.

Legend of Zelda.com

Legend of Zelda.com, or LoZ.com, is an online Zelda website with a massive Zelda Forum and a large Media section. Prior to Mases including Zelda Elements into the alliance, Mases had talks with LoZ.com about being the news and media hub for Zelda Dungeon. Mases had become a news reporter at LoZ.com during this time, but he asked »-LasT-ChaNcE-«, the webmaster of LoZ.com, if he could also become a media coordinator at the website. In particular, Mases wanted to have control over the LoZ.com Image Gallery and have it interlinked with Zelda Dungeon. This meant that the Zelda Dungeon Image Gallery was something Mases wanted to get rid of, much like many of the other sections of the website. However, Chance told Mases that the website already had an established media coordinator and was not interested in the idea. Mases then decided to keep the image gallery, but was planning on keeping LoZ.com as a news hub. Mases eventually decided to have Zelda Elements as the news hub for the alliance, because of his friendlier relationship with the webmaster, Nexus Zero. LoZ.com was never publicly announced during the period of the alliance.

Zelda Chronicles

Zelda Chronicles was a website that was run by Avenged at the time. Zelda Chronicles on two seperate occasions in the past had merged with Zelda Dungeon, and because of this, had close ties with Mases. Many of the sections that were brought to Zelda Dungeon when Avenged joined the staff planned to be returned to Zelda Chronicles. This never did happen though and Zelda Chronicles, although it did relaunch, never added much content to its website. Much like LoZ.com, Zelda Chronicles was never officially announced during the period of the alliance.

Zelda Almanac

Zelda Almanac was an encyclopedia that was thought up by Mases with the intention of supplanting Zelda Wiki and Zeldapedia as the definitive online Zelda encyclopedia. In late 2007, Mases publicly voiced his displeasure about Zelda Wiki and its owner, citing issues Mases had with the image policy as well as the mindset behind the owner of the Wiki. Mases asked around the community, trying to gather support for an encyclopedia. Mases ended up gathering 27 websites that were interested in the Wiki idea, with Legend of Zelda.com being the most notable. Mases worked for a brief period trying to get the website up and running and wanted to announce its launch at the time layout 16 was released. After some server problems at LoZ.com, the project moved to another host where it was viewable online, but never officially released. Word eventually spread to the owner of the Zelda Wiki, and a compromised was reached where the websites image policy was changed, and several diplomatic policy's were changed, in regards to the requirements of supporting websites of the Zelda Wiki. After these terms had been compromised, Mases decided to toss away the Zelda Almanac, much to the displeasure of many of the people that Mases took a long time to recruit for the project. Zelda Almanac was planned to be an alliance website, but after the compromise, Zelda Wiki became an alliance website instead.

Couples of ZD

Zelda Dungeon has two notable couples within its community. Both couples have been together for several years and originated outside of Zelda Dungeon

Caleb and DisappearingMist

Caleb and Michelle lived in the same general area in Homer, Alaska both of their lives. They both attended the same high school, and became acquainted there. They became friends in their junior year, and by the end of that school year, they were dating. Destiny unfolded in the winter of 2007, after dating 2.5 years, when Caleb proposed to Michelle. April 4, 2008, they got married and are living happily ever after! (That's right, just like in the movies.)

Caleb joined the site on March 25th, 2007 and has since worked his way up to a Webmaster position at the website. Michelle, who was constantly seeing Caleb working on the website, decided to join the forums on August 20th, 2008. Michelle has since became a Hylian Hero at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Caleb and Michelle are the only married couple at the Zelda Dungeon Forums.

During the after hours of the Zelda Dungeon Video Podcasts when Caleb is a co-host, Michelle can often times be heard in the background, and on occasion, she will chime into the discussion.

Alder Dragon and Lenora Dragon

Tom & Claire both joined the forums in November of 2007, just five days apart from one another. They use matching usernames with Tom's being Alder Dragon and Claire's being Lenora Dragon, immediately signifying that there is a relation between the two.

Both born and raised in the same town, they had not met until middle school. When they were in the 7th grade, they were introduced by friends. Not really knowing names at first, he was simply the boy with the "Don't make me go Zelda on you" tee. By nearly the last day of the 7th grade, they started dating. Prior to dating, Claire had known very little about the Legend of Zelda series, in fact, she only knew about Tom's shirts, while Tom had been knowledgeable on the series and had first began playing around 3 years of age. By the time she first visited his home, after (of course) being told not to touch the mint Legend of Zelda collectibles, he agreed to let her borrow one of his games. Nearly 4 years later, and now they are both playing the games from the Legend of Zelda series and have incorporated their liking for the series into their daily lives through Zelda Dungeon.

Since their arrival to Zelda Dungeon, they both have reached arbiter status. Tom, after taking a few month hiatus from the website, was replaced as a forum staff member. However, he has since returned and remains a Hylian Hero at the forums, while Claire has been given the position of an arbiter. They are both active members within the Zelda Dungeon community and aim to remain active members.

Forums

For much of Zelda Dungeon's history, Zelda Dungeon never did have a consistent forum for an extended period of time. In total, there have been three official incarnations of the Zelda Dungeon Forums, but minor forums that were connected to Zelda Dungeon did exist in the past.

History

Early Forums

During the early years of Zelda Dungeon Mases had always been very reluctant to start his own community forum. Mases had never been a big proponent of community message boards and had saw so many Zelda forums die out due to inactivity. Given Zelda Dungeon's small site size in its first few years, Mases chose not to go this route with Zelda Dungeon.

Instead of starting its own forum, Mases often times linked to forums of affiliate based websites. Often times this linked to other Zelda forums or even other generic Nintendo based forums that had a Zelda section. There were countless number of websites that were being linked to from the Zelda Dungeon home page. None of these forums were ever actively promoted and the websites being linked to changed on a monthly basis. Mases choose to go this route just to guide his fans towards a community forum, and to also support the forums of his affiliate websites.

1st Generation - Zelda Legacies

Zelda Dungeon also saw its first active participation in a forum during the Summer of 2004. One of the websites closest friends at the time was a website known as Zelda Legacies. They had their own community forum, but it was run by Cartoons, a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. While it was not officially a part of Zelda Dungeon at its conception, the forums were actively promoted at Zelda Dungeon with links and consistent mentions of the forums.

Throughout this time period, Zelda Legacies was beginning to dwindle away, and the forums were becoming more and more interlaced with Zelda Dungeon rather than Zelda Legacies. This forum was known as the Forsaken Forums and in retrospect, is known as the 1st generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum was run on the vBulletin forum software, which was licensed to the webmaster of Zelda Legacies.

Unfortunately, Zelda Legacies and its forums experienced some rough times and went offline, leaving Zelda Dungeon without its own community forum. Throughout its lifetime, the first generation of forums for Zelda Dungeon accumulated over 300 registered members and 7,000 total posts. Outside of Mases and Cartoons, no known members of the 1st generation of Zelda Dungeon Forums are still known to be members of the current incarnation of forums.

2nd Generation - PhpBB

Shortly after the fall of the first generation of forums, Cartoons wanted to relaunch the forums once again, and he did so on October 10th of 2004. The was the first forum software to be hosted by Zelda Dungeon and it became known as the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum program used for this second forum was the phpbb software. Phpbb is a very popular free forum software that was used by several Zelda fan websites at the time. Activity at the forum sparked immediately upon the launch of the forums, and a steady incline in activity followed for the next several months.

In the Spring of 2005 the Zelda Dungeon forums continued to slowly grow, eclipsing the 200 member mark and the 5000 post count. It was during this point in time that the Zelda Dungeon Forums saw the registration of several members who would go on to become forum staff members. Many of these members that joined the forums during this period of time still remain a part of the Zelda Dungeon forum staff including Arbiter Y2K3 and Super Moderator Linkman8.

The 2nd generation of forums had all the standard Zelda related sections, but it also had a few sections that were interlaced with projects going on at the website. One of these was about a project dedicated to the Mas & Vic Present project at Zelda Dungeon. This is where Mases and Vic would review old NES titles and post them at Zelda Dungeon and on Youtube. The section at the forums were used for users to be able to comment on the reviews.

Cartoons left the website in early 2007, and because of this, the Zelda Dungeon Forums were becoming neglected by Mases, and security upgrades for the forums phpbb software were ignored. Mases was disgusted with the direction that forum was going, as the forum was becoming more focused on forum word games, textual role playing games, and a controversial mature discussion. None of which had much to do with Zelda Dungeon or the Legend of Zelda series.

On July 27th, due to poor handling of security by Mases, the Zelda Dungeon forums were hacked into. Later that day, Mases made an announcement about the hacking and removed the forums from the website. In subsequent announcements, Mases claimed that the hacking was irreversible and that the data from the php forums was gone forever. However, this was not entirely true, as both Mases and former staff member Cartoons, had database backups that could have been restored. Mases chose not to pursue this route and made the forum appear as if it was gone for good. Mases had long term goals of restarting the forums with new forum software and a fresh slate.

Legend of Zelda.com

During the short lived merged between Zelda Dungeon and Legend of Zelda.com, LoZ.com was the home of the forums. During this brief flicker of time, the forums at LoZ.com were actually referred to as the Zelda Dungeon, as part of the agreement with the merger. Many of the Zelda Dungeon members during the 2nd generation did make the transition to the LoZ.com community during this period of time. After the fallout of the merger, most of the members of Zelda Dungeon did not remain active at LoZ.com.

Zelda Legacy - Chamber of Sages

After the fall of the php forums, Mases made an announcement that the forums at Zelda Legacy were to become the new temporary home of Zelda Dungeon until further notice. This occured on July 27th, 2007 and held true for a little over two and a half months. During this time period, Mases was given an administrator positions at the Zelda Legacy forums. However, Mases never did take an active role in the actual administration of the Zelda Legacy forums. Some of the Zelda Dungeon forum members made the shift to Zelda Legacy, while others just left the community all together. Some members remained a part of the Zelda Legacy Forums even after the launch of the 3rd generation of forums at Zelda Dungeon, much because the 3rd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums did not have a wide variety of general discussion sections.

3rd Generation of Forums - vBulletin

The 3rd generation of the Zelda Dungeon forums was officially released to the public on October 17th, 2007, just a few weeks after the release of Phantom Hourglass. At the initial launch, the forums were using the myBB forum software, which acts as a free alternative to vBulletin. However, after just three months with the software, the forums were upgraded to vBulletin in January of 2008.

The launch of the forums immediately brought controversy from long time members. Members were upset with the lack of general discussion sections. Many familiar sections from previous forum incarnations had been removed, such as the general discussion, mature discussion, word games, spam section, and the role playing area. This caused a divide amongst veteran members, many of which did not return to the forums. However, with Zelda Dungeon receiving record visitors after the launch of Phantom Hourglass, a large influx of brand new members came to the forums, giving the forum a diverse group of users.

The forums grew exponentially over the next year. From April 2008 through January of 2009, each consecutive month saw an increase in total posts. However, this came to a halt in early 2009 when the streak was broken and there were consecutive months of decline. The forums have since settled and there has been little growth or decline during the Summer of 2009 and into the Fall.

On August 19, 2009 some member managed to hack a moderator's account and use it to wipe out at least a 1/3 of the forums. Nearly 20,000 posts were lost during the attack. The hacker proceeded to ban people from the Shoutbox but then began deleting all the Zelda Sections that he was able to moderate. Luckily, A Super Moderator at the site, DarkLink01, realized that he could move all threads to sections in the forums the hacked moderator had no power over. This saved around 14,000 posts. The plans to upload the back ups for the site failed as the Shoutbox caused for all backups since February 2009 to fail. Mases then decided that we should just build up the forum from its damaged state.

Attacks

Summer 2007 Hacking

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Omena

The forums were spammed up by one, or possibly several, spammer's, creating multiple accounts to evade banning. Although these member's were eventually IP banned, it was very difficult for Mases to ban these spammers, as they seemed to be professionals, changing their IP addresses regularly. During the time before they were finally banned, they plagued Zelda Dungeon with spam, multiple accounts, and generally annoyed members. Also, these members created clone accounts of members, such as making accounts like "Amelie2" , "smitie2", and also cloning other well known members. All the clone accounts and multiple accounts messages were turned into guests, as well as their messages never counting as a message made by members. The war on spam eventually came to an end, but only before much annoyance as caused, as well as stress for the moderator's, super mod's, and webmaster's. Also, Arbiter's were affected too, as members with shape usernames, ( such as a name made of triangle's) Plagued the shoutbox, sending people spam or trolling messages, even private messaging cartoon heads with middle finger's up at people.

August 2009

On August of 2009, one of the moderators of the Zelda Dungeon community forums was hacked. The hacker then presumed to delete 13,000 posts from the forums and ban people from the Zelda Dungeon Shoutbox. Several other users were hacked as well, and the damage continued outside of the Zelda Community on websites such as YouTube and Facebook, in which the hacked users also had accounts there. After the attacks, with a bit of a struggle, the administrators were able to recover some older, archived posts. However, all posts were not successfully restored, and the community is still recovering from all of those lost posts.

Features

The forums at Zelda Dungeon have numerous features, some of which are very common to other Zelda forum communities around the net, while others are more distinctive to Zelda Dungeon.

Shoutbox

The shoutbox works much like an instant messenger. It was visible on the main forum page and allowed users to chat about anything they feel they wanted to chat about. Features of the shoutbox include all of the same features as posting on a thread with the exception of adding attachments. This includes bolding letters and adding smileys.

The shoutbox is no longer available to the public, but rather, is restricted to ranked members, as well as registered users who have reached certain bench marks in terms of number of posts, number of days registered at the forum, and reputation level.

Video Podcast

Mases holds a bi-weekly video podcast that is displayed to the right of the shoutbox. Mases is usually accompanied by a "special guest" (usually a Zelda webmaster) via skype. Announcements about the site are first made and then Q&A with Mases and the guest. People can PM or email Mases questions they'd like answered or ask it in the shoutbox during the Q&A section. Recently, Mases has implemented a Zelda related discussion at the end. For example, "The color of Link's hair." After the official podcast is over, Mases holds an "after party" for several hours. Usually just to hang out with ZD members and play games, such as Pokémon matches online.

Arcade

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Controversy

Of course, like many other forums on other fan sites, there is much controversy on many topics. The Zelda Dungeon tries its hardest to keep controversy clean by having rules against flaming, foul language and off topic posting to make sure that arguments don't get too out of hand. Controversy on the different topics is also necessary for making a good forum as it keeps the conversations fresh, fun and it keeps the users thinking.

General Discussion

At the launch of the 3rd generation of the Zelda Dungeon forum, Mases decided not to include many of the general discussion sections at the forum. Instead, the forum was heavily Zelda based with very little sections existing around general discussion at all. Mases took harsh criticism by many of the long time members of Zelda Dungeon because there was no general discussion, role playing, word game, or mature discussion present at the launch, all of which were popular at the previous incarnation of the forum. It wasn't until several weeks into the forums existence that a general discussion was added to the website, and several months down the line until a mature discussion was added. There were talks of a return of the role playing section at the forum, but those talks were abandoned, and as of today there is no discussion of bringing a role playing or word games section to the forum. Today the General Discussion area also has a General Gaming and Entertainment section, but it stays a minor part of the forums.

Mature Discussion

Mature Discussion is where the users at Zelda Dungeon can post and respond to threads dealing with the more serious topics that deal with things like politics, war, religion and many other topics of the like.

War on Spam

The War on Spam was a point in history where Zelda Dungeon took action to try to restrict spam at the forums. After numerous complaints that the forums had been infested with younger members and members who did not care to put any effort into making quality posts, the War on Spam was launched. There were five key implementations during the War on Spam.

• A vBulletin modification that automatically capitalizes words in new threads.
• The minimum character requirement was bumped up from 15 to 100. (Later reduced to 50)
• Minimum Time Between Posts increased to 120 seconds. (Later reduced to 90)
• Reputation system was utilized to discourage frequent spelling and grammar errors.
• Harsher punishments were given out to spammers and repeat offenders.

The War on Spam received a mostly positive reaction from members, but a handful of members had voiced their disagreement with the policy. In particular, people were upset with the character requirement of 100, as well as the reputation system. While the 100 character limit comes out to 10-20 words on average, or roughly two sentences, users believed that such a restriction did not allow users post how they would like to post, but rather, they believed the ranked members at Zelda Dungeon wanted to dictate the way members would post.

The complaints in regards to the spelling and grammar subsided after clarification from Mases. The purpose of this was not to make posts seem like a school paper, in which missing grammar would deduct points. The purpose was to weed out certain posts and members who deliberately were using improper grammar. In example would be not using any capitalization at all during an entire post, or using capitalization for every letter in a post.

Shoutbox Restriction

In September of 2009, it had been decided that it was in the forums best interest to restrict access to the shoutbox to certain user groups and registered users who had reached certain bench marks. The reasoning for this was that the shoutbox was becoming more of a hangout for members that had little to no interest in improving the forums at Zelda Dungeon. Often times the shoutbox was becoming the center of attention at the forum due to constant controversy and drama popping up. Additionally, it was believed that restricting access to the shoutbox would increase overall post activity at the forums, as members would not have the option of the chatroom, and thus would carry discussion over to the forum topics.

This received a very mixed reaction by many long time Zelda Dungeon forum members. Some believed that the shoutbox was the life blood of the forums, and without allowing access to everybody, the forums would lose its distinctiveness from other Zelda communities. On the flipside, others believed it was a necessary step to progress the forums and to shift the activity in the forums back to the actual forums, rather than the shoutbox. The end result of this restriction has caused a small group of members to leave the Zelda Dungeon forum coommunity.

History

Conception

Mases Hagopian originally gained interest in the Zelda series after playing A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo. Years later, Mases obtained a copy of Ocarina of Time and his interest in the series grew. Leading up to the release of Majora's Mask in the year 2000, Mases became involved in the online Zelda community, frequently visiting the Zelda fan website known as Zelda Power. During the summer of 2001, Mases thought of the idea of creating his own Legend of Zelda website where he could provide written strategy guides for all of the Zelda games. This idea came to fruition near the end of the summer of 2001.

Layout 1.0 - The Early Days

The site launched on August 19th, 2001 and was originally hosted at Yahoo Geocities free hosting service. The site initially launched as part of a network of sites about several other gaming and TV show series', including Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Dark Cloud, and Dragonball Z.

This early era didn't last long, and by October of 2001, all of the network sites had gone inactive and only Zelda Dungeon remained. This primitive version of Zelda Dungeon had very little game content, and it was in October of 2001 that Mases began working on an Ocarina of Time Walkthrough. After about a month of work, Mases was beginning to lose interest in working on the site, based on the fact that there were no incoming visitors. Activity came to a complete halt in December of 2001. It wasn't until January 2nd, 2002, when Zelda Dungeon was first listed on the Google search engine. For the first time, consistent visitors began to flow into Zelda Dungeon. While it was such a tiny number in retrospect, the site was receiving 5-10 visitors per day, and this caused work to resume on Zelda Dungeon. The site got its first affiliate in City of Clocktown, an aspiring website at the time, and Mases became very close friends with the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. Zelda Dungeon continued to rack up more affiliates and there was a consistent flow of new content appearing at the site. With the help of the Webmaster of City of Clocktown, Mases setup an account at shorturl, and the site could now be found at the much easier to remember zeldadungeon.vze.com.

Controversy hit Zelda Dungeon during this early period, when Mases was directly linking to mp3 audio files that were hosted by Zelda Power. Mases did not know that he was not supposed to this at the time, but in response to these new audio files, more visitors began to come to the website. After a few weeks, Mases was contacted by Aaron Holt, Webmaster of Zelda Power, and was asked to remove the direct links to Zelda Power's media.

Layout 2.0 - HTML Conversion

On March 27th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon launched Layout version 2.0, and it was the first layout that was built with html coding. The layout was built by the Webmaster of City of Clocktown. Prior to this layout, Zelda Dungeon had been built with a yahoo geocities site builder. With the introduction of HTML coding, the website now had a consistent appearance throughout all of the pages.

Two versions of this layout were actually released. Upon release, version 2.0 had a listing of all the Zelda games along the navigation, and every specific page of content for each of the games was also listed. This worked well at the layouts launch, as there were so few content pages. However, the website began to grow and new pages were constantly being added to the site, which caused the left navigation to become very lengthy. Additionally, because site was using basic HTML, after every new page or affiliate was added, every single page of the website had to be individual edited.

Several months into the layouts existence, version 2.5 was launched. The noticeable difference was that game menu on the left navigation has been compacted so that it only listed the actual games. With version 2.5, the website began using shtml. What shtml did, was allowed the navigation bars to be adjusted without having to go through and edit every single page when a single link was changed, and this made editing the website a lot more efficient.

The site was growing rapidly during this layout, and yahoo geocities was no longer large enough for Zelda Dungeon. At the end of each month, Zelda Dungeon was being taken offline due to overuse of the allowed bandwidth. After searching online for other free hosts that were more reliable, Mases stumbled upon a website known as Zelda Odyssey, which was part of the Chatville network. After contacting the webmaster of Zelda Odyssey, Zelda Dungeon was accepted for hosting, and moved to this new network.

During this time frame, Zelda Dungeon hired its first ever staff member, Steph. Steph originated from Link's Domain, a Zelda website which had just closed down. After seeing her work and seeing the closure of the Link's Domain, Mases contacted Steph and offered her a job at the website, where she officially became a staff member on October 27th, 2002. Steph ended up creating much of the Adventure of Link content at the time, and had set a new standard of content for Zelda Dungeon. Steph was only at the website for several months before leaving her position behind. Almost all of her content has since been replaced, but Steph still leaves behind a legacy of being the first staff member at Zelda Dungeon.

Layout 3.0 - Hosting Issues

Just prior to the launch of Layout 2.0, Zelda Dungeon became affiliated with one of the leading Zelda websites online at the time, Zelda Central. Victor, the Webmaster of Zelda Central had grown to be close friends with Mases, and becuase of this, he offered to create Zelda Dungeon a brand new layout. On November 23rd, 2002, layout 3.0 was launched and it was a visual upgrade over layout 2.0, as it added more color to the website. Several noticeable changes could immediately be seen with the new layout, including the first official banner that the website had at the top of the layout. In previous layouts, there was just simply a line of text stating the websites name, but now a traditional banner was in place including the sites name and artwork from the Zelda franchise. Also, prior to layout 3.0, the site was always referred to as The Zelda Dungeon, but with the new layout, 'the' was dropped from the website title, and it was now simply referred to has Zelda Dungeon.

Zelda Odyssey, the host of Zelda Dungeon, was experiencing frequent downtime, and this led to Zelda Dungeon also having frequent downtime. With the growth of Zelda Dungeon being stunted because of hosting issues, Mases began looking elsewhere in the Zelda community for websites that offered free hosting. On December 14th, 2002, Zelda Dungeon was accepted by Lars-Christian of Zelda Universe and began to move to its new home. Zelda Universe did not support shtml at the time, and this caused the transition process to be a bit more difficult. Zelda Dungeon abandoned shtml, and shifted towards php, of which remains the primary coding system of the website today. One of the luxuries of being hosted by Zelda Universe, was the large influx of fans that began pouring into the website. Zelda Universe was one of the largest Zelda websites online during this time, and this brought a lot of traffic to Zelda Dungeon.

In early 2003, Mases applied for a domain name at acidmist.com, a website that offered free domain names. Zelda Dungeon was accepted, and the new url for the website was now zeldadungeon.com. In March of 2003, Zelda Dungeon once again contacted acidmist, and this time applied for the free hosting package that acidmist offered. Free hosting would be provided in exchange for the placement of a small banner advertisement at the top of each page of the website. Zelda Dungeon was accepted and in March of 2003 left Zelda Universe and found its new home at Acidmist. Leaving Zelda Universe slowed the growth process of Zelda Dungeon, but Zelda Dungeon was now on its own, outside of the shadow of being hosted at other Zelda websites.

Layout 4.0 - New Co-Webmaster

Zelda Dungeon released Layout version 4.0 on May 3rd, 2003. Mases found this layout online from a website known as Free Layouts. The site offered a bunch of free layout templates that could be freely used by anybody who runs a website. The layouts color scheme was drastically different than the previous two white layouts, as it had a much darker feel to it. After the initial release of the layout, Mases found that there was another, much smaller website, using the exact same layout template found at Free Layouts. This lack of uniqueness, caused the layout to not be much of a hit with the frequent visitors of the website or with Mases himself.

After Steph became the first staff member of Zelda Dungeon a year earlier, the website hired numerous staff members to create content and write articles and editorials, but none of these staff members ever ended up sticking around for more than a couple weeks. On May 3rd, the same day as the launch of the new layout, Mases hired a new staff member who went by the alias of Cartoons. Upon his hiring, Cartoons was treated as a normal staff member and was assigned to work on content projects for Ocarina of Time as well as some material for Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. After being told which parts of the website that he would work on, Cartoons worked very hard and efficiently and just mere hours after being assigned this material, his first content pieces were ready to be released online.

Mases saw this dedication that Cartoons had for the website, and over the next several months of the websites existence, updates became very frequent, content was being added on a daily basis, and the sites visitors were experiencing record highs. On August 18th of 2003, the eve of the websites second birthday, Zelda Dungeon hit the mark of 1000 visitors in a single day. A few months later, Cartoons was promoted to a Webmaster role at Zelda Dungeon.

It was also during this time period, that the first ideas of a Zelda Dungeon Forum were being tossed around. Mases was reluctant to create his own forum, as he felt it would be distracting from growth of the actual website, and because of the relative youth of Zelda Dungeon, would not become very active. However, Mases began seeing the importance of giving a fan base a place to discuss, and formed the first of what became a series of partnered forums. Rather than attempting to create his own forum, Mases agreed to link to existing forums of various affiliate websites of Zelda Dungeon.

Layout 5.0 - Green Return

Layout 5.0 was released on November 25th, 2003. The layout was created by Avenged, who at the time, was the Webmaster of a Zelda Chronicles. The website marked the return of the green color scheme that was seen in Layout 1.0. The layout was filled with dozens of variations of the color green, and this could be seen with a quick glance of the index page. There were very few images within the layout, and this allowed the green to really stand out and the page to load rather quickly.

During the time period of this layout, Zelda Dungeon was able to affiliate with Zelda Power, one of the biggest inspirations for Mases throughout the creation and growth of Zelda Dungeon.

Towards the end of this layouts lifespan, a stunt to the growth of Zelda Dungeon occurred once again because of hosting problems. Acidmist had been a great website for free hosting and a free domain name, but a big downfall was the poor technical support that was offered, and the reluctance of them to comply with the needs of their clients. In this case, Zelda Dungeon had outgrown the hosting package that acidmist offered, and towards the end of each month, the site was reaching its bandwidth limits and the site was coming offline.

This layout did see the hiring of Metalmallow, a new staff member that was brought on board to help the graphics field. Metalmallow created dozens of messenger icons, wallpaper images, avatars, and more. In addition to his graphics expertise, Metalmallow spent a lot of his time working on behind the scenes projects.

Layout 6.0 - ZeldaDungeon.net

During the rough stretch towards the end of the lifespan of Layout 5.0, Zelda Dungeon also hired a new staff member to help produce a brand new layout. This new staff member began creating layout 6.0, but never quite finished before he vanished from the website. It is not known exactly what happened to this member or to where this member went off to, but the layout was not completed. Mases and Cartoons had all the various images that went with the layout, but it was only partially coded when the creator left. This made Cartoons and Mases slowly piece together the layout, which at the time was quite difficult given the primitive knowledge that both Mases and Cartoons had with coding. After nearly three weeks of the site going without an update, Layout 6.0 was launched on March 30th, 2004. It was the first Zelda Dungeon layout to be created and hand coded by members of the Zelda Dungeon staff.

The hosting problems with Acidmist continued, and the search for yet another new host had begun. Unfortunately this also meant that the zeldadungeon.com domain name was also in serious jeopardy, because it was owned by Acidmist. After a search for various other websites that offered free hosting services, Zelda Dungeon discovered a website known as Telefragged. The website was a well established gaming website that hosted several large fan websites from all over the gaming spectrum. They offered free hosting in exchange for a simple banner advertisement that had to be placed on the website. Mases jumped at this offer and after weeks of uncertainty with acidmist, the website moved to Telefragged and was now located at zd.telefragged.com.

With the domain name switch, visitors immediately plummeted. Fortunately enough for Zelda Dungeon, the switch ended up being a great benefit, as for the first time in quite awhile, the website was hosted on a consistent server, and visitors soon reached their peak position during the layout 5.0 era.

The 6th layout of Zelda Dungeon was the first layout that had a quick navigation system for the Zelda games. This was a trend started by popular Zelda websites such as Zelda Elements and Zelda Universe, and during this period, nearly every single large Zelda website had a similar quick navigation menu. The quick menu and the additional images on the side bars led this layout to be by far the most image complex layout to date. The lavender colored layout was also something quite different than any previous Zelda Dungeon layout, and was quite a unique look in color for its time. However, after the strong initial reaction of the layouts launch, most fans did not have good opinions of the layout.

During this time period, Zelda Dungeon switched to Cutenews, a news system that allowed users to make edits on the sites index page without having to edit and upload pages through a FTP program. Having a new content management system like this allowed Zelda Dungeon to have staff members that can work independently to post news articles without having to go through one of the Webmasters or upload through FTP. Thus, during this time period, several new staff members were hired strictly as news reporters. Unfortunately, none of these staff members ever stuck around for more than just a couple of months.

Zelda Dungeon also saw its first active participation in a forum during this time period. One of the websites closest friends at the time was a website known as Zelda Legacies. They had their own community forum, but it was run by Cartoons, a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. While not officially a part of Zelda Dungeon at its conception, the forums were actively promoted at Zelda Dungeon with links and consistent mentions of the forums. Throughout this time period, Zelda Legacies was beginning to dwindle away, and the forums were becoming more and more interlaced with Zelda Dungeon. This forum was known as the Forsaken Forums and in retrospect, is known as the 1st generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum was run on the vBulletin forum software, which was licensed to the webmaster of Zelda Legacies. Unfortunately, Zelda Legacies and its forums experienced some rough times and went offline, leaving Zelda Dungeon without its own community forum. Throughout its lifetime, the first generation of forums for Zelda Dungeon accumulated over 300 registered members and 7,000 total posts.

Layout 7.0 - Community Forums

Related page: Zelda Dungeon Community Forums

Layout 7.0 was launched on August 23rd, 2004, just four days after the websites third anniversary. This was the first of three layouts that would keep the tradition of launching a new layout in celebration of the websites birthday. The layout itself returned Zelda Dungeon to a white background that wasn't seen since the websites 3rd layout. The layout was created by Metalmallow of Zelda Dungeon, and it was his first attempt at a layout. The layout did however, receive a mostly positive reaction from fans of the website.

Zelda Dungeon's content areas began making a gradual shift from standard content to full blown walkthroughs during the period just prior to the launch of this layout, as well as through much of this layouts lifespan. The first of these walkthroughs was completed in the summer of 2004 and it was the A Link to the Past site walkthrough. It was the first full game guide at Zelda Dungeon to have a complete walkthrough of the game, complete with both text and screenshots. This new standard of game guides carried over to the original Legend of Zelda, which was completed in October of 2004. In retrospect, many of these early guides appear to be quite primitive, but at the time of their release, it was top of the line material.

Shortly after the fall of the first generation of forums, Cartoons wanted to relaunch the forums once again, and he did so on October 10th of 2004. The was the first forum software to be hosted by Zelda Dungeon and it became known as the 2nd generation of Zelda Dungeon forums. The forum program used for this second forum was the phpbb software. Phpbb is a very popular free forum software that was used by several Zelda fan websites at the time. Activity at the forum sparked immediately upon the launch of the forums, and a steady incline in activity followed for the next several months.

Near the end of 2004, Mases had taken a backseat as the webmaster of the website. Mases was still active in terms of writing content for the website, but Cartoons had taken over the day to day operations of the website.

Layout 8.0 - New Heights

Zelda Dungeon launched layout 8.0 on February 25th, 2005. The layout was MetalMallow's second attempt at a layout, and it took upon a gold color scheme. The layout had dropped the quick links navigation system at the top of the site.

This era of the website saw some major changes in the day to day activities and updates at the website. In the previous four layouts, Mases and Cartoons were the primary news posters at the website, with the occasional post by MetalMallow. However, during the months after the release of layout 8.0, Zelda Dungeon hired several new staff members in Air Grady and Chance. Air Grady was brought on board to report on recent Nintendo and Zelda news, while Chance was hired at the website to help boaster the graphics department of the site, adding various new icons and buttons, as well as Zelda related wallpapers. Updates had reached their peak during this layout, with nearly daily updates occurring for several months.

In January of 2005, The Minish Cap was released for the Game Boy Advance in the United States, and just a few months later, Mases began working on a Minish Cap Walkthrough. Work on the walkthrough continued throughout the summer, fall and winter until its eventual completion in January of 2006. With the updates on the Minish Cap Walkthrough and content sections, as well as the frequent updates by the staff members of the website, visitors began soaring to new heights. The website repeatedly was breaking new records in total visitors for a single day. On April 2nd of 2005, Zelda Dungeon received 3159 unique visitors, which was a single day record at the time, and a record that would stand for the next 29 months.

The Zelda Dungeon Forums also continued to slowly grow during this point in time, eclipsing the 200 member mark and the 5000 posts count. It was during this point in time that the Zelda Dungeon Forums saw the registration of several members who would go on to become forum staff members. Many of these members that joined the forums during this period of time still remain a part of the Zelda Dungeon forum staff including Arbiter Y2K3 and Super Moderator Linkman8.

Layout 9.0 - Big Surprise

The 9th layout of Zelda Dungeon was released just before the sites 4th birthday on August 18th, 2005. The organization of this layout was done by Cartoons, and the coder of the layout was Henry of Zelda Dimension. MetalMallow and Chance also contributed with some imagery and help with the coding. The layout was created behind the scenes by Cartoons, so much so that Mases did not even know about the layout. On the day of the sites birthday, Cartoons released the layout and made a post entitled 'Surprise' to celebrate the sites birthday. The next morning on the sites birthday, Mases came to the website to see the big surprise and made a formal happy birthday post, thanking Cartoons, Henry, and the fans of the website.

On November 14th of 2005, Avenged joined Zelda Dungeon as a new Webmaster. Avenged offered Zelda Dungeon some very unique material that was previously exclusive to his own website, Zelda Chronicles. However, with the merger between Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Chronicles, this information was now available at Zelda Dungeon

In early January of 2006, our host had setup a Zelda Dungeon media server as part of the already established 3ddownloads. Zelda Dungeon began offering a whole listing of downloadable music from the Legend of Zelda series, including mp3 file rips and downloadable Zelda soundtracks.

Layout 10.0 - Short Lived

Layout 10.0 of Zelda Dungeon was launched on February 12th, 2006. It was created by Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, Avenged, who at this time was using the alias Chrono. This was Avenged's 2nd attempt at a Zelda Dungeon layout after previous helping create layout 5.0. This was the first Zelda Dungeon layout that was not symmetrical. There were still two navigation bars on both sides of the layout, but they each had a different appearance.

The layout in general had an old school Zelda feel to it, using many aspects from the original Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link. The banner used in the background of the header was a map created by Melora, the Webmaster of History of Hyrule. It was a painting like modification to the original Legend of Zelda overworld. Overlapping the map, was a rare official artwork image of Link from the Adventure of Link. The rest of the layout had sprite images and background themes that very much resembled the Adventure of Link. The layout did come out really well, and it was a hit for the short time span that it was online.

There was even a small, unknown Easter egg at the corner of the banner. The statement, "The Evil Jar Awaits The Chosen One" can be seen clearly, and this is a reference to the Legend of Zelda Animated Series. The evil jar was an item used by Ganon during the cartoon and it was symbolic as an item that was kept for the dead. Thus, inferring that death awaits Link.

A lot of the Zelda Chronicles content that Avenged had at his website was brought over to Zelda Dungeon. During this transition, much of the content was reworked to bring up to new standards, and one of the highlights was Avenged's 'Beta Files'. This included a well documented and thorough analysis of the beta history of Ocarina of Time. Prior to Avenged coming on board, Zelda Dungeon had a Coppermine Image Gallery, but it was not popular, had very few images, and was not being up kept. With Avenged as a Webmaster, the image gallery was no longer neglected and media from Zelda Chronicles and other online sources was constantly being added. Another new feature at Zelda Dungeon was a character game. Each week Avenged would post up a screenshot from a Legend of Zelda game, but would blur out a character. Fans would then be able to send in their guesses as to who the hidden character was, and the results were posted the next week, along with a new character. It was one of many intuitive ideas that Avenged had to get fans more involved with the website.

Layout 11.0 - Bright Lights

Just weeks after the release of layout 10.0, talks of yet another new Zelda Dungeon Layout had surfaced. Layout 11.0 was released on April 19th, 2006, and it was Avenged's third layout creation for Zelda Dungeon. The release of the layout came with almost universal displeasure of the color scheme. The new layout took on a gold color scheme, but most fans considered it to be too yellow and viewed it as being way too bright. Along with the new layout came a new greenish-gold forum template, which unlike the layout, received positive reactions from the forums users of Zelda Dungeon.

While Avenged and Mases were big proponents of the layout, the general fan base was not, and a steady decline in visitors was a result of this. After noticing the fans displeasure just three months after the launch of the layout, plans of replacing it with a better layout was in the works.

The staff at Zelda Dungeon was shuffling around quite a bit at this time. Cartoons, after being quite inactive for several months prior to this layout, began making a small comeback with frequent updates in the summer of 2006. Avenged on the other hand, had his interest sway away from the Legend of Zelda series and Zelda Dungeon in particular. Avenged began working on his own website, Planet Vegeta, a dragon ball website, and became less active as a Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. Avenged then resigned from his position as Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon and went on to resurrect his old Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. Avenged provided the site with a steady flow of new material, frequent content updates, news articles, and two layouts during his time as Webmaster. With Avenged gone from the website, this marked the first time in several years where the site had fallen to just two active staff members.

Layout 12.0 - Failed Mergers

Related page: Site Mergers of Zelda Dungeon

Avenged and MetalMallow had been a big part of the creation of the previous 5 layouts at Zelda Dungeon, and now with both of them gone from the Zelda Dungeon staff, Mases looked elsewhere for help with the creation of a new layout. Originally Killswitch of Zelda Legacy offered to create a layout for Zelda Dungeon. However, after a few compatibility issues, the layout was scratched, Jessica, a good friend of Cartoons, offered to create a layout for the website. The new layout launched on the websites 5th birthday on August 19th, 2006.

The layout returned to a greenish color, but it took on a much duller color scheme than anything that Zelda Dungeon previously had. The layout was received with a mixed reaction from fans. Most users at the time did not overly like the layout, but much preferred it over the bright Layout 11.0.

Not too much happened during much of the first few months of Layout 12.0. Several new staff members were brought on board and frequent news updates and articles were written, but none of them received a positive reaction from the fans. The ideas were scrapped, and the staff members began to dwindle away. Usual content upgrades were being made at the website, and even the beginnings of a Link's Awakening Walkthrough were under way. The walkthrough however was never finished at this time, as other issues became more prevalent with the website.

Cartoons, the long time Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, was beginning to take a much less active role with the website. He rarely made any news updates, and most of all his work was now being done behind the scenes. In January of 2007, Cartoons removed himself from the staff page at Zelda Dungeon and months later, Mases posted an update about his formal resignation as Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. This left Mases, for the first time in nearly five years, as the only active staff member of Zelda Dungeon.

On October 31st of 2006, Mases made an update at the website, stating that it was the end of Zelda Dungeon as everybody had come to know it. Mases had been disgusted with the direction of the website over the previous few months as he watched site visitors dwindle to the worst that they had been in nearly 3 years. Even on the eve of the release of Twilight Princess, Mases at the time believed that Zelda Dungeon could not continue to exist in its current form, and Mases was beginning to look elsewhere in the community for Zelda websites to merge with.

In late October Mases approached the webmaster of a now closed website, Zelda Compendium. Early plans were in place for a merger between Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Compendium, but plans never fell through, as the webmaster of Zelda Compendium seemingly disappeared.

Several weeks later, the long awaited Twilight Princess was released. A dejected Mases, after the failure with Zelda Compendium, contacted Killswitch about a potential merger between Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Legacy. Unfortunately, things never worked out and weeks later, plans of a potential merger were dead.

With two consecutive failed attempts at mergers, even with the release of Twilight Princess, Zelda Dungeon had truly hit rock bottom. Site visitors did receive a short jump with the release of Twilight Princess, but moral at the website was at an all time low. December of 2006 marked the first month in site history that there was no update. It wasn't until January of 2007 where Mases formally announced that the plans he had with the website had not fallen through, and thus, regular updates would resume.

In January of 2007, Mases released a new section at the website known as 'Mas and Vic Present'. In this section of the website, Mases, and his close friend Victor, would review old NES games with a mixture of a serious and humerus tone. The videos were uploaded to Youtube, but Zelda Dungeon was the primary home of the videos. A section at the forums was created for the game reviews, and the project did end up gathering a decent viewership. The long term effects of this, included a gradual shift towards the inclusion of video based content at the website.

In February of 2007, Mases released what he dubbed as the 'State of the Dungeon address'. It was the first video based update where Mased spoke about the failed mergers with Zelda Compendium, Zelda Legacy, and a broad overview of what had happened in the previous few months. Mases also gave a brief idea of plans that he had for the future of the website, including a much bigger emphasis on the inclusion of more video content.

The update sparked interest from the Webmaster of LegendOfZelda.com. After a few days of talks, a very short lived merger between Zelda Dungeon and LegendofZelda.com took place. However, Mases quickly turned around and withdrew from the merger, believing that it was rushed and not followed through as originally planned.

Layout 13.0 - Video Content

Layout 13.0 was the second layout that was created by Jessica and it took on a much brighter color scheme than the previous dull layout. The layout was focused on simplicity, with two standard navigation bars, very limited amounts of imagery, and a large content area.

After a failed merger attempt with LegendOfZelda.com in the previous layouts lifespan, talks of a potential merger began to pop up once again. Both sides acknowledged the problems that occurred the first time around and tried to give it another go. Disputes arose about what the possible new layout for this merged site would look like, tensions arose, and the second merger idea never came to fruition and was almost immediately shut down.

The new layout marked the continuation of the emphases on video based material at the website. All updates during this layout were done in a video form. Updates were much larger, but also further apart from one another, often happening every weekend or every other weekend. Updates were embedded onto the sites home page, and a subsequent textual update was placed right below the video. In addition to video updates, Mas and Vic NES reviews continued during this period of time, and towards the end of the layout, a subsequent page was created devoted to the Mas and Vic reviews.

In addition to videos to the NES game reviews and video updates, several more videos were added to the site. One of the features was a 'Top 10 Zelda Website' video countdown, where Mases and other webmasters voted on websites to be listed. After tallying up the vote totals, Mases began airing these countdown videos. The countdown was originally destined to be released in five segments, with each segment covering two websites in the countdown. However, only four of these segments were ever released, which meant only sites three through ten were ever revealed.

Another feature that has since grown at the website, was the inclusion of video based walkthroughs. Mases began working on a video guide for the original Legend of Zelda title. The videos were released at Zelda Dungeon as well as on YouTube. The current YouTube account for Zelda Dungeon was created on February 22nd, and quickly began to gather a following of subscribers.

On March 25th, 2007, Caleb Simpson was formally announced as a new staff member at Zelda Dungeon. Caleb actually applied to the website months before he was hired, but because of the uncertainty with the site during these months, he wasn't officially hired until March. Caleb began working at the website as a content specialist, working with Mases on some of the older game content, with more of an emphasis on better display and completeness of the material. Mases and Caleb revamped much of the original Legend of Zelda section of the site during the time period of this layout.

Layout 14.0 - Phantom Growth

Avenged, after leaving the website 10 months ago, returned to Zelda Dungeon at the launch of Layout 14.0. The layout that was launched was originally intended to be released for Avenged's own Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. After various issues came up with Zelda Chronicles, and some influence from Mases, Avenged decided to come back and once again merge Zelda Chronicles into Zelda Dungeon.

The layout had a few notable differences than any previous Zelda Dungeon based layout, one of them being the color scheme. The tannish color offered a fresh look to Zelda Dungeon. This marked the first layout in Zelda Dungeon history that went away from the standard two navigation bar system. While there was still two navigation bars on the website, they were both arranged on the right side of the layout. This layout marked the return of a quick links navigation system for all of the Zelda games, however there was more to it this time around. When the viewer scrolled their mouse over the game menu at the top of the layout, a small drop down menu would pop up, allowing the viewer to quickly navigate to a specific game page, without having to go through the game index page. These drop downs did not have a complete listing of every game page, as it was believed that the menus would appear quite bulky.

Content during this layout began to really thrive, starting with the continuation and completion of the Legend of Zelda Video Guide. The success of the Video Walkthrough, led the Zelda Dungeon YouTube account to reaching 145 subscribers by August 6th, 2007. Additionally, Caleb began working on the Majora's Mask site walkthrough. Before Caleb joined the Zelda Dungeon staff, he had already completed a Majora's Mask text guide, in a style similar to what would be accustomed to what is found at gamefaqs. Caleb began the transition of migrating the text guide into a site walkthrough, complete with screenshots and artwork, all in a well displayed form with boxes keeping things informative and organized. This new style of walkthrough was the foundation for future walkthroughs, and was a drastic upgrade to the previous styles that Mases created.

Since Cartoons left the website earlier within the year, the Zelda Dungeon Forums were becoming neglected by Mases and security upgrades for the forums phpbb software were ignored. Mases was disgusted with the direction that forum was going, as the forum was becoming more focused on forum word games, textual role playing games, and a controversial mature discussion. None of which had much to do with Zelda Dungeon or the Legend of Zelda series.

On July 27th, due to poor handling of security by Mases, the Zelda Dungeon forums were hacked into. Later that day, Mases made an announcement about the hacking and removed the forums from the website. In subsequent announcements, Mases claimed that the hacking was irreversible and that the data from the php forums was gone forever. However, this was not entirely true, as both Mases and former staff member Cartoons, had database backups that could have been restored. Mases chose not to pursue this route and made the forum appear as if it was gone for good. Mases had long term goals of restarting the forums with new forum software and a fresh slate. On the 28th of July, Mases made an announcement that the forums at Zelda Legacy were to become the new temporary home of Zelda Dungeon until further notice.

On August 19th, 2007, Zelda Dungeon celebrated its 6th birthday and had one of its largest content updates in a single day. On this one day, two new content pages for Majora's Mask were completed, a new Link to the Past content page, two full chapters of the Majora's Mask walkthrough, as well as several new videos, including a new Mas and Vic NES review. An even bigger update was planned, however Avenged was not able to contribute content to the website at the time. Avenged had aspirations of resurrecting his own website, Zelda Chronicles, and shortly after the sites birthday, Avenged left as a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon. Avenged has since gone on to create a popular Dragonball movie fan site known as Dragonball Legends.

Just days after the sites birthday, Caleb was rewarded for his hard work and dedication and was officially promoted to a Webmaster position on August 28th, 2007. Just days later on September 2nd, 2007, Caleb completed the Majora's Mask site walkthrough as well as all other Majora's Mask game pages. A week later on the 8th of September, Caleb released the Majora's Mask official guide. The official guide was a complete textual guide for Majora's Mask, including a full walkthrough, boss guide, enemy guide, character guide, and much more. The guide included detailed textual maps that made the guide stand out compared to most other textual guides for Majora's Mask. The guide marked the creation of a Zelda Dungeon gamefaqs account, where the Majora's Mask site walkthrough was released. The official guide is the largest guide on Gamefaqs for Majora's Mask and it has since received a star rating by the website. The official guide is also currently featured at our affiliate, Zelda Power.

Just over a week later, on September 17th, Caleb began work on the Ocarina of Time site walkthrough. During this time, Mases was also in the process of creating an Adventure of Link video walkthrough for the Zelda Dungeon YouTube account. However, with the imminent release of Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS, both projects were brought to a halt.

Earlier within the month on September 6th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon broke its single day visitor mark of 3159 unique visitors, a mark that stood for nearly 27 months. The 6th of September recorded 3325 unique visitors, and to this date, there has yet to be a single day at Zelda Dungeon that has fallen under this mark of unique visitors.

On September 26th of 2007, the first pieces of Phantom Hourglass content were being released for the site, five days before the games launched on October 1st. On October 9th, chapter 1 of the site walkthrough for Phantom Hourglass was released. The walkthrough was written by Mases, but edited and put together by Caleb, who at the time, did not even own a copy of the game.

On October 16th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon launched a brand new Forum, this time abandoning the old phpbb software, and switching to mybb. The forums were created by Mases, with the support of former webmaster, Cartoons. The forums began to immediately pick up a fan base, many joining to discuss the recently released Phantom Hourglass, while others joining from the old incarnation of the forums. The forum was drastically different than the previous incarnations, as at the time of launch it exclusively featured site and Zelda material, and did not have any features that were popular at the old forums, including a general discussion, role playing area, forum text game area, or a mature discussion. Mases received harsh criticism by some members of the old community at the time of this, but Mases stayed the path during the early months of the forums life, and many of the long time Zelda Dungeon members left the community.

Layout 15.0 - Sprite Layout

Layout 15 was launched on November 22nd, 2007, the day after Thanksgiving. The layout was the first layout that was created by webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, Caleb. It was themed after the Temple of Droplets from The Minish Cap. The initial goal was to design a layout that made it feel like one was actually within a dungeon. The top banner of the website had a puzzle within it. A block of ice with a small key could be seen on the right side of the banner, and an area of fire could be seen on the left side of the banner. Much like many puzzles within the Temple of Droplets, the puzzles solution involved Link pushing blocks of ice to get the small key to the fire. The original idea was to make the banner interactive and playable, but this never did come to fruition.

The layout added a few buttons along the right navigation signifying the current site projects that the staff was working on. One of which, was Phantom Hourglass. Still less than two months after the release of Phantom Hourglass, the Zelda Dungeon team progressed on the section and walkthrough. Walkthrough chapters were released on a near weekly basis since the release of the game and on January 2nd, the walkthrough had been completed. In the coming weeks, just about all the subsequent side pages for Phantom Hourglass were also completed.

On January 23rd of 2008, the Zelda Dungeon Forums received a big upgrade as the site switched over to the vbulletin forum software. This switchover saw a large initial push in registered members and total posts. Over the coming months, significant changes were made to the hierarchy of the forums with the introduction of several new forum rankings. New shoutbox software was installed on the forums, and with that, a new usergroup known as Arbiters were established. Arbiters are those who are just behind Moderators on the forum hierarchy and have powers over the new Zelda Dungeon shoutbox.

On March 1st of 2008, Zelda Dungeon was the recipient of the Golden Mirror Shield award, given out by the Exploding Deku Nut. Each year during the month of February, Darth Citrus of EDN hosted the Golden Item Awards, where sites were nominated and awards were given out to sites that were unique, aspiring, had a lively forum, had a great layout, and an award for the lifetime achievement. Zelda Dungeon was award the lifetime achievement award, and it followed with an acceptance post by Mases at Zelda Dungeon in the days following.

April 4th marked the first time a staff member at Zelda Dungeon got married when Caleb married his wife Michelle.

Zelda Dungeon added a new staff member in Dabombster near the end of the life of layout 15.0. Dabombster was formally a webmaster at the website, Zelda Legacy. However, after he stepped down from his position, he was seen often at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Mases approached Dabombster, asking if he had interest in helping out Zelda Dungeon as part of the site staff. Shortly after, Dabombster was added on board to help revamp The Wind Waker section at the website.

Layout 16.0 - Dungeon Alliance

Related page: Zelda Dungeon Alliance

Beginning in February of 2008, Mases began revealing a project at the website known as the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. Over the next several weeks and months, Mases began revealing websites that were a part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. The original goal that Mases had envisioned with the alliance, was to have a network of eight Zelda websites, each who were unique in their own way. At Zelda Dungeon, rather than having minuscule sections devoted to things like fan artwork, a sprite comic, or a fan games section, Mases preferred to focus strictly on game content and allow other websites in the alliance to satisfy the needs of the other areas. At the launch of the 16th layout of Zelda Dungeon, all these minuscule sections at Zelda Dungeon were to be deleted, and frequent updates of the alliance sites would be posted at Zelda Dungeon.

One of the first websites introduced into the alliance was North Castle, a website devoted to fan artwork, fan fictions, and an assortment of other fan submitted content. Each month, Juliet, the webmaster of North Castle, made an update revealing the newest pieces of artwork and fiction. Mases at Zelda Dungeon, would then feature several of these fan artwork images in what would become know as the monthly artwork update. Four to Six pieces of artwork would be posted at Zelda Dungeon, and this allowed a constant flow of updates to be put on Zelda Dungeon, with minimum work required from the staff of Zelda Dungeon. It also gave a lot of extra exposure to these pieces of unique content and gave the fans of Zelda Dungeon something interesting and unique. Other unique websites that were initially announced as part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance, included, Zelda Comic, Zelda Reorchestrated, Zelda Classic, and several other unique websites. On May 18th of 2008, Layout 16, which was created by Caleb, was launched, and the alliance websites were now being fully implemented. The websites were listed at the top-right corner of the layout in button form.

The layout had a quite a few drastic changes made to the website. With the inclusion of the alliance, all material at Zelda Dungeon was removed, other than game content, site content, and selective media content. All of the site content was stored in pop down navigation bars that could be found along the left navigation and within the header of the layout. The game menus along the left navigation now had huge pop out menus that displayed every piece of content for each game. The compacted navigation bars made it so that it was no longer needed to have two navigation bars on every page of the website. On the right navigation bar on the index page, there was a listing of site projects and affiliates. This page however, was only seen on the index page, and if a user navigated to a game content or media page, the right navigation would be removed and it will be replaced with an expanded content area. This extra space of content allowed the staff members of Zelda Dungeon a wider area to work with, and this ultimately led to higher quality guides because more boxes and larger thumbnail images could be used. New sections of the Ocarina of Time walkthrough that Caleb was working on, were the first pages that took these adjustments into effect.

The layout also so the release of a new slogan for Zelda Dungeon that Caleb created, 'Let us take you through the dungeons'. This signified the extra stress the website had on game content and specifically, strategy guides. Content continued to pour in during this time period, with several new chapters of the Ocarina of Time walkthrough being completed, as well as the beginnings of Twilight Princess site and video walkthroughs.

Prior to the launch of layout, Caleb had been working on another layout that had a black and red color scheme. This layout was never officially released but can be found at the history page of Zelda Dungeon. All of the same fundamental features in the red layout crossed over with the blue layout, but the red layout had too many large images, and this caused the load time of the website to be quite high.

On August 19th, 2008 Zelda Dungeon celebrated its seventh birthday and released a retro version of layout 1.0. Caleb created a mimic of layout 1.0 in a short period of time, and for several hours, it was available for viewing at the Zelda Dungeon index page. The actual birthday update had several new content upgrades, including a new video walkthrough for Twilight Princess and a new site chapter for Ocarina of Time. Mases uploaded the entire Twilight Princess Walkthrough for the sites birthday, however, it was not in complete form, but rather, just temporarily available in text form.

The period of time during this layout saw a drastic increase in active members and total posts at the Zelda Dungeon Forums. Beginning in April of 2008, every consecutive month after April, had more total posts than the previous month. This trend continued every month through the entire lifespan of Layout 16 and into Layout 17. On September 19th, the Zelda Dungeon Forums reached the milestone of 10,000 total posts.

The Zelda Dungeon alliance had not worked out entirely as was originally planned. Many of the alliance websites were going through rough times during the last several months, and many of the sites were not even being updated. Other websites, such as Zelda Wiki or Realms of Hyrule were unique in their own way, but creating constant, interested alliance updates for them, was nearly impossible. North Castle had been the only alliance websites that has been constantly featured at Zelda Dungeon with monthly artwork updates. When discussion of the new layout was being made, Mases and Caleb decided to reduce the alliance down to four websites, only keeping what they felt made the most sense for Zelda Dungeon.

The last few months of the layout saw an influx of several new staff members at Zelda Dungeon. Karashimu, Josh, and Kybyrian all joined the Zelda Dungeon staff during this period. Karashiumu was a former webmaster at several other Zelda websites in the past and was brought on board to help contribute to the Wind Waker section. Josh was hired at the site to help contribute to the Wind Waker section and Kybyrian was hired to help work on the Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages.

Layout 17.0 - Video Podcast

Related page: Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast

Layout 17.0 was created by Caleb and released on October 21st, 2008. The layout was structurally very similar to layout 16.0, but had a much different color scheme, and included a huge fan artwork image for the banner.

The lifespan of the layout saw the hiring of several new staff members at the website. Just prior to the layouts launch, Karashimu, Josh, and Kybyrian were hired, and begining in January of 2009, five new staff members were hired. Yumil, Zenox, Alder Dragon Brandkins,, and blackice_cc all joined the staff in a two month period. Each of them were brought on board to work on specialty guides with Yumil and Alder Dragon working on Link's Awakening, Zenox working on The Legend of Zelda, and blackice_cc working on the Oracle titles. Prior to joining the team, Yumil was the webmaster over at Zelda Relic. After some convincing from Mases, Yumil decided to put his website on a hiatus and joined the team at Zelda Dungeon.

In November of 2008, Mases began experimenting with hardware that would allow for a Live Zelda Dungeon Video podcast. The first podcast took place on November 29th, 2008, but since it was not recorded, it is viewed as a beta version of the podcast. The first official podcast took place on December 9th, 2008. The podcast was streamed live onto the Zelda Dungeon Forums and appeared side by side with the forum shoutbox. Forum users could actively communicate with Mases and other guests on the shoutbox while the podcast was taking place. The podcast ran through the latest news at Zelda Dungeon, at the forums, and within the Zelda world. The podcast then had a Question and Answer section. Each subsequent podcast after the initial one included a special guest, usually a webmaster of another gaming website. Mases interviewed the guest live on the podcast, asking questions about their website or their interest in the Zelda world. The guest would remain online for discussion during the question and answer section.

During the 5th podcast, a featured thread discussion was added to the podcast. Mases would find a thread, give various quotes from some of the member posts, get live involvement from users in the shoutbox, and then it would be discussed amongst the hosts and guests of the podcast. The video podcast is made available for download on google video usually 24 hours after its completion.

After the conclusion of the podcast, Mases remains online for several hours talking with the members of Zelda Dungeon. Often times, other members of the staff or the forums are welcomed onto the live stream to discuss. Mases often times acts as a DJ playing various music throughout the after party. Several activities take place in the after hours of the podcast including Name That Tune, Zelda Hangman, and The Amazing Gameplay Adventures.

Site Mergers

Zelda Chronicles - November 2005

On November 14th of 2005, Avenged, who was known as A7X420 at the time, joined Zelda Dungeon as a new Webmaster. Avenged was a webmaster of his own Legend of Zelda Website, Zelda Chronicles, but because of some difficulties he was forced to shut his own website down. Avenged was no stranger to Zelda Dungeon as he was good friends with Mases and even created layout 5.0 for Zelda Dungeon in the past. With Avenged coming over to the website, he brought over a ton of material that was formally exclusive to Zelda Chronicles. This included various Fan Theories, an Encyclopedia, Hylian creations, and The Beta Files. These new sections helped expand interactiveness between Zelda Dungeon and the community as it offered a few ways that fans can get their material on the website. Additionally, the Beta Files included some rare material that Zelda Dungeon had never had before.

Zelda Compendium - October 2006

The first website that Mases had approached was at the time, a small, little known website, known as Zelda Compendium. Zelda Compendium was a brand new website, only online for a couple of months, but was beginning to develop recognition for having very in-depth game content for some of the older Zelda games. Game content quality that had not been seen anywhere on the internet. Mases contacted the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium with an initial offer to merge websites. Given the youth of Zelda Compendium at the time, the offer Mases made, would be to have Zelda Compendium merge into Zelda Dungeon. All of Zelda Compendium's content would now be available at the website, but more importantly, the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium would become a Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon on an equal par with Mases. The Webmaster of Zelda Compendium was ecstatic about the idea and accepted the offer by Mases, just days before Mases made his update on October 31st. However, days had gone by where Mases attempted to contact the Webmaster of Zelda Compendium, but to no avail. Weeks passed, and Mases had not seen him online and received no e-mail response from him. The website Zelda Compendium, after being updated on a frequent basis for its several month history, had not been updated, and would never be updated again. The site soon disappeared from the internet and the Webmaster was never to be heard of again. To this day, it is unclear exactly what happened to Zelda Compendium and what happened to the webmaster of Zelda Compendium, but needless to say, no merger between the sites ever took place.

Zelda Legacy - December 2006

Several weeks later, the long awaited Twilight Princess was released. A seemingly dejected Mases, after the failure with Zelda Compendium, was unsure of what to do with the website. After realizing Zelda Compendium was gone, Mases looked for other Zelda websites on the internet for a potential merger. Mases contacted Killswitch of Zelda Legacy, and laid out an offer for a merger between the two sites. Mases was interested in merging Zelda Dungeon into the then fast growing website, Zelda Legacy. Mases at the time, was willing to give up the Zelda Dungeon site name, and just wanted the forums to be known as the Zelda Dungeon. In addition, the mark of this potential merger, would be released with a brand new layout, merged content, and a merged history of Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Legacy. Additionally, Mases wanted the ability to bring over a few of the Zelda Dungeon Forum moderators to the forum team at Zelda Legacy. Killswitch was initially interested in the idea at the time, but shortly after, interest seemed to gradually fade away. After several more weeks of slow movement at Zelda Dungeon, little communication, merger talks with Zelda Legacy were dead.

Legend of Zelda.com - February 2007

In February of 2007, Mases released what he dubbed as the 'State of the Dungeon address'. It was the first video based update where Mases spoke about the failed mergers with Zelda Compendium, Zelda Legacy, and a broad overview of what had happened in the previous few months. Mases also gave a brief idea of plans that he had for the future with the website, including a much bigger emphasis on the inclusion of more video content.

This video update sparked interest from Alex and Chance, the webmasters of LegendOfZelda.com. Alex was the original creator of the website, but at the time was not the primary Webmaster. Chance, who was the same Chance who was a previous staff member at Zelda Dungeon, had joined the website, worked his way up the ranks, and became a Webmaster of LegendOfZelda.com. Alex and Chance were also interested in finding another Zelda website on the internet to potentially merge with, and after seeing the video update by Mases, it made perfect sense. Just days after the update, both Webmasters of LoZ.com approached Mases and discussions of a potential merger were underway. Mases was ecstatic about the idea when he was originally confronted, because he knew of the popularity of LoZ.com, and the potential that could become of the merged website. The original foundation of the merger was that for a period of time, the website would be known as, Legend of Zelda.com - Zelda Dungeon, a split name that would incorporate both websites. The forums would be renamed to be known as the Zelda Dungeon, rather than their name at the time, the LoZ.com Forums. Mases would have been given Webmaster controls over the website, and would merge all of Zelda Dungeon's game content into LoZ.com. Members of the Zelda Dungeon forums would be merged into LoZ.com, and they would be allowed to keep their original join date and post count. Additionally, Onilink89, one of the moderators at the time at the Zelda Dungeon Forums, would keep his moderation status when merging into LoZ.com.

On paper, the merger made a lot of sense, and the pre-planning of it was going well. LoZ.com was a site primarily focused on media, news reporting, and a massive community forum. Zelda Dungeon was focused on content and game strategy guides. Each sites weakness was the other websites skill. At the original planning of the merger, the new merged site would be commenced with a brand new layout, signifying this big moment in history. There was a bit of impatience from the Webmasters of both sides, and there was a certain push to get this done as swiftly as possible. Just days later, Mases agreed to the terms, and a launch date was set. The original idea of releasing a brand new layout upon launch had fallen through the cracks, but rather, would just be something that would release at a later point in time.

Mases then created a video update on his site, signifying the merger and Zelda Dungeon Forum members began flowing into the LoZ.com community. Chance, Alex, and Mases all made new posts at LoZ.com, to signify the merger. The night that this happened, thoughts were going through the mind of Mases, and he was unsure whether or not he rushed into this decision or not. After spending a few hours thinking about it and reflecting on the history of Zelda Dungeon, it hit Mases that this was a mistake on his part. Mases rushed and deleted his video update at Zelda Dungeon, deleted the three news posts at LoZ.com, and even deleted his State of the Dungeon video update. It was as if the last few hours of the website had never happened, and Mases had pulled back on his offer of a merger. Mases believed that he rushed into the merger, and that rather than it appearing as a true merger of sites, it seemed more so that Mases was just joining LoZ.com as a new Webmaster. After hearing the news, the relationship between Mases and Chance took a sour turn, and talks of the merger had died out.

Weeks later after the release of Zelda Dungeon's 13th layout, talks of a potential merger began to pop up once again between LegendofZelda.com and Zelda Dungeon. Both sides acknowledged the problems that occurred the first time around and tried to give it another go. Disputes arose about what the possible new layout for this merged site would look like, tensions arose, and the second merger idea never came to fruition and was almost immediately shut down.

Zelda Chronicles - May 2007

Avenged, after leaving the website 10 months previous, returned to Zelda Dungeon at the launch of Layout 14.0. The layout that was launched was originally intended to be released for Avenged's own Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. After various issues came up with Zelda Chronicles, and some influence from Mases, Avenged decided to come back to Zelda Dungeon and the layout was launched on May 14th, 2007. Avenged was still going by the name Chrono during this time period, but later in the layout, he officially changed his alias to Avenged, as it is presently known. The update at the time of the launch inferred that this was a site merger between Zelda Chronicles and Zelda Dungeon, but it did not exactly happen. Avenged coming to Zelda Dungeon was very similar to the first time he came to the website. He brought over another load of information that was previously only on Zelda Chronicles. Avenged's role at the website after this new site merger had to do with managing the fan content such as fan fictions, fan artwork, hylian creations, and various other projects. Additionally, at the initial launch of the layout, Zelda Dungeon had this idea of expanding the range of news updates, including broader Gaming and Nintendo news, allowing the site to make daily updates. This helped contribute to the slow and steady rebounds of visitors during the time of the layout.

Zelda Relic - January 2009

On January 14, 2009, Zelda Relic was closed and all of the content was taken offline. The webmaster left a message saying that he would become staff at Zelda Dungeon. Yumil officially joined the Zelda Dungeon staff on January on 15th, 2009. The incomplete content from Zelda Relic was never transferred over to Zelda Dungeon and Yumil started fresh as a staff member. The sites never officially merged, but rather, Yumil put Zelda Relic on an extended hiatus while focusing his attention on Zelda Dungeon.

Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast

The Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast is a live podcast that takes place roughly every two weeks at the Zelda Dungeon forums. The podcasts are about thirty to forty minutes long, and are typically comprised of updates for the Zelda Dungeon website, community news, and guest interviews.

Topics of Discussion

Below is a listing of the topics that appear on the video podcast.

News and Content Updates

A quick run through of the recent site updates and content additions for the previous two weeks. There are usually discussions of what the site staff is currently working on and mentions of their future plans.

Additionally, news or updates with the Zelda Dungeons forums are mentioned during this time. If the podcast takes place near the 1st of the month, Mases will usually reveal the monthly forum promotions.

A quick run through of any small Zelda or Nintendo related news is also reported, followed by a brief discussion. Larger pieces of Zelda news, are often times left for a later portion of the podcast where the special guest also participates in the discussion.

Featured Thread Discussion

Beginning during the 5th podcast, the featured thread discussion was included. Mases would select a thread from one of the Zelda sections of the forums, and it would be discussed during the podcast. Mases would pull several notable quotes from users within the thread and these would be used as talking points for the hosts and guest during the podcast. Mases would also call upon members who are active in the shoutbox to take part in these discussions.

Topics

• Podcast #5 - The Color of Link's Hair
• Podcast #6 - Life as a Kokiri
• Podcast #7 - Water Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
• Podcast #9 - The Temple of the Ocean King in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
• Podcast #10 - The Cave of Ordeals
• Podcast #11 - Most Useless Item

Question and Answer

In this section, the hosts and guests of the podcast will answer questions that were given by the fans. Prior to the podcast, users send in questions for the podcast and Mases picks out 4-5 of them to answer during the podcast. Depending on the length of the podcast, Mases occasionally takes live questions from members who are participating within the shoutbox.

Special Podcasts

There are occasional Special Podcasts that Zelda Dungeon will be offering. To date, only one such special podcast has taken place, and it was a round table discussion commemorating the announcing of Spirit Tracks.

Spirit Tracks

On March 28th, 2009, Mases hosted a Spirit Tracks Roundtable discussion. The general format of the podcast was dropped and the entire one hour discussion was dedicated to Spirit Tracks. There were three guests on the show, but they were not given interviews like special guests are usually given, because of the nature of the different format. The Missing Link, The King of Hyrule, and Cody were the three guests that were a part of the podcast.

There were certain topics of discussion that were brought forth by Mases, including the meaning of the title Spirit Tracks. There were also several questions that were submitted prior to the podcast, and these were used as talking points. The discussion opened up drastically, and often times the discussion was not even related to the original topics that were asked. This was the purpose of the round table discussion, since it was meant to exchange ideas amongst the participants.

The discussion of Spirit Tracks lasted just over one hour. This was the first podcast that used the Ustream video service. Unfortunately, difficulties arose half way through the podcast, and the live stream was taken down, the forums had crashed, and the site was moving terribly slow. This caused members that were viewing the podcast to be unable to view it live and participate in the discussion. The podcast was still recorded and was made available for download the following day.

Special Guests

• Judai - Appeared on the 2^nd podcast on January 1st, 2009
• Matt - Appeared on the 3^rd podcast on January 17th, 2009, and on the 10^th podcast on April 18th, 2009.
• ebuch - Appeared on the 4^th podcast on January 31st, 2009
• DekuLink - Appeared on the 5^th podcast on February 14th, 2009
• Gravity - Special guest for the 6^th podcast on February 28th, 2009
• F3 - Appeared on the 7^th podcast on March 14th, 2009
• The King of Hyrule - Appeared on the 9^th podcast on April 4th, 2009
• Yumil - Appeared on the 10^th podcast on April 18th, 2009.
• Steven - Appeared on the 11^th podcast on May 23rd, 2009.

Hosts

• Mases — Mases Hagopian is the Webmaster of Zelda Dungeon and main host of the podcasts. While there are other special guests on the podcast, the video is always focused on Mases.

• Caleb — Caleb is the co-host of the podcast, but is not available for every podcast. In podcasts that he is available on, Caleb is the 2^nd man behind Mases in running the podcast. Caleb is often times available during podcasts that are scheduled to begin at 9pm or 10pm US Central Time.

• Dabombster — Dabombster is the other co-host of the podcast. Dabombster is usually the co-host when the podcasts are schedule to begin at 3pm, 4pm, or 5pm US Central Time.

Times of Podcasts

With Mases being based in the United States, the podcast is often recorded at times considered inconvenient for members in other timezones, such as those in Europe. Due to the complaints raised by this, Mases has decided to stagger the podcast airing times, with some airing earlier in the afternoon and some airing in the evening to accommodate international viewers. Mases will always announce the time of his podcast in US Central time. There are plans to have a morning podcast, which would take place at roughly 10am US Central Time to further accommodate international viewers.

After Hours

After the officially recorded podcast is over with, Mases and his guest usually stay online for several more hours in a live stream discussing various topics. On the 3rd podcast, Mases was live streaming on the forums for 12 hours straight. Mases at times will play various music and take requests from fans who are online at the time in the shoutbox. Mases will also occasionally sing a few songs, of which his vocals have received harshly mixed opinions. In podcast #3 he, with the webcam, moved about showing viewers the room he was in, even filming his computer monitor which displayed the Zelda Dungeon shoutbox. Overall, the video stream after the Zelda Dungeon podcast is considered by members to be very entertaining.

Other Guests

In the after podcast hours, Mases often times allows regular forum members and various other guests to jump on board on the podcast and participate in miscellaneous discussions. Often times this includes site staff members, ranked forum members, registered forum members, or other website webmasters. There is only one other Zelda Dungeon webmaster other than Mases, and he is Caleb, who does game walkthroughs at Zelda Dungeon's main site. He has appeared on at least one occasion as a podcast guest, and others have come from other sites too, such as a guest from Zelda Temple.

Name That Tune

On January 1st when Mases recorded the 2nd Zelda Dungeon Video Podcast, the aftermath included a Name That Tune game. Mases would play various songs, ranging from Metal, to country, to pop, and users in the shoutbox would guess the artist and the song title. The first member to give a correct answer was rewarded with a point. The webcam during this portion of the stream was focused on a yellow pad of paper which showed the current standings of who was winning the name that tune game. The first winner of name that tune was ebuch.

Zelda Edition

On the 4th podcast on January 31st, 2009, Mases ran another name that tune game, but this one was the Zelda edition. Mases played songs from the first nine Zelda games and users had to guess which game the music came from and the name of the title. The game was running live for over half an hour and Dabombster was the winner.

After the 6th podcast on February 28th, 2009, Mases hosted another round of the Name That Zelda Tune game. The rules were laid out a little differently, instead rewarding first place with two points and second place with 1 point. This round also introduced the 'Lightning Round', in which Mases would give a specific game title and play music only from that game. Participants would then have to give, in detail, what the song was. The winner of the second round of Name That Zelda Tune was Keats.

Zelda Dungeon Hangman

Hangman works similar to the game Wheel of Fortune, just without any money and without a wheel. Two users would be matched up against each other and a word or phrase was written down. The category would be given and it would usually be a person, location, item, or a quote. User A would guess a letter, and if the letter was in the puzzle, they would get 1 point for every letter, and then get a chance to solve the puzzle after their turn. Then User B would have a chance to guess a letter, and if correct, they would get 1 point per correct letter. Vowels on the other hand were not worth any points but were useful in helping users solve the puzzle. Solving the puzzle gave a user 5 points, and the user that concluded with the most points would advance to the next round.

The first ever Hangman contest took place during the after hours of the 7th podcast, where eight participants took place in the event. Zeldatwilight was the winner of the eight man tournament, beating Master Link in the final round when solving the puzzle for the location Maze Island.

Zelda Dungeon Trivia

On April 4th, 2009 during the 9th Podcast, Dabombster and Mases hosted the first ever Zelda Dungeon Trivia. The format was similar to the Name that Tune game, where Dabombster would read off trivia questions and fans would answer them in the shoutbox. The video stream during the game would show a scoreboard that Mases would edit after each question. Each correct answer was worth one point, with occasional difficult questions being worth multiple points. Points were rewarded to the first two users that answered the questions correctly. ChargewithSword was the first ever winner of the Trivia, recording 25 correct answers.

The Amazing Gameplay Adventures

During the after hours of the Zelda Dungeon Podcast, Mases as well as various guests and staff members may take part in playing Zelda and other videos games and the videos are live streamed onto the forums.

Bomby's Adventures

In the after hours of the 7th podcast, Dabombster took over the live stream when Mases had to step out. He hosted the very first ever gameplay adventures and tackled numerous Zelda titles. He played and completed A Link to the Past in 3 hours and 17 minutes, and finished The Minish Cap in just under six hours. He also started, but did not complete the original Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link.

Mases's Adventures

During the after hours of the 9th podcast, Mases officially began airing Mases's Adventures. Mases would play old classics from the Legend of Zelda series, as well as other Nintendo titles. During the after hours of the 9th podcast, Mases played through the entire first quest of the original Legend of Zelda. Additionally, Mases played through the original Mega Man for the NES, and finished the night off with a game of Tetris from the NES in which he completed 111 lines in marathon mode.

After the 10th podcast, Mases played another round of Classic NES games. He completed the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. Mases went on to complete the 1st Contra title for the NES. He then attempted to beat Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but was unable to do so, dying at the 6th and final screen. The podcast was concluded with another round of Tetris where Mases completed 119 lines in marathon mode.

During the after hours of the 11th podcast, Mases attempted to do a 3 heart-minimalist challenge of the original Legend of Zelda. Mases was not allowed to get any heart containers or any items that were not vital to the completed of the game, (Blue Ring, Magical Shield, Boomerang, Magical Rod, etc...) Mases was able to make it to the 8th dungeon of the game with his death count at 63. After 3 hours of playing, Mases called it quits but has stated that he would like to attempt a 3 heart-minimalist challenge of the original Legend of Zelda at another time.

Mases's Pokémon Gym

During the after hours of the 9th podcast, Mases and Dabombster took part in two Pokémon battles via Nintendo DS WiFi. During the battles, the webcam was focused on the Nintendo DS screen that Mases was playing on. Only the top screen was displayed, so Dabombster could not see the moves and Pokémon that Mases had. Dabombster was victorious during both Pokémon battles.

There are plans of future Pokémon battles with other site staff members, as well as various forum members are planned for the future.