35 replies to this topic

[taikara]

How long have you been communicating with people online, what sort of communities have you been involved in, and what was your general experience?

I actually wasn't allowed to "chat" online until I was about 16 or 17... then I talked my mom into buying Sierra's Realm, which was my first real MMORPG experience (though Realm was sort of a glorified chatroom with pictures, and the option to go fight stuff). I made my first really good internet friend there (known as Harkov online), and we've visited back and forth since (last time I saw him was in 2004). I've met a couple other people from that game to hang out, mostly from the Wheel of Time RP guild I was involved with. My first name on Realm was SageErinyes, and I switched to Tai when I joined the WoT guild.

Then later, after about a year or so of (me) not being online (I stopped playing when I went to University), Harkov got in touch with me and convinced me to play EverQuest. I played for a while, and was really addicted to the gaming part of it. I joined another RP guild, but it wasn't really as fun as the Realm one - and if you've never played EQ, well... people can be quite drama-fixated. I made a few friends, lost a few friends, and finally just stopped playing, because I was mostly interested in the gaming part, and the drama part just made it annoying.

Then I tried out UO on a free shard, and I have absolutely no idea why, because it was even worse. It was kind of fun for a short while, but there wasn't really much to do, so my stay there didn't last long.

I also played AO, and mostly soloed my way through it.

I stopped playing MMORPGs after that, because it was interfering with my ability to do stuff IRL.

AB/AR is actually the first forum-based community I've ever gotten involved with. It's a little weird for me, because unlike in MMORPGs, there's not really a single common bond between people to discuss. We all obviously like games, but we all like different types of games. When you play EQ, you always can talk about EQ. Also, I like *doing* stuff, rather than talking. In MMORPGs, you hang out with people and actually do stuff together, unlike on a forum.

My biggest fault when it comes to communicating with people online is that I really am more of a doer than a talker. When the people I'm talking to aren't involved with what I'm doing, I tend to be unable to both do what I'm doing, and talk at the same time - and whatever I'm doing tends to win the attention competition.

Also, I get really tired of being online all the time - some people don't understand when you want to not log in to chat for a few days, weeks, or more.

[Tom Henrik]

I started my online experience on April 30th, 2004, made an account on AB and stayed put since.

Abandonia has been my only forum experience sofar, and only online community experience. I have never played a MMMPork game, and I doubt I ever will. I get more than enough drama on these boards.

As for my activity, it can't really be seen on the boards. I mostly work behind the scenes and do the most crappy, boring and tedious jobs imaginable. And I love it!

To list some of the things I have done:

• Gone through every single game on both sites (multiple times) to check links, names, forum discussion links, and more...
  
• Gone through every single DOS game on MobyGames and added them to the List.
  
• Gone through multiple online stores looking for games that are still sold.
  
• Added 3737 games to the List, with links and status.
  
• Reviewed a couple of hundred games for AB.
  
• Uploaded several hundred games.
  
• Successfully managed to update 2 games every day for more than a month in a row on AB.
  
• Made a dozen of pixels for both AB and AR, and done a couple of custom titles and banners for AR.
  
• Prepped several games for AR and AB updates.
  
• And so on...

Hmm... That really came off as bragging....
That wasn't intentional. I only tried to show that my online experience usually means work, work and more work

Edit:
Oh, and right now I am:

• Prepping the screens for Halo Zero.
  
• Adding more games to the List.
  
• Doing sprites for a new freeware game.

Edited by Tom Henrik, 03 May 2006 - 02:46 PM.

[Stebbi]

The internet? What the hell?

[Maikel]

2000: email!
2001: ICQ (including excessive phone bills)
2003: Started working on a game mod for Unreal tournament called Atlantis: Fight for earth
2004: Stopped with Atlantis and dropped by on Abandonia. Started designing the new abandonia and stayed after that.

2004/2005: Working on AR

2006: Still working on Abandonia related stuff

in a nutshell.

[Fruit Pie Jones]

My online experience started with a 2400-baud modem and local BBSes in high school (about 1990).  It was awfully exciting to be able to post messages that would instantly be readable by anyone who logged on.  Of course there were the rudimentary BBS games as well - Trade Wars alone occupied a good deal of my time.

My first experience with the actual Internet (which had a capital "I" back then) was during my first year in college, where I discovered e-mail, FTP, Usenet, MUDs (via telnet, the ol-skool way), xtank, and Netrek.  Shortly after returning home for the summer after that year, my beloved 2400-baud modem was destroyed by lightning, and I didn't have the money to replace it.  I also wouldn't be going back to college for a while, again due to lack of funds, so I was essentially offline for the next couple of years, though I borrowed my best friend's e-mail account (with his permission) from time to time to keep in touch with people.

When I got things straightened out and got my butt back to school, the same online diversions were there, and I got right back into all of them.  The World Wide Web was starting to make its presence known at the time, but it still consisted mostly of static pages with white backgrounds, black text, blue links, and pictures of people and their cats.  I didn't pay it much attention at first, but as it quickly grew in popularity over the next couple of years, Web surfing began to eat up more and more of my time.

I think the first web-based community I joined was the Sci-Fi Channel's site ("The Dominion" they called it back then - don't know what they call it now; probably just scifi.com), which I joined about ten years ago, strictly for the purpose of playing "Caption This!"  Though that game is long gone, it still ranks as one of the most entertaining things I've encountered online - but that's nostalgia talking.

Since those days I've been a member of a number of forums, most (but not all) game-related.  In terms of sheer postcount, I've been more active on Abandonia than any other, possibly more than all of the others combined.

I never have gotten into MMORPGs, for three main reasons:

1.  I can't stand the idea of paying a monthly fee to play a game.  (The monthly fee used to bug me back in the BBS days as well, but that wasn't quite the same thing.  Plus, I knew the people who were cashing the checks.)

2.  They seem to consume way too much time, to the point where they dominate some people's lives totally.  That's just scary.

3.  "MMORPG" is a horrid abomination of an abbreviation.  It can't even be called an acronym, because it's unpronounceable.

That's about the size of it.  I hope the "Internet geezer" bits didn't come off too crotchety.  ("You kids today and your fancy graphical emoticons!  PAH!  Back in my day we had to type '<picture of a little blue head expelling vomit from his nose and mouth>,' and we liked it that way!")

[DannyMc252]

Oh good lord. I have no idea.
I know at some point I joined a discussion group for a freeware game, which I am still with, surprisingly. I first got ICQ because of that group, then MSN later. I joined an online Roman RPG, and I met quite a few people there. I then wandered around looking for abandonware (I like freebies ^^) Then came across Abandonia. Back then we didn't even have a forum! We did have the guestbook.. !

This was all back in.. sheesh.. 2002/03. I joined AB in 03, September/October time. I then more or less accumulated a huge group of people on my msn contacts, half of whom I dont even know.

Then.. uh.. I wandered around on the net for the last 3 years doing nothing but spam? ^^

My dad always sorta encouraged me to go on the computer... Heck, I'm still his cable monkey when he builds them. Even though I'm taller than him..

[Doubler]

Short story for me:
The first community I got actively involved in was Abandonia, right after I got a reliable internet connection.
Then came AR.

Besides AB and AR there's the Abandoned, Abandonia's UD group.

I'm also marginally active on the Kerberos and on the TES boards (For the TES boards it's just because  those forums are hilarious ).

I tried MMORPG, but I turned away from them because:
-I play games for the fun of it, and all MMORPG's ever offered me was to run around in a chaotic and usually overpopulated () world doing irritating and repetive chores while constantly having to put up with often annoying people. Before I step on toes let me stress not everybody playing MMORPG's is annoying, but many of them seem to be. Enough to ruin my experience.
-I disagree with the ways many of them make money.
-They spread like a disease these days.

[DeathDude]

Short story too, more or less. First actual community I got involved with was over at gamefaqs, where I hung around a few boards, mainly The Sims, Final Fantasy 6, and Mario RPG, where I basically helped around those boards with the knowledge I knew, pretty much that was the extent of it. Eventually migrated to believe it or not a security forum, mostly just posting updates, keeping up on spyware and other related activities, in a way more of a learning experience on the subject and really got quite knowledgeable in the area.

AB/AR was really the first community I really really got active on and basically it was a welcoming community when I joined Jan last year, and since then made a bunch of friends on both forums that really truly value.

Haven't got sucked into the whole MMORPG experience yet, mainly lack of money is the main cause of it, did game online though a lot with Unreal Tournament and that's prob my fav game that have played online, tribes is close behind though.

[Blood-Pigggy]

This and AB was the first time I ever went on a online community.
My only experience otherwise was playing with guilds and clans in Starcraft, Counter-strike, and other games.

Yeah, I'm not very fond of most of this stuff, I just stuck around here cause you guys aren't tards like most people online.

[Tulac]

I started using the internet around year 2000, very little on 56k, and I did all the noobish site (yahoo chat etc.)...
That's pretty much it, I joined my first forum on 2003, emuforums.com, I still post there occasionaly...
A year ago I got DSL so that's when I started using the internet excesively, I also used to play CoD and CoD2 in clans, and Ogame which was my only MMO experience, that's about it...

[BeefontheBone]

Oooh, this is fun. The first forum I can remember joining (and where I got my nick which is still pretty much unique - go me!) was the Total Annihilation boards back in - when was the BSE thing again? 1996? - to discuss unit suggestions for the game, that must've been when we first got internet access at home. After that I played TFC (the Half-Life fortress mod) over Wireplay (which used to be a great free service run by BT with its own servers and software, now I think they just run a few servers for things) and was in a couple of clans as an Enginner (incidentally, I can't wait for Fortress Forever to get finished on the Source engine). After that I started playing Unreal Tournament, but my 56k modem wasn't up to the task so I had a bit of a break from the internet (I also didn't have a PC in my first year at Uni). Then I got a PC and broadband, and started playing UT2004 online (and joined clan XyZ - wonder what happened to them...). Last year I visited AB to get Colonization (it was mentioned in PC Gamer) and decided to join the forum, then annoyed Tritonjar by actually doing something about the grammar of reviews instead of whining about it and being superior. Heh.
I joined Braindead's mordor site after following a link in his sig at AB and have joined the MordorXP team over there as a writer, and obviously I joined up here when it opened
When I got Civ 4 I signed up at CFC and at Realms Beyond (they play a number of games).
Last month I won some games from PCG's Gamer Snap contest, including a copy of Guild Wars which I started playing when my new PC arrived last week, and am enjoying - I'd never played any MMOGs because of the monthly fees, but GW's lack of fees and skill-over-number of hours played emphasis is rather appealing.

I think that's about it

[Sean]

I can't remember when I got the internet. I guess it was around 6-8 years ago. Seeing as I got it at such a young age it just became another part of normal life. I know for some of our wiser members the introduction of the internet was probably in some small way life-changeing. For me, it wasn't. Like all other new technology I embraced it and it became just another extension of my cyborg self. The first communities I ever got involved with were either game or graphic related. Despite only having a modem back in the days I actually attempted to play online games for about a year or so through a nifty mac only program called GameRanger. During that time, perhaps before I joined a few graphic design forums that mainly revolved around wrestling. I used to be into WWF/WWE and that's how my graphic design started. The internet is really rather interesting, a lot of the people you "meet" online share strong common interests with you. It's much easier to find "freinds" that share such similar interests with you online. I've never really considered it as rewarding. For example, with AB/AR although we're all into games I never really feel like I know the person behind the post until I explore things more personal to them. I usually just knock up somebody on MSN and chat. The internet allows for so many different things, groovy!

[Fruit Pie Jones]

Sean, on May 3 2006, 01:33 PM, said:

I usually just knock up somebody on MSN and chat.

That's awfully rude.  You should chat with someone for at least 30 minutes before knocking them up!*



* Over here, "to knock <someone> up" means "to get <someone> pregnant," you see.

[BeefontheBone]

Here it means either that or to knock on someone's door in a "can Fred come out to play?" kind of way. And occasionally both, presumably...

[A. J. Raffles]

Well, in case anyone's interested, that use of "knock" seems to originate from the 16th century...

Edit: OK, I might as well post something on topic as well: I started using the internet when I was 19 (i.e. in 2000) and the only things I've ever used it for besides work has been emailing, tracking down secondhand books and visiting AB/AR and the Mordor forums. Messenger thingies I basically only use to talk to my mother (because it's cheaper than phonecalls and I don't need to stand in a dark corner in front of the JCR to talk) and I don't remember ever visiting a chatroom.
Actually I'm not particularly internet-savvy, and I don't really think I've been very good at adapting to the medium; most of my emails read like letters, for example. The only other person I know who does that to quite the same extent is around fifty. And learning the correct use of smileys was a long and painful process - most of the time I'm still not sure whether I'm actually getting them right.

Pathetic, hmm?

Edited by A. J. Raffles, 03 May 2006 - 08:27 PM.