It has been three years since RPGDot's first appearance on the web. So we thought to give you some inside information on the teammembers that have been active here for a large part of these three years.

The second one for today is Garrett, who not only searches the web for news and provides content for RPGDot, but also programs parts of the RPGDot software that makes all of this possible.

From the beginning...
Wow, time is passing quickly. I joined RPGDot, or Blinkingdot, as it was called then, in late 1999. The guy with the 'strange' name of Rendelius mailed me and asked me, if want to move my site ‘World of PC-RPG' to their server, because I was on a Xoom site only.

After some consideration we agreed to join forces and I quit my site, moved the RPG Lists to RPGDot and was in the RPGDot team, a newbie, who never before used a news script and it took some time to get used to the new work.

From today's point of view, our start was really amateurish. No reasonable site layout, no database, no boards, no community, no relations to developers or publishers…just a bunch of RPG fans addicted to their hobby. Most of these points have changed, except one: We are still a bunch of dedicated RPG enthusiasts.

In the past years, there have been many changes on the site and in the team.

The site layout has changed several times, each version improved over the past (at least we hoped so), and we also did changes in the background, unnoticed by readers, like using new scripts or switching servers.

One of the more negative experiences was our move to a large German gaming network in the summer of 2000. It never paid of, in fact, it was annoying and after they went bankrupt and talked to new investors, they dropped us - which actually was the best thing to happen to us and we decided to stay independent from then on.

The biggest change happened about 1 year ago, with the introduction of mysql and php to the site and it looks like we are on the right way: A well visited forum, a great news system and many other improvments...and the best thing is, that I learned how to use php :)

The team has also changed a lot since 1999, but for the last 1.5 years, we have a great core team and RPGDot is mere fun!

I also was Editor-In-Chief for some months, before my RL job took away too much time, so I gave back that job to Rendelius again.

We have always tried to be the number one source for RPG news and I believe we have achieved that quite well in this past year.

...to today
But we won't stop here. As I can see from the entries in our 3rd anniversay contest, we do not offer enough features. I agree. There are times, where we have two or three features a day, then there is a week without exclusive content. We are working on that. In fact, after the Arx Fatalis Element of the week feature last year we have finally kicked of our second regular feature last Monday with the Lionheart SPECIAL System feature.

Other improvements will result in a layout change in the upcoming months. But also the RPG market looks very promising. With highlights like Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, Dungeon Siege or Neverwinter Nights already released this year and Gothic 2, Icewind Dale 2, Lionheart or Divine Divinity upon us, there will be enough stuff to write about. Also, I am working on the first complete RPGDot Guide, which is for Arx Fatalis and should be ready by the time the international version hit stores.

Things are looking bright, but the most important thing is your feedback, as it has been in past years. Tell us, what you like and what you don't, what you like to see here, what we can improve and so on…and we will try to deliver.