Some of the information on this page was brought back to life thanks to the very cool
Wayback Machine. There is no way I would have been able to remember this much detail without it.
Guildtools.net (2001 - 2004)
Guildtag.com began as a college research project in 2001 under the name Guildtools.net. We were allowed to pick our own project and didn't have to clear it with the professor. I decided I wanted to create a website that offered free tools to help guild masters manage their guilds. The tools were mainly targetted at Everquest since it was one of the few MMO's at the time. I purchased some cheap php webhosting using my mom's credit card (hooray for moms) and got to work. I used existing software to provide a guild roster, guild forums, and signature hosting on Guildtools.net. By all accounts the tools were pretty well received. Success! Or so I thought...
The day I turned in the paper, the professor took a quick look at it and said
"What's this? This isn't a research project... you'll need to do something else." Granted the paper was probably pretty bad but that wasn't what bothered me - it was that the professor had dismissed the idea as ridiculous and unworthy of his time. I was in shock. I had spent all this effort on something I truly believed to be a great idea only to have it thrown out like trash. So... I wrote some bullshit paper on E-commerce, graduated, and never looked back.
Guildtools.net at one point got hacked and everything was deleted. I was using open source software I didn't write and didn't completely understand. I had no idea what went wrong. Had I set the wrong permissions on something, was there a bug in the software I was using? The support at my hosting company was of no help - so I switched hosting companies and started over. The domain eventually expired even though I had auto renew enabled. Some internet scumbag scooped up the domain and turned it into a link farm.
EQProfiles.net & EQCrafters.net (2004)
I worked on the following two projects briefly before my interest in EverQuest and these sites faded.
EQ Profiles allows the players of EverQuest to add their characters abilities and tradeskills to a database that can then be searched, sorted, and displayed. This tool also allows guilds to have a dynamic and sortable roster that is customizable with a CSS. The Mageloid feature enables your members who have Magelo profiles to quickly add or update their profile. It also allows the admin of a guild to update a members profile who fails to update their profile, but keeps their magelo current.
EQCrafters allows the players of Everquest to add their characters tradeskill abilities to a database that can then be searched, sorted, and sautéed. (ok, well... you can't eat it, but 2 out of 3 isn't bad!) Some people add their characters for fame seeking out the elusive 1750 club, others add their character to increase their fortune.
Slashwho.com (2004 - 2005?)
I really missed working on Guildtools.net. There were several other MMO's on the market, and there still wasn't a great way to find other people a person has played in other games with. It was arguably the beginning of one of the first Gaming Social Networks. But it needed a new domain name, something generic enough to cover multiple MMO's. Slashwho.com... PERFECT! You know, like when you're looking for someone in-game and you type "/who name"... Yeah, I know, it doesn't make much sense to me now either. Slashwho.com was born. It was written in php and allowed users to create a profile and add their characters for any MMO they had played. It was revolutionary, useful, unique, and has zero marketing. Slashwho never did grow a very large userbase and died a slow painful death. The domain name expired, again. And some internet scumbag displayed ads on it, again.
Guildtag.com (2007 - Now)
I was working more and more with ASP.net and wanted a hobby site where I could try new things. There's something about this project that keeps drawing me back in. So here we are again; the same old idea with a pretty new face (and a domain name for 5 years). It's got to work this time... right?
I still enjoy working on this site. It has cost me a lot of time and money over the past several years but it's been worth it. If people find what I have put together useful - that's great! I'd love for it to take off and get used by millions of gamers.