After such a great year on ARC, I just wanted to recap the events and/or general facts over 2004. It had some negatives, but ultimately, it had more positives, because ARC is a great forum. It was amazing for me, myself, looking over all that has happened in 2004.

I know Diacronic said months ago he wanted to do a top list like he did in 2003, and I WAS actually gonna wait for him do one or ask him if he was, but I hadn’t seen him on in a long time so I thought it’d be fun to do one myself. He might still do his own, who knows.

I’d also like to thank Minion for supplying the Real Robotics area of the forum (mainly with the event parts). Here it is folks.

The ones that didn’t quite make it:

*Animations become popular

Eventually, several members begin to try out creating animations. Some of the members who did some animations were Minion, doom force, G-Force and Fish. Even today, animations are used from time to time. For example, the picture of Dominion in Vengeance is a spinning image.

*ARC’s Wordlist for iSketch

FishofDoom created a word list for iSketch with a little help by Gemini and Komodo. The list, however, was never added to the iSketch word list. Those bastards.

*G-Force’s ARCMap

G-Force makes a map of some of the well known members’ locations and posts it on the forum. That’s about it.

70) Omegaforce’s Car Reviews

Omegaforce briefly decides to use his knowledge of cars and give his insight onto good and bad quality cars. He helps out some of the members with his information, since he got to test them all out at his job. The topic doesn’t last that long, and there weren’t that many reviews.

69) A very brief name changing period

During the month of July, silly gags came out of Diacronic’s “Type your name with the following” thread. A gag was made about Komodo spelling his name “Komofo” and then Komodo encouraged others to do the same for about a week. Then all sorts of screwed up names came about like “ty;/';sazDSGTRYJH TRF” and “t6bny4rzn jgteqzakswt64e4r”. Some people got annoyed with it and some didn’t mind it much, but that period ended quickly.

68) Diacronic has a win streak of 14 in FRR

At least I think it was 14. In any event, it was probably the biggest streak anyone has had with any particular league. He did eventually lose a couple, and didn’t win the titles in the second season, but still quite impressive.

67) Beginning plans for ARCCon

ARCCon stands for “ARC Convention”. There where talks in the summer between FishofDoom, Diacronic, Gemini, Minion, Ragnarok and some others of having an offical ARC get together with several of the veteran members. There have been smaller ARCCon’s like Andrew, Adrian and Fish meeting and some others. As for the “big” convention, never happened. Will there ever be an ARCCon to come? Only time will tell.

66) The Steveo Show

As a personal prize for beating Diacronic’s ARC game, Mindgame, you got to see an episode called “The Steveo Show”. I never saw it personally, but it was supposed to be amusing, as I heard from others.

65) Clutch tries to make a HW RA2 tournament

The possibility of a Robot Arena 2 Heavyweight tournament was brought up by clutch (and several times before and after that) but nobody decided to do one considering it would way too laggy for any sort of decent quality play. Clutch was the first to push for one to be run, as he tried to run it as a tournament on all the forums, getting interest from all over, but it never worked. Ironically, the thread that the idea was first brought up in actually drew interest for the new idea of a Replica Tournament.

64) Omegaforce disappears

After Defiance began, Omegaforce was excited about the new season and even took the job as one of the result writers. After a couple of weeks into the season, he disappears. Nobody really know what happened to him for awhile.

63) Andrew gets to finals at AU, then the tourney dies for good

That basically sums it up. Remember last year when everyone got excited over Omegaforce’s tourney victory at AU? Well, this time, Andrew made it to the finals and might have won. Too bad nobody cared about the tourney at that point and it got to the point where it never concluded. That’s when the Onslaught tournaments pretty much died for good.

62) Diacronic holds a replica contest

As a house-warming gift in opening the new forum, Diacronic runs a quick little contest to see who can make the best Root Canal replica. These types of contests were popular on AU for awhile. Doom Force won the contest.

61) Ernie and Be0t win ARCT2

Not really an “event” but it both Be0t and Ernie got big recognition for their victories in the ARCT2. Ernie was an underdog with a simple design that came from behind to win it all against Andy’s deadly plowbot. Death Port, on the other hand, was the dominate powerhouse popup wedge that raised some controversy at the time. In the end, both did a job well done

60) Omegaforce returns….briefly

After returning at the end of Defiance, he had a habit o coming and go frequently. He stuck around awhile at the start of Vengeance, but after that, he came back and forth so frequently. Eventually, he gave his “Parting Words” speech, leaving for the military. However, that last part didn’t happen until 2005, so I shouldn’t be saying that..

59) Omegaforce’s “A Killer Walks Among Us”

Omegaforce had a good, well thought out mini-game on the forum where there would be a plot where one of the members of the forum was the killer. If nobody got them right in time, there would be more murders, and if somebody got murdered, they couldn’t participate int eh game for that round. It was kind of fun. First version was easy and quick, but still good. The second one was difficult but dragged out for way too long without any progress. It got cancelled in the middle of the second game.

58) Mascot Competition

At the start of Bot Bash, Gemini thought it would be fun to start a competition to make an ARC Mascot. Some good ideas were given, but Rejected technically was the winner. Even though, there were suggestions of combining Fish’s and Rejected’s mascots.

57) Zigg tries out “FRFW”

After Vengeance, FRR and WRWF were running, Zigg wanted to make his won league as well. The league never works out due to too many leagues of the same sort at the time. Some were being anal about the possibility, so that wasn’t necessary. However, it never took off.

56) Ted Shimoda builds One-Wheeled Wonder

Andrew told Ted Shimoda about the CFL jokebot “One-Wheeled Wonder”. Not backing down from a challenge, Ted decides to build it. It turns by leaning on one side. Oddly enough, it was the first CFL bot to be turned into a real robot.

55) ARC’s Chatroom (on the actual site page)

When the new ARC site first opened, Komodo set up a new chat room to, at the time, possibly replace Aim chats as ARC’s hangout place. However, the chatroom failed……miserably. Everyone had all sorts of problems with it. It kept on not loading, not showing anything if you could actually enter, kicking people out. It was just a problem that didn’t work out. It was quickly removed from the site and everyone just kept on using AIM for chats.

54) Robot Rage

A computer game that was brought up on nearly every message board. A few members got into it and some tried it out. Hey, RFS even gave it a personal sub-forum on RFSHQ! It never had nearly the longevity that Robot Arena 2 had. Not bad, but nothing special.

53) ARC’s Theme Song

Every forum needs a theme song, right? Well, our theme song, which was picked by Diacronic, was none other than the famous them of Cheers done by Lagwagon. It fit well with the whole idea of “Everyone knows your name”.

52) ARC goes down for a week

During summer, ARC’s host takes a giant shit and craps out for a whole week. Thankfully, it wasn’t down too much longer and everyone came back unharmed.

51) FF3: Winter of Discontent quickly ends

In the middle of the “Robot Arena 2 Era”, Omegaforce decided to open up his RPG again. However, after about 2 cards, it gets closed down. Oh well, worth a try I suppose.

50) Talking TDS head

One of the funniest things on ARC of 2004 was Diacronic making a talking TDS head using the Bud Lite face thing. The Talking TDS head is down as of now, but was very amusing at the time. To quote a fellow ARC staff member at the time, “this is the greatest thing I have ever seen”.

49) FishofDoom starts a Monthly Signature Theme

FishofDoom thought it would be a good idea to make a Monthly Signature Theme since sigs are popular on message forums. The idea itself was popular where a lot of people participated each month. The activity itself will presumably go on for quite awhile.

48) Pennbots "Hamboree" event

A Pennbots event which didn't even take place in PENNsylvania, but in Maryland on March 27-28th with Team Ragnarok and Doom_Force competing. Will's MircoClysm gets 3rd after flipping a bot or 2 over the wall.

47) Hacker never reopens RA-Reborn

RA-Reborn was one of the major forums for awhile, but then RA-R goes down. After this, it was left to rot as it was down for months. Hacker told some people from time to time, that it would be reopened shortly, but it never was.To this day, it remains dead. I suppose he gave up.

46) G-Force’s Extreme Object Wars

G-Force had a unique but fairly popular idea to start a new fantasy league being of just “objects”, so he created a league called “Extreme Object Wars”. It was an interesting idea, but didn’t really have any lasting power. It also had flaws when stuff like zombies with chainsaws, nuclear bombs and the T-1000 get accepted into the competition. It lasts for awhile, but never quite made a full season.

45) Replica Pack 2.0 is released

Like with the first ARC Replica Pack, the ARC guys compile a pack of simple, stock only RA2 replicas made by FishofDoom, Gemini, Doom Force, Diacronic and G-Force. It was just as good as the first one, and got respected for being very good quality replicas for no custom parts.

44) Gemini wins 3 titles in Defiance

In the end of the Defiance season, Gemini claimed a shocking 3 titles in the tournament, which was the most ever in a single tournament. However, the time period wasn’t exactly a happy time, either. It was basically in the middle of a flame war between some of the ARC moderators.

43) DSL Pack is released

Some of the bigger RA2 people (Darkrat, Starcore, Lu-Tze, etc.) created a big new pack for RA giving new robots of Robot Wars and Battlebots, new arenas, some new features and new components. The quality of the pack was fantastic, but it wasn’t enough to spring RA2 to life that much at the time.

42) DRD leaves the forum

The story of DRD (long time member of ARC) disappearing is weird and confusing. He seemed to be his regular self when one day his girflriend apparently broke up with him, which supposedly “changed” him as a person. He then had a few chats with some of the ARC mods, saying how he’s turned pure goth and wants to kill people. If he was doing if for attention or seriously became a blood thirsty serial killer, he left the forum and not much has been known of him since.

41) iSketch

This online pictionary game became popular with a lot of the ARC members for a brief time period. A late night game of iSketch was a lot of fun, even though it was mainly Fish or Dia winning nearly every game. It was even used a “Tie-breaker” and an actual challenge in ARC Survivor.

40) Old ARC members return as well as some new ones that join

This as well, is not really an “event”, but there was a time period where we got a lot of old members back (Kiazi, Shadywhtboy, Ashley, TMDustBunny) and a lot of new members that joined and got involved (NWOWWE, Zigg, Paul 3, Ryan, Deceptor) and even more members that came over from RFSHQ/FRR (Viper, bot257, Ry_Trapp, Panic Attack, cherry).

39) CAD Contest

G-Force decided to start a CAD Contest. The idea itself was good, with specific guidelines where it makes it more challenging for everyone. So far, the bots entered have been good and the actual judging should begin shortly.

38) Be0t gets disqualified from ARCT2

There were some reasons for having Be0t disqualified from ARCT2. The staff had a majority vote, it fell in favor of 3-1 in favor of him getting DQed. After that, the rest of the forum didn’t lie the decision. After a brief period of flaming and controversy, there was a vote to the public on whether he should stay or not. He ended up being allowed in and eventually won the tournament.

37) The FOD Show!

FishofDoom decided to make an episode of his own show, making a parody of The RFS Show. Of course it was funny as hell. It was also largely considered to be a lot funnier then the RFS Show. Job well done, FoD.

36) FishofDoom creates forum show “Cooking with Batista”

FishofDoom made 2 episodes of “Cooking With Batista”. It was basically a “show” using only text and words to as a half cook show, half comedy at the same time using wrestling figurines. It was actually hilarious and a delightful surprise to everyone the first time they read it. FishofDoom sure knows how to entertain.

35) Kiazi Scandal Exposed

After Kiazi closed down CRM, he went and told everyone he was a father. People never thought anything of it at the time, but afterwards, the username of Nathan came on to say that Kiazi had died and got shot in the back. Most everyone remembers the incident, no big sense in going into details. After the issue was proven to be false, we nailed it on him hard, and not hearing anything from him for months. A long time passes, and he returns, making a nice “I’m Sorry” speech. Thankfully, he is still a member today and well respected. It’s a good thing he decided to return.

34) Mad Scientist’s Bot Bash

The idea had been thrown around previous times in the past, but Mad Scientist eventually came up with the idea to have the first inter-forum RA2 challenge. It was AU vs. ARC vs. RFSHQ/Alphaforums vs. RA-Reborn vs. RA. The idea sounded very amusing, despite it being during RA2’s decline. It was hyped up and planned out as each forum prepared for this tournament. Mad never really managed it after he started it so Viper took over in a desperate attempt to save it. Even after that, it still died. If there was ever any hope in saving RA2, I think this was it, but it died.

33) Pennbots "Cabin Fever" event

Doom_Force and Minion33088 attend another Pennbots event on August 14th in York, PA. Hit or Miss gets third and Tyler places second in the rumble.

32) Pennbots "Summer Fair"

Doom_Force's Tastes Like Chicken gets 3rd and Minion's Hit or Miss takes the rumble at Yellow Breeches Middle School.

31) Diacronic’s Mindgame

Diacronic spent many hours into making a notpron type game based entirely on ARC themed bots. Everyone tried it out. It was challenging for a lot of people, when some people went through it fairly quickly. It was a big thing for about a week and it served it’s purpose.

30) Gemini creates CFL database

Gemini decides to start on a big compilations of all the past ARC fantasy leagues (completed ones) with the results from each bot and the decision. In the end, it miraculously worked and was a very well organized database. A very useful tool to check up old bots/results ad made everyone push harder for upgrading their overall ranking. It was basically the first title to give “CFL” as the general custom fantasy leagues (not necessarily being ARC only).

29) AU begins to die

After ARC moved onto running fantasy leagues and doing other things, AceUplink didn’t do anything. They were sort of running Onslaught 2.0 at the time, but that was pretty much dead before it began. Then AU experienced giant period of nothingness.

28) AU slowly becomes gaming forum

After realizing that RA2 wasn’t working out, ARC’s rival forum, AU, decided to invest their interest in gaming. Who knows if their relying on gaming to save AU or not, but it appears that they even started online tournaments with numerous games.

27) ARCT3 bombs, Gemini closes

Unfortunately, at a certain point in time, the game Robot Arena 2 lost about 50% of it’s interest. This made the tournaments impossible to run with success. It was pretty evident when the torunaments took a major turn for the worst, so the manager, Gemini, decided it was time to end them for good. However, AU went on for about 6 more months trying to make their RA2 tournaments work. That’s the spirit, fellas!

26) ARC Replica Tournament

Gemini came up with an idea to make a replica tournament in Robot Arena 2. It became an instant hit with the other members, so it was quickly set up as an ARC sanctioned tournament ran by Gemini and FishofDoom. The actual idea of the tournament was great, since people had to not only make nice replicas but they couldn’t throw on cheap Z-Tek/Tribar spinners, otherwise they’de be declined and not allowed in. The torunament itself ran well ½ the way through until RA2 lost a lot of it’s interest and was closed down.

25) 2004 RFL Nationals

Andrew competes with Disc Addiction in the 2004, by invite only, nationals. DA gets an awesome rebuild before the event and goes 3-2.

24) Motorama '04

One of the largest Northern events of the year featuring up to Super heavyweight bots at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pa. Doom_Force and Minion33088 both competed with Paul's Hard Target getting 2nd.

23) “Top Lists and Awards” forum created

It was voted on by the ARC Staff tha this new forum should be created. It was established to put all the lists and awards threads all in one category. However, it also encouraged people to make lists of their own.

22) Team Testbot wins multiple bot titles.

Orangehamster's Test Bot wins Hobbyweights at Robot Battles, and second at Rocket City Robot Assault May! Nuclear Kitten also wins Beetles at Atlanta Area Bot Brawl 2!

21) ARC goes down for a week due to a hacker

At the very end of the year, the site craps out again and for about a week. Komodo got word from the host that it was due to a hacker and had to close down the site temporarily. Once the site went back up again, there were some changes that took place as far as the site design.

20) Forum Staff Divided: The Flame Wars

Unfortunately, there was a period in time, mainly during the beginning of Vengeance, where the staff was going against each other. There were small and big fights left and right. You name the macthups; Fish vs. Omega, Dia vs. Gemini, Dia vs. Minion, Fish vs. Minion (I think). In any event, a lot of the fights got ugly,and it actually lasted for awhile. Thankfully, everything has settled down where we get along great with each again.

19) Kiazi opens “WRWF”

With the success of Vengeance and FRR, Kiazi decides to start his own league including his own site, several match types, betting system, tag team tournament along with the standard tourney setup. You could also make 2 bots in each class.

18) Omegaforce leaves ARC Staff

After a long period of inactivity, Omegaforce decided to leave the staff knowing that he would be too busy. Not much changed after that actually, since he wasn’t on before much, anyways. The staff never filled in a replacement mod, we just kept going on with the same people and it worked fine.

17) RA2 rapidly loses interest

I know this fact as been mentioned in several other posts, but it did have a big impact in general. For the reason that it wasn’t popular anymore, it basically pushed ARC into a new stage. It also held AU up and put other boards that relied heavily on RA2 discussion into trouble. Thankfully, the decaying of RA2 didn’t kill ARC.

16) “Name that Bot” created by G-Force

This made us reminisce about some of the bots back in the days of BattleBots. G-Force started given a couple of clues to a bot identity, and then once that was revealed, there would be a new bot to identify, then it kept going on like that. Eventually, others joined in by giving clues. It was a fun activity and it lasted a long time.

15) FRR moves to new site

RFSHQ had remained to keep a high level of interest for awhile. Part of the reason was because Viper had setup FRR on RFSHQ, bringing in interest. Later on, Viper and RFS agree to move FRR out of RFSHQ and give it it’s own site. After this, RFSHQ slowly loses interest.

14) Presidential debate

The presidential debate was a hot topic for awhile before the election. I never got invovled with this, but it was a big issue for many people at the time. There were some who were extremely liberal or conservative and some who were neutral. In any event, the debate was mainly involving people like succotash, ry trapp, metal rectangle, komodo, siphai, and some others.

13) FRC gets closed for good

Diacronic wanted to just close down FRC for good after the third seasonc ame to a close, but Minion wanted to try and keep it open. So Minion was given the privilege of managing it in the next season. As expected, it didn’t last for too much longer and Minion shut it down to focus on the newer league of Defiance, which was coming up at the time.

12) G-Force hired as results writer

Unlike Minion, G-Force was hired as part of the ARC Staff but not as a Global Moderator. He was hired for the purpose of being the 4th result writer at the start of the new Vengeance season. Like Minion, he has been there to do his job and is responsible for his responsibilities.

11) Lu-Tze (Lucy Foster) dies

The saddest news of 2004 on the forums. It was talked about on AU, the DSL forums, and I think RFSHQ (not on ARC, actually). Despite never being a member of ARC, she was a really cool person and very helpful with RA2. She was a part of the DSL Team and gained respect by her abilities to make nice custom components. She had a brain tumor and wanted to see DSL be released in time, and she did. Lucy, you will be missed by us all. R.I.P.

10) FishofDoom creates “ARC Secret Santa”

When Christmas was quickly approaching, FishofDoom planned out a “Secret Santa” where members of ARC would give each other gifts. It was a nice add-on to the ARC Family and several of us got nice gifts. It was a good idea and a very happy time. Some didn’t get their gifts, but oh well. Could there be another Secret Santa next year? I don’t see why not.

9) Gemini creates “ARC Survivor”

Gemini creates a new online version of the popular reality show, Survivor. The game stuck with the same popular setup as the real show did. It included daily voting, immunity challenges, and alliance discussion. The show worked out very well and it was a success all the way through. Diablo won the game. It also succeeded in creating a backstabbing and extreme anger and hatred in the end. Season 2 should be coming up soon. Gemini said he wouldn’t run Season 2, though. Most likely, expect Fish and Diacronic to be running the show.

8) Minion joins the ARC Staff

At the beginning of Defiance, the staff was lacking result writers, so everyone agreed that hiring Minion was a good idea. His previous dedication and hard work in his work for FRC got him recognition. His work on Defiance and Vengeance has been good and consistently getting his results turned in on time. He has, in general, been a good moderator as well.

7) FRR moves to ARC

After lots of talk about a possible merge, FRR moves in with ARC and no longer has to rely on it’s independent forum. I think the merge was for the better, and hopefully it helps ARC and FRR continue on without trouble.

6) Diacronic becomes Administrator

Previously just modding the Off-Topic forums, Diacronic helped start the new ARC home by paying for the new site. In addition, he has proved to be a great asset as the webmaster (alongside Komodo), handling the ARC fantasy leagues (the biggest thing ARC has thrived on since April), keeping things in order and doing lots of updates and site changes along the way. For this, we are truly thankfully.

5) Viper creates new RPG called Fantasy Robot Rumble (FRR)

After ARC started their official CFL league, Viper decided to make a new league himself. As it turned out, the league drew a lot of interest. The setup of FRR was different then Defiance/Vengeance, as it used the money system to buy parts for bots. As of today, FRR still operates.

4) ARC’s “AIM Chats” resurrected

The top of the 2003 list was the ARC chats being formed, and for a pretty damn good reason. These daily chats not only kept the community active, but actually brought us closer together. It was like the ARC family was formed. After a certain point, the AIM chats were not being made nearly as much. In the middle of Defiance, it just seemed like they just sprung to life again. It was partially due to more things to talk about with the tournament. In any event, it brought us closer as a community then we had been in months.

3) ARC Vengeance begins

The fantasy leagues reach the peak of their success when the new competition reached a whopping 32 competitors (largest ever in ARC history). Some of the mistakes of Defiance were fixed and it was improved upon even more so to get a great season. It brought about some great new competitors and possibly the most fun some of us have had in the events over the years.

2) ARC Defiance begins

ARC has survived over the years due to the right timing. Battlebots ends, then the fantasy leagues become popular. After the fantasy leagues start to fade away, Robot Arena 2 becomes popular. No major lulls in between. After RA2 died, the ARC staff decided to resurrect the fantasy leagues. This time, the leagues were bigger, better and had solid management of not just 1 person running them (like in the past) but the whole staff chipping in. Making it fun for everyone and reliable enough to stay alive.

1) New ARC Site Opens

This is the turning point of ARC in many ways. We no longer had to deal with a free board and advertisements all of the place. It also brought about a better format for ARC’s home, with downloads, links, stats, hall of fame, and other neat new features. Yes, we did well before hand, but it probably improved ARC in general. We had to drag everyone into the new place. Some had to take a little while to fit in, but in the end, it paid off and we are still thriving on the new ARC.

Good luck to ARC in 2005!