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Aftermath Zone
Added by ORenyRenAftermath Zone, commonly referred to as AMZ, is a virtual pet site. Founded by Ken P., it is now owned and operated by Darryl Thompson. Both, at the time of their ownership, were/are the sole programmers of AMZ. When the site fell, it had around 230,000 active members. This number was tabulated by counting the non-frozen accounts that had been logged into in the past six months. Additionally, AMZ might not have counted users who registered with the site and never logged into their account. Towards the end, there may have been an additional filter to ignore multiple/alternate accounts. AMZ's total account number was (almost) surely greater than 800,000, and likely to be close to, if not greater, than one million.
The site revolves around taking care of creatures called characters. Like traditional pet sites, they must be fed and played with and, additionally, trained for battle in the arena. However, characters can also date, marry, reproduce and go to school, features still fairly unique to AMZ. Unrelated to characters, AMZ offers an active forum, IRC, and the Online Artist where members can show-off their artwork and writing, in addition to both text-based and flash games.
The site was, and still is, maintained by a small group of volunteer staff.
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Guild History 
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Added by ORenyRenAMZ was first founded in 2000 by Ken P. as a Neopets guild/fan site when he was 14-years-old. The majority of AMZ's first users were also Neopets users. Ken did all of the programming and original artwork. Within the first year or so, Neopets threatened to sue AMZ. They claimed that the site's inventory system was too similar to their own and there might have been some references to the entire concept of a pet site. Ken had already planned on changing the inventory system because of its similarities, however due to the subpoena, it became a much more urgent priority. Neopets was not the first pet site, and therefore has no claim or ownership of the concept, however, Ken dropped the Neopets references anyway, including the use of the term "pet" which was changed to character.
Standalone Site Edit
Added by SayumIn the beginning of its life, AMZ had one pet - the Squall. These Squalls were unlike the Squalls of today. They went through stages as they leveled and eventually succumbed to an untimely death, acting much more like gadget-based pets than a traditional web-pet. Eventually, more characters were added and the dying shtick was abandoned for immortal creatures.
Initially, AMZ was following the same path as all other pet sites; it had its version of communities and forums, its own arena, games and the other typical things that all other pet sites have. Ken, however, had much bigger plans.
Aftermath Entertainment Network Edit
Ken created the Aftermath Entertainment Network or AEN. This was similar to a web ring and affiliated games would have a common bar at the top that linked to one another. Here is a list of most, if not all, of the games that were at one point or another part of AEN:
- The Core Conflict
- Space Station X
- City Garage
- Tech Pets
- Dog World
- Pet Palz
- Knox
- Mogsnet
- The Pinga Adventures
- Creature World
- Netwars
- Zyde Island
Added by ORenyRenThe only games that were ever actually functional were The Core Conflict (TCC), Creature World, Net Wars, and Zyde Island. TCC was the only one of these to be hosted on AMZ's server, although many of the games that were never completed were also hosted by Ken. The only one of these games that still exists today is Creature World.
The revolutionary idea behind AEN was that, not only would the various games benefit from the cross advertising, but the games were meant to become interoperable. This led to the creation of the AEN points. Users were meant to be able to trade in each games' currency for AEN points, and then be able to purchase items for the other games using this common currency, or to exchange currencies. The idea was never achieved and AMZ was the only game to adopt AEN points, which remained a part of AMZ until its death. AEN Points were different from the AMZ item AEN Point which had no actual function in the game.
Aftermath Zone Edit
It was during the AEN period and after it that many of AMZ's unique features began to take form and these features were started and/or completed:
- Live Chat
- aNet Browser
- Movie Maker
- Quizzes (and shortly thereafter Surveys were added as well)
- Journals
- Single Player Arena
- Dating/Couples
- Kids
- Online Artist
- Screen Savers
- Greeting Cards
- The Live Help System
- Help Tickets
However AMZ was always more focused on the character-aspect of the site, with 33 common characters, one donation-only character, and the ability to purchase a custom character. There were a number of games to play, including XO Scratcher, What's Behind the Curtain, Bubble Jump, Torca Adventure, Galdiator, and both the multi-player and single-player arenas. Furthermore, the forums the live chat, and the Online Artist, and for the short time that they were around, Journal Specials were exceptionally popular among the members. Modifying your profile, including purchasing a custom profile, was also quite popular on AMZ.
In late 2003, AMZ got its first ever holiday themed layout. It was taken down in April or May of 2004 and was replaced by another new layout. At this point, AMZ no longer advertised the AEN games, however the AEN bar at the top remained in place. In late 2004, the AMZ Store was introduced. At some point in 2004 or 2005, Ken began working on what was to be known as Illia, a new evolution to AMZ that was going to combine the traditional setting of AMZ with RPG. Some time between February and April of 2005, AMZ reached the 200,000 member milestone.
AMZ's Death Edit
In 2005 and 2006, AMZ suffered a number of database and server problems, in addition to personal problems amongst the staff.
First, four members set off a vicious attack against a staff member. Ken decided to take down AMZ out of anger. He was deciding if he should shut down AMZ completely or bring it back as a donation-only site, however, the members were vocal enough to convince Ken to bring the site back and make it available for all.
A few months later the site was hacked by a former staff member who claimed that he wanted to test out a program that he had to see how well it worked. The program was not intended to cause any harm to the site, but rather just to hack into it and test AMZ's security. (That's more or less what happened.) Things did not go according to plan and the site crashed with the database completely wiped. Ken was not going to bring the site back, but once again, enough members convinced him to revive it and so he did after finding a backup on his mother's computer.
The site was online for a few months, but then crashed again, due to Ken not being able to pay the bills, however, it came back up a few months later. In 2005, the site went down once more. Users expected it to return as it had in the past and collected on one of the site's down forums to wait for its return. Months went by and the site was still down with Ken nowhere to be found. The site was essentially dead; however, Northpike kept it on life support.
AMZ's Resurrection Edit
AMZ was first attempted to be revived by nachdenki. Then BA tried. Both of them vanished. Nachdenki has resurfaced since and has signed up on the new AMZ. Bkerensa tried next. He ran into some personal complications and was unavailable for around half a year by which time Ace had already begun working on Aftermath Zone from scratch. For the first few months, the site was hosted from his own computer. During this time, it was a very plain directory index that linked to a forum, a profile editor, and a signature editor. After some time without any progress, Kenko registered aftermathzone.net and began working on it more rigorously.
A layout was thrown together using an old AMZ layout on archive.org, and connected all of the pages. At this time, people on the AMZ group on Facebook and MySpace (although the MySpace group never really took off and is unused) were alerted of the new website, and began joining the new AMZ. After much negotiating, Ace was finally able to get the official aftermathzone.com domain from Northpike. A few weeks later, a mass email was sent out to everyone from the second incarnation of the Down Forums to return.
The forums are now swimming with both old and new users. There are many new ideas, as well as old ones being re-implemented. Dating has already been re-released and there are also a few games, and several features new to this incarnation of AMZ, such as RSS News feeds, AMZiki, new characters and games, and Achievements, Cooking, and a totally redesigned forum. For a more complete list of features available on the new AMZ, click here.
As of July 23, 2010, no new users under the age of 13 are able to register for the site.
Success!
See Also Edit
External Links Edit
- AMZ
- Wayback Machine archives of AMZ
