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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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#romhack on IRC. EFnet then we moved to Dalnet and then we moved to a private server and died a sad lonely death. I used to be someone 
In addition we utilized Demi's board CTC's board and the Donut. Sometimes Zophar's domain.
The only active #romhacker I'm aware that does stuff is Gideon Z. But he finally got a girlfriend so who knows now?
It was great though. From 1997 to 2003 or so. We had our own language, memes, and culture. I think we got too inclusive and thats what killed it. There wasn't enough fresh blood or interest.
It's also where I met Duckroll. For better or worse
In addition we utilized Demi's board CTC's board and the Donut. Sometimes Zophar's domain.
The only active #romhacker I'm aware that does stuff is Gideon Z. But he finally got a girlfriend so who knows now?
It was great though. From 1997 to 2003 or so. We had our own language, memes, and culture. I think we got too inclusive and thats what killed it. There wasn't enough fresh blood or interest.
It's also where I met Duckroll. For better or worse
Hypemaster
Member
Golden State bandwagon.
Head of Vengarl
Banned
http://www.bboy.org/
Ahh yes, my breakdancing phase in high school. Cringeworthy for the most part, but this forum did introduce me to some cool shit, like the Red Bull BC One and the Marionette performance by Expression Crew.
Ahh yes, my breakdancing phase in high school. Cringeworthy for the most part, but this forum did introduce me to some cool shit, like the Red Bull BC One and the Marionette performance by Expression Crew.
Mammoth Jones
Member
Star Wars Galaxies forums. Used to post to that thing every day. Starsider server baby! Debates on changes devs should make.....new content that should be implemented....was really fun.
Oh and screw you, NGE...
Oh and screw you, NGE...
UberTag
Member
Ditto for me on this one. I loved those forums. It made me sad when Chris Beveridge cashed out but I certainly don't blame him in the least.
HigherLevel
Member
I was a member of the old Game Informer forums from 2003-2009. It was an awesome place with hundreds of great members. Their whole site was run by a guy named Paul Anderson who was one of the original staff members at GI. He was an awesome administrator and all around great guy. Many of the members on the site met him in person at various gaming events and all spoke highly of him. He unfortunately passed away in 2007 due to ALS and the site slowly began to slowdown. Many of the other GI writers quit posting as regularly and it eventually just became Joe Juba and Nick something whose last name I forgot running the place.
It was still doing well, just a little slower but when they redesigned their entire site in late 2009 it killed the forums. They new layout was terrible and a pain to navigate, most original members left and it basically became a cesspool of terrible posts and opinions. The staff kept telling members they would fix and update it but nothing real ever happened and now it's basically dead. It was probably the closest online community I've ever seen. There were hundreds of weekly online meetups in games like Halo 3, CoD4, and MGS4 during those years. I personally ran a weekly game night on either Friday or Saturday and we'd have so many people sometimes we'd have multiple lobbies going. It was a ton of fun. Unfortunately life and the death of the forums kind of killed most of the online community on XBL and PSN too. I think there's a handful of guys who still play on Xbox together but that's about it.
It was still doing well, just a little slower but when they redesigned their entire site in late 2009 it killed the forums. They new layout was terrible and a pain to navigate, most original members left and it basically became a cesspool of terrible posts and opinions. The staff kept telling members they would fix and update it but nothing real ever happened and now it's basically dead. It was probably the closest online community I've ever seen. There were hundreds of weekly online meetups in games like Halo 3, CoD4, and MGS4 during those years. I personally ran a weekly game night on either Friday or Saturday and we'd have so many people sometimes we'd have multiple lobbies going. It was a ton of fun. Unfortunately life and the death of the forums kind of killed most of the online community on XBL and PSN too. I think there's a handful of guys who still play on Xbox together but that's about it.
Used to be a regular on BSN for a while, and a thread I made may have put flashlights in ME3. Then after the leak happened, a lot of people left, but there was still a good amount of regulars.
Then ME3 happened and the whole forum went to shit.
I logged back in 6 months ago and it was a shadow of a shadpw of its former self.
Then ME3 happened and the whole forum went to shit.
I logged back in 6 months ago and it was a shadow of a shadpw of its former self.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Ah, I shouldve guessed. Kind of exactly what you'd expect haha. Thanks.
hawkshockey11
Banned
Motherfuckin' Goozex.
I'm apart of a GameFAQs board that might be in the process of dying right now. It becomes less and less active every year. It's not something I'd call dead yet but in ~5-10 years I think it might be.
I was also on NSider for a while, though it basically just disappeared one day. It didn't really "die". Nintendo just wanted to retool their website and the forums went with it.
I was also on NSider for a while, though it basically just disappeared one day. It didn't really "die". Nintendo just wanted to retool their website and the forums went with it.
goldenpp72
Member
ign.com
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Rooster Teeth.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear on MSN Gaming Zone back around 2000-2001 was pretty popular for that time. Couple years later the community fell off hard and continued to dwindle until those and other retail matchmaking was removed from the zone in 2006. Spent a lot of my early teens hanging out in those lobbies chatting, playing ladder matches, or just hopping between casual games with random clans.
friskykillface
Banned
Motherfuckin' Goozex.
RIP
Those 1 am Tuesday link days were awesome , everyone got 1-10 on the gaf thread lol
Also remember getting Mario Galaxy 2 a week after release which blew my mind
Loved that site
PsychoSoldier
Banned
I used to frequent the AnimeonDVD forums when I was deep into the stuff, but ironically I left because no one was actually discussing new DVDs because everyone was just discussing, like every other anime forum, the top releases coming out on fansubs and such---that and the community got so insular that even long-time members started feeling isolated.
Given how fansub/stream focused even an Anime DVD forum was, I wasn't shocked when the anime industry in America started to fall apart.
Given how fansub/stream focused even an Anime DVD forum was, I wasn't shocked when the anime industry in America started to fall apart.
TheShocker
Member
TeamXbox
RIP
RIP
I can't say I was big into the community but I did really enjoy the game. Never felt that 2 had the same feel, not sure what it is.
Yup. I started posting on Allakhazam in 2003 when I started FFXI. I stopped posting in 2011ish. Place is dead now and was well on its way at that time.
The Safehouse was a community for people who played Rogues in EverQuest, when Rogues were still largely considered useless. Was a great place and remained active even after EQ's star fell. I posted there for a good 10 years after leaving EQ, as did a lot of members. But it's pretty dead now.
I was on-again/off-again with the AnimeonDVD forums for a long time as well. The online anime community largely left me behind a long time ago though.
I was on-again/off-again with the AnimeonDVD forums for a long time as well. The online anime community largely left me behind a long time ago though.
Saucycarpdog
Member
The escapist forums.
It really started to die when it became a gamergate haven after the quinnspiracy. Most members and veterans like me left shortly after that.
It really started to die when it became a gamergate haven after the quinnspiracy. Most members and veterans like me left shortly after that.
GentlemanCrow
Member
N-philes (short for Nintendo-philes) was my defacto multimedia forum before Gaf. It was a fairly small gaming forum very much like a budget Gaf. It got rebranded to Nerd Mentality and I drifted away from it. I check in ever now and then. It's still there. Fairly dead though.
I am fond of it because they made an idea I had into a forum used smilie. Glove-cat...
I am fond of it because they made an idea I had into a forum used smilie. Glove-cat...
JesseEwiak
Member
Three things that got kinda big then died out.
TNM - For those of you that don't know, TNM is/was a wrestling simulator where you could book matches and get results. Over time, it advanced so you could book actual spots, finishes, there were plug ins for how much you 'drew', etcetera. Now, being in Visual Basic, the program had flaws and showed it's age quickly, but in a world before TEW or EWR, it was the spot where you could do fantasy booking with a hint of reality around it.
Eventually though, the creator of the program got involved in other things and the community, which used to have probably close to a hundred people regularly posting cards, commenting on other peoples cards has slowly diluted to a dozen or so users left.
E-Wrestling - I know e-wrestling in general still exists, but I'm talking about the specific corner of e-wrestling I was involved in, which was heavily centered around rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy and eventually a couple of message boards. Unlike most "e-wrestling", there was far less focus on out RPing your opponent or putting out dozens of RP's every week bloated with tons of useless words or OOC stuff, but focused far more on putting forth a "real" wrestling show.
Again, at it's height, there was dozens of feds, each putting out cards that had tens of thousands of words involved bi weekly and honestly, I was far more involved in the storylines for the feds than RL wrestling.
But, people got older and with less time, so essentially, there's only one or two feds left standing from this 'circle' of feds.
American Government Simulation - Back as a young 21 year old kinda naive political type, I did a search for government simulation. What I found was the very beginning of AGS, a simulation where people RP'd a Congresspeople, members of the press, Senator's, the President, and so on, and so forth. Over the next six or seven years, there were drone wars, regular fights with the ever changing admin, long involved arguments and long term feuds over RL political beliefs, and so on, and so forth.
At the end though, people got RL political jobs, it was harder for new blood to come in as message boards got less popular in general, and it was easier just to get on Twitter and fight with other people about political stuff than RPing.
But, what it did was made it so I actually far better understood the political process than I ever did before. When you have try to convince a guy RPing a Democratic Senator from Montana to not vote for an amendment to a health care bill but forth by the IG GOP, you all of the sudden have a lot more sympathy for somebody like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.
TNM - For those of you that don't know, TNM is/was a wrestling simulator where you could book matches and get results. Over time, it advanced so you could book actual spots, finishes, there were plug ins for how much you 'drew', etcetera. Now, being in Visual Basic, the program had flaws and showed it's age quickly, but in a world before TEW or EWR, it was the spot where you could do fantasy booking with a hint of reality around it.
Eventually though, the creator of the program got involved in other things and the community, which used to have probably close to a hundred people regularly posting cards, commenting on other peoples cards has slowly diluted to a dozen or so users left.
E-Wrestling - I know e-wrestling in general still exists, but I'm talking about the specific corner of e-wrestling I was involved in, which was heavily centered around rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy and eventually a couple of message boards. Unlike most "e-wrestling", there was far less focus on out RPing your opponent or putting out dozens of RP's every week bloated with tons of useless words or OOC stuff, but focused far more on putting forth a "real" wrestling show.
Again, at it's height, there was dozens of feds, each putting out cards that had tens of thousands of words involved bi weekly and honestly, I was far more involved in the storylines for the feds than RL wrestling.
But, people got older and with less time, so essentially, there's only one or two feds left standing from this 'circle' of feds.
American Government Simulation - Back as a young 21 year old kinda naive political type, I did a search for government simulation. What I found was the very beginning of AGS, a simulation where people RP'd a Congresspeople, members of the press, Senator's, the President, and so on, and so forth. Over the next six or seven years, there were drone wars, regular fights with the ever changing admin, long involved arguments and long term feuds over RL political beliefs, and so on, and so forth.
At the end though, people got RL political jobs, it was harder for new blood to come in as message boards got less popular in general, and it was easier just to get on Twitter and fight with other people about political stuff than RPing.
But, what it did was made it so I actually far better understood the political process than I ever did before. When you have try to convince a guy RPing a Democratic Senator from Montana to not vote for an amendment to a health care bill but forth by the IG GOP, you all of the sudden have a lot more sympathy for somebody like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.
I legitimately miss this game and online community. The game was okay but the community made it so much more enjoyable.
One of my favorite games ever. So many memories. But I guess I would quibble with its inclusion here, as I don't know if it's fair to say the game or the community itself really ever thrived. It stumbled pretty bad out of the gate and began its descent basically from Day 1.
But I hate that that game never took off. No MMO I've played since really captured what made that game and its community so fun in that first year.
N-philes (short for Nintendo-philes) was my defacto multimedia forum before Gaf. It was a fairly small gaming forum very much like a budget Gaf. It got rebranded to Nerd Mentality and I drifted away from it. I check in ever now and then. It's still there. Fairly dead though.
I am fond of it because they made an idea I had into a forum used smilie. Glove-cat...
I used to frequent N-Philes/Nerd Mentality too! I know a few members are here, and I follow a few more on Twitter. Cool people.
I used to go to Ganon's Tower before then. I also remember Kasuto.net. Lots of Zelda fan fiction there.
Soldat:
A 2D side scrolling shooting game where you have jet boots with limited fuel.
The online servers were filled with user created game modes ranging from zombie survival, WW1 trench warfare, hide and seek, racing to RPG TDM.
The game was never huge but the community used to be pretty lively.
Played a few years and then stopped. When I came back, there were very few servers and a lot of them were empty.
Also, I used to play GunZ Online. Game could be a real hackerfest, but damn was it fun.
A 2D side scrolling shooting game where you have jet boots with limited fuel.
The online servers were filled with user created game modes ranging from zombie survival, WW1 trench warfare, hide and seek, racing to RPG TDM.
The game was never huge but the community used to be pretty lively.
Played a few years and then stopped. When I came back, there were very few servers and a lot of them were empty.
Also, I used to play GunZ Online. Game could be a real hackerfest, but damn was it fun.
SynthFetish
Member
Yep, Deadsy message boards and D1 music message boards. Was always amazed how many people used those. They dead now, have been for years, died about the time Facebook happened and the bands stopped doing anything.
s_mirage
Member
That's the one I was going to say too. I didn't post there much but it was a good community until the buyout. I think some of the community moved over to fandompost.com, but it doesn't seem very active.
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Not really an online community but in school I started a forum for our class. (In germany you're usually a group of 25-30 people who all have the same classes and stay together most of the time)
This was before Smartphones and Facebook were a thing so it was a very convient way for us to chat and share homework(of course in a secret section of the forum only visible for users with the necessary rights, because teachers knew about this forum, too) etc.
The forum was incredibly active for about 2 years and then slowly died because our class wasn't together anymore. But there was a small group of people(like 3 or 4) who still posted even years after that. I don't know why.
This was before Smartphones and Facebook were a thing so it was a very convient way for us to chat and share homework(of course in a secret section of the forum only visible for users with the necessary rights, because teachers knew about this forum, too
) etc.The forum was incredibly active for about 2 years and then slowly died because our class wasn't together anymore. But there was a small group of people(like 3 or 4) who still posted even years after that. I don't know why.
I remember Allakhazams. I think I had a binder of all of their zone maps that I had printed out.
The only active #romhacker I'm aware that does stuff is Gideon Z. But he finally got a girlfriend so who knows now?
THE Gideon Zhi? The girlfriend would explain why he hasn't made any updates in the past year.
Two spring to mind.
The first, and the earliest, was Gamezville. It was a forum set up to run alongside a much short-lived TV show shown over here in the UK on Sky One. It tried so hard to be the new GamesMaster, but failed spectacularly. The official forum shared a similar fate, with the boards becoming less and less active as the show slowly died. Eventually, a band of members set up an Invision forum called 'GVGamerz' - a place for the veterans of the original forums to post in with none of the restraints. It did well, to be fair, but died down after about three or so years. Another new forum was set up, but I forget the name, and I certainly don't know the fate of the board, or of it's members.
The second was more recent, PlayStation Universe. A lot of people who post regularly on the gaming side of NeoGAF will have heard of this one, or even be a member of it's now very-small community. It used to be a decent place to post. There was always active discussions going on but that soon died, and the numbers began to dwindle, when elitism crashed over the forum. A 'Quality Posting Initiative' was set up to ensure that everyone put time and effort in to their posts, and any spelling mistakes were ridiculed, with the poster being shamed. They also then introduced paid membership with 'perks' to try and balance the elitism. That failed, though I believe there are still a few subscribers. PSU is still alive, from what I know, but there is barely any decent discussion going on.
The first, and the earliest, was Gamezville. It was a forum set up to run alongside a much short-lived TV show shown over here in the UK on Sky One. It tried so hard to be the new GamesMaster, but failed spectacularly. The official forum shared a similar fate, with the boards becoming less and less active as the show slowly died. Eventually, a band of members set up an Invision forum called 'GVGamerz' - a place for the veterans of the original forums to post in with none of the restraints. It did well, to be fair, but died down after about three or so years. Another new forum was set up, but I forget the name, and I certainly don't know the fate of the board, or of it's members.
The second was more recent, PlayStation Universe. A lot of people who post regularly on the gaming side of NeoGAF will have heard of this one, or even be a member of it's now very-small community. It used to be a decent place to post. There was always active discussions going on but that soon died, and the numbers began to dwindle, when elitism crashed over the forum. A 'Quality Posting Initiative' was set up to ensure that everyone put time and effort in to their posts, and any spelling mistakes were ridiculed, with the poster being shamed. They also then introduced paid membership with 'perks' to try and balance the elitism. That failed, though I believe there are still a few subscribers. PSU is still alive, from what I know, but there is barely any decent discussion going on.
pokeystaples
Banned
Not game related but the afropunk blackboards were such a big part of my life for years. It tore me up when the site and the festival were sold and it turned into...whatever the hell the site is now. LE SIGH.
Dandy Crocodile
Member
Motherfuckin' Goozex.
Came to post this. I was a hugely active user and built up a lot of the collection I still have today due to this site.
I really miss it.
IdreamofHIME
Member
IGNs insider general boards.
Thrived during the PS2/GCN/Xbox and most of the 360/ps3/Wii days and then just before this gen started they splintered into pieces when IGN refused to update their shitty old glitch ridden boards. Their reaction was basically the infamous 'this is fine' pic.
The Nintendo folks created their own forum, the rest scattered around a few other sites. Seen many an IGN asylum seeker on GAF.
Miss those boards, the PS2GB and GCNGB particularly.
Thrived during the PS2/GCN/Xbox and most of the 360/ps3/Wii days and then just before this gen started they splintered into pieces when IGN refused to update their shitty old glitch ridden boards. Their reaction was basically the infamous 'this is fine' pic.
The Nintendo folks created their own forum, the rest scattered around a few other sites. Seen many an IGN asylum seeker on GAF.
Miss those boards, the PS2GB and GCNGB particularly.
Used to visit bjunkyard.com and be on the forums oftenfor the community way back in the day before the major proliferation of K-Pop. The only other site I can think of that exists from the early days of K-Pop is soompi (which I rarely visited as I didn't like their site design back in the day).
Was a pretty good community until things just kind stopped happening on the site due to lack of interest etc. Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the old members haha.
Was a pretty good community until things just kind stopped happening on the site due to lack of interest etc. Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the old members haha.
Vestal
Gold Member
With you on this. Also to an extent the FoH Board. That was my go to Message board before GAF.
Seraph_Nicholas
Member
I have a lot of fond memories of totse. I was too late for the BBS, but the website was a treasure trove of illicit historical documents.
There were also a few communities that died directly because of me. They were all fairly gross, though, and I'm proud of my part in their disintegration. Minor racist gatherings getting wiped out by an email to the host quoting the ToS on hate speech, and the like.
There were also a few communities that died directly because of me. They were all fairly gross, though, and I'm proud of my part in their disintegration. Minor racist gatherings getting wiped out by an email to the host quoting the ToS on hate speech, and the like.
This. So sad.
Star Wars Galaxies after the NGE (New Game Experience) came out. Place turned into a huge ghost town except for the most popular server. The CU (Combat Upgrade) that came before it did a number as well, but nothing like the NGE. Killed the game dead with its corpse hanging around for a few more years after that.
Edit: thought this was game side. I'll leave this anyway.
Edit: thought this was game side. I'll leave this anyway.
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