Castersrealm
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Casters Realm is a Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Website network that is owned and operated by The Underground Online (UGO) Network in New York.
[edit] History
Castersrealm was founded by Gregory Short, who operated under the moniker of his character name Baelish, in 1999 with the release of EverQuest.
Originally the website was known as EverQuest Enchanters, which specialized in one of the EverQuest magic classes. The website contained a lot of information related not only to the Enchanter class but also to numerous other aspects of the game such as the Jewellery tradeskill. EverQuest Enchanters was the first website online to have a complete list of recipes for the Jewelry Tradeskill. The site also contained detailed information on magic spells for the class including effects and acquisition details.
As the game, and site, grew in popularity Mr. Short decided to accede to numerous requests from players to create a larger website for all of the magic classes in EverQuest. Because of this he renamed the site from EverQuest Enchanters to Castersrealm, and set up the domain eq.castersrealm.com.
With the site growing in popularity, Mr. Short approached New York based UGO to be an advertising affiliate. With the advertising revenue ripe during the dot-com era, Mr. Short hired on a programmer to help transform the site into a more robust offering. He also paid people to assist in the maintaining of the item and spell database, commissioned unique character art for class areas and continued to improve the service.
Castersrealm was one of the first MMO websites to begin acting as a corporate entity focused on developing regular interactions with developers, providing exclusive news materials on a daily basis and geared at operating not just as a fan site, but as a profitable corporation.
Castersrealm was the first website for MMOs to offer services such as customizable character profile pages, patch note archiving for the game service, official videos for game contests such as EverQuests Best of the Best series and more.
Castersrealm was one of a few key sites to survive the dot-com crash (including Allakhazam and Stratics).
Over time the website expanded their supported games including Shadowbane, Jumpgate, Asherons Call, World of Warcraft, EverQuest II, Vangaurd, Lord of the Rings Online, Conan, Gods and Heroes, Tabula Rasa and more. The website was shortened to crgaming.com in order for it to be easier to access and they started up a general news service on their home page.
Mr. Short sold the company to UGO when he was hired by Sony Online Entertainment to develop their online community services known as Station Players in 2004. The site network was redesigned after UGO was acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 2007. It is currently maintained by Evil Adam, with posts by Deimos, Nanyea, and others. The current website logo shows the name as being two separate words "Casters Realm", and not the single word name it used to have.
[edit] Features
Along with character class and spell databases for some games, such as Everquest and Everquest II Casters Realm also includes news, official press releases, image galleries, and video clips. All content is related to RPGs, MMORPGs, fantasy games, and the developers of those related genres.
