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Ever been a part of an online community that lived, thrived, and then slowly died?
- Thread starter Slayven
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SJRB
Gold Member
Gametrailers forums, no doubt.
That place was amazing, especially after they allowed Factions. Was a member for many years, it was so much fun, and there was so much nonsense. Incredible amount of trolling and platform wars going on. Also many crooked mods. From a business standpoint I understand why at some point they cracked down hard on the community, but it resulted in a wasteland of a forum.
Subjectless Thread in General Discussion, never forget.
That place was amazing, especially after they allowed Factions. Was a member for many years, it was so much fun, and there was so much nonsense. Incredible amount of trolling and platform wars going on. Also many crooked mods. From a business standpoint I understand why at some point they cracked down hard on the community, but it resulted in a wasteland of a forum.
Subjectless Thread in General Discussion, never forget.
Ivan A Nguyen
Member
FFXI for sure. I was in that game deep before I left it. Now if I go back on free weekends it's a hollow shell of it's former self. Someone made a Youtube compilation of all the story scenes so I no longer have any motivation to even check it out anymore.
Yep, a Nintendo-oriented community, friendcodes.com. It had a neat specialized chat feature to find players interested in exchanging friend codes and playing Nintendo's online games. Right around the end of the Wii's lifespan and introduction of universal friend codes on 3DS it started to slowly fall apart. Went from hundreds of concurrent users to at most 20 nowadays.
questionmark
Member
SoGamed was the best community for the competitive Counter-Strike scene back in the day. Just look at this beauty;
HLTV is just garbage in comparison.
HLTV is just garbage in comparison.
Heh, yeah. On paper, though, I thought it was a slam-dunk idea for an MMO though. It's an idea I wish would get resurrected, too bad the popularity and relevance of the Matrix franchise is non-existent these days.
disappeared
Banned
If we're counting forums, gamers.com/1up. Started there when it was first launched in the EGM/OPM days, migrated to 1up.com, then shifted over to GAF as the community and 1up itself started dying off. Then came the final abolishment of the forums as 1up officially closed. Spanned roughly ten years.
soundscream
Member
NBA GAF
To savage for this world.
To savage for this world.
PlayALLtheGames
Banned
The Palace online chat.
Fuck with me.
Fuck with me.
QuantumBro
Banned
Nsider the only one for me, but that was less of a slow death and more of a shot to the back of the head when no one was looking.
This. Every site (even Neogaf) will one day close up shop. Just have fun and remember the good times.
This. Every site (even Neogaf) will one day close up shop. Just have fun and remember the good times.
in the early 2000s a bunch of people from the RPG forum of gamefaqs took over one of the user level-restricted boards. A bunch of us still keep up with one another and play games regularly, but hardly anyone posts there anymore. Gamefaqs in general kind of dropped off sharply after the site was sold off.
crimzonflame
Member
rapmusic.com's forums. Specifically the battle rap subsection. It was fun, hilarious and thriving but then they perma banned a lot of the trolls. It was never the same after those bannings as they a lot of the users moved onto other sites.
Orbis Tabula
Member
What went wrong with LessWrong?
Not asking to disagree with you or anything like that. I'm just sort of aware of the community and curious.
Cloudchaser. The main site dying and then a failed main site taking over pretty much killed it, but the sheer lack of moderation to reign in the worst of it certainly played a part. When most news threads simply linked to GAF news threads, it was clearly done.
Oh hi.
Oh hi.
theepicoftyler
Member
RIP Coalition Forums, the shining gem of Dragonball Z and Anime fan site webmasters of the early 2000's.
The most prolific one was probably mp3.com, which was basically the Soundcloud equivalent in its heyday of 1998-2000. That all but evaporated as the service gradually shifted towards catering to big labels rather than independant musicians.
I also hung around on some MM forum communities in the very early 00's. I remember Egoraptor also frequenting one of them, way before he got famous.
I also hung around on some MM forum communities in the very early 00's. I remember Egoraptor also frequenting one of them, way before he got famous.
SillyEskimo
Member
Indeed. It is still around with maybe 5-6 posters. We used to have thousands.
It's 15-16yrs old.
It's 15-16yrs old.
PeskyToaster
Member
WoW Offtopic was fun. People would come to post about how amazing other MMOs were going to be then they would be stinkers. It didn't slowly die off but Blizzard got rid of it I think.
ChaosZeroX
Banned
MY answer as well. So much fun. Wish they had servers up still.
I used Turntable.fm. It was fun, I hit it up a little bit every day and it was an amazing source for new music. For those that used it, it hit hard, grew quickly and for about a year it seemed to always be busy. It couldn't maintain the large number of people using it, so it slowed down, then the creators decided that it was a drain on bandwidth or something so they killed it. It was pretty cool.
Now there is Plug.DJ that I think Gaf uses.
Now there is Plug.DJ that I think Gaf uses.
D
Deleted member 752119
Unconfirmed Member
Cheapassgamer.com
Used to be super active in all the forum areas, great place to discuss games, liked it even better than here as I prefer having console specific forums to one catch all gaming forum.
It just slowly died off over the past 3 years or so. The deals forum is a cesspool just as bad as slickdeals, and there's barely in activity in gaming forums with just a handful of posts in many of them.
Used to be super active in all the forum areas, great place to discuss games, liked it even better than here as I prefer having console specific forums to one catch all gaming forum.
It just slowly died off over the past 3 years or so. The deals forum is a cesspool just as bad as slickdeals, and there's barely in activity in gaming forums with just a handful of posts in many of them.
Thriftweed
Member
I spent a large portion of my teenage years over at MX (mxtabs/musicianforums/sputnikmusic). Last time I checked in there it had declined rapidly.
Manmademan
Member
AOL
Yooooo AOL use to have the dopest trivia games.
Gunbound comes immediately to mind - it is/was a Worms clone and one of the earliest examples I can think of where it was a free game with microtransactions. When I played there used to be thousands of people online; these days there's only 200-300 people online at any given time and they're all veterans so good luck trying to play if you're a novice.
The Pojo.com forums still exist somehow, but it looks like the Yu Gi Oh community is the only one that's still around. When I posted there, they had pretty sizable communities for the Pokemon TCG, MTG, and DBZ.
The Pojo.com forums still exist somehow, but it looks like the Yu Gi Oh community is the only one that's still around. When I posted there, they had pretty sizable communities for the Pokemon TCG, MTG, and DBZ.
thesuperfunk
Member
As part of a group of roughly 6 mods I put a hell of a lot of time into the forums [especially the tracklisting forums] over at PvDPlanet.net back in the early-mid 2000's ... I travelled the globe supporting my favourite DJ until it all just got a little stale, everybody grew up and the whole board slowly died a death ...
megarockexe
Member
Sad to say, but I'd say The Rockman EXE Zone when I co-launched it back in 2006. It really peaked around 2008-2012. We ran the most active MegaMan Battle Network-themed forum at the time. What a time.
I used to read and post on the Aint It Cool News comments sections for years and years and years. I started around the time of stuff Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Fanboys. The place was incredible in the insanity you would find in the comments. Of course it was way more of a wild west than places like Neogaf. People were rarely if ever banned and most of the comments sections could be full of trolling and such.
I dropped out several years ago when I realized Harry was basically up his own ass and was barely updating the site and when he did it was usually to add a few meager features that should have been there 5 years past. I really liked the feeling I got there but that site just never kept up with the times and never expanded to cover other audiences like the videogame world.
I do go back time to time but its nowhere near what it was and Harry still has the same issues running the place though at least they started using a better program for their comments sections.
I dropped out several years ago when I realized Harry was basically up his own ass and was barely updating the site and when he did it was usually to add a few meager features that should have been there 5 years past. I really liked the feeling I got there but that site just never kept up with the times and never expanded to cover other audiences like the videogame world.
I do go back time to time but its nowhere near what it was and Harry still has the same issues running the place though at least they started using a better program for their comments sections.
Mostly the same story here. PCGB/PCGB and the Gamecube Lobby were my jam. Bad Cartridge was a fun experiment but really didn't have much activity.I use to live on the IGN boards back in their heyday. The mid/N64 days, through GameCube/PS2/Xbox days, and toward the launch of the 360.
I probably have 10,000 immature posts on "Teh Vesti."
I eventually moved over to Bad Cartridge, which became Day One Patch; but it just didn't move too quick and it was the same 50 people posting all the time, it felt like.
And then I came to GAF
yongeandcollege
Member
MAG forums!
HungOverOnATues
Member
Twice on the first page, hah. I was there for a bit after the IGN boards purge but ended up jumping ship over to here not long after. My posting habits have slowed considerably over the years and I've become more of a lurker, and this being a more active site has held my attention better.
MatthewB92
Member
Ign before they changed everything. Tried to sign back in once but had me under the wrong username. I wanted my fan boy username Nintendo.Wii but sadly gone forever.....
Vicetrailia
Member
G4 Forums. It basically mirrored the rise and fall of the station itself.
I used to be pretty active over at the NA PlayStation forums back in the late 2000's. They made the shift to a different forum layout (I think Lithium?) and the community started to disappear. I eventually stopped visiting, and when I tried to return back to it around 2013 my perspective had changed, and all I could see was unnecessary console war arguments. At the same time my GAF account had been approved, so I migrated here and found a community more to my liking. Sometimes I check out the current state of the PlayStation forums, and it's dwindled to a handful of active users. I even saw a ridiculously transphobic thread there a few weeks ago, which lasted a good couple of pages.
Haha hello. I was a mod at the original Cloudchaser, actually. Yes, we probably should have reigned in the worst elements. But a lot of the site's downfall was due to neglect from being sold, etc.
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