There seems to be something about the number four and the Panzer Dragoon series. Not only are there four games in the main series, but each game title (with the exception of the original) contains a word with four letters (Zwei, Mini, Saga, Orta), and many of the characters have four letter names (Edge, Azel, Gash, Paet, Kyle, Mobo… I could go on). So its only fitting that we’re launching the fourth version of The Will of the Ancients today.
Back in March 2009 I stated that I had no plans to make any major changes to this site. Well, I have since completely changed my mind. The Will of the Ancients has a lot of potential to grow as a Panzer Dragoon and Crimson Dragon resource, but to do this efficiently I needed to create a database-driven backend for the site. This basically required a revamp of the entire site. So, after almost two years of development, content creation, and pedantic discussions about whether to spell Ancients with capital A, I’m glad to finally launch the new version of The Will of the Ancients.
With this new version comes numerous changes. It is the completion of the merger with Panzer Dragoon Legacy that we announced back in October 2010. Not only have the Cameos articles from Panzer Dragoon Legacy been added to this site, but we’ve used the remaining articles as the starting point for a new resource on The Will of the Ancients. Combined with the former Factions, Characters, Products, Tracklists, and Game Info sections, we’ve revised and reorganised all of this content to form a new peer-reviewed encyclopaedia. Not only does the encyclopaedia contain entries based on the old content, but we now have entries for every character and faction present in the Panzer Dragoon game series.
It has long been my desire to create a Panzer Dragoon encyclopaedia. Although we considered a wiki, making the encyclopaedia peer-reviewed will give us more quality control and should result in fewer errors. The text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, so you’re welcome to use it or fork the project (more info here), however we’d also really appreciate new contributions or constructive criticism of the existing entries.
For this update, we’ve also proofread and revised all of the content on The Will of the Ancients, including adding captions to all of the illustrated images within the articles and reorganising much of the content. One change that I think people will find useful is the split of more speculative articles from the Theories category into a new Speculation category.
There are also five new articles from Geoffrey:
- Orta’s Purpose
- A review of Panzer Dragoon
- Was Radgam Kyle?
- The OVA Sky Rider
- Human Nature and the Nature of Drones
I’ve also completely rewritten two of my older theories, which were badly in need of updating. They were written before Panzer Dragoon Orta was released, so the new versions have been updated in line with new evidence from that game.
- Origin of the Anti Dragons Theory (previously Anti Dragon Theory)
- Edge’s Death Theory (previously Panzer Dragoon Saga Ending Theory)
A huge thank you to Draikin and Geoffrey for their hard work proofreading and writing content for the site (especially the encyclopaedia). And once again, thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site so far (particularly Lance Way, whose content formed the starting point for many of the encyclopaedia entries). The Will of the Ancients has been built up from the cooperative effort of fans; it couldn’t have reached its current state without fellow dragoons working together towards a common goal.