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Ever been a part of an online community that lived, thrived, and then slowly died?

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Digg if that counts. I remember Kevin Rose pimping it on TechTV and I joined immediately. Then some changes happened and certain users manipulated things to the point it stopped being worth visiting. It basically died, selling to become whatever it's trying to be today.
 
I was a member of a message board of fans of my university's sports teams. Started out as part of the local newspapers online message board where there were hundreds of new users every month. The admins would eventually makes sub-forums due to users becoming more crass and not just discussing the sports topics. That sub-forum created its own community and for a good long while thrived. Eventually one of the members went to far and a mass ban occurred where some decided to make their own message board. Many, many posters made the move but it was impossible to get the influx of new people like you could on the newspaper website forum. The place still exists today, but only about 5-10 folks are still active. But those 5-10 folks keep the place running and have been friends for nearly 16 years. Quite an accomplishment
 

Ensoul

Member
I had a lot of posts on the IGN boards between 2003-2009 or so, but they began to change pretty drastically and a lot of people jumped ship. The 360 Community board was a big hang out for me.

I came to post this. I signed up for IGN in 2001 and spent most of my time on the dreamcast boards as well as the ps2CB. (among other boards as well) Obviously the dreamcast boards and PS2CB had a shelf life but all the other boards died down as well and people just bailed.

I have not made a post there in almost 2 years and every poster I knew no longer posts there. Kind of a shame because I thought they had the perfect amount of posters there in their prime. The boards were small enough where people knew each other but big enough where there were always new topics. These boards are great as well but they are very fast moving.
 

Bulbasaur

Banned
I'd been posting on horrorcore.com since 2001 and when the owner got EDF syndrome a member created supermensa.org and a lot of us made the jump but most didn't. It's like my home on the net, a magical place where you can't ever get banned.
 
Something Awful.

A long series of staggeringly dumb decisions turned a pretty big community into a dead forum.

SA is still my go to daily forum after 12 years. That said they have ruined GBS and several of the other forums. What SA does best is it sub-forums, but even those are slightly not what they use to be. Still it is far from dead, but I do agree they need some smart future decisions to keep it active.
 

Sayers

Member
Had some great times on the PS3GB on IGN. We had organized game nights on the weekends playing Uncharted, Killzone or ModNation Racers multiplayer. It wasn't a huge community so just about everybody knew each other. Then we had something of a revolt when IGN abandoned the Insider community. Many of us went to Bad Cartridge for a while but I didn't like it much so I ended up here.
 

Darg

Neo Member
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.

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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.

Yeah City of Heroes was fantastic (even Champions Online does not compare), such a missed opportunity. Sadly i quit any Ncsoft based game after i found out they used "iesnare" which is some nasty stuff (google it up), ever since then i refused to play anything that uses it even if it uses it upon account creation or usage (talk about driving someone away). What a shame, maybe its for the best that they aren't in charge of it, though someone else should of been.
 
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