water_wendi
Water is not wet!
In the early 2000s i was involved with an erotic hypnosis irc channel/website. Was lots of fun in its prime but life happens and its slowly dwindled over the years. Life. What can you do?
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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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SolidChamp
Banned
How...how does that even work?
Baka Sempai
Member
Few years back I was heavily involved on the PC modding community, and as such, I was a very avid poster on a site called "PIMPRIG". Met great people, made some awesome friends, and even won a couple of contests since the site was very active with a lot of high-end sponsors.
Unfortunately, the site's owner let profit get the best out of him and since some more higher paying sponsors didn't like the word "pimp" he decided it was best to change the name to something more "sponsor-friendly", needless to say, he chose "PCAPEX" which didn't have the catchyness of the original, and ultimately ended up driving and incredibly active community to nothing but a deserted pc forum.
Unfortunately, the site's owner let profit get the best out of him and since some more higher paying sponsors didn't like the word "pimp" he decided it was best to change the name to something more "sponsor-friendly", needless to say, he chose "PCAPEX" which didn't have the catchyness of the original, and ultimately ended up driving and incredibly active community to nothing but a deserted pc forum.
MedicUnderFire
Neo Member
Battle For Europe - Call of Duty Forums, online tournament where you fought 2 times a weeks, lots of fun and then slowly I got older and the games got worse and everyone I played with left about the same time I did.
Zenogaming
Kingdomhearts2.net (now known as KHInsider, I'm as OG as it gets)
Blootix
Gametrailers is where I spent the majority of my years, I witnessed its rise and fall, eventually they culled the factions and the site died. None of users there actually liked the output of the site anyway, eventually GT made some podcasts or some other stuff but It was too late. I see a few relics here and there of GT on this forum, think zulux and waqman are the only ones I recognized.
Kingdomhearts2.net (now known as KHInsider, I'm as OG as it gets)
Blootix
Gametrailers is where I spent the majority of my years, I witnessed its rise and fall, eventually they culled the factions and the site died. None of users there actually liked the output of the site anyway, eventually GT made some podcasts or some other stuff but It was too late. I see a few relics here and there of GT on this forum, think zulux and waqman are the only ones I recognized.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
If you are asking how people were hypnotized online the answer is that only communication is necessary to put people into trance. Irc and messenger chats were the most used tools but those that were tight-knit would do trances over phone/skype or in-person.
If you are asking how the channel was run it was done with a strict moderation policy based on a set of ethics of the founding members. Things like a no-tolerance rules regarding financial domination, who could do trances in room, instructing all guests to inform ops/mods immediately if they got an unannounced pm for safety reasons, etc.
SolidChamp
Banned
All of this is oddly fascinating. I never knew a trance could be induced that way.
Not so much thriving. I was definitely part of a WoW guild that was super serious for exactly one summer and then fell apart. I helped someone build a website for scheduling our raids, we had a ton of energy for like a minute. It went from founding to tight knit to dead in the space of like four months. Everyone was friendly and cool and then just kind of disappeared silently.
Erm yeah kinda.
psu.com (Playstation Universe) used to have a great community on their forums a few years back. It was active, vibrant with quite a large user base. Every time you logged in you could spend a fair amount of time catching up on your favourite threads. I was a moderator on there for a good 2 years or so.
A number of upgrades and new features were promised but they kept getting delayed. Then the owner lost interest so stopped funding it, staff left and the whole forum just stagnated, brought on by constant down time and the site just not working properly. I'm sure they had to reboot everything at one stage which resulted in a loss of posts etc. Slowly and surely, the community just left for different places.
Even when a new owner took over and brought about improvements it just wasn't the same.
I don't know how the place fares these days but for me it died a long while back, a shame really.
psu.com (Playstation Universe) used to have a great community on their forums a few years back. It was active, vibrant with quite a large user base. Every time you logged in you could spend a fair amount of time catching up on your favourite threads. I was a moderator on there for a good 2 years or so.
A number of upgrades and new features were promised but they kept getting delayed. Then the owner lost interest so stopped funding it, staff left and the whole forum just stagnated, brought on by constant down time and the site just not working properly. I'm sure they had to reboot everything at one stage which resulted in a loss of posts etc. Slowly and surely, the community just left for different places.
Even when a new owner took over and brought about improvements it just wasn't the same.
I don't know how the place fares these days but for me it died a long while back, a shame really.
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
At the lowest point, we had to put up with auto-playing, resource-intensive, Flash ads with sound. For months. (Years?) It's what finally pushed me over the edge to install adblock. Couple that with the huge number of broken threads with each new forum software switch and it's pretty much a ghost town.
ExigentContact
Member
I was part of Gamespot's boards for a long time, but jumped ship to the offshoot site Systemwars.com right as it was growing. It died off massively in the following years and I'm pretty sure it's down to a dozen regulars. I pop up from time to time.
Was also a part of several wrestling sites that also diminished severely, one of which used to be the official TNA Wrestling boards back when they had street teams to raise awareness. There was a ton of enthusiasm for TNA back then, but after they rehired Vince Russo and saw the writing on the wall, the community started drying up. It was seriously depressing to see such a large and vibrant group slowly lose all love for something and then disappear. The latest offshoot of that board still lingers but I think it's down to a handful of people who only post sporadically.
Of course, I've seen quite a few game communities slow down over time, the one that sticks out to me is Halo. Hated watching it slowly ebb away after Reach and 4. It's still a big thing, but it lacks that true energy it once had.
Was also a part of several wrestling sites that also diminished severely, one of which used to be the official TNA Wrestling boards back when they had street teams to raise awareness. There was a ton of enthusiasm for TNA back then, but after they rehired Vince Russo and saw the writing on the wall, the community started drying up. It was seriously depressing to see such a large and vibrant group slowly lose all love for something and then disappear. The latest offshoot of that board still lingers but I think it's down to a handful of people who only post sporadically.
Of course, I've seen quite a few game communities slow down over time, the one that sticks out to me is Halo. Hated watching it slowly ebb away after Reach and 4. It's still a big thing, but it lacks that true energy it once had.
ivanthebearable
Member
I remember for awhile in the early 2000's Nintendo used to have a thing every summer for week or so called 'Camp Hyrule' with their forums and it usually was just a glorified chat room with some small mini games and whatever, and they'd have scheduled chats with different Nintendo crew.
Remember they just kinda stopped with it after awhile, so it was kind of a forced death. Had a ton of fun chatting for hours with random people on it though and I won't soon forget it.
That and some Brawl fansite and forum that had guides for how to deal with certain matchups and character specific forums with clans and stuff. Learned how to use Photoshop to make sigs for people on there and is part of how I got my start with digital art in general. Was part of a Ness clan on the site lol. Forgot the name though. But I remember the owners of the site deciding not to use it after it started to die since they didn't update the main site anymore. They closed the custom stage sharing portion and then the forums shortly after.
Apparently a lot of them went to another site but it seemed halfassed so I didn't return. Really fond memories of it despite not even remembering what the name was lol.
Remember they just kinda stopped with it after awhile, so it was kind of a forced death. Had a ton of fun chatting for hours with random people on it though and I won't soon forget it.
That and some Brawl fansite and forum that had guides for how to deal with certain matchups and character specific forums with clans and stuff. Learned how to use Photoshop to make sigs for people on there and is part of how I got my start with digital art in general. Was part of a Ness clan on the site lol. Forgot the name though. But I remember the owners of the site deciding not to use it after it started to die since they didn't update the main site anymore. They closed the custom stage sharing portion and then the forums shortly after.
Apparently a lot of them went to another site but it seemed halfassed so I didn't return. Really fond memories of it despite not even remembering what the name was lol.
Not sure if I'd consider either of them "dead" but they're definitely less populated than they used to be: GameFAQs and Facepunch.
GameFAQs used to be my go-to for almost everything gaming, and I was deep into the whole karma system back in the day. Then, I think it was the merging with Gamespot that started pushing people away, at least the ones I knew. Since I was a part of some social boards, I pretty much left when people started walking.
Facepunch was my main squeeze from probably around 2005 to 2010. It was amazing back in its heyday, with all the Source community basically using it to get stuff out there. I gained many friends through the board, some of which I still know today. Some restructuring/reformatting went on a few years back and since I found GAF, I just left. I still visit, but the community has died down a lot from what it used to be so it's a lot easier to check every few days instead of every half hour.
GameFAQs used to be my go-to for almost everything gaming, and I was deep into the whole karma system back in the day. Then, I think it was the merging with Gamespot that started pushing people away, at least the ones I knew. Since I was a part of some social boards, I pretty much left when people started walking.
Facepunch was my main squeeze from probably around 2005 to 2010. It was amazing back in its heyday, with all the Source community basically using it to get stuff out there. I gained many friends through the board, some of which I still know today. Some restructuring/reformatting went on a few years back and since I found GAF, I just left. I still visit, but the community has died down a lot from what it used to be so it's a lot easier to check every few days instead of every half hour.
ColdHoboKiller
Neo Member
Bungie.net forums. Specifically The Flood Off-Topic section.
I really miss having information in a centralized place. Everything's so fragmented now.
I basically went from a small site about the PSX version of RPG Maker known as the RPG Maker Pavilion to TWoP and then finally to GAF. I believe the Pavilion is actually still around with a bare handful of diehards posting, but TWoP is dead, and I jumped ship right around the point it started really going downhill (basically shortly after Bravo bought it).
Since I joined GAF in '07, I basically have just stuck around here.
Since I joined GAF in '07, I basically have just stuck around here.
woopWOOP
Member
Before GAF I was mostly hanging out on forums that were already dying before I got there
As for games, after 2-3 years my favorite TF2 server slowly became less populated and more barren as regulars stopped showing up. Eventually it was taken down as even the moderators stopped playing. More or less caused me to move on to other games myself.
As for games, after 2-3 years my favorite TF2 server slowly became less populated and more barren as regulars stopped showing up. Eventually it was taken down as even the moderators stopped playing. More or less caused me to move on to other games myself.
Pantaghana
Member
Vindictus.
Loved it when it first launched, the entirety of Season 1 was amazing. But as Season 2 rolled out, there were changes to the balancing, bosses and some other mechanics, while not big on the surface, it led to people becoming more and more elitist.
I was frequently kicked out of raids because my stats weren't high enough, not because it meant I couldn't contribute, but because I lacked the DPS people wanted, the raid would take a few minutes longer. Seriously.
There were significant changes to economy to make gold farming difficult, but those same changes hurt real players not just gold farmers.
Out of curiosity I reinstalled a few weeks ago, while there are still people playing, it's a ghost town compared to used to be.
Loved it when it first launched, the entirety of Season 1 was amazing. But as Season 2 rolled out, there were changes to the balancing, bosses and some other mechanics, while not big on the surface, it led to people becoming more and more elitist.
I was frequently kicked out of raids because my stats weren't high enough, not because it meant I couldn't contribute, but because I lacked the DPS people wanted, the raid would take a few minutes longer. Seriously.
There were significant changes to economy to make gold farming difficult, but those same changes hurt real players not just gold farmers.
Out of curiosity I reinstalled a few weeks ago, while there are still people playing, it's a ghost town compared to used to be.
Aquavelvaman
Banned
eatpoo.com
This was my answer.
two actually..
First one was a place called Ayenee in Yahoo chats. Was fun, lots of "Roleplay" going on back in the mid 90s. was super popular for awhile then Yahoo changed their chatrooms and killed all user created chat rooms instantly.. It was actualy my first "MMO like" experience. Being in a world with thousands of others, making friends, going on adventures etc.,
City of Heroes.
Still boggles my mind how NCsoft could not figure out how, in the superhero boom that was taking place, to monetize it better! no reason they should have killed it off, for freaking POS Wildstar of all games. They won't sell the IP to anyone else (Lots of developers/studios tried to buy it). And now they are in the crapper.
I won't say Everquest because it still has a sizable community playing on it. Heck I play on it once a week or so just for the feels and remembering being a teen thinking HOLY CRAP this is AMAZING
I was also part of a huge Vampire:TM forum which died. At one point it had 20k registered people.
First one was a place called Ayenee in Yahoo chats. Was fun, lots of "Roleplay" going on back in the mid 90s. was super popular for awhile then Yahoo changed their chatrooms and killed all user created chat rooms instantly.. It was actualy my first "MMO like" experience. Being in a world with thousands of others, making friends, going on adventures etc.,
City of Heroes.
Still boggles my mind how NCsoft could not figure out how, in the superhero boom that was taking place, to monetize it better! no reason they should have killed it off, for freaking POS Wildstar of all games. They won't sell the IP to anyone else (Lots of developers/studios tried to buy it). And now they are in the crapper.
I won't say Everquest because it still has a sizable community playing on it. Heck I play on it once a week or so just for the feels and remembering being a teen thinking HOLY CRAP this is AMAZING
I was also part of a huge Vampire:TM forum which died. At one point it had 20k registered people.
MudoSkills
Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
I used to co-admin a forum of Gamespot refugees. Ran for five or so years before the founder went crazy and burned it all to the ground. Probably had around 40 regular members and several hundred thousand posts. Most of us are still in touch on Facebook.
I was a part of Inselkampf World 1 (US), but after a while all the unpunished multi players just drove away huge swaths of the player base.
Technically I still have a LUE accessible account over at GameFAQs. I'll check it every year or so. Definitely not what it was, but that's probably a good thing. It could be an odd social experiment to track the changes over time, as the user base can only shrink and get older.
Technically I still have a LUE accessible account over at GameFAQs. I'll check it every year or so. Definitely not what it was, but that's probably a good thing. It could be an odd social experiment to track the changes over time, as the user base can only shrink and get older.
Around the time RE5 came out I used to spend a lot of time on "The horror is alive" or the-horror.com which is a resident evil fan forum. It was really buzzing around that time but by the time 6 came out the place was a ghost town and the owner posted that he was selling his collection of RE memorabilia and just stopped posting. People are still there but it no longer feels like a community, more a place where RE news is occasionally discussed.
Wind's Howling
Member
I know this is an off-topic thread and I am posting something game related but this was my go to place for years. It had one of the biggest online communities I ever witnessed.
Sony's Online Infantry incl. Bug Hunt aaaannddd...
Cosmic Rift
Never again have I played such an amazing top down online strategic capture the flag game.
This was CTF done right. You could defend your flag with mines, turrets and other gadgetry. It was 64 vs 64. Constantly trying to find the best place to safe the flag. Bunker's. Cave system's. One sided bridges. You name it.
I must have played this game for years. I was one of the better Infiltrators.
The community was HUGE. IRC chat's and Sony's online forums. There were even dozens of fansites for this game. That was my place to be for years and years.
Sony's Online Infantry incl. Bug Hunt aaaannddd...
Cosmic Rift
Never again have I played such an amazing top down online strategic capture the flag game.
This was CTF done right. You could defend your flag with mines, turrets and other gadgetry. It was 64 vs 64. Constantly trying to find the best place to safe the flag. Bunker's. Cave system's. One sided bridges. You name it.
I must have played this game for years. I was one of the better Infiltrators.
The community was HUGE. IRC chat's and Sony's online forums. There were even dozens of fansites for this game. That was my place to be for years and years.
Holy shit I remember this place! It was my go to site during my early Internet years.
Continuum - MGSCTF - i doubt anybody remembers Continuum but even less likely they were part of the the MGSCTF game, it was amazing and had a community of probably less than 1,000 people. Sadly that declined over the years and i think they ran out of money to fund it.
Apparently there's a kickstarter remaking the continuum game, but i doubt those maps and skins will be included
EDIT: it was part of the Cosmic Rift universe mentioned above
Apparently there's a kickstarter remaking the continuum game, but i doubt those maps and skins will be included
EDIT: it was part of the Cosmic Rift universe mentioned above
So, so, so many during the years, some of which I ran myself. Speaking of game related ones, I have fond memories of some alpha/development projects that never came to fruition - being part of the eager test user base and then just seeing it die.
Regarding the commercial releases I think Jumpgate is the one that hurt the most.
Regarding the commercial releases I think Jumpgate is the one that hurt the most.
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
I used to post all the time--and briefly was a contributing editor--at the HG message board in its heyday, back when it was a friendly rival to the Gaming Age forum.
Some good people over there. Cahill, Lachesis and others that I got to know in person for a brief moment in time.
Some good people over there. Cahill, Lachesis and others that I got to know in person for a brief moment in time.
karmaforgotme
Member
The first online community I was ever really part of was area51live.com. Despite the name it was not an Alien conspiracy forum, but instead it was what started as a TFC farm league and forums. It later became (after HL2 came out) a little more known for Half-Life Radio. The community started to shrink as interest in TFC died down, but it mainly went away because of backlash against the guy who created the community (he was a serial liar). I can't express how much fun I had being part of this community in the early 2000's (I joined in 2000 and stayed active for almost 4 years).
I remember you! I (think?) my name was Dr. Funkenstein
The Bizarre Creations forums, when PGR was a thing.
My man.
Bizarre Creations forum, until it was shutdown (alongside BC itself..).
My man.
I played EverQuest from about 2000-2002. I think there had been one expansion when I started. I seem to have lost my login details and I'm pretty sure it was registered to an email address I have no access to anymore, so I guess I'll never see my Enchanter again.
I used to play a MUD called ElephantMUD. I must have started in about 1993, all the way through university whenever I was at a computer I'd have an xterm open with it going on in there. There was always 30 or so people, not huge numbers but there were always people. I had great times going to meetups. I tried logging in now to see who is on, there is usually a single player, but it appears to be down (but not out, the Admin is on Facebook saying he's trying to sort it out).
I post in the Straight Dope forum. That's been in a terminal decline for some time now. It never seemed to recover after it went pay to post (it isn't anymore).
I used to play a MUD called ElephantMUD. I must have started in about 1993, all the way through university whenever I was at a computer I'd have an xterm open with it going on in there. There was always 30 or so people, not huge numbers but there were always people. I had great times going to meetups. I tried logging in now to see who is on, there is usually a single player, but it appears to be down (but not out, the Admin is on Facebook saying he's trying to sort it out).
I post in the Straight Dope forum. That's been in a terminal decline for some time now. It never seemed to recover after it went pay to post (it isn't anymore).
PandaShake
Member
Spikedhumor. It was a youtube-like website where the videos on the front page gets voted up for visibility like Reddit, but this was in the early youtube years of '05-'07. A community developed in the video's comment section and there were parody videos of user's reaction to vids. Good times. Nearing the impending shut down of the site, the community were to migrate to a clone site, but it never came to be
I searched, but didn't find a post for BattleForums. www.battleforums.com
That place was bumping during the Diablo II/StarCraft/WoW hay days. I was a mod for the Diablo II section for a while. It died a slow, horrible death and got bought and sold many times. It's still up, but a complete dead zone.
That place was bumping during the Diablo II/StarCraft/WoW hay days. I was a mod for the Diablo II section for a while. It died a slow, horrible death and got bought and sold many times. It's still up, but a complete dead zone.
Darryl M R
Member
I use to play anime games on a website called BYOND. It had a great community back in 2009-2011 but then I went to college and the site didn't work on Macs. Now when I go back it seems dead.
NeoGAF doesn't look like it will ever fade right? The exclusivity and anti-selling out posts made by the boss man of this site implies to me a long term vision.
NeoGAF doesn't look like it will ever fade right? The exclusivity and anti-selling out posts made by the boss man of this site implies to me a long term vision.
The Artisan
Member
manji-clan.com, d12world board, harry potter's page, and i think that's it
Imp the Dimp
Member
I was on a huge german cheats board in 2001-2004 which got turned off over night because they claimed to improve it which would take an indefinite amount of time. The forums never went online again but the site is still hugely popular in Germany and my 2001 acc still exists. There's just no community to submit replies to.
Obviously, this community didn't die slowly but rather fast lol. Still hurts though.
Obviously, this community didn't die slowly but rather fast lol. Still hurts though.
Let me tell you the story of Spymac.com, which probably deserves some incredibly small mention in the history of email services in that it announced basically a day after Google Mail it was also offering a then-massive 1GB email service. That's where I grabbed my first-ever email account.
It was a Mac community first and foremost, wrapped up in a very nicely designed espionage theme. It had more than one million members and a pretty passionate user base, and came with a membership tier that brought you bigger mailboxes, forum tools, and a web disk. But then came versions 4 and 5 of the site, which were riddled with bugs and dramatically increased the number of spammy ads. The community would probably have lingered on, slowly withering, but then Spymac decided to trash it all and turn itself into "Leapfrog", a shitty looking Youtube clone. It somehow persisted like that for a few years before dying completely. Was the first forum I ever joined and was active in; I guess in a lot of ways social media has obviated the same niche for forums these days but I've never been as involved with a site as I was then.
Think all the Halo Custom Edition stuff is on Halomaps now.
Dev forums in general are a terrible place to build communities because they can get wiped out easily. Happened to Bioshock's Cult of Rapture, for instance.
Haha, that was a fun game I played at my cousin's house since I didn't have access to a broadband PC back then. Spent a lot of time tricking people in full servers that if they just logged out and ghosted to a portion of the map there'd be all these loot and helms for them, then jumped in when they left the game.
It was a Mac community first and foremost, wrapped up in a very nicely designed espionage theme. It had more than one million members and a pretty passionate user base, and came with a membership tier that brought you bigger mailboxes, forum tools, and a web disk. But then came versions 4 and 5 of the site, which were riddled with bugs and dramatically increased the number of spammy ads. The community would probably have lingered on, slowly withering, but then Spymac decided to trash it all and turn itself into "Leapfrog", a shitty looking Youtube clone. It somehow persisted like that for a few years before dying completely. Was the first forum I ever joined and was active in; I guess in a lot of ways social media has obviated the same niche for forums these days but I've never been as involved with a site as I was then.
Think all the Halo Custom Edition stuff is on Halomaps now.
Dev forums in general are a terrible place to build communities because they can get wiped out easily. Happened to Bioshock's Cult of Rapture, for instance.
I know this is an off-topic thread and I am posting something game related but this was my go to place for years. It had one of the biggest online communities I ever witnessed.
Sony's Online Infantry incl. Bug Hunt aaaannddd...
Haha, that was a fun game I played at my cousin's house since I didn't have access to a broadband PC back then. Spent a lot of time tricking people in full servers that if they just logged out and ghosted to a portion of the map there'd be all these loot and helms for them, then jumped in when they left the game.
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