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and when to remove this template message allakhazam.com type mmorpg fansite founded 1999 headquarters los angeles united states number of employees approx . 30 website www.allakhazam.com allakhazam s magical realm part of the zam network is a website providing forums a wikibase and lookup services for several online rpgs including aion dark age of camelot eve online everquest everquest ii final fantasy xi free realms lord of the rings online rift runes of magic star wars galaxies warhammer online and world of warcraft . as of december 7 2008 it has over 1.4 million registered usernames and over 10 million posts between the forums and individual pages for each item in every game covered on the site . the site s primary purpose is to enable registered users to search a range of databases relating to specific mmorpgs . these contain details of quests npcs and in game items as well as interactive maps and advice on game play . as the site developed a significant user base the interactive nature of the discussion allowed users to post comments on the various database items thus ensuring the content and advice to gamers was current . in addition to these databases registered users can also download content to enable offline review of their current game characters game patches and other gaming resources . in recent years the discussion forums have become an increasingly important feature of the site with specific forums dedicated to each of the supported games and more generalist areas such as technical support and out of topic discussions for non game related discussion . contents 1 history 2 unique site features 2.1 premium vs regular registration 2.2 custom titles 2.3 karma system 3 denial of service attacks 4 references 5 external links history edit allakhazam.com was started in 1999 by jeffrey moyer as a simple guide to the game everquest on a free web hosting service . it quickly became known by the everquest player base for its extensive quest descriptions . mr. moyer then teamed up with programmer andy sharp acquired the url allakhazam.com and the site was expanded into a database format covering quests items mobs and other aspects of the game . by the year 2000 allakhazam was the most popular site on the internet covering everquest and was getting over 10 million page views a month . many consider allakhazam to be the innovator of the gaming database format that is now followed by a number of other networks . citation needed in late 2000 the internet experienced a vast reduction of advertising revenue that has been referred to as the dot com bubble . most gaming sites including allakhazam lost the majority of their revenue . many popular gaming sites went out of business soon thereafter and have not been seen since . allakhazam weathered this storm by establishing a premium membership service where users paid for certain advanced searches and other features designed to make their game play easier . at its peak the allakhazam premium service had over 45 000 subscribers making it one of the more successful services of its kind ever . the success of everquest inspired other publishers to release their own online role playing games . as new games were released allakhazam added sites for them . each allakhazam site was popular with the gaming communities of the individual games . the release of final fantasy xi however was of particular note . because publisher square enix did not launch its own official forums for the game the allakhazam ffxi forums became the main forums for that game . this led to a significant expansion of the entire allakhazam forum system . the launch of world of warcraft in 2004 marked another significant milestone . allakhazam launched an extensive database for the game that currently accounts for approximately 90 % of their traffic . allakhazam is regularly referred to as a reference for wow information and is particularly known for its quest descriptions and auction house information . in november 2005 co owners moyer and sharp sold their ownership stake in allakhazam to ige . 1 the amount of the sale has been said to be between 7 and 10 million dollars . affinity media spun out of ige and then created the zam network to consolidate allakhazam with thottbot into the internet s largest mmo gaming information network . later zam also acquired wowhead . allakhazam thottbot and wowhead are all ranked within the top 1 000 sites according to alexa and the combined traffic of these sites likely puts the zam network as one of the internet s top 100 sites in terms of total traffic . indeed the zam media kit claims a total of over 700 million page views a month . both moyer and sharp continued to work for the new corporation and in 2008 mr. moyer was named as the president of the entire zam network . on september 26 2009 moyer announced he was leaving at the end of the month yes it is true . illia sharp got fired a month ago and i am leaving allakhazam at the end of this month . so sorry to see it end this way . 2 unique site features edit premium vs regular registration edit in order to access content and participate in the community users must register an account . this is at no cost all content is free to access . however some search features are restricted to premium users who pay a subscription fee currently ranging from 2.50 to 3.33 per month depending on the duration of subscription . in addition premium users can include a user image or avatar to their posts use graphical emoticons or smilies in the forums and access advanced search and support features . custom titles edit on attaining 10 000 individual posts a custom title is awarded by the administrators ; usually sarcastically based upon that user s posting style . this is in contrast to most other forums where either a custom title can be set initially or doesn t exist in the first place . as of september 22 2008 fifty six users have custom titles . karma system edit while the site s forums and comments are watched by the site s administrators a degree of control similar to but more extensive than slashdot s is granted to a portion of the users by way of the karma system . in essence posts can be rated up increasing the poster s karma or down decreasing it to manipulate whether or not the post meets the current filter criteria . resulting posts that are pushed under the filter sub default are invisible under the default settings on the forums . unlike slashdot s karma system however only a flat number is assigned to the posts and comments rather than both a number and a type of rating . denial of service attacks edit according to a statement on the site s home page 3 on february 21 2008 the allakhazam site became a victim of a denial of service attack in an attempt to block users from accessing the site . this recurred on march 3 2008 as the site became inaccessible to users forcing the site s owners to change their service provider . 4 normal service was restored on march 5 2008 but another denial of service attack took down the site again on march 11 2008 . new hardware was added to compensate for this continual attack and the site has not experienced any major downtimes since then . references edit ige acquiring mmog sites . corpnews.com . may 4 2006 . retrieved may 8 2006 . jeffrey moyer s twitter account september 26 2009 allakhazam.com news ddos attack allakhazam.com news we re back external links edit allakhazam v t e warcraft blizzard entertainment warcraft orcs & humans ii tides of darkness beyond the dark portal adventures lord of the clans iii reign of chaos the frozen throne hearthstone heroes of warcraft world of warcraft world of warcraft gameplay the burning crusade wrath of the lich king cataclysm mists of pandaria warlords of draenor legion tabletop games the board game the roleplaying game world of warcraft the board game world of warcraft trading card game books of blood and honor day of the dragon lord of the clans the last guardian war of the ancients trilogy rise of the horde tides of darkness beyond the dark portal arthas rise of the lich king graphic novels the sunwell trilogy world of warcraft legends dragons of outland other licensed media azeroth choppers heroes of the storm film soundtrack universe characters sylvanas windrunner jaina proudmoore arthas menethil illidan stormrage tyrande whisperwind creatures locations races and factions related articles corrupted blood incident defense of the ancients glider leeroy jenkins make love not warcraft professional warcraft iii competition korean editing jass mdx file format mpq file format websites wowhead wowwiki thottbot allakhazam category warcraft book warcraft retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title allakhazam & oldid 727863739 categories video game internet forumsonline game databasesinternet properties established in 1999hidden categories wikipedia articles in need of updating from october 2010all wikipedia articles in need of updatingarticles lacking reliable references from march 2010all articles lacking reliable referencesarticles with topics of unclear notability from january 2009all articles with topics of unclear notabilityall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from july 2011 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages svenska edit links this page was last modified on 1 july 2016 at 18 28 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site 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