OO Anniversary check-in

[hentzau]

Still here, still my place of sanity on the Internet.

[Daveman]

I was much more active in the GG days when I also had more time to play computer games, but I'm still here too. I don't post as often as I'd like, but I read this forum regularly as I still enjoy gaming and nearly every other topic of discussion here. Not sure where else I'd be

[Zaxxon]

Here since the beginning, and at GG before that from sometime in 1999 through The Great Crumbling™. In a bit over a year I will have known GG/OO for a larger portion of my life than the time before. Ain't that sobering.

Things I love:
-Somehow, this place has maintained a similar spirit its whole life despite The Internet changing around it. Now we discuss Trumps, solar panels, EVs, and wireless doodads rather than Bushes, giant gaming PCs and graphics cards. OK, so we still discuss those things, too.
-Somehow, we're still here despite no significant gateway to new posters for over a decade. Smaller than we were, but still big enough to support interesting conversations daily.
-You guys/gals.

Things I miss:
-The UT2004 days. Despite a half-hearted attempt to relive the glory days. UT (1999) through 2004 brought just an incredible amount of amazing gaming moments to my life. (In addition to some other amazing gaming moments I experienced during that same period.)
-The Guild Wars days. We spawned hundreds of pages worth of threads on here as we discussed our tens of thousands of hours of guilded gaming. This arrived in 2005 just as UT2004 was starting to fade, and held me over through 2007 or so, when Real Life Adulting™ dug in and my gaming time steadily decreased. Today I get a few minutes/day on mobile and virtually nothing on PC aside from pockets where I get hooked and make time for a few weeks for a particular game.
-Rich.

[Bad Demographic]

I'm not always checking in daily like I had a few years back but pretend I log in when I lean over and see my husband (original member GG and OO) lurking around. I usually say to him, "What's goin' on with the guys?" No offense to the smattering of women here but we know we are outnumbered.

My relationships, sentence structure, views, ability to defend a topic, and life would be less meaningful without this forum.
Also adding today IS my wedding anniversary! And it takes me so long to post, several of you have chimed in while I was typing this shit out. Marvel at the speed of you all.

Whoa! Happy Anniversary!

[Bad Demographic]

I feel like this place has been here (wherever "here" is) forever. I, too, am from the old Gone Gold days, I think even with the same name. You have a couple of my (ex) co-workers to thank or blame for me being here. Imagine! I had co-workers who also played computer games - that's still amazing to me. I don't remember what their nicks were back then, currently I think they're Grafvolluth and Hypnotoad, and I wish they hung out here still.

[disarm]

I've been around since the GG days...discovered that site through PC Gamer and mostly lurked around the forum until becoming very active in a thread dedicated to one members impressive attempt at a persistent multiplayer world in the original Neverwinter Nights. Our NWN group crumbled about the same time GG disappeared, and I made it to OO pretty quickly.

Like Zaxxon, I have great memories of pouring hundreds of hours into UT2K4 and Guild Wars with the OO crew. Our UT tournaments are some of my greatest gaming memories, and I'll never forget an epic match of Double Domination on the Conduit map that was tied for more than an hour of sudden-death overtime...moments that will stay with me forever. The brief UT2K4 revival of 2014 was great while it lasted, but I think life quickly got in the way for most of us.

I don't post a lot these days, but I do read every day and post when I have something to add. Unfortunately, my gaming time is slim-to-none lately due to family life taking over, but I'm glad we all still have OO as our own little corner of the internet.

[Carpet_pissr]

I'd bet almost every one of us originally went to GG looking for game release information.

Definitely was for me. In fact, I don't even remember the GG forums (though I guess I eventually found them, because how would I have found OO?) I pretty much used GG like I used Blue's News at the time - information feed.

[Z-Corn]

I'd bet almost every one of us originally went to GG looking for game release information.

Diablo II! And it was still like a year away from release.

That was when I came around also. We probably joined about the same time.

[Isgrimnur]

I don't recall if it was PCGamer or GG that came first for me.

[Smoove_B]

I just checked...still have the email I sent and reply received from Rich - 9/10/01. I remember being absolutely amazed that an internet/magazine famous person took the time to write me a nice message back. Anyway, I lurked GG for a long time but apparently didn't actually register in the forums until January of 2002. No idea what I was waiting for but I'm guessing I was likely scared of the motley crew that was there at the time.

[Baroquen]

I was on GG but barely remember it. Probably lurked more than than I do here. I missed the start of OO, but got on within the first couple months (?) I think. Been hanging around ever since. This place reminds me of an old dial-up BBS I used to hit WAY back in the day. Was a very small crowd, and people I never really met much in real life, but was still immensely entertaining in its own way.

I may not be on every day (perfect example is missing this thread until it was 3 pages long... how'd that happen?), but it's always an open tab in my browser. I regularly jump in and check PC Games and Everything But Gaming to see what's new with the crowd. It's comforting in its familiarity.

[Kelric]

Through high school, college, failing out of college, living at home (and not in the basement), working, not working, not living at home (and in a basement), having my first roommate that I wasn't related to or forced to live with in dorms, my first real job, my own apartment, my own condo, my marriage, my wife's pregnancy, my own house, and now my daughter's 15 months of life.... I've spent more than half of the years that I have been on this planet putting up with you crazies.

In the immortal words of Darth Vader:

The one constant through all the years, J.D., has been GG/OO. The internet has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But GG/OO has marked the time. This website, this forum, is a part of our past, J.D. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will post, J.D. People will most definitely post.

According to here, I was on GG for 249 days before 6/13/01. That works out to be 10/7/2000, which sounds about right for posting, but I really thought I was on there beforehand. Maybe I just lurked the front page for a long time. That website brings back a lot of forum memories. I miss a lot of those people to this day. And despite feeling like I have barely posted for at least the last two years I am still 9th on the OO leaderboard. Slackers.

[Kelric]

Pad.

[Redfive]

The only time I'm not here multiple times a day is when I'm completely out of pocket. I think I joined GG some time around '98 or '99.

Profile tells me I have .25 posts per day I'm pretty sure I had more posts at GG than here but this is still the first place I go every time I open a browser.

[Kraken]

Pad.

Dude, when I met you you were an Impressions groupie and you weren't old enough to buy a legal beer. I didn't know if you were a fan or a stalker because I'd never had either before.

[FishPants]

Wow.. Joined here when I was 28 and freshly married. Since then we had the great OOTage and I moved us to a dedicated server, then our server holster stole our server, restored from backup elsewhere and relocated us to the safe haven we are in now in Canada.

I have had two kids who are now 11 and 8 since being here, my father passed away, I have worked in four different jobs.. maybe five.. My wife is battling cancer (and winning). Crazy how much time has passed.

Bah.

[MonkeyFinger]

Another GG refugee that ended up at GT and here near the end of 2004. Oct and Dec respectively. Dang, 12 years.

[RunningMn9]

I think I joined GG in Jan/Feb 2002, shortly after Smoove told me about the joint. Damn that was a long time ago, but I'm also surprised that I already had my first kid when I joined.

[Newcastle]

Present and accounted for.

Found GG for release date info, lurked for a long time made a few posts nothing of consequence. Than the great darkness occurred and was thrust in the wilderness till i found the safe shores of the OO refuge. Lurked and slowly and gradually started posting more. Dont post a lot but i check in usually once per day or so; definitely more if the WW game is running hot and my OCD is kicking in.

Really thankful for this place. Nice little oasis to hang in the wide word of the internet. Get good info on PC games, interesting RP stuff.

Kind of bummed we've been slowly losing members though. Still think we're chugging along nicely though.

[Blackhawk]

I tossed out a one-liner, but this thread has grown up since then, so I'll post for realsies.

The Secret Origins: I had a period of six or eight months in 2000, just after I moved to Indiana, in which I had no internet access. That was in what was, to me, the golden age of gaming, and I was purely PC at the time. I spent the time I wasn't hooked to a PC re-reading all my back issues of PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World for my news and information. That was in the era when Rich was going the release schedules for both. When I finally got the internet, I went to check out his site. I have no idea what motivated me, but I decided to join the forum. I'd never participated in a forum before (although I'd spent plenty of time on newsgroups.) The Gonegolders Project says I joined on June 28, 2001.

In the past, I'd used the name 'Sable', a nickname someone gave me in high school that somehow stuck. Unfortunately, a woman wrestler had risen to prominence using that name, and I got tired of people assuming I was trying to emulate her. I needed a new name. I thought about it, and picked the name of a brand of throwing tomahawk I badly wanted as a teenager. The Blackhawk. Everybody, naturally, assumed I was emulating the movie that came out about the same time. I was young, and I was so full of it. I thought it sounded cool (I even signed my posts, "Go in honor!" ) Now I just think it sounds presumptuous, but it is well established at this point.

The Adventures of: I've been with ya'll ever since, more than 15 years. I met Rich and Zaxxon for the first time at the launch party for Command & Conquer: Renegade in Indy. Rich was running Gone Gold, and Zaxxon was running The Stratos Group (a reviews site and writing company specializing in strategy guides and game documentation.) By the end of that afternoon, both had offered me positions on their staff. I became a moderator on OO, and a reviewer/Reviews Manager/writer for Stratos. I organized the Gone Golders' Magazine, a periodic online digest of gaming and tech related news. Unfortunately, we only got to two issues before things started going sideways at Gone Gold. Outages became frequent, and Rich became unreachable.

When Gone Gold died, I stuck with the staff and was here when we decided to found a new site with the same 'feel' as Gone Gold: The Brute Squad I mean Octopus Overlords (the naming decision was our first big explosion of drama.) I stayed through our growing pains. I was a soldier in The Battle of Fucktard Ridge. I was a general at Hooterloo. I survived the Bovine Stampede when brother turned against brother. Things finally settled down after a few skirmishes (known by such colloquial names as 'Kobra', 'Crowley', and 'Brettmcd.') By then, though, I was burned out. OO had become a source of stress. I stepped down, shortly before the OOtage.

OO has seen me through some tough times. Gone Gold was there for my disability and the end of my working years. The birth of two kids, one of whom is already in high school. You helped me through my divorce. You helped me make it through cancer. A couple of you (whose initials are RM9 and GG) were instrumental in my giving up religion and becoming an atheist. GG/OO has changed the way I think about the world in a very fundamental way - mostly by calling me out on my bullshit enough times that I learned to fact-check myself before opening my mouth, and then before forming an opinion.

Epilogue: I've been thinking about OO a lot lately. It is sad, sometimes, seeing how slow we've become. It used to be that a gaming thread would drop off the front page in a day. Now they last months or weeks. People disappear. Some wander off. Some have died, and we've never learned of it (I've made arrangements with two people to notify OO should anything ever happen to me, by the way.) The front page would have helped had it taken off, but the one thing OO has never had was a figurehead, an single person with a vision leading us. It has always just been a potluck, with the community throwing in whatever they could. It lead to a great community, but one without much drive.

What I really miss is that lack of participatory community threads. We used to have a lot of them, and I think it drew people into the community. The AARs. The game challenges ('let's all play X and compare notes.') The 'guess the game' type threads. Threads where we were together, rather than just the occasional thread where three or four people playing the game of the month would converse.

And yes, I see the hypocrisy of bemoaning the lack of something without doing something about it myself. While I've been brainstorming, I am also subject to the thing that has hurt us the most: We're getting older, busier, and our responsibilities have taken over our free time.

What to do? I don't know. I would love to see it happen, though.

Also: Damn, that turned negative fast. I love OO. GG/OO and all of you have, believe it or not, been a big influence in my life. I just hate watching us in decline.

[RunningMn9]

A couple of you (whose initials are RM9 and GG) were instrumental in my giving up religion and becoming an atheist.

Wait, what?

[dbt1949]

We all float down here.

[Blackhawk]

A couple of you (whose initials are RM9 and GG) were instrumental in my giving up religion and becoming an atheist.

Wait, what?

GG/OO has changed the way I think about the world in a very fundamental way - mostly by calling me out on my bullshit enough times that I learned to fact-check myself before opening my mouth, and then before forming an opinion.

Once I started fact-checking my religious beliefs, piece by piece, they started to disappear until there wasn't much left.

[naednek]

I first heard of GG in PC Gamer. I lurked for a short while, and was impressed with the release date list (Gone Gold) At that time I worked for a call center that handled, EA and Sierra accounts. People would always call asking when a game was coming out (usually Half Life and Diablo (I think 2) and I would refer people to GG because we never knew because they always kept us in the dark.

So with that said, it must have been around 1998 when I joined

[RunningMn9]

Once I started fact-checking my religious beliefs, piece by piece, they started to disappear until there wasn't much left.

Just so we are clear, I don't think "call Blackhawk out on his bullshit" has ever crossed my mind. Don't be so hard on yourself. Challenged your arguments? That's me. I called tony72 out on his bullshit. That's a totally different thing.

[DD*]

tinyfuzz.gif

This! Been around since "Gone Gold" really meant something - on 5 1/4" disks!

[Daehawk]

Reading all these replies gives me a mental image of a bunch of old farts sitting in a room talking and its filled with old modems and hardware and spiderwebs. Theres a door that if we opened it would let light shine in on us and there would be a giant futuristic city out there with flying cars and such

[Freyland]

Here since beginning, unknown number of years on GG. Lurk multiple times per day, usually don't have much to say. Lot like that in groups in RL, for that matter. Occasionally will pop in to give medical advice.

[Papa Smurph]

Late, but present. I can't keep up with all the posts on this forum as is, so the long slow decline doesn't bother me. I mostly lurk, partly because I'm never sure what I've missed. Been with you all since the GG days, I have no idea the date. 1998 maybe?

[RunningMn9]

I miss the very detailed discussions about non-political topics.

[Daehawk]

Smoove....if we combine our posts we can take first place away...what say ye?

[Blackhawk]

I miss the very detailed discussions about non-political topics.

+ 1 giggityplex.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I miss the very detailed discussions about non-political topics.

Hey, I'm always primed to edify the philistines suckered into wet-shaving with extortionate pieces o' plastic puffery and canned goo.

[hitbyambulance]

changes circa 2010s:

* Trade Forum is practically kaput, for obvious reasons. PC game physical media?? i miss that. and can't trade/resell/give away Steam/Origin/Uplay/etc titles once the registration codes are redeemed. (the trade-off: games i tend to buy often are available for much, much cheaper - and are even of higher quality these days. can't really argue!)

* General Computing has experienced a dramatic downswing in build threads, as people now tend to buy their machines (large and small) already assembled in some form or another. most modern (or modern forms of) operating systems (Windows, OS X/iOS, Android) have become increasingly locked-down, more restrictive, and just plain boring. it would be nice to have some ongoing technical discussions, and it's too bad the Linux and programming/development threads never take off.

[Blackhawk]

* Trade Forum is practically kaput, for obvious reasons. PC game physical media?? i miss that. and can't trade/resell/give away Steam/Origin/Uplay/etc titles once the registration codes are redeemed. (the trade-off: games i tend to buy often are available for much, much cheaper - and are even of higher quality these days. can't really argue!)

I've made the argument a few times that the trading forum, which is now largely obsolete, should be combined with the Bargain Bin. It would give the threads that do come up much more visibility and might actually liven things up a bit.

[Chaosraven]

Originally an Alt Acct for LordMortis to keep his post count down, given to an actor hired to play "Chaosraven" at OO functions (including but not limited to OctoCon), forgotten and laid aside to be picked up by a preteen girl who figured out the clever "12345678" password left by the big bald idiot.

Still here.

Looking to play WW games in the FGF.

Blep.

[Daehawk]

So now you're a 20 something girl?

[Jag]

So now you're a 20 something girl?

This happened to me once before. It ended with someone asking me to have a seat. Don't take the bait.

[RuperT]

I don't remember why I went to GG in the first place, but I did make a couple of posts in the forum IIRC.
I don't remember how I found OO after the Reckoning, either.
I'm here a lot, and read most everything, but usually someone makes a post that resembles what I would say enough that I rarely pipe up.
As I told MHS when I met her, I appreciate the intelligent dissent, as I have managed to arrange my life such that I don't get much of that day to day (not to mention being a generally sane Floridian ). It is mostly an intellectual exercise, as I say, but I really do like the purely social aspect even if I don't much act like it. I like to know the real lives behind the avatars, and likewise make an effort to share my own occasionally.
Content here is more challenging than the rest of the Internet, which is largely commercial pablum anymore. I think we're the last of the folks that think it's interesting and novel and valuable to find out what a generally analogous stranger across the country actually thinks about things, beyond assertion and virtue signaling (see: social media). However, I've tried to become more copacetic to those posting modes here, and of course I do it, too.

[Daehawk]

I think I felt my IQ go up. *shakes fist*