History of FurryMUCK

This article covers the history of FurryMUCK.

Beginnings

 * August 1990: BlueMage, Neil M, a student at North Carolina State University started a Muck on one of the servers. The theme was to mimic the university's campus which has unusual areas like underground steam tunnels.  There were steam tunnels, a bandstand, and other initial objects.  BlueMage, invited Gypsy, Melissa Whitfield, to help out with building the Muck.  She was made a wizard (object #2).  Melissa saw that the project would be a large endeavor and invited her boyfriend Drew Maxell to help with the building.  The NCState theme didn't seem to catch on. A new theme was discussed and Drew brought in the idea of FurryMUCK (hatched from discussions between him and his housemates).  Drew then invited his housemates Ashtoreth, Shaterri, Centaur, and Erych, Abigail (Claire Benedikt), Ryuuko  - Revar, lynx and Tugrik arrive shortly after the launch

Growth

 * Spring 1991: FurryMUCK outgrows the resources and good graces of the administrators at NC State. It moves to the University of California at Irvine. Siegfried became a wizard, as did Lionman, Carelia, and Tugrik; Erych left soon after.  Archteryx was made a wizard for a few days by Drew without approval and was dewizzed shortly after.
 * April 1991: The original taxi, the Cafe Rose, and Lynx's truffel program are installed; 10,000 objects reached. Drew and Gypsy were no longer dating and personal conflicts led to Gypsy being dewizzed and resigning FurryMUCK.  Gypsy occasionally visits FurryMuck to watch its incredible growth.
 * October 1991: 20,000 objects reached
 * November 1991: FurryMUCK is forced to move to Carnegie-Mellon University (Shaterri's workplace) by the actions of a user called Bruce
 * 1992: Helpstaff formed; lynx, Revar, Mishael, Kimi and Riss are made wizards, while Ashtoreth, Carelia, Lionman, and Siegfried resign - Revar resigns later in the year
 * August 1992: 50,000 objects reached
 * September 1992: FurryMUCK is deleted, but mostly restored from Revar's backups; relaunched at the University of Toronto with Chris Siebemann administering
 * New Year's Day 1993: The Quicksilver virus written by Targhan infects the MUCK, diverting all conversation to Yozduk, who posts the log on rec.games.mud.tiny
 * Spring 1993: The Demons vs Angels role-play takes place
 * April 1993: 75,000 objects reached
 * Summer 1993: A PG-13 rating is enforced in the Park
 * October 1993: S'A'Alis begins hosting FurryMUCK, becoming a wizard shortly afterwards
 * March 1994: Wired publishes Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers, and FurryMUCK gets a deluge of sex-seekers
 * June 1994: An entire chapter of a published book is devoted to a transcript of a FurryMUCK login session, as a demonstration of MUDding, telnet, and online virtual worlds. Later editions of the book contained a much shorter version. (Internet explorer's kit for Macintosh, by Adam C. Engst and William Dickson, Hayden Books, ISBN 1568300891)
 * July 1994: 100,000 objects reached
 * Mid-1994: Triggur is elected as Mayor of FurryMUCK
 * 1995: Data corruption on the move to a new server causes FurryMUCK to finally implement proper backup procedures; Kimi retires from the wizcorp, Nightwind replaced her, and K'has, O'Nara and Slipstream joined too, while AJWolf "acquires" the mayoralty
 * July 1995: 125,000 objects reached
 * Late 1995: Lumpy the Squirrel, the primary source of urine in the FurryMUCK park pond, is finally toaded once and for all; the pool is thoroughly cleaned afterwards
 * February 1996: The passing of the CDA causes FurryMUCK to implement age restrictions on certain areas for people below 18 years of age
 * March 1996: Vulpine, one of several who has falsely declared his age to pass the restrictions files an affidavit with the ACLU - the result was his permanent banning, after much discussion on alt.fan.furry.muck and elsewhere
 * November 1996: Chip Unicorn and Points join as wizards at ConFurence 7 in 1996, while Frang takes over as Mayor
 * 1997: Mishael retires as wizard
 * July 1997: 175,000 objects reached
 * October 1997: Toast is elected as Mayor
 * 9 February 1998: FurryMUCK records 500 simultaneous users
 * June-August 1998: Debate over the use of the wixxx flag pedophile causes it to be pulled and replaced with WhatIsz (retaining the same global 'wixxx' command) and the broader term ageplay
 * August 1998: Inari is elected as Mayor
 * 31 October 1998: FurryMUCK temporarily becomes FurryMORGUE, the last 99 & 44/100% gangrenous Furry TinyMu*
 * February 1999: Points and Slipstream retire from wizarding
 * April 1999: Brenda added to wizcorp as coder, while Riss is dewizzed due to lack of time, leaving amicably
 * 11 April 1999: Tugrik takes over site administration duties. FurryMUCK moves to a dedicated server, hosted in a colocation facility in San Jose, California.
 * June 1999: Silent Red resigns as a wizard
 * July 1999: Aragh becomes a PR wizard
 * October 1999: Mwerevu is elected as Mayor

2000s

 * June 2000: Rose de Stitches is elected Mayor, only to step down a few months later amidst controversy
 * October 2000: @shout is removed over age concerns and abuse. A private version called "Scream", written by Sarusa, fills the void left by @shout. Being outside of wizard control, it is not censored and becomes a community of its own.
 * March 2001: Dwight Dutton started an eBay auction on the domain names furrymuck.com/net/org. The wizards were not pleased (see this post to a.f.f. by Shaterri), and shut the auction down, but not before it reached $500. Darrel Exline, the high bidder, bought the names for $550, and later let the domain registrations lapse. Triggur bought them and donated them back to FurryMUCK.  The domains are now managed by lynx. One result was an increased highlighting of the use of the term "FurryMUCK" as a service mark.
 * 13 July 2005: The server experienced a massive hardware failure. After discussion with the other wizards, Tugrik and Revar ran a donation drive to fund a new server.  Within five days enough had been collected to purchase a new enterprise-class machine, which the Muck currently still runs on.