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[Slayven]

The news about Stargate made me check out if Gateworld was still around. Gateworld was THE stargate fansite, and it was pretty popping. I use to lurk there hard. Now it is just a shadow of it's former self.

Use to post hard on this small comic website, there was about 20 of us(CBR and WIzardworld refugees), but we keep it jumping until the site keep getting knocked offline for months at a time. By the time it came back up everyone pretty much went their own way.. I miss those guys, use to school me on comics.

 

[Pilgrimzero]

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.

 

[phisheep]

I caught up with LessWrong just as it was going MoreWrong.

 

[Sephzilla]

I legitimately miss this game and online community. The game was okay but the community made it so much more enjoyable.

 

[Slayven]

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.

We can still meet up at the windmill

 

[Kaladin]

I legitimately miss this game and online community. The game was okay but the community made it so much more enjoyable.

Loved that game and I agree the community made it one of the best MMORPGs around.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

1emu

generalmayhem

dieselstation

It seems the only thing that will last is GAF. **knocks on wood**

 

[Straight Edge]

CHUD is slowly dying. Have been a poster since 2004 or so

 

[CitizenVectron]

badcartridge / dayonepatch

A few years ago the IGN forums made some big changes for the worse, and a few hundred users jumped ship and created their own website called badcartridge. There were videogame forums, current event board, etc. Over time of course, the community has dwindled. It's not dead yet, but there are only maybe 100 or 150 active users, where there used to be 400 or 500 I'd guess. It's a really great site, especially for discussion of current events, but unfortunately it's hard to keep a forum going without a lot of new members. However, most of the posters have been together since 2000/2001 on IGN, so there is a really tight sense of community, which is nice.

If you want a good place to discuss current events and politics though, the dayonepatch current events board can't be beat. Still the best part of the site.

 

[Slayven]

I legitimately miss this game and online community. The game was okay but the community made it so much more enjoyable.

That game was so ahead of it's time.

 

[ApharmdX]

Planetshogo, long ago. Cloudchaser and Final Fantasy XI, more recently.

Hate to see people slowly leave from a community.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

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

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Age of Empires forums at heavengames.

 

[Azzurri]

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."

Lol, Me too.

WildStar in my most recent memory.

Back in like 1998 and 1999 there was a really popular SEGA forum, but I can't remember the name of it.

 

[TheCochese]

TXB.

Although, I left long before the eventual demise. There was in particular one shit-tier Brewers fan that I wanted to strangle IRL.

 

[Goldenroad]

Gametrailers in the mid aughts. I got out long before the site shutdown, but that place was toxic.

I'm also a mod over on a Phish site that I've been a member of since 2005, and that site is basically a ghost town these days. Been a while since I've even logged in. Don't get me wrong, the Phish community on the internet is very much alive and well, but that site is not what it once was.

 

[Generic Power Ranger]

Command & Conquer Renegade.

Although some mods and some community remains, the clan communities I was part of, are pretty gone.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

TV Tome and sonicanime.net.

The former turned into TV.com which I never liked. The design of that site just bothers me. It wasn't as clean/straight-to-the-point/no-frills as TV Tome so I found that change jarring. IIRC the difference was sudden too. One day the site was acquired by CNET and then it was all different and seemed less community-focused.

The latter kinda died off. Though in retrospect, I'm pretty sure everyone there was older kids or younger teens and obviously Sonic X ended and 06 came out, so most people probably just grew up/moved on, I guess. It was one of my first real forum experiences though.

I went on Newgrounds a lot but surprisingly that still seems to have a crowd.

 

[enoki]

Harvest Moon Otaku.

We were even ribbed a bit live on G4 for enjoying a farming game.

 

[kendrid]

I used to be really into home audio and I was a very active member of av123 dot com. av123 sold speakers ranging from a few hundred dollars to the 10K range.

There were local meetups, raffles, etc. I actually met a few gamers at the meetups and we still play online together and talk about the 'good old days' of av123.

What happened to av123? The owner, Mark Schifter, ran a lot of charity raffles. The problem is that he rarely gave the money to the charities.

Here is a news article.

He end up with jail time. Another thing he did was while av123 was running he took down payments on speakers that didn't exist. A bunch of community users sued him and won but they are still waiting for their money.

Gaming related it was TeamXbox.

 

[God Dayumm]

Fire Emblem Sanctuary of Strategy was one of the first forums I spent time on. One day they announced they will stop existing and everyone moved on to related FE forums. I didn't, I moved to AboveTopSecret then started lurking GAF

 

[SolidChamp]

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.

 

[GreekWolf]

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.

Same.

Classic EQ certainly wasn't the first MMORPG to come down the pipes, but when it came to presentation and popularity, there really was no equal at the time. I was addicted for over two years in that game world at the expense of everything else.

 

[TreIII]

Well, I hate to go there, but...the Mega Man community.

At one time, I was a part of several online forums. I enjoyed talking to the likes of Mandi Paugh (of MMHP.net fame), LBD Nytetran and so many others, especially in early 00's. I even helped with a few fan games and such here and there.

But especially after the brand hasn't had much to show for in the last few years, a lot of my old haunts (especially for those dedicated to EXE and X) have since shuttered, or the forums still exist but nowhere near the thriving hubs they once were.

Considering even the likes of Bob and George were hallmarks of my life during middle and high school, it's just been sad to see what's happened since.

 

[liquidtmd]

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

 

[Jeb]

Gametrailers.

That place fun because of how troll infested it was, got a lot of good moments out of it.

But then there was a site redesign that pissed off everyone to the point that there was a mass exodus and the place was a wasteland since.

 

[OmegaSkittle]

I was part of the Living With Style forums for a good while until the owner sold off the site.

The site started to change a lot to the point where a lot of the original mods went and created their own off-shoot forum, Casual Discourse.

I think both sites are dead now.

 

[Maledict]

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.

Yep - I was on Graffes for a long, long time, the Wizard class board. Out of all the class boards it seemed to survive the longest thanks to a huge burst of traffic from WoW due to one of the prominent members being in the alpha, and even nowadays it's still going (just). The issue was the membership remained locked in the early internet way of thinking - moderation was bad, free speech above all, no censorship etc. Eventually over time that drove more and more people away, until it's left just as a shallow shell of what it was.

Shame, as it could have easily transitioned into a general gaming site considering the numbers.

 

[Azzurri]

You can add G4 and 1up to that list.

 

[LQX]

http://nvnews.net/

I had not been there awhile and just Googled it before posting to see if it was still up and it was not and I also learned that the owner MikeC died last year. Tragic as his son also died a few years ago. It was once the go to site for NVidia card users but slowly turned into a mess. I partly blame it on the very conservative users that made it almost unbearably at times but other than that it was a great site much like this one.

 

[Dreadnought]

Bungie.net before destiny

 

[jelly]

Teambox went to crap in the end with spam threads and stuff, some users thinking they owned the place, it slowly got ignored, never updated then shut down by IGN.. Good times though throughout the life of it and MSXbox was my first experience of online communities then with TXB when they merged.

 

[emb]

Back in like, 04 or 05, a friend of mine was telling me about this kotor forum (at the time it was knightsoftheoldrepublic.com) he was part of. I ended up making an account there just to say hey to him and maybe troll a little and be done with it. Ended up as a moderator with one of the higher post counts, and still to this day have not played either of those games.

I wouldn't say it ever thrived, but it was lively and exciting for a while. As a fansite very specifically for a couple games though, it slowly died off. We had regulars that tried to stay with it, ways that the owners tried to change it up or reinvent it, but ultimately it just kept drifting away. Even as the MMO came out, it never really picked up. I don't think it exists anymore.

 

[Lagamorph]

I really miss City of Heroes.
My first ever MMO and still my favourite.

 

[Sephzilla]

Loved that game and I agree the community made it one of the best MMORPGs around.

That game was so ahead of it's time.

MXO was immersive as fuck at times. At launch (before SOE took over running the game) the in-game chat client ran through AOL Instant Messenger, so you could actually log into AIM outside of the game and communicate with people in game - which basically gave you the equivalent of being in the "real world" and communicating with someone in The Matrix. Plus there was shit like being able to queue up online radio stations and jam out to some music while playing, and listening to actual live music in game kind of drove home the idea that the Matrix world was a recreation of what actually existed. In general that game did a lot of little shit I really loved. Too bad WB gave up on the game way too quickly and then shipped it over to SOE, who proceeded to slowly ruin it.

And yeah, the community added another huge layer to the immersion in my opinion. Plus everyone there was generally fun to play with and really helpful when it came to figuring out builds and completing missions (some of the late-game shit got really hard).

...Fuck, I still really miss this game a decade later. Now I'm actually legit wondering what a lot of my old clan mates and shit are up to these days.

 

[Slayven]

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

I give them probs, they still got the same site design

 

[radios shipping overview]

Lots. Insert Credit (which is a completely different thing now), The Next Level, The Fanitsu Project, Gamengai, a few other import gaming-related places, a number of fan-translation/romhacking forums, lots of IRC channels. GAF is also not the place it was ten years ago, even if it's much bigger.

It sucks to see communities die, especially when they're tightly-knit and feel like home. You share a techno-cultural moment and when that moves on it's hard to find that exact connection again with other people. I still talk to a lot of people I met in those places, just through messaging services or Facebook.

 

[Zee-Row]

1up.com

 

[rainking187]

I used to post on AnimeonDVD.com a lot before they got bought out and the site pretty much went to shit.

 

[How About No]

A site dedicated to research and speculation on Resident Evil 1.5, the infamous scrapped version of RE2. I think the name was Bioflames.

I remember some very dedicated peeps helped make complete maps from ripped backgrounds, it was amazing.

 

[Smokey_Run]

The SOCOM community. Just a very small pocket left now.

 

[Slayven]

Lots. Insert Credit (which is a completely different thing now), The Next Level, The Fanitsu Project, Gamengai, a few other import gaming-related places, a number of fan-translation/romhacking forums, lots of IRC channels. GAF is also not the place it was ten years ago, even if it's much bigger.

It sucks to see communities die, especially when they're tightly-knit and feel like home. You share a techno-cultural moment and when that moves on it's hard to find that exact connection again with other people. I still talk to a lot of people I met in those places, just through messaging services or Facebook.

Yeah, I wonder if the kids coming up will have that.

 

[Linkyn]

I legitimately miss this game and online community. The game was okay but the community made it so much more enjoyable.

I find the concept of a Matrix MMO oddly ironic.

 

[Azazzel]

TWOP. I miss you so much. There's never going to be a better place to discuss tv shows.

Why. Why did you have to die 😭

 

[studyguy]

Yeah I used to play a ton of Korean MMOs back in the day. That's literally LIVE, THRIVE, DIE and then they're reborn under another name, publisher with double the grind and half the players.

 

[jon bones]

Aw, yeah :/

It was called InStrife and it was an online forum about punk/hardcore/metal.

We really thrived, and I met a lot of cool people on it but as the music (and posters) began to age, it started to die.

We're still FB friends, so it's nice to see what those folk are up to these days but the community is dead.

 

[Sawneeks]

Neopets was the shit. The forums used to be a crowded place and last I checked, 2 years ago or so, it was barely clinging to life. A shame too, I made a lot of friends there.

Also BOTS! online and a bunch of other Acclaim titles that disappeared when the company blew up again.

 

[InfiniteBento]

Still weeping over this community to this day. One of my absolute favorite MMO's of all time.

 

[JTripper]

Bungie.net before destiny

This. I checked those forums every day until about the time Halo Reach came out. Bungie.net during the Halo 3 days was great.

And in relation to the Halo 3 days, Xbox Live from 2006-2010 was peak online gaming for me where I played so much of it from Gears to CoD to Halo and made so many online friends who I don't even play with or talk to anymore.

 

[therealist]

I used to start and administrate small sports forums back in the day. It was fun. At the beginning you try your best to advertise it and get people to join. You hope that you have a solid base of posters who can keep the conversation going. With small forums like that (we had 400-500 members and probably 10% were active) things are fickle, it only takes a a few people not posting or a down week for whatever reason and then the conversations stagnate and the forum becomes less interesting, then it dies.