Millennium Creatures.net


 * Web addresses:
 * http://www.creatures3k.homecreatures.com/ (old, down)
 * http://mc.creatureslife.net/ (old)
 * http://www.millenniumcreatures.net/ (newer, down archived)
 * Webmaster: Dan
 * Contributors/Staff: FishGal, Eme, Julianne, MNB, MysticEttin, alanna
 * Ran from/to dates: 1999-2001

Introduction
Millennium Creatures.net was the website that started a long obsession with both web development and Creatures for Dan. The website was one of the more popular websites during a peak period for the Creatures Community, and recieved great input from community members and support from other large websites such as HomeCreatures. Although the website only ran for 2 years, it went through many changes and evolutions - from small info site, to large hub site.

Summary Of Content
Articles on the Creatures games and the community, downloads including COBs, a large selection of norns, and skins for Creatures 3 that allowed users to change the appearance of the GUI. In addition, it hosted a regularly updated news feed and was later home to The Creatures Forum.

History Of Website
Founded as Millenium Creatures (sic.) in late 1999, the initial version was (like many first Creatures websites) a small info page created in Frontpage. It shut down mid-2000, but reopened at MilleniumCreatures.net on 16 February 2001.

There were two main versions of Millennium Creatures; Purple Cheese and MC.net. Purple Cheese was launched alongside the new domain name, and consisted of static HTML pages. The second iteration, MC.net, was launched after a major overhaul of the site to make use of dynamic content. This change allowed community members such as Mandy and Eme to contribute to the site alongside Dan. With multiple Community personalities involved, MC.net became a more active and diverse destination - having a regularly updated community news feed and downloads section.

MC.net was infact a collection of different sites which formed the 'network'. Alongside the main site there was Eem Foo!, a Creatures Community search engine, and a site dedicated entirely to the Creatures Adventures series. MC.net also hosted one of the only Amazing Virtual Sea-Monkeys websites, with Dan being one of the few Creatures players to develop for the alternative title. His interest in the game was short lived, however, as was the site.

A Beasts sister site for Millennium Creatures, called Millennia Beasts, was developed, featuring a Beasts flavoured version of The Creatures Forum, and was actively promoted within the community. Sadly the game was never completed, and the site was abandoned when Millennium Creatures closed.

Millennium Creatures' closure was not planned - infact, a new design and features had been developed for the next iteration of the site. However, at the time when the site was taken down to implement these changes, Dan was becoming more involved with HomeCreatures, following the sites' failed merger with Creatures Creations. It was decided that Dan would take over the running of HC, and Millennium Creatures was put on a permenant hiatus. It was intended that content from Millennium Creatures would be incorporated into HomeCreatures, and indeed some of the articles were before Dan left the site.

HomeCreatures closed early in 2002 following the financial struggles of its parent company, MGON. Dan launched Egg-Central as a followup to Millennium Creatures, that featured stuff from both HC and MC.

Interesting Facts

 * Before Millennium Creatures, Dan created his first ever website, The Creatures Lounge using Microsoft publisher. It was so bad that Ping claimed to have been blinded by it.  It survived about a week.
 * At the time when Millennium Creatures was originally being developed, Mark was also developing a site of the same name. After a brief discussion, Mark renamed his site to 24th Century Creatures, but he had already claimed the HomeCreatures subdomain http://www.millennium.homecreatures.com/.  This is why Millennium Creatures resided at http://www.creatures3k.homecreatures.com/.
 * In 2001, Millennium Creatures hosted the only annual Meanest Op Awards. This was a chance for JRChat users to vote for the operator they considered to be the most tyrannical.  Random won, but Emy came in a close second.
 * FishGal developed a number of Creatures themed WinAmp skins, that were available exclusively through Millennium Creatures.