What was Tazoon.com and why did it disappear?

[Lascivious Goat]

As a recent arrival to Horizons I don't know any of the early history of the HZ gaming community and the associated websites that sprang up from it. Can someone give me a rundown?

[Con]

tazoon.com was ginesh's hz fansite.
it housed the beta forums, and its post release forum was declared "official forum" for gn and its european servers (ign being the official us boards). after many hz boards including ign had been overrun by slambois or simply been deserted tazoon became somewhat of aof last bastion for civil and interesting hz communication.
i believe tazoon was hosted by verio, the necessary webspace possibly payed for by ae. when ae and verio went separate ways <cough> tazoon went down and the site owner had to look for alternatives. given that he himself obviously had stopped playing the game and was unwilling to invest money to uphold the site, and probably aware that ae had its own boards already in the works, tazoon never came back up (much personal speculation here, someone please correct me if i am wrong).

i think a mirror site of the old tazoon boards exists, but i cannot say where.

Varaenion/Unity

[Kulamata]

And yet more speculation. Tazoon.com was also the official beta forum site. A good deal of energy was spent on creating a database for players, with the reasonable expectation of becoming the release official site as well. When the Vault was made official instead, it really took the wind out of Ginesh's sails. A bit later tazoon.com was made the official European site, but that was not enough for financial viability, and the site was then more or lessrun on autopilot.

The ign-vault choice proved to be very unfortunate. There was a heavy slamboi population, the forums were very loosely moderated, and venom seeped out into the general MMO customer base, costing Hz reputation and credibilty. And while AE certainly had problems then, they were wildy overstated by some vault posters, with no apparent motive other than malicious griefing. It was especially unfortunate that potential newcomers to the game were directed to the "official" site, where they were repeatedly "warned" against Hz. As stated above,most of the beta players continued to use tazoon.com. Some of ustried to direct newcomersto tazoon.com and counter-post, but were pretty well swamped by griefers who had an awful lot of time on their hands. I came to believe that some of the griefers were competitors' representatives from the selection of features they said that an MMO "must" have. (No good without dual wielding for example.)

Eventually of course AE set up their own forums, a great improvement. (And now we have a new "affiliated" database site, very good news. ) Before setting up the current forums, tazoon.com was contacted, but Ginesh apparently felt that the price offered wastoo low. So tazoon.com vanished, and with it some lore and information that have never been fully replaced. After Tulga, someone may have contacted IGN about the vault, and there was a massive housecleaning there, with deletions and bans.

As a result ofthe vault experience, I became a believerin strong moderation, enforced civility if you will.

[HratLi]

I REALLY miss Tazoon. The boards were very usable, the folks friendly, and the accumulated lore from Beta through release was astounding.

Hehe... I used to warn folks to avoid the 'official' boards at all costs as well
-HratLi

[Drulgar]

I'd recommend heading over to http://horizons.gamersinfo.net/. It looks like they are trying to pick up where tazoon.com left off. Lots of good info and data feeds from TG.

[Lascivious Goat]

The ign-vault choice proved to be very unfortunate. There was a heavy slamboi population, the forums were very loosely moderated...

I remember well the early days of AC1 and the Vault boards for it. Lots of unmoderated posts slamming anything and everything. Personal attacks, counter-posts, you name it. A real wild west until extremely heavy-handed moderation was applied. There was another AC1 site where its forums were "ruled" by a gang of regular posters who attacked any poster who dared to disagree with their postings or did not hold views similar to theirs.

[Daedra]

Grr, I've lost the flogging a dead horse gif.... [:P]

[Nalrach]

We were all griefed when IGN got choosen as Tazoon offered a more family and real-player base, you could getpack of info on Tazoon. Hopefully with the combine of thecommunauty/web and thegamersinfo database, we can get a lot of info out there. Now we just need to pass the word along.