[Arilou]

I am always amused how people assume things that aren't true and then spread them as fact. Here are some excerpts from another failed attempt to explain the game.

but all staff members or "Wizards" as they were called had to be extremely dedicated to the server, (as in play for years) and release content (new maps and dungeons or what not) to even be considered,

No, all you had to do was submit quality maps and you'd be promoted. We do have a rule that you have to have a level 15 account to be a wizard, but that was not enforced for the longest time and level 15 isn't hard to reach anyway. Neither was level 25 which is why I know a lot of people who didn't play the game for years before becoming wizards. In fact, I'm actually an extreme example of how wrong this is as I was promoted days after making my first account, something I've told people time and time again.

As for the releasing content part - You have your words mixed up. You have to make content to be considered, the releasing part happens after you're a wizard.

and once this happened finally you went through a trial period of 2 months as a trial Wizard (or apprentice).

Honestly, unless we were nervous about you or you were promoted after Legolas left and before the whole arch wizard incident of 2009, you were promoted from junior to full wizard as soon as you finished your first project. What constituted a project was rather subjective when it came to art wizards so they sometimes stayed as junior wizards for a little bit longer than map makers. But map makers almost always got promoted after their first area went live. Certain people played around instead of doing their work and so they remained as junior wizards for awhile, but those of of us who bug tested our areas and put them up right away got promoted right away. In fact, I don't think I was even a wizard for two months when I was promoted to senior wizard (if I'm not mistaken, it was just a little bit before the two month mark).

The server was also similar, in that the owner started it in college, and eventually became one of google's lead software engineers.

A) To be fair, I think he was trying to exaggerate the importance of certain things to secure a mod position at steam, but thinking that Rhialto's position at google was a grand one because he's outspoken on the internet is pretty common. Yet, until recently, he was just a regular staff software engineer.

B) Wrong again. He did not start Wyvern while in college, he started in while in the workforce - He worked at Geoworks from 1992-1997 and then spent a year just working on Wyvern before landing a job at Amazon. His time in college and his time at Geoworks does overlap, but he had been out of college for a bit when work on Wyvern begun. So, I don't know where this misconception came from (it's a new one for me).