Happy Birthday Fumbbl

In the beginning there was nothing. Then SkiJunkie created JavaBloodBowl and Christer saw it and knew it was good. Christer thus called out to the world and soon after had found 12 (14?) apprentices following him to form Jleague. After having spent sometime among themselves the group opened up to the general public (using the address of fumbbl.com already) and started convincing the masses to join their cause ? only to close down for a Christmas break not soon after. Finally, a year ago, on January 3rd 2002, the transformation of jleague was complete, due to the assistance of Mr-Klipp, and fumbbl.com opened up as a fully automatic system. Since then more than 100,000 matches have been played, and fumbbl turned into one of the focus points of online bloodbowl. 

A day on Fumbbl back then

12:13 I log on to fumbbl irc server, which is, as the page itself running on an old P200 at Christer?s apartment. My new teams that I had submitted sometime yesterday around 23:20 have been approved by one of the three admins (Christer, Mr-Klipp and Zy-Nox) during the night. A hefty discussion about the quality of the various types of paint available as well as about the latest second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy currently in cinema is going on. Once in a while somebody tells bowlbot to do an age roll on Grumbledook - he niggles - or do a skill roll of somebody (4+3).
14:23 Trying to find a game by pasting a link to my overview (http://fumbbl.com/~Mnemon/) into the chatroom, while telling people which teams (the new ones) I?d actually would like to play with. Several people contact me via pm within a couple minutes and I decide to play against the closest team in TS (some chaos with 23 TS on my rookie amazons) not bothering to take a look at my opponents? roster.
15:50 The game, played via direct connect is over, but the server is having hiccups ? my opponent has to get back to work, and promises to try to upload sometime later today. As the page is unreachable for the time being the 15 people that still are connected (6 of which are idle) turn #fumbbl into a general chatty type of irc channel.
17:40 The page is still unavailable, Christer being afk for some time now, I log off to read a book.
23:15 Checking to see if the page is back online, which is the case and I notice that my opponent from earlier today has uploaded his match report already, so I try to do the same ? the match, as a number others have already, gets stuck in the process though. As Christer is in bed already, and Mr-Klipp not yet available I will have to wait until tomorrow to ask one of them to push the result through. Bed time.

A day on Fumbbl today

13:30 Logging onto afternet, where #fumbbl is situated today, to be greeted by BowlBot announcing a game that has just finished ? a 1-1 tie. I also join another four or five channels connected to various tournaments, and other fumbbl related topics. There are about 90 people in #fumbbl at the time being, about 10 of them admins, gorillas or approval monkeys. Bowlbot has about 90% of the lines spoken in the channel while there are hardly any discussions going on between the users.
13:45 Received 3 PMs offering games with dwarves versus my goblins ? I decline all of them as I am neither in the mood to play yet, nor do I want to sacrifice a team I like and invested a lot of time in letting somebody else destroy them.
15:28 Present my teams in open and divx division looking for a game as none of my tournament or faction opponents is online right now by using the bblfg command that triggers bowlbot. My agility teams instantly get offers for games, my more bashy teams hardly do. Having learnt to be picky about my opponents I carefully check both their TR/TS and their roster before deciding on any of them. 
15:34 I host the game via proxy, and notice several spectators joining in within a couple seconds after the game had started. Both teams are using personalized images for their players as well as an on field team logo. As usually I get majorly screwed over by the dice and thus make my opponent happy.
16:15 Uploading the game takes less than a minute and bowlbot immediately after tells the public about yet another defeat for me. Somebody else conceded a high tr game and bowlbot tells us which of the players stay with that team and which ones don?t.
19:58 Been afk for a little while coming back to find 8 teams waiting for approval and several people in the channel asking how much longer it would take. I go through them - six are approved, one not and one is in a language I don?t speak so I leave it in the line. 
20:20 Agree to a game in stunty league, which means high casualties and generally insane ways of playing ? winning is not as important to most people here as it is in open and divx division.
22:34 Tired of searching for another game in #fumbbl I decide to join Cusi and Mr-Klipp for a couple rounds of settlers of catan. 
0:56 One of my faction opponents comes alive and we start our game.
1:20 My opponent drops out of the game and #fumbbl after he made his third TD against me, a detailed set of rules explains what each of us has to do in such a case, none needed though as he returns to the channel within 12 minutes. I call it quits and head to bed after the game is over and uploaded.

Did you know ?
- that SkiJunkie only wanted to learn how to write a client/server application. 
- that Jleauge required Christer to do all changes to the rosters manually ? including skill rolls and buying new players ? using his league manager.
- that bowlbot only was used to do dice rolls in the channel, originally.
- that Jleague and later Fumbbl were running on a P200 with 94 mb ram.
- that the new database driven fumbbl was set up on the above mentioned P200 while the database was hosted on Christer?s own P500 (which meant that both couldn?t be used for anything else).
- that the irc server software used in the beginning only could support a limited number of users ? which is why #fumbbl moved to afternet when it became more popular.
- that xxx created the first fumbbl team (need to check on that)
- that the first game played on fumbbl ended (need to check that)
- that you only could have a maximum of six teams in the beginning (three in open, three in divx division)
- that the first user created tournament (before there was a tourney division) was the a.n.a.r.c.h.i.s.t.
- that the new server?s power supply ? financed through donations ? blew up twice before it finally worked.
- that the current system fumbbl is running on starts to peak out at times and Christer is looking for donations to upgrade to a dual-cpu set up