All is Brawl
Nintendo Dojo, abbreviated as NDJ, is an online community that was started by certain Smash World Forums members. Initially started as a Super Smash Bros. Brawl-centric site under the name All is Brawl, the site was renovated in response to Super Smash Bros. 4, and repurposed into a general Nintendo-centric site. The site started the "All is" network, designed and run by Nealdt.
Site features
All Is Brawl's primary purpose was to bring the online community of Smash Bros. together and it allows for users to create various user groups (be it for crews or for socializing) and host their own tournament via a program known as tio tournament organizer. This feature was used for hosting tournaments for all three Smash games, as well as both online and in-person Brawl tournaments. The site was also home to its own ladder rankings system, where any user was welcome to join and challenge others to increase their rank. The ladder was updated on a weekly basis, and made use of the TrueSkill system, the same program used by Microsoft in its online ranking system. Another feature of All is Brawl was its chatroom, with 8 different categories of subjects discussed. This included a tourney chatroom, with four different rooms to allow tournament organizers and participants to communicate without interfering with other chatrooms or receiving such interference. Users could also upload videos via YouTube, such as technique/combo videos and recorded tournament matches.
In its prime during the early-to-mid Brawl era, the All is Brawl community was active and large, being the largest and most active Smash-centric site after Smashboards. Users had the ability to design their profile, leave each other shoutouts, blog, and use the site's forums and chatrooms for social and recreational purposes (in addition to their usage to discuss Smash).
All is Brawl was also famous for its very organized Brawl Stadium community. Smashers from all over the world came to post their records for 1-P modes such as Target Smash, Home Run Contest, and Multi-Man Brawl. Smashers like Sin2324 were once active on the boards, along with OWLET, LinksDarkArrows, Nismoe Joe, marth1 and super-mod Nessy.
Recent history
As the "All is" network aged, Nealdt slowly became increasingly more inactive and difficult to contact. All is Brawl downtimes became long and frequent, spanning weeks with no warning or explanation. Ladders became impossible to run correctly due to requiring Nealdt's presence to reset them. Server issues resulted in the mass deletion of old user blogs and messages, instead of simply buying more server space. The DDoS attack of late August 2013 brought down the site and damaged several parts of it. Finally, in November 2013, the entire "All is" network went down to a "service unavailable" page. The site reappeared on December 11th, 2013, explaining the downtime as massive database corruption resulting in a full-on server upgrade. Nealdt also vacated his position as the site's owner shortly after, with JV taking over.
With the approaching of Super Smash Bros. 4 and the shutdown of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (making it impossible without hacks to play Brawl online, the site's then main purpose), it was expected by most users that significant change would be coming. It was known (via mostly technical reasons more than official announcements) that the site would be renamed "Nintendo Dojo", and re-purpose its focus as covering Nintendo in general rather than just Smash, at some point in the near future as part of this. The site was officially renamed and moved to nintendodojo.com in October 2014; all previous content was carried over.
However, even with the release of Smash 4, the site has continued to declined and become increasingly less relevant instead of experiencing a resurgence. The site remains riddled with bugs and features that do not work, including a particularly infamous one where users are randomly logged in another user's account, and the complete inability to upload tournament results, while hired programmers have had great difficulty in fixing these bugs. The site has additionally failed to incorporate new features based around non-Smash Nintendo games, leaving the site still primarily Smash-focused despite its name and intended purpose, creating brand confusion among new users who joined the site expecting a Nintendo-based site rather than a Smash-centric site. The site's active userbase has also continually shrunk, with many of it users that once used it as a hub to interact with other smashers moving onto using Smashboards, various Smash-centric groups on Facebook, and reddit's various Smash-centric subreddits instead, as these users grew dissatisfied with the site. And the site's once-prestigious and very active online Smash ladder continues to see much less activity than in its heyday, with most smashers moving onto Anther's Smash Ladder and other competing ladders.
