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[espher]

VNBoards for DAoC. Server boards were monstrous. Some folks are still active on PostCount (assuming PostCount is around) but man it was a trip when they announced VNBoards were shutting down everyone showed up and shitposted like we'd never lost a day.

Edit: Class boards were a fucking trainwreck, though. Alb Fighter Boards was like pulling teeth, esp. by the time I became Pally TL...

YTMND

RIP

Oh man, yeah, that site is a shadow of its former self.

Here, my two favourite loves of that era - YTMND + VN: http://caerleon.ytmnd.com/

 

[Fëanorian]

I came in this thread to see if the Rotten Tomatoes forums would be mentioned, and here are Solid and Feanor trading barbs like the good ol' days. Thanks for the nostalgia guys.

Commander! Long time no see!

Yes, we trolled and played online and it was good times. Solid wasn't invited, maybe he's salty about that.

 

[Corpekata]

I'm another Rotten Tomatoes refugee. Place had some fucking weird trolls toward the end.

During the last year or two the higher ups merged the old ass general forums with their weird subforums for every specific movie topic which revealed to me there were a TON of other people posting on the site in their own little corners, and it was a hilarious clash. The specific topics people like wrote wiki entries about themselves and called themselves the Trollhunters. It was super dorky.

Fabfunk / Gabe Toro used to post there a lot and he was recently arrested for child prostitution, fulfilling several predictions. It was one last hurrah when that happened, bringing back a lot of the regulars. I lost interest shortly after.

 

[Zeus Molecules]

EverQuest.

There was nothing like it when it came out. A whole new frontier.

I was glad to be there before MMOs got so homogenized.

The forum aspect of it was amazing. Setting up raid schedules. Sharing maps and secrets and tips.

Glorious.

Great example! I was their before Kunark and left when they did the expansion with the Frog people. It was great until they did luclin. The new graphics and the market killed that game slowly

 

[DrFunk]

Anyone mention penny arcade forums yet?

 

[SolidChamp]

Commander! Long time no see!

Yes, we trolled and played online and it was good times. Solid wasn't invited, maybe he's salty about that.

I'm happy to stay as far away from your CoD-loving ass as possible, thank you very much Feanor.

 

[Rabbi_Vole]

Dayonepatch. I wouldn't say it's dying but it's certainly stagnant.

Great community, though.

 

[Fëanorian]

I'm happy to stay as far away from your CoD-loving ass as possible, thank you very much Feanor.

It was all about that K/D ratio, besides haven't been a console gamer since 2009.

All about that PC!

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Neogaf.

 

[Rabbi_Vole]

Neogaf.

Ooooooooooooooh, snips!!

 

[Hindenblewp]

Hyrule Town Square/Nsider, though they were both quick deaths.

 

[Lothar]

Howdy.

Ya know, in a way, I'm glad some of those communities are gone without a trace. I was 15 when I first got into online communities and I'd hate to read some of my posts from back then.

Oh, don't worry. Good news. I have them. They're not on the internet. But I'm an archivist nerd.

 

[SolidChamp]

It was all about that K/D ratio, besides haven't been a console gamer since 2009.

All about that PC!

LOL if it's not 60fps (at least), amiright?

I suspect more than a few RTers shunned console gaming altogether when the Xbox One was announced.

 

[SodiumBenzoate]

RIP LurkerLounge

 

[paplikaplik]

Let's see, there was:

T'Bonez Star Warz Universe
Corona's Coming Attractions (a whole bunch of your favoritest film writers crawled out of this primordial ooze)
Jedinet
TheForce.net (technically those boards are still around but it's like 50 really fucking stupid people pawing at each others' nuts at this point)
Aldera.net
The X-Boards
MillenniumFalcon.com

I was an admin of the original incarnation of the TF.N forums for a year or so. It was probably the best Star Wars forum until May 18, 1999. Then it experienced a brief bout of greatness with forum drama and faction wars, before everyone got banned and ran off to create ezboards

and then I pitched a giant hissyfit about some stupid shit or another, consumed myself in a giant fireball of stupidity and forum politics, retreated to one of the spinoff communities

Same here. I got over it and moved onto blogging.

 

[EverythingShiny]

Chatphiles (a super old X-Files web-based chatroom type thing)
Melodramatic.com
Livejournal ( I know it still exists, but it's just not the same. )

I still have some good friends I met on Melo and LJ. Haven't really gotten to know people that well online since then, not counting WoW.

 

[umop_3pisdn]

totse

 

[Magni]

Wasn't a part of it myself, but we're all witnessing that happen right now to the Bernie fandom.

 

[oni_saru]

One of the first forums i joined years ago was a bl/yaoi dedicated forum.

Back then membership was high. Constant good chats. Even the mini shipping wars were in good fun (non of the tumblr drama shipping wars tend to be).

But after one of the major Japanese publishing companies sent them C&D letters for all the Manga raws & scans they had, the community went to shit.

Many people left, the good topics stopped, hell no more news updates on anything.

Just checked real quick and I don't even see a topic on the recent Libre news with DMP. Back then, that news would have been a hot topic.

That community really died (doesn't help that the mods kinda sucked at banning some of the ruder/louder members due to probably the donations of said members. I remember a certain member who drove away some of the veteran posters. Mods didn't due shit.)

I do miss the days that forum was at its peak.

 

[Sou Da]

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.

Ditto. At that point the forum just turned into people who hated the company and the games but invested too much time into the forum to leave, then they finally changed the forum software to something modern and purposefully made so that people could no longer have a way to gang up on posters. Then social media became a thing so all the devs left for that and stop posting on the forums which defeats the purpose of bothering to check it out now.

After that they fully neutered it by removing off topic so that people who hated the games had no reason to stay. Now the forums are just a big unhinged sycophantic hate circle jerk. Shame.

 

[gnomed]

Aintitcool

At one point it was legitimately a nice place to be, then increasingly grew more toxic and less relevant.

Haven't been since last year but it sure seemed shit and dying when I did. Maybe it was my perspective that was off

TeamXbox also gets another shout out from me

The last time i visited AICN was back before all the blogs and vlogs took over. It started to turn into a youtube comment section before those existed with the same posters spouting the same tired memes. And with it, my enthusiasm for new movies. I''m slowly turning into that crusty old guy that watches the Criterion Collection on Hulu during his Saturday afternoons when not out drinking and occasionally commenting on a forum he frequents.

Early MMO forums use to be my jam also. Especially the pre-beta discussions, agonizing over every little detail the deverlopers release. Eventually winding up in the OT section because what more can you say or discuss ad nauseam .

Spoiler

Not Gaf

 

[littlebigman]

I was a regular on AtariAge at it's peak in around 2010-ish. At one point, it was the go to retro gaming enthusiast forum and there was tons of great discussion to be had, plus an active homebrew scene. But then a sudden influx of younger members caused the mostly forty-something userbase that had been running the site for close to a decade to lash out and the whole forum became completely toxic, culminating in an incident where one of the moderators orchestrated a harassment campaign against a twelve year old newbie for the heinous crime of being twelve. A pretty significant chunk of the userbase left in disgust after that, myself included, and these days it's a much smaller, quieter place.

 

[Sou Da]

Oh, yeah another site I was on was Dwayne McDuffie's forums. They were great until he died and after that it pretty much became a forum for his last project: Ben 10 Omniverse. One of the writers/his friend held the board together by answering questions about the show but he soon realized that fanbase crazy, I'll hand it to him to him though he answered every inane question they gave him. Then someone did him a huge favor and linked to a pirated episode, he abandoned that place in a fucking heartbeat.

 

[ロックマン]

Yep, part of two gaming forums that I absolutely loved but they died along with most of the forums on the internet.

One was GT, it was dead long before the website shutdown, and the other was a niche gaming forum called Petesgameroom (PeteDorr from YT's forum).

I really miss the glory days of forums in the mid to late 2000s. Things are much more convenient now with communities like Reddit but the close community and relationships of old forums is something I miss a lot.

 

[Mechazawa]

The Rottentomatoes "vine" forums for both movie and video game discussion.

As the site itself gradually changed over time (not for the better, IMO), the forums were left untouched and site managers slowly distanced themselves from it.

That used to be my go-to for video game and movie discussions, but it was a mess due to poor moderation.

During the 360/PS3 era the video game forum was a complete 360 fanboy wankfest with constant trolling and berating of anything PlayStation. There were some blatant trolls there that got away with so much shit, who would've been banned with the first post over here.

Kenporules was a shitty moderator, and went with the mob mentality instead of cleaning the fucking place up, like he should have.

I'm so glad I'm over here now. That place was pathetic, in retrospect.

Shame though, since the movie forum was home to some healthy and insightful discussion. Such a waste.

You were a loudmouth windbag that consistently pushed weird console warrior agendas and imagined up all these weird perceived slights towards a video game console that you for whatever reason took to heart.

Kenpo was also the nicest, most chill dude in the world who consistently looked the other way for otherwise menial "offenses" due to a consistently waning community size and the fact that everyone knew each other and could otherwise be trusted not to lose their shit and act overly stupid. He wasn't bending to "mob mentality", he just knew and liked everyone and wasn't going to be strictly regulating an otherwise relatively small and tightknit community that already was at the fringe of the website.

Maybe if you chose to act like a regular fucking person with a sliver of decorum when talking about V I D E O G A M E S instead of a paranoid forum troglodyte, you wouldn't have been one of the few people across that forum's existence that actually managed to get banned for frequently saying stupid bullshit.

 

[Sneaky Gato]

ever posted on Stardestroyer.net?

Oh man Stardestroyer is a name I haven't heard in years. While I never posted I remember it being really active in the Versus debates and original Science Fiction writing communities. The community pretty much stopped once the owner, Mike Wong, stopped caring about the site and the head mod disappeared off the face of the earth. Free to do as they pleased the rest of the mod team pretty much tribalized the site and banned wily-nily eventually driving everyone away and crashing the servers.

 

[Albino_Yeti]

Back before Pandemic Studios went under, they had a really active forum. I lived in that forum during my middle school years, there were elaborate forum games, in depth stories written by people, and discussions of all kinds. Mercenaries 2 and Lord of the Rings conquest brought a good influx of people to the forum, but if I remember correctly the saboteur had its own forum. The forum went down with the studio unfortunately

 

[Peotical Injection]

1up, the MGO 1 PS2 community. Loved MGO 1, met so many great people.

 

[higemaru]

Yeah, I went on NS2 for about....a year, on and off, until it basically became unusable with the bloat. I discovered it several months after NSider shut down when I decided to do a Google search about the site (which never occurred to me before).

It was weird, it was like all of Power-On moved to that site but the other parts of that site were dead.

I'll forever remember the Summers of 2006, 2007, and 2008 as being spent lurking Power-On (06 and 07 on NS1 and 08 on NS2).

Haha, I actually think I might recognize you as strange as that is. Have you always used G&W avatars? I definitely recognize HUELEN at any rate. I posted on there when I was really young (12 maybe?) so I'm almost embarrassed to give out what my name was

Spoiler

BONE210

.

But yeah Nsider2 was mostly Power On people. I was always posting on Power On, the Smash Bros board, and the Legacy Systems board. I tried to post everywhere as much as I could because I loved talking with other people but a decent amount of the site was dead. The Donkey Kong board got shut down, and most of the series-boards were pretty inactive aside from Pokemon, Mario, and Smash Brothers.

 

[deadscreensky]

Ah yes, you were one of the major cunts I was referring to.

<3

Honestly I shouldn't even be responding to you, it's unfortunate you're still so bitter over your own dumb mistakes. Say whatever paranoid nonsense you want about me or Fëanorian, we're here and can respond/ignore as appropriate. But coming here and spreading your childish little hateful gossip about a super nice and gentle non-GAF dude like kenporules, a man who worked hard in a mostly thankless role to keep a small community that a lot of us loved going, is absolutely gross and uncalled for.

 

[bronson]

Another RottenTomatoes regular checking in here.

This thread is beautiful.

Fabfunk / Gabe Toro used to post there a lot and he was recently arrested for child prostitution, fulfilling several predictions. It was one last hurrah when that happened, bringing back a lot of the regulars. I lost interest shortly after.

Also holy fuck.

 

[Lagamorph]

MY answer as well. So much fun. Wish they had servers up still.

I wish someone would set up a private server for it somewhere
It's a shame, City of Heroes seemed to get huge at one point, game, Heroclix, comics....then the comics just fizzled out and the game seemed to go into free fall.

City of Villains was a fun addition, but they completely missed an opportunity by not allowing heroes to become villains and villains to become heroes. The player base was crying out for it but it never got implemented.

 

[CharminUltra]

Gaming Age Forums.

 

[mulac]

A (very) long time ago I was highly active to a wrestling forum called Smashwrestling.com. Basically a really tight knit community of like-minded people talking WWE, general stuff like movies, football, games.

Got to the point there were alot of healthy rivalries and some friendships that still last today even thought the website died around 10 years ago.

Predominantly UK based but a fair good amount of people from the USA on there.

I was a moderator and wrote a ton of articles on WWE plus general crap as it came to mind.

Website doesnt exist anymore as the guy who ran the site was basically paying for it out of his own pocket and it got way too expensive.

Ah...to be in my twenties again...

 

[bigjig]

Spill before it got shut down. The successor site Double Toasted is ok but I really only care for Martin (Leon) and Korey. Miss Cyrus and Co-host 3000

 

[Corpekata]

Another RottenTomatoes regular checking in here.

This thread is beautiful.



Also holy fuck.

http://forum.rottentomatoes.com/topic/show/1989580

Forum topic about it. As awful as the crime was it brought out a lot of great posts.

IIRC he had an account here too but I'm not sure if he was active.

Looking at the general forums it's actually more active than I expected right now.

 

[Symphonia]

AlterE, but I changed to euphemism before it died

Well, shit, that name rings a bell.

Good to see a fellow N-Philer. That place was a pretty decent forum. Plenty of conversation to be had. Quite a fair bit of drama too.

 

[Valkerionseven]

Jpopmusic... i think that's what it was called. First international music forum I signed up too. Good place. Good people. Good music recommendations. Good "free" music shared by the community on request or (hey you might like.) Helped shape my taste in music.

Final Fantasy XI stuff. Still alive technically with a hardcore base, but most moved on. Loved everyone on Bahamut server. I even remember people from other servers posting in our forums wondering if anyone even played this damn server because the lack of drama posts on the boards haha. Everyone kept their shit in their linkshell (guild) and off the public chat is all.

Spoiler

like one lady who divorced her husband who also played, moved across the US to live with another man in our linkshell @.@

Had no idea when I came back after a break for over a year and put two and two together from some of the chats.

KillingIfrit forums, FFXI hub. Was always a second tier site but way better than some others in terms of info and maps/pics ect. Went to shit when they let the ads run rampant and community members bully each other for stupid reasons. Stayed out of all of it and helped make a bomb ass Summoner guide with the other few other Summoners at the time. Eventually stopped caring and updating it, and moved on to Dragoon lol.

 

[titiklabingapat]

Neopets! And the various forums that thing brought on.

Was also actively posting on Survivor Sucks. Don't watch TV anymore though. Just checked, and my god, I still recognize some of the people in the SS OT.

 

[Einchy]

This RT stuff is the best.

 

[It's Reyn Time!]

The Crow Community Forum (CCF), a forum for the 1994 film and its sequels. I joined in late 2000 and there were about a hundred active members and for a while it was a genuinely lovely place to hang out online, get chatting to people from all other walks of life from all over the world with that one interest in common. There were loads of gatherings, lots of friendships and relationships formed and it blows my mind that there are teenagers alive today who wouldn't exist were it not for that forum.

The company which owned the barebones website and forum eventually took down the forum when it turned out that a bloated, addicted Edward Furlong wasn't going to reinvigorate the film franchise. Everybody relocated to a forum put together by one of the forum members where we bled members. Without new blood now and then, the community shrank into increasingly esoteric sub-groups until one day a moderator lost his shit, banned everyone and deleted as much as he could. Nobody saw any point in rebuilding it and that was that.

 

[Skux]

Sputnik Forums, the forum offshoot of MXTabs, back when I played a lot of drums. It was the early 2000s and it was one of the few places you could go to talk about music.

It was rebranded Musician Forums and hasn't been the same since.

 

[MMarston]

This RT stuff is the best.

It's like a high school reunion minus the moving on. Man...

 

[SolidChamp]

<3

Honestly I shouldn't even be responding to you, it's unfortunate you're still so bitter over your own dumb mistakes. Say whatever paranoid nonsense you want about me or Fëanorian, we're here and can respond/ignore as appropriate. But coming here and spreading your childish little hateful gossip about a super nice and gentle non-GAF dude like kenporules, a man who worked hard in a mostly thankless role to keep a small community that a lot of us loved going, is absolutely gross and uncalled for.

Ah, there he is. My least favorite former RTer. So far up his own ass that he was desensitized to the smell of his own shit.

I love that this has turned into a "calling all former RTers" thread. You just couldn't resist DSS, your ego wouldn't let you.

Your forum turned into a wasteland for a reason, with absolutely no help from me.

Oh and give my regards to Elixir, while you're at it. I'm sure it won't take long for you to call him up and bring him into the fray. You always were fond of petting the head of that little troll (which head, you ask? Take your pick).

My work here is done. I'm happy to have facilitated an RT reunion, at least. The gang's all here.

Edit: KenPo was a pisspoor moderator, at best. I said it before and I'll say it again; the fact that half of the shit was allowed to fly there is proof of that. I'm here and I see people get banned for less. When trolls like Elixir were allowed to post their vitriolic bile with impunity, it just doesn't make sense.

I stand by my opinion: stand up guy? Sure, maybe. But pisspoor at keeping the community free of it's bullshit. I'm seriously done, now. Putting it to bed.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

High Impact Halo

Back when I had the original Xbox.

Great community there, always had good people.

 

[GamerJM]

Haha, I actually think I might recognize you as strange as that is. Have you always used G&W avatars? I definitely recognize HUELEN at any rate. I posted on there when I was really young (12 maybe?) so I'm almost embarrassed to give out what my name was

Spoiler

BONE210

.

But yeah Nsider2 was mostly Power On people. I was always posting on Power On, the Smash Bros board, and the Legacy Systems board. I tried to post everywhere as much as I could because I loved talking with other people but a decent amount of the site was dead. The Donkey Kong board got shut down, and most of the series-boards were pretty inactive aside from Pokemon, Mario, and Smash Brothers.

I have not, on NS2 I had an Ike avatar and on NSider I switched around my avatar on like a monthly basis. I've always been GamerJM though (or GAMERJM I guess). That username seems a little bit familiar but a lot of people had usernames like that back then (i.e. some random word or phrase followed by numbers), so it could just be because of how generic it looks.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Anyone mention penny arcade forums yet?

I posted there a lot from 2003-2006. Wonder how it's doing now.

 

[Claude Augario]

Saw a couple of IGN mentions, gotta throw my hat in there too. It was one of my first forums, joined back in 2000. They had a bunch of thriving communities there, I haven't really seen too many forums like it since. For those who weren't aware, in 2001 IGN introduced a premium "insider" service, but did it in the worst away possible - by not telling anybody before it launched, and by locking a lot of general features, like the forums, behind it. Thus began the Insiderpocalypse, which instantly wiped out their vast communities when everyone logged in that day to find their access to the forums revoked - dangled behind a $20 pay wall.

This was before the days of social media so if you didn't have someone's email or instant messenger handle, it was really hard to contact them. You couldn't read private messages, I don't think you could even see profiles to get emails. I lost contact with a lot of people on those forums. There were refugee forums set up afterwards but I think most of those have died by now too. Some of the people that paid to keep access to the forums got a false sense elitism and actually stopped talking to me and a few other people I know because they thought that we felt we were too good to pay $20 to stay in what was left of the community. Those elitist cunts eventually died off too.

I know it's 2016 but I'd still like to say FUCK YOU to whoever orchestrated the Insiderpocalypse. Probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone inflict their own community.

 

[bjork]

It never got huge on the scale of this site or something like gamefaqs, but the gamesarefun forums had a small and pretty active community for a couple years there and it was pretty nice. Then I forget what happened, but I think someone hacked the forums and they were closed. The site existed a bit longer, but now you can't even view it.

There was another site I went to for a bit about 10 years ago that had great articles on pop culture and stuff, and the forums were smaller but still lively. Then one of the more prominent members killed himself and it hit the site owner pretty hard, and it's never been the same since.

 

[platakul]

Oranjive.com was glorious like a candle lit by a firework