LEGO Universe Creation Lab

The LEGO Universe Creation Lab was the website that started it all. It was a free creation sharing social network on the LEGO Universe website.

Format
The LUCL creation uploader had five slots for pictures, videos, or .lxf files. It also had a description box, which allowed typing up to about 2,000 characters, which was mostly used for writing stories. After creations had been uploaded and passed moderation, other users could post comments on the creation, and rate it using a star system (though few did).

The uploader also had a space for tags. It was traditional for users to ask to be in the "tags cloud" of someone they liked, so that clicking on their name in the tags would show all of the users who tagged them. This practice was continued on the Gallery till its closure.

The uploader had a famous glitch that required users to edit and resubmit creations to use line breaks. Since LU had been shut down, the site was barely maintained.

Community
There were a number of communities on the LUCL, and the community that wrote the stories this wiki is based on was only one of them.

At the time, users present on the LUCL were mostly former LEGO Universe players, writing stories and posting creations inspired by their experiences. In time, telling stories about the game evolved into something that eclipsed the game itself, with many users being welcomed into the community who had never played the game when it was out.

Stories
Many of the users on the LUCL enjoyed writing stories. Dachshund11 wrote the first story that is now considered canon, inspiring many others. Eventually, what started as a practice of referencing others' stories and staying true to character storylines evolved into a shared universe that worked almost like a roleplay.

Shutdown
Because LEGO Unvierse had been discontinued a while earlier, the Lab could only stay open so much longer. It was announced that the LUCL would be shutting down, and so users began to make preperations. Crossbow9568 created the Nomad Archive, which was an external archive of most of the community's creations and stories.

The mods kindly ensured that the then-new LEGO.com Gallery was ready in time for the community to move in to, which is where the second chapter of the LUCL community began.