Ex-GM Erig, founder and former owner of Tibiawiki and erig.net, was interviewed by our ex-staff member Zanko.

TibiaNews: Greetings GM Erig! Thank you for taking some time off to do this interview with TibiaNews. To get things off to a running start could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Erig: I'm 26, Australian, and like to drink.... water. Enough said?

TibiaNews: Haha, the average Australian then. Well let’s get straight into Tibia shall we? When and how did you first discover the game?

Erig: My younger brother started playing Tibia before I did. I was into text-based MUDs at the time, and every so often I would see him playing Tibia and started to wonder about it. Eventually I became intrigued because it was basically all the goodness of an original text-based MUD, except graphical. It was not, and is still not, your typical MMORPG, which I am thankful for and I believe many Tibians are also thankful for.

TibiaNews: What about your position as a gamemaster. When did you receive it and what was it like when you did?

Erig: It was in August 2005. I was contacted by a "god" months before - asking whether I was interested in the position. I believe I was part of the first group of new real GM "recruits" in over 2 years. Since then CipSoft have regularly invested in new GM talent from the "newly-created" Senior Tutor ranks.

TibiaNews: Ooh, well what about your first day as a gamemaster. What was that like?

Erig: I remember I was asked to perform a broadcast after my first banishment. That was quite a shock. Hundreds of PMs flooding your way. That still happens today when a GM broadcasts, which is why they are very infrequent and only used when an important message needs to be sent to the masses.

TibiaNews: Was it hard at all to learn the ropes to being a gamemaster?

Erig: As previously discussed, since our "newbie GM team" were the first recruits in quite some time, it took some getting used to, by us, and also by CipSoft, but we worked it out eventually. Much has been learnt since then, and I believe new GM recruits (such as the ones being recruited recently) have a much easier time of it, fortunately.

TibiaNews: Are there any funny or interesting GM’ing memories which you would like to share with us?

Erig: I think GM Banalot of Tibianews fame speaks for us all in that regard -- if he ever returns to the "big screen".

TibiaNews: Well let’s move along to fansites. Erig.net, a popular fansite among many Tibians. What first inspired you to make it?

Erig: My fansite was originally a personal site for myself because I was interested in certain statistics. Eventually I showed it to a few Tibians on my game world and they were also interested. I then realised that there was a niche for a statistics-based fansite and released it to the public.

TibiaNews: And how long did it take to make it?

Erig: The first instance of erig.net only had a couple of the calculators (magic, XP). The XP Histories (which 95% of people that visit erig.net use) came much later. It's hard to determine how long the entire site took to make, since I would develop one interesting page, then someone would suggest another, and it evolved from there.

TibiaNews: What about the programming, how hard was all that?

Erig: It's all simple PHP/MySQL. There's nothing that I consider complex about screenscraping Tibia.com and analyzing the output into interesting statistics. Any number of Tibians could do it today, and some have, delving into other aspects of analytics of Tibia.

TibiaNews: What got you through the hours of scripting and building the site? Surely there must have been times when you thought it wasn’t worth the trouble?

Erig: Honestly, there never was. I am quite selfish in erig.net, I wrote the scripts because they interested me primarily, the fact that other people thought they were interesting was a bonus, but mostly the reason you see something on erig.net is because I thought it was interesting, and I don't code something that doesn't interest me.

TibiaNews: Well let’s move onto TibiaWiki. When were you first inspired to create it?

Erig: It was late 2004, it was sort of "born" alongside erig.net. I started TibiaWiki with one article, it was the Hellgate Library article, and I populated with all the 469 books from that library and also all the responses to common keywords Blinky responded to. I like to believe that I started the "469" enigma.. it definitely became a force of its own after that (and its still unsolved! Come on peoople!).

TibiaNews: And are you given a majority of the information or do you and other Tibians have to add all the information yourselves?

Erig: CipSoft currently offers absolutely no information regarding Tibia to TibiaWiki. Everything you see on TibiaWiki is discovered by players and our regular and somewhat understated Contributors... (or it's fake, let's be realistic, anyone can edit TibiaWiki, so you can't trust it completely). However, talks are currently underway with CipSoft's fansite administrator regarding information released to Supported Fansites, so the accuracy of that level of information may change in the future.

TibiaNews: What would TibiaWiki be if other Tibians did not help update it?

Erig: It would contain one article, the one I described previously. Seriously, whilst people often credit me with TibiaWiki, I _ALWAYS_ state that TibiaWiki (whenever someone asks) is nothing without its contributors. They are what drive TibiaWiki and I cannot thank them enough.

TibiaNews: This winter update someone wrote false information for the Jester Outfit Quest, confusing a lot of Tibians world-wide. Will anything be done, or has been done, to ensure things like that can’t happen again in the future?

Erig: Our contributors are fairly consistent in expelling incorrect information from TibiaWiki, but occasionally, just like in Wikipedia (which TibiaWiki uses the same software of), inaccuracies may creep in. If enough people make enough noise, the TibiaWiki Administrators will soon notice and remove the vandalism/inaccurate information. It's not a perfect wiki world, but we try.

TibiaNews: Once again we’re jumping from one site to another, this time Tibia lotteries, which is really just an extension of Erig. What gave you the idea to make that?

Erig: lottery.erig.net was made because I was often seeing "lotteries" held on game world boards, where players would "roll" the winning numbers themselves, and quite frankly, I didn't trust them. I believed at that point that people would trust my reputation and my site, so I created a sub-site that would offer a fairer alternative than self-drawn lotteries of the time.

TibiaNews: Does it require much more work now that it is completed? Or do you still have to make regular updates for it?

Erig: The main erig.net fansite requires almost no maintenance at all, but I am actually currently working to revise the way erig.net is laid out, which will make it easier to update in the future and easier to add new features, which I have been given multiple ideas of from people using the "PM Erig" feature on my site.

TibiaNews: About how many views do your three sites get a day? (If you have any way of knowing)

Erig: Towards the end of TibiaWiki being hosted by me, my site was averaging around ~75,000 unique visits per day (or 2.2mil unique visits per month). After TibiaWiki moved to Wikia, I am no longer able to access that information.

TibiaNews: Well are there any changes we can be expecting for Erig, TibiaWiki or TibiaLotteries in the coming future?

Erig: As discussed above, erig.net will get some new features, you'll have to wait and see as to what they may be. Any TibiaWiki changes will be decided by the TibiaWiki Administrator team, and TibiaLotteries? No, that site does one thing, and it does it well so there will be no changes there.

TibiaNews: What about forums?

Erig: I believe that other supported fansites have adequate forums, there's no need to create more specifically for my site, plus the maintenance and management of a forum is not worth it for a site like mine, IMO.

TibiaNews: Thank you for your time, Erig.