What WAS eternal-anime.org?
As I had stated in my history page, I had bought this domain in 2018, but before that it was actually owned by a forum community I frequented as a kid. I actually keep the /forums directory URL live as well as what assets I could pull off the Web Archive in case someone tries to visit and encourage them to contact me via e-mail, but since it's been over 20 years now, and everyone was much older than me at the time, I'm sure they have their own lives outside of seeing what someone archived of an old forum community of theirs.
Eternal Anime was originally a forum dedicated to the distribution of anime wallpapers and avatars. I'm pretty sure this is how I came upon the website (probably from a sailor moon shrine) and it was a small community at the time... It;s where I gained my passion for creating anime websites.
It was ran by Ji-n, Pinky, and a few others around 2005, first on invisionfree, then self hosted for a couple years (2005-07) at the eternal-anime.org domain. The community wasn't huge... but it was like a family. For some reason I even got thrown in as a moderator. This is where I learned that whoa... You can MAKE a website? BY YOURSELF?! and even got a little Mew Lettuce layout made for me, all lost to the void now.
After that, it got merged to their Ragnarok Online server, Eternal-Ragnarok.com!
Eternal RO Anime (2006 - 2008?) @ratemyserver.net
Eternal RO Anime was the successor in the form of a Ragnarok Online server. (And also, my very first interaction to what an MMO was and my way to learning basic LUA at age 12 aha)
I can't tell you the how or why of things; I was really, REALLY young and was more excited about learning what an MMO was and how this whole thing worked.
E-RO-A was special in the fact that everything on the server was Anime themed, from the Kafra being the girl from Elfen Lied, to Inuyasha mini side quests, anime BGM, and a bunch of custom items that were ALL anime themed.
The main town was Lighthalzen with a snow effect, and there were a bunch of systems in place, like snow, cool lighting ect.
Whatever had happened to the server/site though, I have no clue... I lost internet access in the middle of playing on the server. Back then, laptops had to have wi-fi cards slid into the side of them and mine broke, effectively leaving me without internet for a while. I ended up delving into using an eAthena test server I had saved to my laptop to hone my RO scripting skills and effectively lost all contact.
Helios RO Twilight (2008 - 2009) @ratemyserver
I honestly. have NO remembrance of what Helios was... All I remember was when I could access the internet again, Eternal-Ragnarok would redirect here. The only things I heard was Admins of Helios had stolen some of E-RO-A's assets after teaming up with them? And then everyone resigned.
(The fact that Pinky's sig of ALL THINGS was archived on the wayback machine throws me back so hard... She would use this character appearence when she helped me learn RO, and dedicated a whole two days to helping me learn the class and pet systems in the game.)
Apocalypse RO (2009 - 2013) @ratemyserver.net
The last thing I had heard about E-RO-A's creator, Ji-n, was on this server. Again, the anime theme and sprites returned here with 3 different server types: Twilight, Aurora, and Dusk, the names themed around .hack//.
One of the servers retained all the anime sprites and was a super low rate server, while the other two were regular rates. (rates are just different EXP and Item Drop percentages)
These are the screencaps I could get off the wayback machine:
Afterward
Otherwise... Thats all the history I really have on Eternal Anime. It was a small anime community that still has an impact on me to this day, and I'll be forever grateful for that... I wish I had more to show, but my old HHD I had used to store many of my late 2000's things died a year back, so all is lost to the void now. I still have printouts of some of the site headers or forum posts, but they're very, very faded.
