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"since finobe's inception, it's always been a shitpost." - Raymonf, 2020
Finobe was the largest, longest lasting, and most well documented revival at the time of it's untimely end on May 19th, 2021 which is oft mentioned as the beginning of the fall of the ORC was we knew it, and here is it's story.
Finobe was established in early 2017 by the renowned Raymonf The Great, founder of RBLXDev and Nobelium as a way to poke fun on the crowds of people who were piling up at Nobelium's gates, due to the fact itd be thought upkeep would be low, but it'd wind up being some kind of a "rise from the ashes" since Raymonf had gone into "hiding" in Nobelium, which had evolved from RBLXDev after it was taken down due to ROBLOX sending in a DMCA notice. Rumors say that Energycell takes the credit, but that is to be taken with a grain of salt — because he apparently survived drowning.
These intentions were clear as Finobe was originally "Graphictoria Reborn", capitalizing on the fact that the original Graphictoria had gone offline for a third time before being renamed to "Filude", meaning "Brick Play" in Latin. But that domain was filled with some... nasty stuff.
After that, the name Finobe was settled on, being a portmanteau of "Filude" and "Nobelium", with the site being launched on the domain fi.nobelium.xyz, and releasing with a 2010 client similar to the one Graphictoria used, although later that year a 2012 client was also added and eventually became the focus, and a short-lived 2007 client which was initially withheld from the public "for security reasons" and which would only be obtainable as Finobe's 2007, which also had many security issues and was removed, but it didn't really matter as the unmodified client was released later anyway.
Oh, and, did i forget to mention Graphictoria also shut down in late August that year? Yeah. The ultimate goal had finally been achieved, Graphictoria is dead, Long live Finobe!
With effectively no competition whatsoever, Finobe rose to the top of the charts and reached even greater popularity than Graphictoria. So much so the site started using invite keys in 2019, by which time 2010 was removed and a 2016 client was added, which would effectively eclipse 2012 as Finobe's flagship client.
The client was tested on Nobelium prior to being launched on Finobe, and even during that time it was greatly coveted, it was speculated to have been built on the leaked source code of a March 2016 client. It had much greater capabilities than 2012 but many saw it as "too new" for their liking, and that it wasn't "old" enough for the "Old Roblox Community."
Finobe's competition would barely shake it initially. Otorium, Goodblox, and others would come to the scene and despite being successful would continue to be in Finobe's shadow, until Goodblox, around since 2018, would begin to slowly eclipse Finobe throughout 2020. It was what the community seemed to want more after all, truly retro ROBLOX in all it's glory, so retro in fact they modified it to be even more retro!
Finobe's numbers, in comparison, declined. At most there would be 5 people in-game at any given time, meanwhile Goodblox would regulary hit a dozen online by the end of the year. In November Raymonf the Great would announce that Finobe would not make it past 2021.
The time after was eerily quiet in terms of updates, Finobe was just a dead revival walking.
However, it would see a slight resurgence thanks to Goodblox's closure on February 2021 due to a string of hacking attacks.
And then...
Finobe admin Uni announces the bad news... "Hear ye, Hear ye, citizens of Finobe! The end is near! We have recieved a Cease and Desist from ROBLOX and will be forced to close..."
It was on the 19th day of May of 2021 when this happened, Finobe's 4th anniversary. No one could believe it, he who was too big to perish was finally slain. Chaos ensued. People issued their farewells, the server was spammed with invites of other revivals and archive servers, and it was then nuked.
The Great Bastion of the ORC had finally fallen. the Dark Age has begun...
A few changes have been made from the original, primarily pertaining to the DMCA that took down RBLXDev and it's origins, props to tobu.fi for contributing that