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From Sonic Retro
The Moogle CavernFrom Sonic RetroThe Moogle Cavern is a long-running (over seven years as of now) site featuring sprite comics, hoaxes, a place for people to share their artwork, and an active message board. While it is not strictly a Sonic site, it has close ties to much of the Sonic scene. The Moogle Cavern itself is maintained exclusively by Kulock, who also has control over all its other functions. He is assisted by H Hog and Andrusi in moderating the Comics and Hoaxes Archive, and by Jamie Swiftrunner and Blaze Hedgehog on the Oekaki board. MoogleMB is moderated by H Hog, CrazyMrLeo, Eric (formerly known as TLoB), Sz, and Andrusi. Many MCers, or members of the Moogle Cavern community (primarily the MoogleMB forum), claim as an injoke that "the Moogle Cavern is a cult, you cannot escape." And indeed, many people who attempt to permanently leave the MC have difficulty doing so (although girls have a higher success rate, as many of the male members are perverts or at least act that way).
HistoryThe Moogle Cavern was originally founded by Kulock as a general site focusing on his interests, such as (naturally enough) Square (then Squaresoft) RPGs. The site was very obscure at first, known primarily to Kulock's friends from existing Sonic communities, such as the Sonic Powerzone mailing list. With the exception of "Sonic Season Three", an ill-fated attempt to continue SatAM, the site in its early form offered little in terms of unique content. However, this changed in the late 90s, as hoaxing came into fashion. Kulock and several of his friends were interested in hoaxing, and so in late 1998 a hoaxes section appeared at the Moogle Cavern. For one reason or another, the site became one of the larger hoaxer "hangouts", with enough regular visitors to support a forum on ezBoard. Due to various complications, the initially frequent updates to the hoaxes section (and the increasingly neglected other sections) slowed, until the site finally went on hiatus in 2000. The message board, however, remained alive (and stable, due in part to the consistent presence of the "original" members), and in fact grew in size. The forum community formed its own culture, including a hoarde of injokes, and became one of the most social boards on the Internet. This culture (along with many of the injokes) was spotlighted in 2001, when CrazyMrLeo began a comic called "Moogle" which starred the avatars of the regular posters at the Moogle Cavern Message Board. ("Moogle" inspired several other comics, the most prominent of these being H Hog's "The Horror", which continues to this day.) In 2002, in response to increasing service prices and decreasing functionality at ezBoard, Kulock created a new message board "home" for the MC Community: a phpBB known as MoogleMB. At roughly the same time, he launched an Oekaki board on the same domain, where members could show off their artwork. For reasons that are disputed (each "side" blames the other), the MoogleMB community became one of PACHUKA's enemies, and as a result suffered difficulties such as a Sonic CulT-inflicted denial-of-service attack. (The site was also hacked at one point, but while PACHUKA and the CulT were suspected, the culprit was never identified.) In 2004, the main page partially relaunched at www.mooglecavern.com. The new site sports a revamped hoaxes section, provides hosting for MC-related comics (mostly sprite comics), and features Kulock's own community-based comic, MC Dash! In early 2005, a Flash-based chat feature was added. The page's form at that point is referred to as "The Moogle Cavern 0.5", referring to Kulock's intention to eventually reopen the site's original sections. In 2005, the MoogleMB website was destroyed as a result of an attack by a former member who was displeased by his banning. As a reaction, H Hog quickly opened a makeshift "Emergency" forum at ProBoards, where they would remain for a good while. In 2006, the main website relaunched, this time named "MC Tiny"; referring to the Toolbar-esque layout at the top of the page, a feature which also merged in with the messageboard. During Christmas of 2006, Kulock reopened the forums anew as an SMF powered board at www.mooglecavern.com/mb/, choosing to abandon the MoogleMB subdomain and instead, keep the forums in a subdomain on his main website. The OekakiSome time around June 27th of 2002, Kulock added a special "Oekaki," or art board, for the more artisticly inclined of the Moogle Cavern's forumers. Over time, the message board and the oekaki grew into two seperate communities. Several attempts to "take back the Oekaki" have been made by various forumgoers over time, but none of them have been successful. The bitterness seems to have ended for good during the last attempt to take the oekaki back, though; both sides agreed to their flaws, and now several forumer have returned to grace the oekaki with their art. A few people from the Oekaki-community left in the conflict, but now that it has been resolved the oekaki should become a welcome drawing board for anyone with some artistic skill. External links |
