You've read CipSoft's side of the fansite programme, but what about the administrator's side? It's time for their story!

Where would Tibia's community be today without its fansites? With over 28 different fansites offering a variety of material - from portals like TibiaSpace, to encyclopedias like TibiaWikia, to multi-lingual fansites like Tibia ML, to roleplaying like TibiaRP, to even us, TibiaNews, offering daily news on all of your servers. Behind every great fansite, there's a great administrator. Without the administrators, the proper team, and the community - the site would fall behind. We took the time out to ask the fansite administrators a few questions about themselves and their sites so we can get a little input and knowledge of where they are within the fansite programme and their communities.

TibiaNews: What is being a fansite administrator to you?

Fox Mc Cloud (Tibia ML, Exhiti): I like running a website and thus I love to administer Tibia ML and Exhiti. Especially Tibia ML is really great as we have a lot of active users there who give feedback about things we change and propose how we can improve. It's really a great feeling to know people care about the things you spend your time on and this motivates me to keep going. We're working on a big update for the site with a complete redesign at the moment and for every step we do we try to collect feedback from the community as without the community Tibia ML would be nothing!

Romano The Knight (TibioPedia, FunTibia): First of all, position of fansite admin makes me proud. So yes... it's something very important for me. Maybe because I've enjoyed management and Tibia so being a fansite admins allows me to combine both issues and have fun. When I was a noob, I admired all fansites, used nearly all of them and was dreaming about my own :P When your dreams come true, you feel really excited - same here. Lastly, I just love challanges and it's also a kind of challange...

Luthor Mithos (TibiaHispano): Being a fansite admin is both a job and an amusement. It carries some responsabilities but gives you the chance of meeting awesome people, make friends, and improve some skills, like your english or your group management capacity.

Rico Pasa (TibiaTr): Its part of my life since its been a part of my life for a few years. It makes me feel special even it takes up most of my time. You always have to think about how to make it better also you should keep it up-to-date. You know, big positions brings bigger responsibilities so i cant complain at all.

Some fansites have existed for many years before they joined the fansite programme, or before there even was a fansite programme. So, we wondered exactly what they were thinking when they made one!

Etien (TibiaVenezuela): We know that Tibia is a great game, but what makes it great is that is a social game, even compared to others mmorpg Tibia stands out because the social component, the community on Tibia is a powerhouse both in gameplay and the scene surround it. That's why being a fansite administrator is an important job, as fansites are the link and gathering place for the scene for a particular Tibia community, in this case Venezuela.

A Fansite administrator is linked to the fansite concept, all the traits and perks a Fansite has are also applied for the administrator because he is the responsible for the direction that the Fansite will go, we try to gather our community and try to reflect their spirit on our fansite but alos our fansite influences the community, all of this with the goal to improve every day and enjoy Tibia in so many levels, not only by playing it.

TibiaNews: What compelled you to make your own fansite? What makes your fansite distinct from any other?

Fox Mc Cloud (TibiaCity, Tibia ML, Exhiti): Tibiacity was originally a guild site which evolved a lot and eventually became a pretty popular Tibia fansite. Later on I planned to make a Tibia fansite in Dutch, but was then thinking about making it in more languages then just Dutch. Later on it seemed the site became a success and I started putting more time in it and it evolved into what it is today. How do we distinct from others? I think it's because we have a lot of staff that's active on our site and thus we have immediate feedback on the things we do. Our mission is also to bring information in the users own language so they can read it without language problems. We'll also focus on this even more with our new website.

TibiaCity's updates to where it is now

Romano The Knight (TibioPedia, FunTibia): We should start with the fact that I made one fansite owing to the help of MastroDaro, especially his support. I did it because I always try to achieve my goals and as I said, I enjoy challanges so I wanted to give it a try. I am also an admin of Tibiopedia but if you want to know why this fansite was created - just ask Daro. I can only tell you what makes it distinct from other fansites. FunTibia - well, it's the only fansite dedicated for fun - update is coming soon so our new layout and features will make it even more distinct. Tibiopedia - we have some quite interesting tools like Decorator, Outfiter, all-in-one calculator. It is difficult to compare communities and activity, but our users are friendly, you can hardly find any aggression; the team works hard to keep everything up-to-a-date... and we have FERU <3

Luthor Mithos (TibiaHispano): Well, actually I didn't make our fansite. TibiaHispano was made by our 3 capos, Makin, Success and Gok. They created both sites, TibiaHispano and TibiaPic, but I've been in the staff for such a long time that I feel like a little part of them is mine (I want to mention here my old mate Dark Link, who's been one of our pilars since the very beggining of the website). Our fansite is not very different from others, however, our hughe collection of guides, pictures, articles, our updated and well-redacted library and quests section and our enormous community makes it special.

Etien (TibiaVenezuela): In Venezuela Tibia is a very popular game, but we noticed that our players needed guidance and a place to gather and share experiences, the venezuelan community usually is very tight but they needed the tools to be together.

We think our fansite is very different as we promote a lot the RPG component of Tibia, and always try to keep our visitors entertained with lots of events, surprises, high quality articles and accurate and fast translations, we are always working new ideas on our fansites and our programmers are always coding, we never rest. What defines TibiaVenezuela is quality, we don't and we even despise the use of google translator for example, and also the use of excesive or innapropiate advertising, even if its allowed by Cipsoft we sometimes are horrorified by the advertising we see on certaing fansites. We are different about it and will never sell out for a commercial project or put other games or non appropiate advertising for underages. We make this for our love to the venezuelans and latins players in general.

Rico Pasa (TibiaTr): Actually we have an interesting story at the begining. The Creator of TibiaTR his name was Polathanem, he was one of the oldest guys in Turkey who played Tibia. Everybody was asking questions to him. So instead of answering the same questions everytime, he decided to create this website. I was normal member there and after working hard, I became the admin of TibiaTR and I applied for the fansite programme after a few years. Thats how we started.

What makes our fansite distinct from any other? Well we are mostly focusing on Turkish community but we are also offering different language options in our fansite. I personally think there s no point to focus on other languages since we have really good fansites in that languages. So i think when somebody visits my fansite, they should find whatever they want without language problem. Thats my opinion.

TibiaBR logo throughout the years

TibiaNews: What impact or influence, if any, do you think your fansite holds upon the community? With that said, how big is your active community?

Fox Mc Cloud (TibiaCity, Tibia ML, Exhiti): With our update we want to be a communication platform for Tibia users. We want to focus more on the social aspect of playing Tibia and give people the chance to find out what others are doing as well as sharing what they are doing. We have a pretty big active community, but nothing compared to the giants like TibiaBr.

Romano The Knight (TibioPedia, FunTibia): Uhmm... as far as FunTibia is concerned, it makes people happy so I think it's very positive impact :) Tibiopedia is rather professional fansite which shows that you don't have to stick to your habits but try something new as it may turn out to be a better choice. Our community is constantly increasing in size so I think that our "quality" attracts more and more people or just our old users invite new ones. So this is a kind of influence on the community...

Tibiopedia then and now (roll over to see)

Luthor Mithos (TibiaHispano): Our fansite has had such a big influence between hispanic community. Tons of new players have made their firsts steps in Tibia thanks to us. We've hold ingame conventions and promoted other roleplay events for years. Last but not least, some hispanic communities in different worlds have been born in our forums. It's great to see how thanks to our boards players meet each others and team up.
Our community has almost 40k members and 50k threads.

Rico Pasa (TibiaTr): Well we dont have pretty big community like Poland and Brazilian fansites since Tibia is not popular in Turkey. Still our community is big enough for us.

Etien (TibiaVenezuela): Our community is big, Venezuela is one of the main communities on Tibia, very particular and without any doubt with a big identity, we try to influence our community promoting the fair play, the rpg, the strict applying of the rules of Tibia, the correct behaviour and cooperation.

TibiaNews: Do you feel that you have responsibilities that come with the title of being a fansite administrator? If so, what?

Etien (TibiaVenezuela): Yes, as we said before, we are the captain directing the ship, and we say where it will be headed and what kind of party will be celebrate while we travel. We try to entertain, study our community to reflect their worries and thoughts, to bring joy of Tibia not only by playing it, but sharing our experiences together, doing events, contests, prizes and making the community an active part of the fansite. Our responsabilities are to constantly bring that up and innovate as much as we can, hail TibiaVenezuela and all Latin Americans players!

TibiaVenezuela's very own Dragon Khax

Fox Mc Cloud (TibiaCity, Tibia ML, Exhiti): Yes I do, I think that as a fansite admin you should keep your visitors informed about possible security issues and should do your best to prevent them from getting hacked. Furthermore you should also take care of younger visitors and make sure your content is suitable for them too. This are only a few of the responsibilities you have as an admin, there are plenty more.

Romano The Knight (TibioPedia, FunTibia): Definitely I have responsibilities. In my opinion, fansite admins are like teachers/parents who show you the way, tell what to do when you have problems or just protect in case of danger. It may sound funny but that's what I feel... so - Luke, I am your father! <evil laugh> OK, now seriously - we have to detect all potential dangers on our fansites and eliminate them as soon as possible. We should promote legal and enjoyable game, do our best to keep our users informed about everything that is related to Tibia. There are much more issues that we could mention - maybe other admins will do it :P

Luthor Mithos (TibiaHispano): I don't feel like I'm having responsabilities for being an admin because I've been doing my best and putting all my efforts in my work. Anyways, of course I've got some "self-imposed" rules: treating everyone in the same way, try to be as fair as I can and to respect everyone. I'm always opened to spend some time chatting with my visitors or giving them advices - even some times it's tiring - because if not for our users, why are we making all this effort?

Rico Pasa (TibiaTr): Most of the players are using our fansites because they re playing Tibia but personally I only play Tibia because I have a fansite. Since players are asking alot of questions, i have to know the answers. You know keeping the website up-to-date,being role-model etc are our other responsibilities.

Without the diversity between all the fansites, Tibia would seem meaningless, boring. It's times like these where people go to the fansite communities to actually bond with someone that shows the necessity of each and every fansite. Ranging from 28 different fansites, each fansite keeps a "rank" internally to see which has the biggest size. Typically the top three do not change, but we were unable to receive permission to print them, although we are certain you can guess them already. At number three, though, we have TibiaML, one of the largest fan-based communities out there for Tibia today. With their amazing map features and their choice of different languages, TibiaML shows that it is one of the most unique fansites around.TibiaNews, which used to be in the top five, has slowly moved towards the upper teens, last month (March) landing in 16th out of 28 sites (that's an improvement, believe us!)

It wasn't too long ago where there weren't many fansites at all - Tibia.de and TibiaNews being one of the few that people actually visited. It was in February of 2005 when we first made an article about a fansite program being announced - yes, before there were any "promoted" sites - just the supported ones.

Our article ended with "It is still unknown when the Fansite Program will start to be noticeable by players, but "soon" is at least the best keyword." That was an understatement to say the least, now. Huge massive events occur on fansites which gain popularity every second. Current fansite events are:

Host-An-Event Contest and Smuggler Spring Contest! by TibiaML.

Masters of Fun by FunTibia.

Birthday Spectacular! by TibiaNews

with many more likely to come.

But, no matter if a fansite is popular or just decides leaves the programme or not, more sites around the same area will arise once more. Erig.net used to be one of the only sites that provided statistics and calculators to the Tibian community, now you have Tibia-Stats, ExHiTi, and even TibiaStats! With a sacrifice comes a gain, and with time comes more productivity.

These fansites could not and would not exist without the help of you, the community. The bonds between fansite administrators and their passion for their site would never be as much as it is if it had not been for such a passionate community.

But, TibiaNews, how do I make my own fansite and get it supported or promoted?

With a lot of patience and a lot of time and effort - anyone is able to get a supported fansite. As stated in CipSoft's current article by Etien: "Try to do things right, if you do a fansite do it for love to the game and to help the community, it will work if you work hard for it. Get a nice group of people to work along with you."

You can see a full list of supported and promoted fansites yourself on the official Tibian website, just to see what exactly you're missing.

Read this article in Portuguese on TibiaBR!

Discuss this on our forum with other Tibians!

Special thanks to administrators of TibiaML, TibiaCity, ExHiTi, FunTibia, TibioPedia, TibiaPic, TibiaTr, and TibiaVenezuela for giving up their time for the interview.