Zelda Universe

Zelda Universe is the largest Zelda fansite on the internet. It is world renowned for high levels of failure.

There used to exist a small band of /b/tards in the forums, most notably Captain Cornflake and Emperor Hindmost, who spent their time trolling the community. They used to hold fortress in the chat room (#zelda on irc.gnug.org) where they discussed ways to wreak havok upon the forums, as well as other NSFW stuff you'd expect to see in /b/. However, in July 07, they split off to VG Resource Center, with the ZU trolls reforming into a secretive trolling group that holds strong ties with /i/, providing intel reports and soldiers to the /i/nsurgency.

The Invasion of Summer 06

Yep kids, it's a Photoshop

Late night on July 26, 2006, a screencap of a forum post from the Zelda Universe Forums of a webmaster who had heard of the Habbo raids, and was pledging for ZU to help Habbo Hotel in a massive counter-attack. Though it was soon found out that this post was simply Photoshopped, Anonymous was bored and decided to invade anyways. Within minutes, the vBulletin paradise of 25 thousand Zelda fans was turned into a wasteland. Upon realizing that simple moderation couldnt' handle this menace, the staff of ZU temporarily shut down the forums in order to clean up the mess and wait until the attack died off.

Soon afterwards, another thread was posted on 4chan, scheduling a second raid for August 2. According to an anonymous who was in 4chan's IRC room at the time, the mods were considering taking it down, that is, until one of the mods from ZU came to 4chan and started taunting /b/ with words like "You act like i've never seen 4channers in action. I eat trolls for breakfast." With fighting words like that, the raid was back on.

All through the next day, July 27, /b/tards were hitting ZU's Media Wiki as a preliminary strike. However, most of the attackers left once it was found out that one Anonymous was using an AutoHotKey script to deface ZU Wiki pages in bulk. By the time the attack was finished, around 600 pages were defaced.

In the days leading up to August 2nd, dozens of accounts were registered by Anonymous to prepare for the day of reckoning. However, August 2nd came and went with no invasion, which was previously being regarded as the most Epic Fail in /b/ invasion history until Anon followed up on it a year later. (See below)

After lurking in ZU's chat room, it has been revealed that the person who instigated the raid was Captain Cornflake, the same guy who started the Zelda Guide raid, who also holds operator status in ZU's chat room. It should be noted that after starting the raid, he still holds that position of power, because it was understood he did it for the lulz and thus acceptable.

7/06 Raid Gallery

• 

  WIN

• 

  Shot heard 'round the world

• 

  DESU

• 

  Believe it or not, it isn't a shop

• 

  Promotional poster for the Wiki raid

• 

  I have a smart idea: It's called taunting Anon in the middle of a raid on your site!

The Invasion of Summer 07

HYRULE'S CLOSED

On July 26, 2007, on the one year anniversary of the ZU attack, Anonymous decided to return to Zelda Universe to finish the job they left unfinished so long ago. What eventually started with simple raiding soon escalated into an all out hacking, when one anonymous bruteforced the password to the server control panel, which was revealed to be 'apassword11.' Soon, the entire mod team was deleted from the forums and replaced with a crew of /b/tards, who took turns in making a custom forum layout for ZU, while spamming and banning members. Eventually, however, the forums were broken, prompting Anonymous to turn the homepage into a redirect to Last Measure, breaking browsers everywhere. Eventually, the homepage was blanked, and then changed to a flash animation of Stalin and Lenin before the hosting account was suspended.

ZU returned early on the morning of the 27th, and all seemed well after that. However, on the night of July 29th, anon had once again broken in, deleting mod accounts on the boards and again replacing them with their own team of /b/tard admins to wreak havok in the boards. This time, usernames were posted publicly in 420, which would be given admin powers on ZU. On top of that, a fake interstatial ad for "PC Tune Up" was placed on ZU, offering a free scan for "viruses and AIDS." Of course, if you clicked the Scan button, it would send you to Last Measure. If you didn't, it would redirect to a battered forum. This went on for awhile until the boards were broken; apparently anon had once again wiped out the SQL databases, with the site being taken control of by its owners mere minutes later.

Let it be known that even though it took Anonymous a year to follow up on their promises, they succeeded their previous epic fail with a far more important epic win. And that is all that matters.

7/07 Raid Gallery

• 

  HYRULE'S CLOSED

• 

  The beginning of many design changes.

• 

  You all suck. Seriously.

• 

  DESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESU

• 

  The new and improved mod list

• 

  YOUR LIVES ARE GOING TO GET WORSE OFF FROM HERE

• 

  Delicious.

• 

  For the motherland!

• 

  Are you tired of POPUPS AND AIDS?

• 

  TERMINAS CLOSED

• 

  The screen that shows up when owners took back control

October 07 Return

Anon came, saw, destroyed and closed ZU again without warning the morning of October 29th, 2 hours before the weekly ZU backups. Getting in through an undisclosed vulnerability in ZU's Coppermine installation, Anon quickly overtook the forums and the site, comandeering a couple admin accounts and swiftly redesigning the homepage to "Desu Universe." The entire staff then had their forum accounts deleted as Anon started handing out admin access to anybody who asked for it and proceeded to make waste of the forums.

One of the forum admins tried to combat /i/ by deleting the config files for ZU's CMS and forums, hoping it would stave them off by having non-functioning forums. In retaliation for having their fun ended prematurely, they proceeded to nuke the entire SQL database, wiping the forums to a clean slate that had to be restored from week-old backups.

10/07 Raid Gallery

• 

  DESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESUDESU

• 

  The new staff.

Three Years

The night of July 26th, 2008, Anon returned out of the blue to remind ZU that they NEVER FORGIVE AND NEVER FORGET. Possession of the site lasted an hour and a half, resulting in ZU being rebadged as "Gardening Universe," featuring Marty Chang offering gardening tips. Eddie Murphy also made an appearance, asking users to write a new movie script for a cross between Zelda and Beverly Hills Cop.

10/07 Raid Gallery

• 

  Hey kids, isn't it fun to garden with plants?