To be perfectly honest, I don't remember a whole ton about the early days. I do remember Balton, although I think he was here for a full two days after I signed up before he left. I remember there being a woefully unused Fallout forum. I remember King Kai 3 being an admin, or a Sup Mod or something to that extent, and what makes it even funnier is that every forum I've become heavily involved in since this one has had KK as an admin as well.
I remember desperately grasping for a username and settling on "Raziel" because I was obsessed with Soul Reaver at the time. I remember the first thread I posted in was in regards to Soul Reaver 2.
I remember bullshitting with SYG and Sirp for about four hours one morning and then having all three of us bitched at by NGM the next day for spamming the Flame Forum (*gasp!*). I remember creating a thread in the Flame Forum criticizing Johnny for closing too many threads.
But the most
vivid memory of the early days of this forum that I have is that I was absolutely
shocked to learn that the majority of the members were several years younger than me. I was almost 20 when I joined, and before Zel, the
only online message board that I had used was the Rant Board system at
www.knac.com. I was a member for about three years and the majority of the other members were adults anywhere from 25 to 45. I got sick of the place because I came to realize that there was no honest-to-God
community there, just a lot of bitter metalhead trolls looking to ridicule anyone and everyone in sight. So, I clicked on that nifty Something Awful banner (the primary reason I clicked on it was because it had a sprite of Link on it) and joined the same day. I learned a few days later that 90% of the userbase consisted of 14-year-olds and it knocked me flat.
The thing that surprised me the most, however, was not necessarily the young age of the members, but the fact that I was completely unable to distinguish the difference between a bunch of kids and a bunch of 40-year-olds. I mean that as a compliment to you guys. KNAC was loaded with older members, yet they behaved in the most childish and asinine manner I think I've ever seen full-grown adults engage in. In coming here, I encountered a bunch of
kids who (although were capable of grotesque amounts of spam) were also more consistently capable of more mature behavior than a board full of homeowners. That's something to be proud of.
The main reason I've stayed here so damned long is because, for some inexplicable reason, this place attracts an uncanny number of genuinely great members. Regardless of how bad it may seem now in comparison with the "good old days", this place is every bit as entertaining as it was back then because we, for reasons I can't explain, continually get a healthy influx of great new members. Since I joined, we've had members like Titus, DFD, Adrenachrome, Jamesadin, RoboticSilence, Medieval Bob, MJ, King_Amazon, Sovereign, Vollstrecker, Eddie Perez, Sum Yung Guy, Senesia, Uncapped, Thanatos, Penny Bags, Strider Fury, Shinto Katana, Sirpullido, Slim, Mantralord, Ex-Mania, Gsus, Doofus, Silverjinx, AC, Tai, KHWIII, Slaynish and Kuja`s #1 join in addition to all of the great members here before me like Grav, WetWired and Chruser, and a whole shitload of other people I was too lazy to look up.
The fact is, this forum has been extremely lucky for quite a few reasons, and we
continue to be lucky because those high-caliber members continue to flock to this forum on a fairly regular basis. I've helped run two other forums besides this one, and neither of them were as fortunate. The head admin didn't do anything
wrong. He worked his
ass off, but his luck just wasn't up to snuff. This place is a phenomenon that defies most predictable patterns I've encountered since joining, and I enjoy the hell out of being a member.
Edit - Wow, that got way off topic, but it took me a while to type, so I'll just leave it be.
