Part 1: The Rise
To understand the rise of Toribash we must understand where it rose from. The year was 2007 and the day was the second before Christmas. culapou was born. culapou is who I was before I became TheGod, I rose to become TheGod as the symbol of the ultimate sacrifice; the world which culapou entered was the one which I tried to save. Toribash in the late 2000's was different, the culture of the time could be described in one word; freedom. There was this understanding at the time, before the rise of our current SJW sentimentality that freedom of expression lead to maximum entertainment. Also there was this understanding that the purpose of Toribash was entertainment. This was the wild-west era of Toribash. You could say what you want and do what you want, you were required to protect yourself at all times and keep a vigilant eye open. You were required to form alliances for protection and brotherhood, but clans were rare and most were not easy to join. Climbing the ranks was difficult and treacherous, toricredits were rare and precious. Colors on your character back then were a badge of honor, the shine of Pharos drew praise from the lobby. The darkness of Demon was legendary. Every item earned was a remarkable achievement, tournaments needed to be won and gambles paid off. This is in stark contrast today where even the common character is over-colored, almost to the point of self-vandalization with putrid combinations of flames, trails, textures, 3d nonsense, etc. The tournaments back then were rare and high-stakes, nowadays it is the reverse, common and low stakes. The adrenaline, the passion, the emotion, the struggle, these are all the cultural characteristics of the rising toribash. Tournaments were not some back-lobby 5 person roundabout aikido tourney for 500tc, they were a once weekly 25man open bout struggle for 20k where up and coming players came to make a name for themselves, and the legends came to defend their honor.
The forums too were a place of high stakes and personal enterprise. The forum was not merely a market for buying and selling goods but truly in the fullest sense a community. The community become strong through open communication, minimal rules/censorship, and mutual entertainment. There were no rules against bullying or hurting feelings. Instead, it was understood that by allowing these affronts we will be creating rivalries between players, which can be settled in game and increase the activity of these players. And even as rivalries drew enemies together to fight it out, as a community united behind the entertainment of this game we stuck together. The foremost embodiment of the toribash culture back in these days was the raid on an enemy runescape forum. One of the admins at the time lead this effort, which really illustrates the difference in temperment between the boring do-nothing censor admins of today, and the badass army-leader admins of then. This runescape forum had made a post about our game saying it sucked and wasn't fun, so we organized a relentless DOS and Gore campaign against their forum. They retaliated of course, but eventually we came away victorious and they were knocked offline. This is toribash as a community, as a culture. Reasons like this is why people would stay attached to toribash for 10+ years. One could rise through the in-game ranks and then become a community leader. One could choose to be a bad guy, or a good guy, and neither would get banned; instead they could fight it out. Nowadays you can't be bad, you just get banned. If this were mario party, the admins would ban Bowser, and everyone would be Toads. In 2009 I saw this beginning to happen, the admins were becoming stricter and stricter, more and more regimented. Everything needed to be the same, needed to be "nice", Toribash was quickly losing its edge. Something had to be done.