Useless Conversation

[TheWalrus]

Got here by way of Waterthread, which I found by reading Maturity of the Modern Mmog, by our own Haemish on a SWG site. (Excellent read if you haven't, and probably still relevant) One of my first posts involved being a spelling and grammar nazi about some dev studios frontman. His dev posts were in awful English, and I was trying to make the point that I would be reluctant to hand someone my money if they couldn't be bothered to hire someone that could do the English to sell me the game. Signe called me a porridge head. It later turned out to be vaporware and I got a good giggle out of it. Jury's still out on the porridge head part.

[lamaros]

Not sure what my first post in this thread was, google seems to think it was having a go at SnakeCharmer or something, in 2009. I guess I'm not one for general chat, seeing how that was fours years after my first posts, and three after this thread started.

I have NFI how I got here, but spent most of my time talking about game design and WoW.

Ten years ago I'd returned home after travelling in Europe for six months. I've moved cities, and back, since then, completed two uni degrees, and worked for three different companies in a number of different jobs. I'm now living with someone I met on that trip to Europe, which is nice.

Edit, no wait, seems I do know how I came here: "Came browsing over after the Darkfall interview at MMORPG.com linked over here". Well, at least Darkfall was good for something.

[apocrypha]

I missed all the LtM, Waterthread, etc. stuff and just wandered here from reading HRose's blog;

Same here. HRose was crazy, but often right.

[Abagadro]

Can't remember exactly how I ended up connected to this bunch, but I believe it was the Dawn/Glitchless/feta-pult/company at steak! episode that was linked from some Asheron's Call board (or possibly fark.com).

[Zetor]

I found LTM through an UO stratics link to some rant in 1999 or 2000. I don't even remember what the rant was about, but it had an animated gif of some fighting game chick at the end.

Random fragments from my memory: AO was going to be the best game of all time (cf LumCorp), xrgaming and ezboard forums, WW2OL flying tanks... and Whamadoodles Online! I wonder if anyone has the swf file that would play All Your Base Are Belong To Us when you pushed the fetapult button.

e: just checked my first posts on f13, they're about me being completely terrible at MTGO and defending the e-honor of RPers in SWG. Accurate!

[schild]

I missed all the LtM, Waterthread, etc. stuff and just wandered here from reading HRose's blog;

Same here. HRose was crazy, but often right.

I don't remember him being right often or much at all. I do remember him being a wackadoodle though.

[apocrypha]

He was right about DaoC a lot. Doesn't count for much I know, but it's something. 

[MrHat]

First posts were about WoW beta back in 2004.  I apparently used to write a lot. Now I write less.

[Nebu]

He was right about DaoC a lot. Doesn't count for much I know, but it's something. 

He and I used to argue about DAoC a lot.  I remember that much.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Ha!  My first post on this version was about... P2P, lol!

I quit going to P2P a while back, there was never anything worth looking at there.

Plus, the crappy front page icons annoyed me to no end.  Ugh.

Wasn't there a forum crash at some point and everything was lost, including registrations?  Or did that happen with the changeover from Waterthread to F13?

[Strazos]

I forget how, but I somehow found this place during my senior year of college in 2005.

Though, you wouldn't know it just by looking at how I posted back then - good grief. Thankfully, I recall someone scolded me about my shift key pretty damn early. 

[IainC]

I came here to argue with arthur_parker about W:AR back in 2007.

[Rasix]

Though, you wouldn't know it just by looking at how I posted back then - good grief. Thankfully, I recall someone scolded me about my shift key pretty damn early.  

Dude, you were young. It was painfully apparent. You've shown probably the most personal growth out of anyone here over the last decade.

Eh, yah.  I go back to UO and LtM. Nija and I played in the beta together. I think I was grief titled on every incarnation of these sites until this one, where I can now grief title myself. To be fair, I was pretty dumb and socially awkward as a young college student. Now I'm just a little less of each.

[schild]

Ha!  My first post on this version was about... P2P, lol!

I quit going to P2P a while back, there was never anything worth looking at there.

Plus, the crappy front page icons annoyed me to no end.  Ugh.

Wasn't there a forum crash at some point and everything was lost, including registrations?  Or did that happen with the changeover from Waterthread to F13?

There was no way to transfer over the data from WTO to f13 at the time and frankly, we didn't want to. Glassing it was by far the best option to get rid of the riff-raff.

Which we did fairly subtly, we didn't actually ban nearly anyone - we just left them on very thin ice and made it extremely hostile for them. From the outside it looked like business as usual except a handful of people seemed really butthurt over it.

There has not been any post-loss of any meaningful amount on f13.

[Cyrrex]

Though, you wouldn't know it just by looking at how I posted back then - good grief. Thankfully, I recall someone scolded me about my shift key pretty damn early.  

Dude, you were young. It was painfully apparent. You've shown probably the most personal growth out of anyone here over the last decade.

Hah, so this!  I still read Strazos' post sometimes and have to remind myself that he's totally different then he was back then.  Which should be considered a compliment.

[schild]

Strazos 100% wins the "Biggest Change in 15 Years" award for f13.

[Chimpy]

What about triforcer? He made such a big 180 that I think it might have been a 540.

[Cyrrex]

It even seemed like it was literally a different person in triforcer's case.  Anyway, Strazos has been a more consistent presence

[Selby]

Ha!  My first post on this version was about... P2P, lol!

I quit going to P2P a while back, there was never anything worth looking at there.

Plus, the crappy front page icons annoyed me to no end.  Ugh.

I can't be held accountable for that, I wasn't allowed creative control. And I'm not going to mention it again for another 5 years! Maybe I'll have forgotten about that mess by then...

[Bunk]

Ah, I missed a flood of nostalgia. Always fun.

First post here was March, 2004 in a thread about what happened to Waterthread. I was one of those that had the "Who the fuck is this Schild punk?" reactions. Amazing that more than half the posters in the first page of that thread are still posting here.

I came to all of this from Lum's original site. Used it to pass time while sitting around the office waiting for printers to break. 17 years later, I'm sitting in a different office waiting for things to break.

[Mandella]

Are we walking down memory lane? Okay I'm in!

I go back to LtM, but only as a lurker. Found the site while looking for some Asheron's Call info, I read it nearly daily but I don't think I ever even registered on the forums. Also, I never got into UO (I know, blasphemy!!).

When Lum sold out I stuck around through SND, I think, then finally migrated over to Corpnews. Why there and not here? I really don't remember. I did check out Waterthread and f13, but I don't remember what exactly turned me off. And unlike many I tend to pick a community and stick with it, even while being an infrequent poster. It's not really about sticking with one team or the other, it's just that I don't have the time or patience to deal with more than one social forum at a time.

So I stuck with Corpnews for the length of its life. The slower pace of the forum suited me, and the characters where always entertaining.

But then Corpnews got slower and slower, then went briefly nova (the aforementioned ill-fated Penny-Arcader invasion) and burned out for good. Moped around a while and then was excited to discover that Lum himself had restarting his forum, seeded with the banned from Qt3, no less! I jumped right in!

And jumped right out, after about a year I think. It ... was not a good fit for me.

So wandered back over here and made my first post a titty pic in the T & A thread.

Let's just call it a symbolic bridge burning...

[Cyrrex]

Speaking of all the people who are still hall, I have been meaning to figure out just what the fuck happened to Ironwood?  I missed something while I was on vacation or something I think some time ago, but wasn't sure if I should bring it up if it was something sensitive.  Anyone know?  I miss that bastard.

[Trippy]

Ironwood's a mystery. If he's been lurking it's from a different location than what he was using before.

[Cyrrex]

Well fuck.  I remember him mentioning once in a while how he'd consider taking a break from this place for whatever reason, maybe a permanent one.  If so, that sucks.  Never came across someone like that before who could so easily call someone on their shit in one succinct sentence.

[schild]

Well fuck.  I remember him mentioning once in a while how he'd consider taking a break from this place for whatever reason, maybe a permanent one.  If so, that sucks.  Never came across someone like that before who could so easily call someone on their shit in one succinct sentence.

I like Ironwood, but he wasn't a unicorn. He was just Scottish.

[HaemishM]

And I'm not sure I even like MMOs anymore.

No one does. I'm not sure anyone did, they (and we) were just too caught up in addictive behavior cycles to know how much they hated them.

MMOG's - the medium/genre that completely pissed all its potential down its leg.

[Reg]

I started at Lum's back in the UO days. I think I posted there even before he had real forum software. I've been at all of the successor sites but was a little slow jumping on F13 train because I found schild offensive.  I do miss a few of the old posters though. Arcadian Del Sol in particular. He was the power behind the little Japanese girl gimmick account as well as the famous Captain Ebolter.

[Soln]

Schild nailed MMO's for me pretty early on (no, I won't did up the the thread).  He called them "economies" or something about pay-to-work ("chopping trees").  That's all they are in design and practice. 

I think I came here after Calandryll was working on SWG.  In the years since I joined I've worked with game devs from Ubisoft, Arenanet, Microsoft Studios, Valve, SonyOnline/Verant/Bioware... basically every big MMO shop.  Hartsmann was great because he consistently delivered.  Lum bugged me because he got a lot of attention for delivering nothing but appearing like a "dev".

[apocrypha]

Ironwood's still alive, he pops up on my battle.net friends list playing WOW regularly.

[tar]

Well that's good to know. I also wondered.

I've been here since the start, via lums/waterthread I think.

[Cheddar]

Goodness, time flies.  I first posted when leaving military at worst possible time for an IT guy, was stealth banned at some point, and drunkenly demanded pink.

Crazy.  I am honored to say, one on one, I have had some awesome interactions with this community.   

[Sky]

Used it to pass time while sitting around the office waiting for printers to break. 17 years later, I'm sitting in a different office waiting for things to break.

"Sitting in an office waiting for things to break" could be the other f13 motto.

[Paelos]

Last time I checked we were still allowed to post what we wanted on the sites within reason, and that didn't seem to ever stop anybody from talking about whatever they wanted to. Nor did it stop people from derailing the conversations about other stuff.

We are a group of political, angry gamers. I doubt we'll stop talking about games in any variety.

That was my first post in 2004. We've changed very little.

[ghost]

Apparently I first posted here to talk about Warhammer Online.    and 

And then I discovered there was a politics board.   

And then I got to busy to care.   

I did get to play Twilight Struggle with Schild though.  I'm still convinced he cheated....   

[Nebu]

I did get to play Twilight Struggle with Schild though.  I'm still convinced he cheated....   

I played unreal tournament with Schild and a few people from here shortly after f13 came into being.  It was at that very moment that I realized just how terrible I was at shooters.