User blog:Drek'TharSuperSword/PvZW and PvZ history!

So today's PvZW's 10th anniversary, and with that, we're bringing you a history kind of post.

We've been preparing this since last month, so hopefully you enjoy it.

TCLP has made a "history-story" that you can read here. It's pretty cringy but hey. The wiki's been full of drama and whatnot since forever (oof).

There's also the wiki and game's history based on my perspective, which you can read below or by clicking this link.

This is a detailed breakdown of PvZW’s history that I compiled for the 10th anniversary event, down to the many minor events, mostly from my perspective. Note that I mainly focus on 2012-2013 here because everything was less mundane back then so it’s easier to remember those time periods.

The timeline is sorted in chronological order, with subsequent events being merged into the same day as the first event.

I’ll add more once I could recollect those past events better.

7 May
I saved the Crazy Dave article from the wiki, and I still have it today. This was the only evidence that I knew about the wiki even a year before joining it, but I didn’t realize the game’s anniversary until 2013 (7 May was essentially 2 days after the game’s 2nd anniversary).

Some of the blog posts featured in it are: “What’s your plants and zombies idea?”, “iPod achievements”, “Stupidest thing in PvZ”, “Survival Endless setup”, “I, Zombie Endless”, and “Recent Vandalism”. Note that this was when the wiki was still in a low quality state, so it makes sense that some of the blogposts were a bit weird.

Early-mid 2012
AJCatlove drama. I’m not sure about the details but he globally disabled his account after this. This was shortly after I joined.

5 May
I joined the wiki. Coincidentally, I actually joined on PvZ’s anniversary date but I wasn’t aware of it back then.

Snowttail was the first user to ever leave a message on my talk page.

June
An infamous vandal known as Nazi Peashooter attacked the wiki several times. These series of attacks were done under five different accounts and lasted until February 2013.


 * The first attack occurred on 2 June 2012, under the name of Nazi Peashooter681, which managed to vandalize 22 pages before being blocked.
 * The second attack occurred on 12 June 2012, ten days after the first one, under the name of Nazi Peashooter Is Back. Only 6 pages were vandalized before the account was blocked.
 * The third and most severe attack occurred on 22 June 2012, under the name of Hail Nazi Peashooter, in which 158 pages were vandalized before it was eventually blocked. This happened due to the fact that there were very few active admins at that time, which allowed them to perform attacks that lasted for 15 hours, with a 10 hour break from 1:02 PM to 11:56 PM. It is unknown why they did this, but it might be possible that it was done to avoid detection.
 * The fourth one occurred on 9 November 2012, after over four months of break, under the name of Nazi Peashooter 682. However, it is unknown whether this was a real Nazi Peashooter or simply an impostor because the only article edit done with this account was on the Hypno-shroom page and it didn’t look like a vandal edit at all, and the rest were edits on their own userpage.
 * The last one occurred on 10 February 2013, three months after the fourth attack. Only four pages were vandalized but they also managed to vandalize my userpage with a very inappropriate content.

28 July
Promoted to chatmod, along with Jackass

8 September
Wordbubble was added. This template was used for talk page messages, intended to make them look nicer. It is also customizable, allowing for users to modify it to suit their needs. The template still exists today but is no longer used due to the switch to message walls.

Late 2012
Forums were added. It initially only saw limited use, mainly for wiki discussions, but it quickly became popular (or abused) with the advent of the “Fun and Games” board.

Rumors about PvZ2 being released in 2013 broke out, which was indeed true.

2013
This was essentially PvZW’s golden era.

Early 2013
PvZ Adventures released as a closed beta. Everyone WANTED to join the beta testing program but it only had a limited amount of invite links that can only be used for up to 500 users for each link. Princess Kitty was the only more active person on the wiki to successfully join the beta program, and I, along with Jack, literally asked her to leak the contents of it (IIRC). This didn’t go well though, as a PopCap employee by the name of PopCapDemian approached us immediately and warned us to not leak the contents of the game until its release because they were bound to an NDA. All articles leaking the game’s content were shortly removed thereafter. Quoting MignightHawk’s post:

To participate in the Beta, you must agree to a terms and conditions statment [sic], and among the list is the refusal to state any information about PvZA outside of the publically stated info.

Discussions about PvZA were hot at that time.

26 February
Wiki revamp made by Gwaine. He didn’t really contribute to the mainspace and wanted to be an admin dealing with wiki styles but we accepted it anyway back then because why not. Some of the changes he made include adding the lawn background to elements such as buttons and wiki navigation.

This was one of the most major changes on the history of the wiki.

26 April
Staff members decided to create PvZA articles that were sourced from publicly available contents.

20 May
PvZA was fully released for public as an open beta. and articles about the game were restored or re-created due to the NDA being lifted.

3 June
First excited, then disappointed: Rant over PvZ2 coming to iOS first before Android, just like what many app devs do. If I have to guess it’s because iOS has much less device segmentation, which makes it it easier to perform things like bugfixes there.

Despite rumors of it coming out to PC, it never did (Android emulators don’t count).

9 July
Initial release of PvZ2 on iOS. It was soft launched in Australia first before the international release. I remember some people asking on how to download it when they’re not in Australia.

August
International release of PvZ2 on iOS.

October
I made what might be the cringiest blogpost I’ve ever made here, “Bye all :(”. It’s essentially my rant about how I couldn’t manage to be an admin despite everyone else managed to be one with relative ease.

2014
Unfortunately I don’t remember much about 2014, since that was when I left the wiki for a few months and didn’t make a return until the end of the year, but I do know there was a drama involving Napalm Rosalina. Nonetheless I still don’t really get what happened. Some users have told me that they were blocked due to them having an alt account that was abused to get them promoted easily.

Garden Warfare was released. wonshu jokes incoming from this point on.

PvZA was shut down possibly due to its lack of popularity. This was only a year after it was released.

2 November
Demoted to regular user after a few months of inactivity.

2015
“AbramR” vandal attack. It was suspected ThePurplePi did this, but we decided to unblock him after certain discussions. This was a horrible idea: turns out it was him who did it all along, and he tried to make some excuses to avoid getting blocked. Of course, he also did some sketchy things like cheating edits with automated scripts (which counted as fluff editing, and you weren’t allowed to use it in the first place without using bots) and removing warnings and block messages, not to mention he used profanity when removing a message on the forum (this was before swearing was allowed in limited cases), saying “disqualified vote bitch”.

27 March
Promoted to forum (discussion) moderator.

2016
Garden Warfare 2 released. I was mostly only hyped for MOAR TWO SHOED ZOMBIES. PvZH released. This was when the PvZH fad began.

8 March
Promoted to admin, finally ending that cringe blogpost after 4 years, although I was a bit disappointed about how everyone have gotten it way earlier than me (e.g. Jack, SO456, etc).

2017
The PvZH fad ended abruptly in mid-2017 due to PopCap mostly abandoning the game at this point.

13 March
“Demoted” for inactivity, only to finally it admin shortly after. Apparently it was due to some people forcing to demote me after the Mee6 leaderboard reset controversy.

2018
Major meta changes to the wiki: Policy, manual of style, and promotion guidelines were updated. Promoted to bureaucrat, which finally ended my quest to be one.

30 April
Probably one of the more controversial changes to the server, in which MS was demoted. The community was enraged by this change but it soon died down.

May
Well here we are. PvZ’s 10th anniversary, the upcoming 10th anniversary of the wiki, my 7th year on the wiki. Highlights of this month include:

ZackScott published an interview with George Fan and mentioned the wiki. Laura streamed PvZ’s 10th anniversary Q&A and music requests on Twitch and also mentioned the wiki, saying that she uses the wiki and she likes it for being such an awesome community. Wiki 10th anniversary on 12 May.