Basic History of eWrestling

Overview:

We here at the eWrestling.Org Wrestling School for idiots feel if you are every going to become the best at a hobby, you must understand it’s history to appreciate it’s current state. Without a solid foundation, veterans and journeymen will find you easy pickings in whatever federation you choose.

From what we know, eWrestling started off as two wrestling fans that were fooling around on email. One guy wrote his buddy saying he hit a move on him covering for the win. Then the other guy wrote back saying someone interfered and stopped the count. This went back and fourth and from such a simple idea, it grew through stages.

Stage 1: [Email to Email]
After growing bored with emailing moves, the two decided cutting interviews would decided the winners and losers. So back and fourth they went again until someone threw up their hands in defeat. Soon someone got the idea that this basic concept could be done using multiple players. This used to be the most popular way to Role-play because it didn't require the owner to have a site that needed updating. Unfortunately, since this hobby has advanced so much, it's a rather archaic way of playing the game these days but at that time, it was pretty ingenious. But when you got 10 to 20 Emails per day, the focus was lost and the game became confusing.

Stage 2: [Mass Mailing]
Thus Mass Mailing was born. This was next stage in the evolution and it was a lot like Email to Email but all the wrestlers sent their Role-plays to the head of the E-Fed and he sends them all out at once every day or every other day. This was good because if there were a lot of wrestlers in the E-Fed, it cut down on the amount of Email you were receiving. Again, this is a very old way of playing this game but there are some people out there still doing it. Remember, it requires no complicated site, and little or no effort for an owner. But the creative E-Fed owners wanted more and so did the wrestlers.

Stage 3: [Message Boards]
The handlers wanted more control over what they were reading, and by having everyone place their interviews on a message board or in a guestbook, they could pick and choose cutting down on the interviews they didn’t want to read. No longer was a handler Email box filled with stuff he/she didn’t want to read. E-Wrestling was taking off and with the invention of the message board; you could moderate the content of what was being posted. In our opinion, the addition of the message board was the single most important advancement in E-Wrestling today. For the first time, you were allowed to use HTML tags adding great visual effects to your Role-plays. Although most owners don't give extra credit to these handlers for the spice, it does aid in helping the handler create a mood for his wrestler to speak. This idea would soon expand to include OOC Areas and other topics allowing handlers to become an internet community as well as a competitive game.

Stage 4: [Sites]
With a community in place, owners now had a reason to create websites dedicated their handlers. Here an owner would show his appreciation to his wrestlers by posting results, ratings, interviews, and rankings for the world to see. The more advanced the site, the more potential wrestlers would come join the community. The secret hand shake was being advertised and now the owners were competing as well as the wrestlers. But design wasn’t enough, old school owners began to taut, it’s quality over quantity and while some nice sites were simulating their results, the more dedicated owners were hand writing theirs. Simulated against Hand written? Depends on what you were into as a handler.

To aid these E-Fed wars, the birth of resource sites and Inter-Feds came into the mix. With numbers there was power and although some owners preferred being on their own, there was more glory for the owner who took the most risk. And like all good things, egos, and greed killed most of these sites splintering E-Wrestling back years and forming private communities rather public ones.

Conclusion:
Today, E-Wrestling is very much alive but with the hype from “Real” federation on the down slide and invention of X-Box, this game in our opinion is living off its past rather than creating a future. Why? In order to compete in this hobby, owners are now forced to spend hundreds of dollars on a server, URL, and software to play competitively. Handlers want more and with games like Halo out there, you can’t blame them. Kicker is, E-Wrestling is still very much a free game and unless an owner is willing to part with the cash, you’re doomed.

Which brings us to the forefront, and where E-Wrestling is most likely be heading. As of 2004, eWrestling.Org has figured out a way to move passed the written cards, and produce their shows in MP3 format.

From email to listening, E-Wrestling is far from done with. As long as there are owners out there willing to spend the money, there will be handlers willing to play this game for free.

So when choosing a federation understand and appreciate the history behind the game, and you just might do a bit better in your quest for the gold.