Pojo.com
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| Pojo.com | |
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| Url | http://www.pojo.com/ |
| Founded: | December 1998 |
| Founder: | see text |
| Owner: | Pojo (Bill Gill) |
| Category: | Gaming |
| SLanguage: | English |
| Programming language: | {{{PLanguage}}} |
Pojo.com is a website devoted primarily to gaming. It has a variety of individual pages devoted to collectible card games, such as Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars Minis, Inuyasha, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, Heroclix, VS System, Dragon Ball Z, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Pirates of the Caribbean, Duel Masters, Fullmetal Alchemist and also has a general Anime site.
It is also home to the Pojo message board, which as of November 17, 2006, had more than 47,188 registered users, and over 4 million posts.
Contents |
[edit] Card of the Day
Commonly abbreviated as COTD, Jason Klaczynski (Ness) began COTD as a feature on the Pokémon site in 2000. Jason went on to win the 2006 Pokemon TCG World championship. All sections of Pojo now have the COTD feature where staff members review three to five cards per week.
[edit] Deck Garage
The Deck Garage is a feature where readers can email their decks to staff members, aka Deck Mechanics, who pick a few decks each week to review. Some of the best Pokémon players in the world have been Deck Mechanics. There have been Deck Mechs on other popular Pojo sections. Bill Gill created the terms "Deck Garage" and "Deck Mechanics" in 1999 for the Pokemon section and Pokemon Magazine, as he grew up working in his father's automobile service station in IL. These terms have become commonplace on many gaming sites.
[edit] History
The site was started in December 1998 as a Pokémon Only site called "The Pokémon Dojo" at thepojo.com domain. It was named after the Fighting Dojo in the original Red & Blue Pokémon games. During 1999, the site drew around 100,000 unique visitors each day and focused on providing tips for Pokémon Video Games and Trading Card Gaming Tips and Decks to readers.
Separately, Paul Adkins sold quirky golf equipment he manufactured under the domain of "Pojo.com," which came from "Paul & Jody" (Jody is Paul's wife). Adkins was, however, finding his server was overloaded with people looking for "the pojo.com", and he received lots of negative mail from kids looking for Pokémon information. In September 1999, he offered the domain name to Gill in exchange for a brand new Dell PC. Thepojo.com then became Pojo.com and has been updated daily since it's origin.
In October 1999, H&S Media, a magazine publisher made famous by Mary Beth's Beanie Baby Monthly, became affiliated with Pojo to create a monthly Pokémon Magazine. The December (first) issue of Pojo's Pokémon News & Price Guide Monthly hit streets in November 1999 and quickly sold over 1,000,000 copies. The magazine sold quite well for nearly 2 years until the publisher was forced into bankruptcy by bad business decisions in other magazine titles.
In mid 1999, Gill became Internet Buddies with Scott Gerhardt. Scott was one of the highest rated Pokémon Trading Card Game Players in the World. Scott worked daily on pojo.com for over two years, and was, as Gill put it, "a Pojo God". Scott also started the Magic the Gathering section of Pojo.com in February 2001.
Also in mid 1999, a Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) section was added. Besides Bill, four other people worked regularly to make it the hottest DBZ site on the Internet. These four people were: Eric Gerson, Andy Diehl, Kunhal, & Douglas VanDerveer. Pojo's Total Dragon Ball Z magazine followed soon after, sold extremely well, and led to more DBZ magazines and books.
In 2002, a Yu-Gi-Oh! section was added to Pojo.com. This section featured the same formulas that made Pojo's Pokémon, DBZ & Magic the Gathering sites popular: Daily News, Featured Writers, Card of the Day, Deck Garage, Cartoon/Anime information, and fan submitted deck ideas. It is currently the most popular section of the website.
Many other sections have and still live happily on Pojo.com since its inception, including: Naruto, Digimon, Duelmasters, Inuyasha, Monster Rancher, WizKid's Pirates, UDE's Vs., Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, Shaman King, UDE's Quickstrike Games both Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar the Last Airbender, Star Wars Minis, Dreamblade, The Spoils and more. New games are added at least once every couple of months, as they become more and more popular.
Pojo.com has consistently received lots of traffic. In May of 2003, during the height of Yugioh's popularity, Pojo had over 1,660,000 unique visitors and over 41,000,000 page views that month.
[edit] Message Board
The Pojo Message Board discuss topics on various collectible card games, not limited to the site's topics. It is also used by some members for the purpose of trading. It is, perhaps, the most popular setion of Pojo's site.
[edit] Sections of the Message Board
- Yu-Gi-Oh! - Contains a number of forums devoted to talk about Yu-Gi-Oh! including gossip, decks, anime, trading, etc. Currently, Yu-Gi-Oh! is clearly the most popular section of the site, and is the only forum which has an area only visible to site 'veterans'.
- Magic: The Gathering - For discussion about the card game Magic, including trading.
- Pokémon - For discussion about various aspects of Pokémon, including the games, the TV show and movies, card trading, asking questions about rules, etc.
- Duel Masters - For discussion about the Duel Masters card game, including trading, anime discussion.
- Dragon Ball Z/GT - For discussion about the various aspects of the Dragon Ball universe.
- Heroclix - For discussion about the Heroclix game, and for general comic book talk. Now also includes a section for the new Horrorclix game from WizKids.
- Pirates - For discussion of WizKids Pirates of the Spanish Main line of games, including a trading forum.
- Full Metal Alchemist - For discussions of the Full Metal Alchemist Anime & Trading Card Game
- Dreamblade - For discussions pertaining to the Dreamblade Miniatures Game - Gossip, Team Building and Trading
- Star Wars Minis - Star Wars Minis - Squad Building; Trading; Strategies; Gossip; & more.
- The Spoils - For discussions pertaining to "The Spoils" Trading Card Game
- World of Warcraft - For discussions pertaining to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and the Massive Online Game.
- General - For forums that do not fit anywhere else. Includes the Random Topic Center (Largely deals with 'Real Life' stuff) a Fan Art section, a Fan Fiction section, a general Anime forum, and others.
- Video Games - Xbox, PS2, Nintendo Systems, PC discussion.
- Miscellaneous Trading Card Games - For TCGs that do not have enough to have their own forums, such as Naruto, Poker, Hecatomb.
- Rules & Stuff - Where people can ask about the rules, complain about bad trades, and read announcements. The Trading Committee is in this section.
- Staff - The fabled staff section.
[edit] Trading
Trading is a significant feature on the Pojo message board. People use it to trade cards, movies, and video games. Because of how much trading is done through the board, a system has been set up similar to what is used on eBay to track trader ratings. Those with higher ratings are supposedly more reliable, and those with negative ratings are people to be careful around. There is a Trading Committee that offers advise on trading issues and votes on motion relating to trading, such as those to ban forum members who rip other members off. Pojo's trade forums are consistently the most popular sections of the board, and comprise more than one third of all posts.
[edit] Message Board Staff
The Moderators, or Mods, are well known throughout the Pojo message board community. Many of them are regular posters. The Mods of Pojo are very strict in their work, making Pojo a place where it is very hard to have fun without being accused of spamming, trolling, or flaming by other users who side with the Mods. Also, a wide range of views and opinions is also opressed, for fear that it may cause "flame wars". Thus, threads which promote debating and moderate involvement of opinions are immediately closed or deleted.
They have three levels - Mod, Supermod, and Administrator. All of them are volunteers. Although many new members (and even some veterans) have asked how to become a moderator, it has been made clear that new ones will be selected by the current moderators if they need one, and anyone asking can be assured that they will never be selected (thus, completely defeating the purpose of asking). Moderators are invited by the existing staff to become a moderator whenever Staff feels like it.
[edit] Administrators
There are two Administrators - Pojo and EOC Jason. They have the most power on the board.
- Pojo - Pojo is the number one man at Pojo.com. Founder of the board and the main site, he has final say on everything.
- EOC Jason - Wrote the trader rating hack used by the website.
[edit] Super-Moderators
As of October 2006, there are only four super-moderators. As far as the board goes, they have large amounts of power, and are rarely overruled by the Admins.
- Wildwill - Probably the most respected member of the community. He is a father to a new born daughter.
- piccolo#1 - The longest tenured moderator has recently been promoted to Super-Mod.
- jonnyosage - Main site editor who acts as an administrator of the forums when others are away.
- Secret Squirrel - The newest and youngest of the super-moderator. The new Chariman of the PTC.
[edit] Moderators
As of September 2006, there are 30 regular moderators. They have very limited power and cannot ban anyone, but help the Supermods and Admins keep an eye on things.
[edit] myuu
myuu (no capitals) is worthy of note for several reason. He was the original vbulletin board Admin in 2004. He manipulated his post count to over 9 million (which effectively made it so his post count goes down whenever he makes a post). He was also responsible for a large April Fool's Day prank. He manipulated some users' avatars, custom titles, changed other parts of parts of the forums, such as forum titles, and also added the infamous Sniper Kitten to the top of the page. myuu also used to run the Pojo news section.
[edit] Previous Versions
The message board originally ran using the Ubb (Ultimate Bulletin Board) system, then the ezboard system, and switched again in early 2004 to vBulletin where it remains today. The current message board uses a separate domain (pojo.biz).
Many sections of Pojo have been "retired". Some were retired because the game they focused on stopped production and some were retired because of bandwidth costs. Mega Man, Yu Yu Hakusho, Shaman King, NeoPets, Harry Potter, Monster Rancher, Digimon, and Gundam all used to be sections of Pojo.
[edit] The Magazine
For approximately 2 years, there was a monthly Pojo Magazine. The magazine was first titled: "Pojo's Pokémon News & Price Guide monthly". In the 2nd year of the title was changed to "Pojo's Pokémon & Other Way Cool Stuff". This monthly magazine covered mostly Pokémon and second section on the back for most everything else that they wished to cover. This second section featured Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon and more. This section was printed upside down and in reverse of the main Pokémon section, almost making it a second magazine. Nineteen issues were published.
Other "one-shot" Pojo Magazines were printed including magazines on: Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Video Games, Digimon, Monster Rancher and even a guide to State Quarters. The Magazine was discontinued when the publisher (H&S Media) filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
[edit] The Books
After the magazines, Pojo.com began producing large format "unofficial books" to various Card games and pop-culture phenomenon. Books published with the Pojo imprint include:
- Pojo's Unofficial Big Book of Pokémon - Dec 2000 - 304 pages
- Pojo's Unofficial Total Pokémon 2004 - Mar 2004
- Pojo's Total Digimon - Dec 2000 - 112 pages
- Pojo's Total Gundam Wing - Dec 2000 - 128 pages
- Pojo's Dragon Ball Z] - Dec 2000 - 128 pages ISBN 1-57243-416-3
- Pojo's Unofficial Absolute Dragonball Z: Gt Episode Reviews- Jan 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player's Guide - Jun 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Total Magic: The Gathering - Jul 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Total Duel Masters: History Of Duel Masters - Oct 31, 2004
- Pojo's Unofficial Guide to Neopets - Jan 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Total Yu-Gi-Oh! - Dec 2002
- Pojo's Unofficial Yu-Gi-Oh!: Guide to Labyrinth of Nightmare - Jun 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Yu-Gi-Oh!: Guide to Legacy of Darkness - Sep 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Guide to Yu-Gi-Oh!: Pharaonic Guardian - Sep 2003
- Pojo's Unofficial Big Book of Yu-Gi-Oh! - Dec 2003 - 256 pages
- Pojo's Unofficial 2005 Yu-Gi-Oh! Annual
- Pojo's Unofficial Yu-Gi-Oh! Trainers Guide 2006 - Jan 2006
- Pojo's Unofficial 2006 Yu-Gi-Oh! Annual
- Pojo's Unofficial Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Trainers Guide 2006
Scholastic has been the distributor for Pojo books since 2005.
