MTG Salvation
MTGSalvation is a Magic: The Gathering website which focuses on Rumors and News. MTGS is most known for its spoilers which generally come weeks in advance of the pre-release of any given set. These spoilers are generated in The Rumor Mill and generally come from the sources of rancored_elf and to a lesser extent urzassedatives. The site also features daily articles, a Wiki, a Radar of Magic websites as well as one of the more active Magic forums online.
Foundation
MTGSalvation was founded on July 11, 2004 by Xenphire (then The Numen, Kuberr). The site was originally a phpBB board hosted on Xenphire's friend's server. It was founded after the banning of Xenphire on MTGNews, with him stating MTGSalvation to be free of the bad administration and poor choices that allegedly ruled 'News. The purpose of MTGSalvation was to create an open environment and community based off that of MTGNews. It also aimed to put away "Forum Drama" for the betterment of the community. The success of these goals is still debated.
The two days after its founding, MTGSalvation gained several members although most of them personal friends of the founder. Then, on September 3, 2004 when rumors of administrator rancored_elf leaving the site due to internal problems began circulating within the public, the member base once more grew, this time causing more mainstream users of MTGNews to join. At this time Sakabatou was named the second administrator.
MTGNews Split
See main article at MTGnews
MTGSalvation lay relatively dormant and forgotten until January 1, 2005, when a number of staff members from MTGNews, including rancored_elf and urzassedatives, announced their resignation from the Staff on the website front page and as a forum-wide announcement. Their reason was in protest of the man appointed to oversee the forums, Subterranean Spirit, by Raa, the owner. Within minutes, several decided to use this to their advantage, spamming the MTGNews forums with links to MTGSalvation.
When MTGNews was temporarily closed to the outside to remove the spam and lawlessness that had accrued since the announcement, a significant number of the most prominent MTGNews posters, including rancored_elf, began posting on MTG Salvation. Quickly, it became as active as MTGNews had been the day prior, and the presence of older members contributed significantly to the validity of the site. By the time MTGNews was reopened a few hours later, many saw it as "the new MTGNews".
While MTGNews was open again, Subterranean Spirit began to enforce a policy of banning any member who mentioned MTGSalvation in their signature or elsewhere, which was in stark contrast to the previous policy of allowing any advertisements in signatures. This, coupled with the protests of important members and the banning of several others, led to MTGnews becoming partially abandoned. Most of the members who were banned relocated to MTGSalvation.
Early Changes
The change from a small, relatively unknown website to the host for most of MTGNews' members necessitated large changes to the way the forums were run. Though it already had a small compliment of moderators to handle the minimal traffic that had existed before, a flurry of new staff members were added, most of them long-time MTGNews members who Xenphire recognized. Though most of them had great experience as posters, some of them would prove problematic later on.
Around a day after the New Years Post, Hannes Roth, then best known for owning MagicCards.info, contacted Xenphire, offering extra server space and a vBulletin license. Xenphire took the offer, and after a few hours' downtime the forums were running on vBulletin, and with a new URL. A new frontpage for the website began to be prepared, to facilitate Articles and other content which had previously been unfeasible.
As all of these changes were occurring, it solidified its status as the premier Magic rumor website by completing the Betrayers of Kamigawa spoiler before any other site. Around this time Subterranean Spirit had been removed as an Administrator on MTGnews, and some of the old members began to return.
The Collapse of Xenphire
Behind the apparent success, however, trouble began to brew. Though he was the founder and administrator of the forums, Xenphire began to make decisions which were controversial among the staff and members.
As the staff began to feel less confident in his abilities as an Administrator, an election was initiated in the Moderator Lounge to decide the Administrators; he did not receive a single nomination. This, coupled with other factors, caused him to remove a significant percentage of the staff, including Administrator Wolfwood. Sakabatou, the only other Administrator at the time, stripped Xenphire's Administrative powers and remodded those who had been removed. Within a few weeks, Xenphire was just another Registered User.
The Three Admin Era
This caused a pause in developments for almost three weeks in which much was planned within the Mod Lounge and the future was paved. During this time few public statements were made by the staff as to the future with the forums just continuing on. But then on February 14 the future was made very clear. The new frontpage was launched. Articles and the new staff were announced. On February 14 the new article page hit, kicking off a run of daily weekday articles that continues to this day.
On March 3 the new Warning System was announced, one which survived almost a year. The new staff also added many tags still in use today, most notably the /me tag. It was also announced that Salvation would begin running an Article of the Month contest to promote and reward their writers. This was followed up by the announcement that users could now submit news for the frontpage as well, a feature still in use today although rarely taken advantage of. Salvation also began running a monthly artwork contest in the artwork forum as well as a weekly avatar and signature contest within the Avatar & Signature forum.
However all of this advancement was not without pause. During March and April the site lost both Wolfwood and Sakabatou, this time not to forum drama but to real life situations. All of this led to Belgareth becoming the only Admin.
The One Admin Era
A Judge's Forum was added to Salvation which allowed judges to have their own community to discuss common issues and tough rulings calls. In addition another new logo was announced, this time by Bateleur.
However with the community swelling and and the site getting even more traffic many technical problems began to arise. These problems made themselves painfully obvious in mid-August, with the server crashing multiple times. The short term solution, which remains in-effect today, was turning off auto-thread subscription.
In October the competitive forums went through a re-vamping when it was announced each would have the new sub-forum Decks For Critique added to them. This forum made it so that decks that were not casual but also not top tier competitive had a place to go and be discussed.
In November and December MTGSalvation went through some drastic changes that would change its face forever. A new server was purchased and began being operated on the new forums as they changed to vB 3.5. A new frontpage incorporating Bateleur's logo better was also launched. In order to operate this new server a new small banner ad was also sold to StarCityGames. The forum awards were also voted on and announced during this period.
The biggest change of this period happened at the very beginning of December. ButteBlues and Crazed Mike resigned which led to a firestorm and in the end would result in both of them and Raia off the staff and Belgareth de-admined. Goblinboy would replace him as admin.
Restoration and Growth
Goblinboy quickly appointed rancored_elf and Feyd Ruin as temporary Administrators alongside him. New moderators for the now empty forums and newly announced MTGS Wiki were also quickly decided and multiple changes to the emoticon list were made.
Various end of the year awards were handed out at this time, including the FCC of the Year, the officialForum Awards, and the Clan of the Year award. In January sneakyhomunculus and urzassedatives replaced rancored_elf and Feyd Ruin and became full time Administrators. As a result this once again created a "Three Admin System" at MTGSalvation, for the first time since Wolfwood, Sakabatou and Belgareth ran the site after the collapse of Xenphire. During this time a monthly short story contest was added and the forum rules and forum layout was reorganized. The article program also was expanded with Saturday articles.
The major story of early 2006 was the Hasbro V. Rutter case, Wizards of the Coast's attempt to stop rancored_elf (Daron Rutter) from posting rumors and more specially playtest cards. After an initial DMCA order it eventually led to an lawsuit.
Two Admin Era
In June 2006 Goblinboy left the staff ending the temporally Three Admin situation. urzassedatives and sneakyhomunculus decided to not appoint a third Admin and went on together. After several staff changes resulting in the appointment of new moderators and Global Moderators a Two Admin system was set up with a wide group of Global Moderators to lend administrative support.
Other big administrative events in 2006 were the rewriting of the Forum Rules. The Warning System was changed into an Infraction system, making it clearer and stricter, but also making Infractions more time-based and less number based. Several popular site features were stimulated. As a result more attention was given the Wiki and the Storyline forum, The Colosseum was restructured and a rebirth of Team MTGS was tried.
In early 2007, MTG Salvation underwent a number of changes, including a new front page to celebrate its second anniversary, a new Forum Jump and Spy feature, and the much awaited introduction of the blog forum.