Around 1997, two things happened that were as distant as they were epic. On one hand, Mexico began broadcasting the first Spanish-dubbed edition of Dragon Ball, while at the same time, a near-revolutionary MMORPG for its era was born, known as GIMUD (Graphical Interface Multi-User Dungeon) — though it gained popularity on the more old-school forums as Tibia.

Many of us from that generation grew up with at least one of the two, some more privileged folks maybe with both, but the luckiest ones (in my totally unfounded opinion) got to know a fusion of the two.

Tibia, an online multiplayer game with endless quests to discover, to such an extent that even today, more than 20 years after launch, there are still plenty of mysteries, theories, dungeons, and even monsters left undiscovered.

And so, with that same enthusiasm, other fans — the kind who as kids raised their hands in front of the TV to give their energy to Goku while he charged his Genki Dama — decided to grab this engine, mold it, reconfigure its look, dramatically changing the game without ever losing Tibia’s essence.

That’s how the first versions of WODBO were born — an OT server based on Tibia, standing for: World Of Dragon Ball Online.

Sounds funny, but you could even call it an analogy to the fusion of Trunks and Goten — though I don’t feel nerdy or otaku enough to make that claim without showering first.

That said, let’s go back to Poland, along with an existential question of how a Polish OT server ended up reaching a rural town of under 10,000 people. And that’s how, at just over 13 years old, on a Pentium 2 the whole family shared, I started playing: DBVICTORY, a game that’s still running to this day.

But time passed. I stayed on the ranking’s toplist for a long time, a personal achievement that mattered a lot back then — gamers will get it. But time kept moving on; you grow, you watch, you listen, you learn, often left with just the memory of what could’ve been, a nostalgia only someone who was there can understand — looting until the early hours of the morning because it was necessary to unlock a special quest. Five people: 2 Polish, 1 Mexican, 1 Brazilian, and me.

I even remember some classes with their nicknames: Libra, a Piccolo, excellent at PVP; Karma, a Bardock who was the team’s tank, along with Psycho, a Dende — all from Poland. Then there was Bless, a Goku in second-line fire, from Mexico, while King, from Brazil, along with me — “Salat” — both played Trunks; we ran a kind of “support” role even though our characters were more burst-oriented.

Communication, what a dilemma — it was a Frankenstein of loose Polish words like “zajete,” “nie,” “yo,” “elo,” mixed with English and a Portuguese accent tacked onto “wey.” Laughs were never in short supply, understanding was minimal — just enough for the team to know whether a WAR between clans was kicking off, or whether someone was needed for a newly discovered quest.

The same spirit as Tibia, but with the fanaticism of Dragon Ball.

And so, this year, with the homelab, a far-fetched idea hit me: “self-host my own server,” for one simple reason: because I can.

Because I can go, just like those first creators did, modifying the map, quests, creating assets, changing things however I want, to build my own living Dragon Ball Frankenstein, where I can play with my friends, brainstorm, create, modify, delete.

And above all, learn :)

At this point, it was time for the most important part — touching the piece of this whole ecosystem I flat out didn’t know. That’s how I had my first encounters with OTServ, TFS (The Forgotten Server), along with an excessive amount of googling, searching forums across different regions, and lots of failed attempts to get my own server up and running due to compatibility issues, missing files, etc.

Until finally, I made it.

I managed to get a version of Wodbo Wars up, similar to DBVICTORY but with big differences in mapping and quests — plus it seemed to be built 100% pay-to-win, something I obviously removed as soon as I could.

And so I started playing inside my own server, finding bugs, things that didn’t convince me, things I wanted to flat out remove or change — a strange feeling of having a living virtual world, where a few friends and I were testing experience, levels, skills, items, etc.

After that, I did a full audit to understand what I actually want to achieve with the gameplay experience, because there’s a thin line between obsession with the past and nostalgia itself.

And right now, that’s what it is: a simple, humble server, with the sole goal of reliving good times, at a point in life when time itself tends to be the scarcest thing.

Today, Wodbo Wars is exactly that: private where it matters, public only where it can be. I keep finding bugs, tweaking quests, and steering clear of that fine line between healthy nostalgia and obsession with the past.