In The Beginning...
Sometime in the late fall of 2002 the man most of you know as Diggzy Brown said to me in rather casual conversation over MSN one night..... "Lars was mentioning that they are going to open an indy version of Wrassle and we should think about getting our own fed going there. They say we can run it however we want." ....THAT, as they say, is where it all began. The inspiration was Lars, Diggzy was the medium, and I was just the guy who got to go along for the ride.
At least at first.
Lars and I had an extensive history as commissioners, and we had also worked for each other at various times in our history as players, so when the opportunity came to work together we were both intrigued. We started planning, and with the help of Diggzy's managerial persona Sneaky Jensen, we built the foundation of Federation X in a little less than a month. In December of 2002 we started a marketing campaign (seriously!) in an effort to make our opening the biggest news in online wrestling that anyone could remember. It was a success.
January 1, 2003 was the day that Federation X officially opened its doors for business, and what a day it was! By noon the boards had backlogged almost three pages of posts, and I am certain we chased away some very talented players within the first two days because of the speed at which the boards were moving. It was not just activity either. This was damn good roleplay! Sapper, Alisterfiend, Ironfist, Faith, Acid Ed, Soothesayer, Deathwish and a host of others exploded out of the gates that first day and never looked back. The list of people who came out and gave it a spin is too long to go through, and the truth is that we probably became victims of our own marketing campaign when certain players simply had to leave us behind because they couldn't keep up with the boards. It was the most perfect, and most frustrating week I've ever spent running a federation.
That is how it started ...and I like to think that that is how it ended. In between there were some bumps in the road, and more than a little changing of the guard amongst our talented players. For a period of time the original fathers of FEDERATION X handed over its operation to the players you know as Faith and Dani and took some time away from the game. Later on, situations transpired that lead to our return and another entertaining run at the helm of the greatest wrestling federation ever put together. During this time we got some help from other people who put in their extra time and effort to make things run the way they were meant to. Other people came onto the Powerbase, and gave us that little something extra that set our management team apart from all others. Von Braun. Ma. Tyler Durden. Samantha. If I am forgetting anyone, I apologize ...I am an old man now ...my memory sucks. Together we engaged players with every tool we had at our disposal and prided ourselves on the innovation we brought to the game on a regular basis. We ran a unique version of Stable Wars that has turned into our most successful event year in and year out in the form of Sponsor Wars. We used Lethal Lotteries, and planned a month spent playing as our 'sister' company in Japan. It was an awesome time to be a part of the company.
The sad truth is that shortly after Federation X was created we ran into conflict with the people who owned the site, and our fate was sealed. We were never able to overcome the antagonizing positions that they took in our business relationship.
Federation X closed in the early spring of 2005.
It would not be heard from for many years.
Federation X reborn...
You don't punish customers for your own mistakes.
That was what I said to Maverick on the day we walked out of Wrassle. It was a simply philosophical position that had, over the years, lead me to great success in numerous business ventures, and had steered me away from terrible businesses to deal with as a consumer. I found in my commissioner and longtime friend a person who understood completely. For years I had been drafting and conceptualizing the 'ideal' wrestling game, in which talent and effort trumped disposable income and politics. The biggest barrier had always been that Wrassle was easy. It was there, and it was already running and it had a collection of players that I admired for their talent. That and the fact that I'm not a programmer. I can't just sit down and design the game that I can envision in my head, or we would have been building this monster years ago.
In the end, Erik and I didn't leave alone. For years we had networked with talented and dedicated individuals who believed, like we did, that the game could be better. That it could survive without whoring out its pinnacles of success to the player who spent the most money every month. Lars, of course, came with us. Others were quick to follow. Some had been there for Federation X, and had a sneaking suspicion that if we were going to take the stand we were, that there would be something else showing up for them to use sooner or later. Others just believed in the friendships they had forged with us over the years. A few came because they watched what happened and said 'that ain't right.' Whatever the reason was, we didn't go alone, and our departure didn't go without notice.
Erik was approached by parts of the leadership of Wrassle to discuss what could be done to repair the rift, and to even explore the idea of bringing Federation X back as an independant operation within the larger whole of the organization. The truth though is that there can be no common ground between people who have such enormous philosophical differences. Erik and a few of the Wrassle leaders did their best to bridge that gap, but it wasn't to be. So we moved on. A collection of guys we had worked with before started scouring the web for alternatives that could serve as a temproary home for our roleplaying while I explored ways to hire a programmer and get started building what we actually wanted. Gfeds became the answer.
Federation X officially relaunched using this format in the fall of 2007.
With GFeds we found a place that we could make look sexy, and provided us with all kinds of federation management tools that we really, really liked. There were just two problems; players didn't sim for themselves, and the roleplay board was capped at five posts per person between each card. We solved the roleplay problem, which was our larger issue, with a couple of extra steps, and started out on a journey to rebuild Federation X. We got everything set up, and got the company launched, and then while my colleagues Maverick and Lars started running the federation, I set out to start our process of constant improvement. That lead us to moving our roleplay to Freeforums, where it currently resides.
Moving to Freeforums opened up all kinds of posting and board options for us that improved the product of our roleplay. It afforded us a great deal more options for posting, and felt a lot more like the options we all 'grew up with' in CSlam and Wrassle. It took some adjusting to, and we were still stuck with having to repost our 5 best posts from each match to run the SIM on GFeds, but it was a better home for the time being. Once we settled in, I moved on to Step 2; our own SIM. I recruited a friend to build me what I call FedX Engine Version .0000024 because its so far from what I think the engine can be that it can't even be called Version 1. With that said, it does a couple of things that were crucial for us to take that next step and eliminate reposting. It lets players SIM their own matches, provides us with various match endings, allows players to choose wrestler archtypes and allows players to choose match types. Step 2....complete.
We got our SIM put together and up in January, four months from our relaunch in GFEds. Four months from the site we settled for, to being done with that site and moving on to a new home and even bigger plans for the future. We had a plan in place, and a map of how we were going to get there. With the influxes of talented players we experienced, we knew we were doing some things right. Their arrival and decisions to stay helped keep us pushing forward. We hoped this page would continue to add more chapters as the fed continued to grow, but....
07/01/11...
We were not making the kind of progress we would have liked to be making, but we were at least making progress. A couple of months earlier we ran a rumble event completely on FedXWrestling.com, and tested out a wide range of the functionality that was being built into it. The test was a success, in that it identified for us three key areas that had to be revamped and recoded in order for us to move to the site full time and leave FreeForums behind. Was it pretty and perfect? No. But it was better, and that's what we're all about. Continuous improvement.
On the new site we tested the automated sim bonus system, and it passed with flying colors. That was a big step forward for administrators, as it cut down on the burden of time involved. There were some additional automated functions that were being outlined for coding even as we were addressing that, and using them would make the site's operation seamless and simple, letting people like Lars, myself, Genocide and others spend more time roleplaying and less time as functionaries. I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that some of the new players had made suggestions about ammendments to the rules we operated under, and there were some changes as a result. Like I said, continuous improvement.
We were always getting better...
Welcome to The SHOW...
In the late fall of 2011, Wrassle went down, and went down hard. It looked like it was done, and at the request of some of the players FEDERATION X immediately stepped in to provide a temporary home for a numebr of things, including message boards where the Wrassle community could connect with one another and discuss what their options were. During this time Titus Fuchs, the commissioner of SHOW which had been in the midst of a recent invasion by The Talent, opted to continue running his company in FEDERATION X. Wrassle did eventually reopen, guided by the hand of Colt Calhoun, friend of Fed X and all around terrible Podcast guest, but Titus, SHOW and many players remained in their new home, joining the Fed X family.
In December of 2011, with its largest active player base ever, the site was split into three feds and a draft was held. The two existing feds (the core body of Federation X was rebranded as Evolution X, plus SHOW) were joined by a new company known as Empire Wrestling, and after the existing feds chose 4 performers that would not be exposed to the draft, supplemental pre-draft picks were given to Empire as well to balance everything out. Then a rumble was held to determine who would be the first ICON with permission to move freely between feds. Following the rumble, a draft was held to manage the expansion of rosters. Below are the 4 protected picks for each fed, as well as the first 3 picks in the draft:
SHOW:
Tag Team Champions: The New Breed (Alan Scott & Ryan Scott)
Show Champion: Echos
TV Champion: Johnny XS
Evolution X:
Tag Team Champions: Lasher & Eve Riley
Superstar Champion: Valentine
X-Factor Champion: Osiris
Empire:
Max Entropy (Supplemental selection)
Angelica Grimm (Supplemental selection)
Kraven Blood (Supplemental selection)
Christopher (Supplemental selection)
DRAFT:
#1. The Kansas Kid (SHOW)
#2. Romulus Heinrich Winters (Evolution X)
#3. Carnage (Empire)
14/04/12...
We began the roll-out of a new system designed to reflect the small market structure of independant wrestling promotions, while hearkening back to the glory days of a governing national body like the N.W.A. of the 1980's. This was a dramatic shift in the design of the game, as we for the first time move away from the fed based system that has dominated gameplay since (for many of us) the days of Cyberslam.
Under the new system players controlled wrestlers who were contracted to FEDERATION X but who were free to work for any of the promoters whom the company licensed to put on shows and promote the brand around the country and across the globe. Where wrestlers spent their time, took their feuds and put in their work was left to the wrestlers (and their managers) to determine. They may have spent months working exclusively with one promoter, or may have moved between promotions with weekly or even daily regularity, charting the path of their own careers. Every two months FEDERATION X would schedule and host a global pay per view broadcast, bringing together all of its employees under one roof for the night.
This new system would challenge Promoters to do more than count posts and book cards. It tasked them with creating the most vibrant and dynamic territories, competing to attract the biggest matches and the best storylines. Promoters would be graded by the Powerbase, and it was possible for a Promoter's license to be suspended if the branding work they were doing didn't meet the company's standards. Whenever a Promoter's license was suspended, the Powerbase would look to another Promoter in a different territory to pick up the slack. That Promoter would receive a temporary license and a chance to become a permanent fixture for the company.
We also moved all of our simming to the new site at this time. We anticipated our coder finishing the tool that would allow the Powerbase to add Promotions and remove Promotions on a rotating basis, with the built in logic to handle automated bonuses, at which time we would be looking at moving the entire game to this site.
Ever onward ladies and gents...
Spring 2014
A slow painful decay of the game had begun. Ridgeway did his very best to keep the game together, managing the site through ever diminishing levels of engagement from players. Wrassle's revival had also ended painfully with an abrupt closing of the site, and the remaining players had not infused Federation X with any real momentum. Too many builders had burned out, and stepped away for the momentum of the site to continue. Ridgeway continued to work with the few remaining players to provide direction, administration and cards, but even that would die off in the months that followed.
A few half-hearted revivals popped up each year, but none ever really caught on.
The Passing of Burnt
In August 2016 the unexpected news that Bern Doyle-Dimou, co-founder of Wrassle, reached Facebook where groups for former Wrassle and Fed X participants remained one of the few vehicles for communication amongst past players. Matt McDervish worked to bring together a large assortment of players as a tribute to Burnt, and hosted a large card on the Federation X boards. The card prompted re-engagement in what was once their favorite passtime by numerous writers. Though it was short-lived, it served its intended purpose.
Federation X...one more time...
In late September of 2016 Maverick and I connected for a call. We had been trying to line these up on a semi-regular basis because Bern's passing (and the passing abut a year earlier of our dear friend Bruce "Diggzy Brown" Lerch) had reminded us that it was incredibly easy to fall out of touch with friends we'd spent years investing in. During the call Mav wasted no time in telling me that while he didn't participate in the card, that it was happening had gotten him reading a lot of old material. There's some damn GOODTM writing on this site! His creative juices were flowing, and he proposed to me the idea that we needed closure. Whether that meant one month of decent writing, or whether it could capture our imagination again and it would last a year wasn't the point. The point was that too often we had let our characters fade away without giving them their due. So we began to brainstorm.
We talked about writers we missed, and friends we hadn't spoken to in far too long. We talked about people we had mocked and ridiculed, when in truth we liked a great deal of their writing. We talked about what the game would need to look like in a new age when time was in shorter supply, and players couldn't be expected to throw up 14 posts a week in order to be "active." We scratched out some idea, but one remained at the center above all others; "let's have some fun." The next day Mav took to the boards to tease what was coming.
We started contacting old friends. Letting them know what we were thinking of doing, and inviting them to join us. Some of them have. Some haven't shown up yet, but we see them lurking with great regularity and we look forward to the moment when they choose to step in. We're seeing old characters that feel as familiar as family (Acid Ed, Alisterfiend, Valentine, Osiris, Omega and others), new characters that are fascinating and talented (Rex, Che, Melody and others) and characters that we know, but who are being brought back to life with a much bigger role than ever before (Shaun, Shane, Amarezza, Nigel and more.) What will it become? As long as it's fun, who cares?
For me the best part is looking around and seeing Lars, Maverick and Ridgeway all pitching in to see what we can make happen. These guys are builders, and I have no idea what we're building right now, but I'm kind of excited to find out!
Welcome...to FEDERATION X
