The following is a history of the Forgotten Realms Wiki, as vaguely recalled by editors of the Forgotten Realms Wiki and written down years after the fact. Please feel free to expand or to submit additional recollections and links on the Talk page.
Hatching[]
The logo for the FRW from October 2005 to February 2008, based on the 3rd-edition map of the Sword Coast.
The Forgotten Realms Wiki was born on October 1st, 2005, whilst Wikia was still named "Wikicities". It was created by its first user, admin, and bureaucrat, W-Drizzt (a.k.a. Drizzt), who said on their user page, "Hello! I am the founder/admin of this wikicity. I do not treat it like my own, this is everyone's wikicity, I merely suggested an idea." W-Drizzt kicked off the Main Page and other wiki architecture, designed the first logo, welcomed other users, and started articles about Drizzt Do'Urden, drow, and Drow Sign. However, W-Drizzt became inactive within the month, saying "I found I wasn't passionate for this topic", later leaving the wiki in the hands of long-running administrator Hashimashadoo in December.
For the next year, as the statistics show, the wiki ticked along at a relatively slow but steady pace under a few dedicated editors. But building from the ground up is a very difficult task for any wiki. Activity slowed to an almost complete halt in the last quarter of 2006, with little more than 400 articles, before suddenly shooting up to new heights by the end of the year. This may have been the product of a recruitment campaign by Hashimashadoo, bringing in many more editors. But it seemed the FRW had also hit the kind of critical mass needed to attract a lot more interest; despite seasonal fluctuations and external events, activity would never get so slow again. At the end of 2006, long-standing contributors Zerak-Tul and Fw190a8 were added to the administration team. The next year and a half saw a period of consistent growth.
In May 2007, the FRW applied for Featured Wiki status. It eventually won this in January 2008, and was displayed on Wikia's front page.
The Forgotten Realms Wiki main page as it appeared in December 2007, using the classic Monobook skin.
However, the Forgotten Realms's advancing timeline proved to be a headache for editors, as articles once written in present tense, reflecting the present state of the setting, had to be rewritten to past tense as events moved on and sources were no longer current. Two users, Heaven's Agent and Johnnyriot999 (later Ruf67) wondered at this at Talk:Aznar Thrul in October 2007. Concerned by the changes expected in the coming 4th edition in January, 2008, Fw190a8 also called for greater care with dates given to lore. Heaven's Agent had proposed a policy in October 2007, suggesting that editors write with the perspective of being a long time in future—that is, past tense. This sat without comment and unopposed for several months, and Fw190a8 put it in place in June 2008, becoming the Remove Wiki from Timeline policy.
Edition Wars[]
The arrival of 4th-edition D&D (in June 2008) and the new 4th-edition Forgotten Realms sourcebooks (August/September 2008) contributed to another significant increase in activity, with a marked rise in the number of casual editors, the number of edits made, and the number of new articles in the latter half of 2008. It seems that new fans coming to the Forgotten Realms with the new edition and altered setting wanted to see 4th-edition content and post-Spellplague lore. Some editors like User:Niirfa-sa applied 4th-edition retcons to deities, elves/eladrin, and genasi to older edition material. However, the changes to the setting had been widely controversial, even unpopular among the existing fandom, and these "Edition Wars" were reflected upon the FRW. Some fans would perceive a 4th-edition bias and turn away from the wiki. Behind the scenes, it seems existing editors could not keep on top of the number of new editors and the influx of new lore, and could hardly enforce policies. Categories and infoboxes designed for 3rd-edition rules struggled to accommodate 4th-edition rules, and became much-patched or meaningless.
The logo for the FRW from February 2008 to October 2015, depicting Fflar Starbrow Melruth battling Aulmpiter, not unfittingly.
This post-4th-edition activity peaked in January 2009, with the FRW's greatest number of casual editors and numbers of edits and new articles per month. At that time, Hashimashadoo raised SkyeNiTessine to admin status. Activity and number of editors gradually settled back down to normal over the course of the year, perhaps as the new edition smell wore off. Nevertheless, the damage had been done. Eli the Tanner, who joined at the end of 2009, recalled, "many of us editors plodded along mostly by trial-and-error in the early days. The community before 2011 was very fractured and had a wild west, DIY feel. There were broad waves of 4e editors rewriting entire 'core' articles, often deleting entire tracts of previous lore in the name of 'updating' the wikia to the new edition. The mods like Fw190a8, Hashimashadoo, and Cronje were the sheriffs of the day that worked to push for citations and did their best to curb the trolls and unreferenced work. However, most editors had to fight for their own articles, and it was often a case of 'out-referencing' another editor to stop them deleting your work. Many of the battlegrounds drove the editors away as little could meaningfully get done." However, investigation of edit histories has not turned up too many examples of such rewrites and removals, suggesting the problem was more perceived to be widespread than actually commonplace.
The period around September/October 2010 saw the introduction of the Roll of Years pages, seeing the mass-production of over a thousand new pages, followed by over 4000 edits for formatting, as shown by dramatic peaks in the statistics. Many were placeholders, containing no more than the names of the years, but many others contained historical lore. Unfortunately, much of this had been copied by one particular user from The Grand History of the Realms. Plagiarized content, much of it sneaking in unnoticed, was another significant problem for the FRW, as was homebrew and fan lore.
Casting Restoration[]
Nevertheless, the community and the wiki survived. Eli continues, "However, Fw190a8's golden rule of 'reference everything' endured and was picked up by editors like myself and became well-established when the 2011/12 crop of BadCatMan, Darkwynters, Moviesign, TerrorBlades & Thomaslove92 arrived". From 2011, Hashimashadoo began raising up long-lasting and quality editors to admin status, with Quinsareth (who'd started in March 2007) in March 2011 and Cronje (started May 2010) in June 2012, while future admins Darkwynters and Moviesign joined respectively in August and November of 2011. This new crop all quickly became very involved in the running and maintenance of the wiki. Moviesign recalls, "I guess it says something that my first edits (on any wiki anywhere, I think) were to create and use a {{Cite book}} template. After I got acclimated to wiki work and began some pet projects, I got interested in the more technical side of things and adding new features. My first real template was the {{Currency table}} and I was hooked." Darkwynters explains the new dedicated patrolling of the wiki, "Man, I do DO a lot of patrolling on the wiki. Okay, I will not lie, since 2011 I have basically checked EVERY edit (apart from notable editors) on this wiki, and I will tell you it can be very tiring sometimes. But to me the wiki brought me back from a 4 year hiatus from the Realms. The Forgotten Realms was a place my teenage self could go to escape all the dark parts of adolescence. This site made me find it again."
However, the wiki had not seen the last of the Edition Wars. At the very end of 2011, a few users were calling for 4th-edition lore to be placed in separate sections or articles, and even for the wiki to be split in two, one for the classic Forgotten Realms setting, and a new one for the post-Spellplague setting. These arguments may have arisen more from personal opinion than what was best for the wiki. Moviesign explains, "The 4th edition controversy was still echoing through the wiki (mostly on Talk pages and Forum:Split the wiki, which was a big deal at the time) and I had quite a few 2nd edition sources that I wanted to use in my contributions, so I spoke out in favor of treating all editions equally..." Many editors argued eloquently, others with vehemence. Fw190a8 argued at the time "the best way to improve the wiki... is to just improve the wiki." Explaining that such a split would harm the wiki more than help it, admins and regular editors called for more dedicated editors, obedience to and enforcement of existing policies, with no bias toward any edition. Moviesign finishes, "Thankfully, the wiki did not split and I got to have fun reconstructing templates to handle everything from 1e to the as-yet-mythical 5e." Eli the Tanner describes the later atmosphere: "Post-2011, the community began building new policies that have shaped what we have today. The new climate allowed specialists like Daranios and Coswig to flourish unimpeded."
In January 2012, Niirfa-sa proposed a revised canon policy, designed to focus on Forgotten Realms lore over core D&D lore, and to acknowledge the changes of 4th edition while preserving older lore. In practice, this would mean no bias toward any edition. The Edition Wars were briefly resurrected, but the editing community were almost all in favor. The proposal nevertheless lingered until it was bumped in June, and finally implemented by Fw190a8 in October. This edition-neutral view would remain the dominant philosophy.
February 2012 saw the arrival of BadCatMan, who says, "I left another wiki with a very hostile admin and non-cooperative community; I wish I'd never gotten involved. Though the quality of the FRW had put me off for years, I found things on the up-and-up and a much more friendly community, and soon became very involved." He would regret not getting involved way back in 2006 when Hashimashadoo first advertised in a Forgotten Realms play-by-post community they'd played in. Creating articles on the Vast to support his campaigns, BadCatMan developed a lengthy and extremely detailed article on Procampur, introducing a completist approach that formed the basis of future Featured Articles and most other new articles.
From August of 2012, the number of articles on the wiki actually decreased. Thankfully, this was the result of a clean-up campaign to remove old plagiarized, copyright-infringing, non–Forgotten Realms, and homebrew articles, with them being deleted, tagged, or rehabilitated. This would be an ongoing effort, expected to take years to complete, but would lead ultimately to a cleaner, more original wiki. It was not without its troubles, however. In late August, an anonymous user turned troll, apparently annoyed at wholly copied articles being removed, then falsely labeled every dragon article as being copied and demanded their deletion, in a confused and misdirected protest against copyright law, apparently. BadCatMan spent a great deal of time undoing these, and he and Darkwynters calmly argued the wiki's position on copied material, before the troll stormed off. Other serial copiers reacted with incoherent anger, but it was now clear that wiki policies were being enforced, and that the wiki was policed.
In September 2012, wanting to be able to block trolls and delete articles in order to clean up the wiki, BadCatMan simply asked in the forums how to become an admin, and he and Darkwynters won admin posts by popular acclaim in October. Stepping back and unable to regularly weigh in on policy issues, Hashimashadoo bestowed bureaucrat powers on BadCatMan in May 2013. In June 2013, Darkwynters nominated Moviesign, and he was duly upgraded to administrator by BadCatMan. As old admins faded away or lost regular access to the online world, BadCatMan, Darkwynters, and Moviesign became a triumvirate managing the wiki on a day-to-day basis, enforcing policies and creating new ones, welcoming and assisting new users, and implementing many new features.
The next Forgotten Realms Wiki logo is a modification of the 3rd-edition Forgotten Realms logo. It was created in October 2010, but not displayed until February 2013.
The Main Page as it appeared in August 2013.
Despite the advances in the background, the Main Page had remained almost unchanged since 2008, with featured articles and images changed less than once a year, and a still fairly plain, basic appearance. Thus, in October 2012, Fw190a8 put forward a new design with a slideshow-based format. Fw190a8, Cronje, and BadCatMan put their heads together, sharing ideas about fresh content, preferably in automatic rotation, but the project languished until Wanderscribe bumped it with fresh ideas. BadCatMan then began a complete overhaul of the Main Page, restoring the old wood-and-sepia color scheme and organizing the design to put lore and features front-and-center. He created a weekly "Did You Know?" (later named Realmslore) trivia section, showcasing new articles and editors' work, first rolled out in mid-January 2013, then instituted the new Main Page on February 5th. With coding help from Moviesign, new Featured Article and Featured Source sections were implemented and put in automatic rotation, though a regular Latest Releases section was soon abandoned (later revived in 2016). Featured Articles would now be decided by community vote, according to stringent guidelines on quality. These Featured Articles would demonstrate completeness, good wiki styling, full referencing, organization of articles of various kinds, and balanced integration of lore from multiple editions and sources.
The following year, Moviesign created the "On This Day" feature, appearing in March 2014, and BadCatMan followed up with a Featured Image section in April 2014, if only to get rid of a long-running picture of Elminster. All this combined led to an engaging and dynamic main page designed to interest readers.
Early in 2012, Cronje and Moviesign had begun work on revising and standardizing the infoboxes. Such work would be ongoing, with regular additions and revisions. Periodically, throughout 2013 and 2014, Moviesign and others proposed changes to the infoboxes to support all editions, with edition-specific sections and categories. {{Spell}} and {{Person}} received major overhauls in July 2013, and updating pages became a community-wide effort.
In March 2013, 23dutch45man, admin of the Baldur's Gate Wiki contacted the Forgotten Realms Wiki to recruit and discuss collaboration and information-sharing. Though the two wikis were very different in form and aims, some lore and articles were shared and inter-wiki links were built, seen in many "External links" sections. Inter-wiki links were extended to many other wikis for video games in the Forgotten Realms franchise, boosting the chances for traffic to and from the other wikis.
Reaching High Levels[]
The FRW enjoyed its 12,000th article in May 2013. After this achievement, feeling the redesigned and dynamic Main Page had put a new face on the wiki, and the active community had given it a new heart, BadCatMan reached out to the Forgotten Realms fandom, posting at the Wizards of the Coast and Candlekeep forums. Here, he and other editors explained the new philosophies and policies, introduced new features and current work, called for new editors, and fielded questions and concerns. The Edition Wars remained a problem, but the philosophy of edition-neutrality remained firm and became well supported. These communications with the fandom became a semi-regular exercise, alongside BadCatMan's reports to the editing community on how the wiki was doing in ratings and statistics. The now-defunct Wikia Activity Monitor demonstrated increasing traffic to the wiki, indicating a larger, more interested readership, and a raised profile among fans. In fact, the Forgotten Realms Wiki was revealed to be one of the larger and more visited wikis on the Internet, with Wikia staff regularly contacting admins with new features and changes.
It was perhaps because of this that the FRW was targeted by high-level trolls. Trolls and vandals have long been a problem for the FRW and all wikis, but two major incidents stand out. On May 9, 2013, one vandalized a number of pages, which were quickly undone by User:Boo Too, and the troll was soon after blocked by Darkwynters. On June 6, 2013, an arch-troll from a horde of trolls assaulted the wiki. It defaced the new Main Page and moved it around the wiki to make it harder to undo, while also vandalizing user pages. Fortunately, Darkwynters was on hand, restoring the Main Page after only six minutes, while BadCatMan later spent a half-hour before breakfast thoroughly undoing the page moves. Regrettably, the Main Page had been left unprotected after the redesign, following misguided advice from Wikia. The troll and its horde, who had attacked several other wikis, were permanently banned from Wikia.
The FRW had survived one edition change, and now faced another: 5th edition. But this time, it was ready. Policies, infoboxes, and categories designed to accommodate four previous editions had also been designed expecting the next. Fortunately, with 5th-edition sourcebooks and 5th-edition Forgotten Realms lore released on a staggered basis from August 2013 through 2014, and no whole campaign setting for the Forgotten Realms yet released, the expected deluge became a manageable stream.
BadCatMan gave a report on the state of the wiki, statistics, successes, issues, etc. in September 2014.
In late 2014, Wikia's Community Development Team invited the FRW to take part in a voting tournament hosted by the Shadow of Mordor wiki to promote the new video game. The community accepted, and Drizzt Do'Urden was pitted against Talion; the dark elf won handily.
Lhynard arrived in November 2014 and quickly impressed, being invited by BadCatMan to become an admin in April 2015. Fortunately, he accepted and stayed.
The release of Stranger Things on Netflix in July 2016 brought surprise spikes in views of the Demogorgon and Vale of Shadows pages as viewers sought to know more about the kid's misplaced D&D references, leading to some confusion and erroneous edits. Each new season of Stranger Things would repeat this on the mind flayer and Vecna pages.
In August 2015, Wikia staff announced that a large percentage of readers are accessing the site via mobile devices, but the old wiki markup infoboxes consistently broke when viewed on a mobile device. Moviesign began the long process of converting all the FRW's infoboxes to the new "portable" style, while hoping to retain the functionality of the old style. "I think all of wikidom can be summed up in three little words: work in progress." says Moviesign.
The Forgotten Realms Wiki logo as of 2015, celebrating the 10-year anniversary and used on and off thereafter. It is based on the 2nd-edition logo.
In September 2015, Moviesign reminded everyone of the upcoming 10th anniversary, prompting a community-wide celebration of the wiki's own accomplishments and long life. New anniversary-edition logos were designed by Jandor and Thomaslove92, and many more ideas proposed for future implementation. BadCatMan gave a lengthy report on the wiki's statistics to date, its successes, and its growing status, as well as its needs for the future. He also pieced together this very history from statistics and user recollections. Darkwynters says "We, admins and editors, are the lore-keepers gathering ALL this great knowledge and keeping it safe for new generations. So cheers to 10 years, cheers to our admins and faithful editors, and, of course, cheers to our readers. :)"
The latter half of 2015 saw campaigns by Coswig to categorize images and Moviesign to categorize maps. Lhynard introduced Good Article status to mark quality, if not feature-worthy articles. At the end of the year, BadCatMan renamed Did You Know? to Realmslore and introduced the {{Current Clack}} feature for the Main Page. Over the next few months, this evolved from a simple noticeboard and announcements to an entertaining tour of editors' recent projects and imagined misadventures.
High Levels[]
By the beginning of January 2016, the wiki was growing by leaps and bounds with 17,693 articles and climbing. Fifth edition was in full swing, having published the Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, and the long-awaited FR lorebook Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide in 2015. The growing popularity of this new edition meant the Forgotten Realms Wiki was becoming a popular resource among fans. But the older editions were not forgotten as the Zakhara and Al-Qadim sections of the wiki were greatly expanded by Artemaz and Daranios. East met West in a lengthy discussion of where to draw the line between Kara-Tur and Faerûn, with significant Kara-Turan expansion by BadCatMan. Meanwhile, Lhynard added a family tree feature to the wiki.
January 2017 rolled around and the wiki had grown to 21,352 articles. The admins and editors wrestled with canonicity questions about Convention Created Content, Adventurers League, and DMs Guild publications. Regis87 joined late in the year and immediately began fleshing out the Dragon magazine pages, eventually completing the set in 2018. She and other prolific editors pushed the wiki page count to 24,202 on January 1st of that year. While he was recording this statistic, Moviesign noticed that the wiki had over one million page views that week—a new milestone in FRW history—followed quickly by hitting 25,000 pages on February 17th. Regis87 then moved on to comics, building on previous work by BadCatMan. On July 8, Fw190a8 created a Slack group for dedicated editors to discuss wiki issues; it created a community atmosphere and accelerated development of templates and practices, but meant less of the wiki's history and debates would be recorded on the wiki itself.
2018 also saw the triumphant return (after a hiatus of nine years) of Ruf67, who dusted off his wiki skills and became a fixture for several years. Sir Whiteout and Lhynard took to the stars on their spelljammers, greatly expanding the wiki's coverage of Realmspace, and somehow found time to add pronunciation (pronounced: /proʊˈnʌnsiˈeɪʃʌn/ pro-NUN-see-AY-shun) guides to hundreds of pages (some of which contain audio of themselves demonstrating the correct form). Moviesign became the wiki's newest bureaucrat in July. He and Sir Whiteout used an astrolabe and some fancy math to compute the phases of Selûne (currently waxing crescent 
).
As of January 2019, the wiki had 27,359 pages.
2019 saw the beginning of the Year of M... projects. The brainchild of Regis87, and continuing her early magazine drives, this is an annual drive to create or expand as many as articles as possible on a specific topic, with the aim of developing areas where the FRW might be lacking. Regis87 declared 2019 the Year of Magic, focused on adding spells and other magic-related articles. As for the name, the first few Years happened to start with 'M' so editors would search for synonyms beginning with M just to fit the pattern (a Year of Magazines was never named, but fortunately it fits).
Moviesign promoted Ir'revrykal to Admin status in March, primarily because he was already patrolling the wiki and upholding its standards, but also so he could speak with authority to outside entities. Among his many contributions, SirWhiteout made it easy for the wiki to support both English and SI units with a set of smart templates. He was promoted to Admin on October 11 of that year.
Later that year, Regis87 proposed the FRW make the move onto social media. Although others were uncertain, she created a Twitter account in May 2019, posting lore (much of it from the Did You Know/Realmslore feature), images, news, and announcements. In a promotion effort accompanying the D&D Live 2019 event, the FRW account live-tweeted lore for the Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus liveplay, while editors frantically live-wrote articles. After this, the FRW Twitter account steadily grew in number of followers and reach. This would introduce editors like BadCatMan to social media, modern fandom, and the views of fans regarding the wiki. It was joined by a Mastodon account in November 2022 and a Bluesky account in August 2023.
In September 2019, BadCatMan began working on the long-languishing Eberron Wiki, eventually becoming its leading admin. By implementing FRW policies and templates, he cleaned it up and improved standards, and brought it within the FRW's umbrella.
Plague Years[]
The COVID-19 pandemic erupted onto the world stage in January 2020, and lockdowns and social distancing saw great growth in the online world. D&D enjoyed a surge in popularity, particularly in online gaming, streaming, and podcasting. Like many other websites, traffic to the FRW increased, and editors promoted a 'stay at home and explore' attitude on Twitter and in Current Clacks. BadCatMan documented this growth in another extensive statistics report made in July 2020.
Prolific editors Artyom.pavlov and SunderedShor joined early in 2020, Arodp88 arrived in mid-2021 and ItalianKarsus came in late 2021, and ChloeLorde in late 2022.
Perhaps appropriately, 2020 was also the Year of Monsters, seeing editors add or expand many pages on creatures and races. Next, 2021 was the Year of Maps, focused on exploring the world and adding 1,580 articles on geography, locations, settlements, buildings, and so on.
Also staying at home and exploring, from April 2021 to January 2024, Twitch streamer and D&D player Hibernoway began a quest to read the entirety of the Forgotten Realms Wiki, live-reading random articles weekly on Fridays. FRW editors noticed and enjoyed these streams, joined the conversations, and promoted them on Twitter. This would be the first D&D-related fan-made thing the FRW would learn to promote, but not the last. (And Hibernoway would never complete that quest.)
Production of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie over April to August 2021 and the subsequent publicity was investigated in detail by BadCatMan and others. This included trailer breakdowns and finding a leaked fragment of the script. They were able to uncover many details of the storyline, setting, and characters, and while some entertainment reporters dismissed their reports, every discovery was borne out. They posted updates on the wiki and Twitter account and Hibernoway even visited (outside) one of the shooting locations; these posts went viral and were repeated on many entertainment new sites, even by those who'd dismissed the earlier findings. This was accompanied by an organized effort to write articles in support of the movie and merchandise.
Afterward, getting the itch to DM again, BadCatMan started a D&D campaign for fellow wiki editors in early September, 2021. Would-be players jumped for it, with regular editors Artyom.pavlov, Lhynard, Ir'revrykal, Possessed Priest, and SilverTiger12 making characters, joined later by Arodp88. A play-by-post game run entirely on the wiki itself, Legacy of the Green Regent uses 3.5-edition D&D rules and is based on the RPGA campaign of the same name. Hibernoway would do dramatic readings of the early game.
2022 was the Year of Miracles, focusing on deities, religions, priests, and divine magic. It produced 1,260 articles.
A screenshot of results on Ask Valhaeria when asked about Valhalaeria the Vaunted. She's not pretty, but she works.
Another miracle came in late 2022 when ItalianKarsus embarked on an ambitious and advanced project: nothing less than a searchable index of all Forgotten Realms and most Dungeons & Dragons sources, including sourcebooks, novels, webpages, and manuals. And despite warnings, he went ahead with it. With technical assistance from Possessed Priest, WanderingKobold, and Regis87, and with much feedback and testing by regular editors, he developed it over the next several months and fed in countless documents. It was more-or-less (mostly less) complete by March 2023, with countless more updates and revisions following. Without storing any actual text, Ask Valhaeria (named for Volo's pseudonym Valhalaeria the Vaunted albeit with a spelling error, and called Ask Val for short) provides near-instantaneous search results and previews for any term or phrase inputted, giving all sources it appears in, with a range of options. With this tool available to regular editors and in a limited form as the V.O.L.O. bot in some Discords, it turbo-charged wiki research, allowing for even more complete and comprehensive pages, and aided in finding sources for unreferenced pages and in detecting plagiarism.
The Legacy of the Green Regent campaign had a most unusual spin-off when, in November 2022, Artyom.pavlov launched a cooking blog, Juniper's Companion to Venturesome Cookery. Written with an in-universe point-of-view as Juniper Churlgo, his halfling wizard player-character from the campaign, it presents recipes and whole dishes inspired from a wide variety of Forgotten Realms sources, alongside existing and homebrew lore. It would prove popular on social media, with even Ed Greenwood sharing it and speaking about it in interviews.
Promotions, Plagiarism, & Publishing[]
Given the major releases upcoming, 2023 was named the Year of Manuscripts. For this, editors focused on adding pages for various sources, indexing subjects in them, and writing related articles. This complemented work on Honor Among Thieves and Baldur's Gate III and produced around 2,490 articles.
The Forgotten Realms Wiki during the Honor Among Thieves promotion.
Honor Among Thieves was released in March, 2023. As part of the promotional efforts, Paramount Pictures approached FANDOM and FANDOM contacted FRW editors with a plan to makeover the wiki with Honor Among Thieves branding and a new Main Page. The editors agreed and fortunately enjoyed the movie so much they kept the new look up through to June. FANDOM also invited questions from FRW editors for an interview with the writers/directors and actors; while not many of these questions made it through, they did mention that the FRW had been a resource for the writing and production. This is evidenced by the number of classic Forgotten Realms references in the film that wiki editors and fans spotted and listed at Forum:Honor Among Thieves - Easter Egg Hunt. The research and article-writing effort also meant that most movie-related articles, even those for major characters, were finished almost as soon as the movie was released, or sooner, providing for an influx of new readers curious about the movie.
However, another and, as it turned out, much bigger release was Baldur's Gate III from August, 2023. Fortunately, the game's early-access period meant that much groundwork had been laid since October 2020, but much more work on article writing would follow, with much of it from Artyom.pavlov. Extensive inter-wiki links between the FRW and Baldur's Gate 3 Wiki raised that new wiki's profile and serviced a massive, long-running wave of visitors to the wiki and new fans of the game.
Alongside the redesign, BadCatMan activated the right-hand-side margin of the wiki as a notice for new readers. Afterward, he developed {{RailModule}} into a means of displaying headlines and promotions of both wiki editors' projects like Juniper's Companion and Legacy of the Green Regent and of outside fan creators' podcasts, YouTube channels, and charity fundraisers. This included Hibernoway's playthrough of Baldur's Gate III and wiki editor SunderedShor's own Twitch channel playing older games like Eye of the Beholder, and Ed Greenwood's Patreon and YouTube channel. The following year, in August 2024, BadCatMan extended this to the Main Page with {{Promotions}}. Combined with the wiki's high traffic, this made the FRW an influential platform for promotion.
In late 2023 it became clear that the FRW had also been used for the writing of Baldur's Gate III—in fact, text from a wiki article was copied in a magic item description. Meanwhile, wiki editors found that a pair of high-profile DMs Guild products had also mistakenly utilized text from the wiki. Similarly, in early 2025, it was found that Neverwinter Nights: Doom of Icewind Dale also mistakenly copied wiki articles in many item descriptions. And looking back in time, even official adventures Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus carry errors that surely originated on the wiki. Mea culpa, but like trap streets and fictitious entries, these things only become evident when they go wrong. In any case, it became clear that even the professionals and creators use the FRW to write official and licensed Forgotten Realms products. In the cases of copied wiki text, wiki editors contacted the creators privately to inform them of the potential plagiarism issue and to explain the CC BY-SA 3.0 license so that it could be resolved. The works were cleaned and the Forgotten Realms Wiki given thanks or credit in most cases.
Perhaps with Baldur's Gate still on the horizon, 2024 was the Year of Metropolises, which returned to exploring cities and settlements and everything in them. It produced 1,115 pages.
In February 2024, artist Daniel Solicide was commissioned to create new, high-quality logos for the Forgotten Realms Wiki. Although based on the 3rd-edition logo as before, he produced these in alternative designs and different color schemes for display on the wiki's light and dark modes and the social media accounts. These were unveiled on February 27.
Our first book!
Beginning in June 2024, Artyom.pavlov and BadCatMan began work on another ambitious and high-profile project: The Forgotten Realms Wiki Presents Juniper's Companion to Venturesome Cookery, a combined cookbook/sourcebook based on the in-character cooking blog and presenting new and revised dishes, existing and original Realmslore, updated magical items and spells, stories, new artwork, and music. Wiki editors Lhynard, Arodp88, ItalianKarsus, ChloeLorde, and Epikowl wrote to the book, and even Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood wrote a foreword from Elminster and column, while fellow Realms writer Steven E. Schend wrote an article for the work. Developed over the next year, it was finally released on July 23, 2025, on the DMs Guild website. Believed to be the first book published by a fan wiki for its own setting, it was praised by fans and both Greenwood and Schend for its high-quality, faithfulness, and practicality, receiving 5-star ratings.
2025 was declared the Year of Machinations. Focusing on organizations, schemes, and feuds, it's intended to help provide background for places visited and organizations explored in the upcoming 5th-edition Revised Heroes of Faerûn and Adventures in Faerûn.
On October 1st, 2025, the Forgotten Realms Wiki celebrated its 20th anniversary.
A graph of the total number of articles over time.