EU has a long and storied history in the sim horse game world.
Started in 2003, EU was one of the first completely forum based sim horse games. Very little of the game was done through email or groups.
Taken over by myself and another woman, we continued to try to keep EU running through multiple message board crashes resulting in total losses, member tragedies, and several other major problems that would have completely killed other games. In three years we suffered 3 complete game losses, and rebuilt from scratch 4 times. At our peak, we had over 200 members, active, posting, and showing.
The game went from a dual admin 'government', to a single admin early in 2008, when the other head admin left under unhappy circumstances. Left to run EU independently, I immediately implemented things I'd always wanted to, like purchasing our own domain and server space. I changed the forum platform from pro boards to a paid board, with tons of extra features. I made several huge changes to the rules, and general structure of the game. Up until Summer of 2008, EU had always been a 'closed' game, which meant that no horses were allowed out to show All-Sim, and any imports had to be approved. But, when EU was opened up to the All-Sim community, it was received with mixed feelings. The All-Sim part of the game started with a bang, but fizzled quickly.
Then another tragedy - my computer that 90% of the records were stored on was broken, and was unfixable for the rest of the year, and into the early part of 2009. When I was finally able to get back on line on a regular basis, there were only a handful of members left trying to keep what remained of EU alive.
The effort was great, the results pitiful. The brand new board set up in 2008 was dead. A brand new fully searchable horse database, and banking script were going unused - with less than 10 members left. The final blow was when that message board was discovered by the spam bots, and they hit the board with a vengeance. I fought them for a few months, then decided the only solution was to shut EU down for the first time in 5 years of being open. May 2009 I closed EU's doors for what I thought was forever, and set up a pro boards forum for those of us that were left to still talk to each other.
The group of members that were left included 3-4 that have known each other nearly the entire time that EU had been active. It was one of those friends of mine that finally convinced me to re-open a 'lighter & meaner' version of EU.
It wasn't long after in the fall of 2010 that I closed EU's doors for good. We are reopening to give it one more shot, one more breath of fresh air.
So here we are. With a refreshed and revamped website, a forum that is totally spam free, and a whole new attitude on things. Hey, we've been there, done that. We've seen the end, and pushed past it. Nothing can kill EU permanently, we just won't let it.
Hope you like what we've done with it :).
Beth - Owner
