Well what can I say about myself? I'm just your typical Dynasty Warriors fan. But what is a typical Dynasty Warriors fan? Maybe someone who enjoys the games? That would seem the most logical answer.
Anyways, the name's Ryan Leigh. I'm 16 years old and first experienced Dynasty Warriors round my friend's house. He had brought DW2, and after playing it just the once, I was immediately hooked. I brought DW2 and DW3 for myself and completed them after several months of gaming. I also got my hands on the original Dynasty Warriors game, made way back in 1997 (I think) for the PSX. It is nothing like the DW games we've come to know and love, but it is an asset if you want to complete the collection.
I then purchased DW3XL, DW4, DW4XL and DW4Empires. And inbetween playing all of these games, I tried out other Koei games. I did not particularly enjoy Mystic Heroes, Dynasty Tactics, Dynasty Tactics 2, Kessen 2 and Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8. However, I became interested in the Samurai Warriors series. I brought SW and SWXL and although I prefer DW to SW, SW had some unique features which made me want to play it more.
At the moment, I'm eagerly awaiting DW5. I've preordered it from Amazon and should be recieving it next week. But what do I do if I'm not playing Dynasty Warriors games? I tend to spend time online, chatting to friends I've grown close to. I post at various boards, mainly SoSZ, a board with a forum specially dedicated to Dynasty Warriors. Other than that, I update my site.
Ah, but I do not spend all of my time in front of a screen though. I attend a Martial Arts school, the Black Belt Academy. I practice Tae Kwondo there usually five times a week. Sometimes attending more than one session a day if I feel up to it. I am currently a blue belt (5th Kyu) but I will be grading on the 29th June, so hopefully I'll be a grade higher.
I also have a job, though I do not particularly like working there. I work at a huge clothes shop every Saturday and Sunday. I will be working there more often now unfortunately. As I've have finished High School and my exams I have more spare time on my hands. Now's the time to collect some cash, so hopefully in five years time, I can travel to China with my buddies.
Currently, I'm single. So I do not have to put up with a partner wanting to meet up with me 24/7 (haha, not really, I would love to have a partner). I am known to be a perfectionist by many, and I show that by always challenging myself, always looking for ways to be perfect, especially at Tae Kwondo. I have quite a lot of friends, a lot of them younger than I am, but I don't mind. I feel as if I can communicate with younger kids. Maybe I'm just used to it since I live with my 9 year old brother.
The site was first built way back in October 2003. After my friend showed me how easy it was to create a site on Freewebs, I immediately started to produce a site about my favourite game series, Dynasty Warriors.
Progress was actually quite quick to begin with actually. I had already made a homepage on AOL about Dynasty Warriors. The one page was huge, so the multiple pages Freewebs allowed was a relief.
Initially, the site was called 'Dynasty Warriors Galore!' and had a homepage, plus individual pages for DW, DW2, DW3, DW3XL, DW4 and DW4XL. An older version of the guestbook was present, and the site also had a Web Album. This only allowed me to host five images into a slideshow, but I was able to give information on some major characters in the DW games.
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Fun Fact: It took me, my friends and any visitors over a year to realise that I had spelt 'Galore' 'Gallore' (with two ls). I couldn't believe that I had overlooked such a mistake, considering it was in huge, bold text right at the top of the page. My friend and I had a good laugh about my incompetence.
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I soon began changing stuff around, and I quickly scrapped the Dynasty Warriors page as I couldn't be bothered to list the moves for every character. I added a 'Music and Art Shrine', what is currently known as now the 'Art Shrine'. I listed links to videos and music files where visitors could download or just watch/listen to the files. However, a lot of broken links arised because of this.
It was either in November or December 2003 when I left the site for a while. I couldn't think of anything more to put up and considered the site as 'finished'. I had left a link to my site on SoSZ, a board where a lot of DW gamers reside. In February 2004, I randomly checked 'Dynasty Warriors Galore!' and noticed my visitor counter had gone over 1000 in just a few months. I checked the guestbook and found many comments from friends and decided to start updating my site again.
I changed the site template from a modern dark blue background to a more oriental style with leaves at the header and footer of each page. I added more links to guides for DW games, and tried my best to sort out the music links on the 'Music and Art Shrine' page. I eventually realised after some time that the music section was not going to work this way, and got rid of it.
In response to the absence of the music section, I added MIDI music files to the background music of the site. A different song on each page. I regularly changed the songs until I became annoyed with them. With no music anymore, I decided to concentrate about the information, not presentation, of the site.
I added the 'Koei Central' page, where I listed Koei games coming out and supplied visitors with infromation and release dates about each game. Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires was rearing it's head in Spring, and was released at the beginning of Summer 2004 in Europe. I changed the site template once again to the current one in response to the release of the new DW game.
I included some information about DW4Empires, but updates were becoming less and less frequent. Eventually in July 2004, I left the site again. While I checked it often, I noticed that the visitor counter was increasing very quickly, nearing 5000.
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Fun Fact: My excuse for not updating the site at the time was that I was busy with exams and school work. Though that was partly true, the real reason for not updating was that either I couldn't be bothered to or I was procrastinating, putting it off for another day. My friend and I would always joke about when I would actually will update my site again.
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I think I updated the site once or twice during November or December 2004, but I didn't really do anything new until the end of January 2005. That was when Dynasty Warriors 5 was announced. The most anticipated DW game since DW4. I started updating the site again, including information on the game and images of the characters. I also changed the name of the site to 'Dynastic Destruction'.
My site started to recieve less visitors by then, though the visitor counter had reached 6000. Now, 'Koei Central' has been replaced with a 'Martial Arts' page to satisfy my love for Tae Kwondo, and a 'Game Release Date' section was added to the homepage. Polls that change every now and again are on the homepage for some user interaction and some of the DW pages have been merged together to make room for the 'Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires' and 'Dynasty Warriors 5' pages.
The site continues to be updated, and hopefully will be recieving a major new, and unique, layout for the site. I'm not disclosing any further information about it, as I'm not sure about the final design myself yet. Expect to see it maybe by the end of this year...hopefully.
Layout copyrighted to Erikku of Xiao Star
Images from NY Info.
Brushes from Fallen Deity Production {closed}, Fifth muse, and Rebelheart
Inspirations from Aethereality
