Community:Alliance (ZD)
From Zelda Wiki.org
The Zelda Dungeon Alliance was a grouping of Zelda websites that was formed by Mases at Zelda Dungeon during the Spring of 2008.
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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.
