1st

[hepcat]

Okay….fine.

Middle!

[gbasden]

Yay us! I love our weird little internet backwater.

[Hrdina]

I missed Opening Day by a couple weeks, but close enough for non-government non-work.

I think I was 4 days late. I still feel like one of the newbies.

Looking forward to our third decade together, friends.


To stick with the theme of the OP: 393d!

[Archinerd]

Only feels like 18 to me.

Same. +/-

[sgoldj]

Long may we endure. I wonder how many other internet communities go back 20 years with the same core cast?

And lurkers

[Hipolito]

I wonder when Gone Gold started, as that's when this community was really born. Probably sometime in 1998.

[Blackhawk]

[Kraken]

I debuted on Gone Gold when I announced that Pharaoh had gone gold (late 1999). I sort of thought that was the point of the site, since it was right there in the name and I was the game's producer, but Rich lit into me for leaking it in the forum instead of passing the info to him and letting HIM announce it formally. Thus began a long period of hot water with my boss, who accurately accused me of being more sympathetic to gamers than to the industry. I very nearly lost my job for admitting publicly that there was a bug in Civil War General II. We absolutely did not acknowledge bugs.

Once the eyes of the industry were on me, I was mostly relegated to lurking on GG and made a point of not discussing our games. One could say that this community has been getting me in trouble for 25 years.

[Max Peck]

Long may we endure. I wonder how many other internet communities go back 20 years with the same core cast?

Quarter To Three, for one. I just read a thread there that was necro'd after a 22 year hiatus, and some of the old posts were by people who are still active on their forums.

[Holman]

This trip down memory lane just made me go and check what I think was my oldest game-related bookmark, Crimson's Sim HQ. This was a site I used to check regularly for news about flight sims and wargames as early as 1993. I don't think I've clicked the link in 10 or 12 years.

Well, the old site is gone, but the link still works because a gaming hardware company bought it. Now it tries to sell you gaming chairs and PC driving-game peripherals.

[Blackhawk]

This trip down memory lane just made me go and check what I think was my oldest game-related bookmark, Crimson's Sim HQ. This was a site I used to check regularly for news about flight sims and wargames as early as 1993. I don't think I've clicked the link in 10 or 12 years.

Well, the old site is gone, but the link still works because a gaming hardware company bought it. Now it tries to sell you gaming chairs and PC driving-game peripherals.

You inspired me to do the same, although I didn't have an actual link.

Heat .Net is now an HVAC site.

[Jaymann]

Maximum PC is no mas. I stopped visiting when they nuked their PC games section. It now redirects you to Tom's Hardware.

[Jeff V]

Andy brought me to Gone Gold to answer some questions regarding a game we co-reviewed for The Wargamer. Someone named Ironrod is responsible for directing me here after that imploded.

[Sudy]

I think I joined GG circa 2002. I was 18, or possibly 17. I may have come across the forum seeking Morrowind mod or Season Ticket Baseball 2003 (AKA Out of the Park Baseball 4) info... I don't remember. I'll always regret waiting to join OO until November and not having an October 2004 join date. Being a latecomer to GG and one of the younger members, I didn't feel very connected to the community's culture at the time.

I'll always be super grateful for the sense of belonging and community OO has provided me with. I'm not quite as active these days, but I lurk. A couple of small Discord communities have become my primary online social outlet over the past few years, so I don't share as many personal things here anymore. But OO has always been there for me when I needed it, including during some of the worst of my mental health struggles/social isolation.

The community has turned me on to multiple things that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. Even though I only played City of Heroes for a couple of months and Cataclysm-era WoW for several, being part of the OO guilds are some of my fondest gaming memories. I was also part of one of the later OOTP leagues which sadly only lasted a few seasons, but I had a ton of fun. OO also introduced me to The Wanderers, whom I have similar happy memories of playing New World with a few years ago.

I was heavily involved with the GG/OO trading community for a couple of years early on, back when physical media was still a thing. I took advantage of several pay-it-forward freebies. I'm pretty sure I bought my 00s gaming rig from a GG member, though I don't think they were around for long (some college kid from Ohio). I still have YellowKing's Nomad Jukebox Zen MP3 player around here somewhere. I never used it much, it's the size and weight of a fucking brick. I won't list every member I've enjoyed interacting with and learning from (I'm sure there are many I've forgotten); but coming to mind at the moment, I've always appreciated Blackhawk's compassion, Kraken's insight, Skinypupy's music recommendations, Smoove's health info, and discussing media with Hepcat and Rumpy.

Here's to 20 more years!

[Sudy]

Heat .Net is now an HVAC site.

Heat.net, holy shit! There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I remember buying a starter kit that included a T-shirt, I think, from Target in '98. I didn't even have the internet yet. Once I did, I was disappointed by its free games... I don't think they worked very well via AOL.

You guys have bookmarks going back that far? That's insane. Though I guess I have all my old systems somewhere. I just never bothered to import anything.

[Kraken]

I'll always regret waiting to join OO until November and not having an October 2004 join date.

I'll always think of you as The New Guy.

[Holman]

I lurked at GG long before I joined, which would have been 2000 or so. After the site went away, I was forum-homeless for a few months until I searched for "What happened to Gone Gold?"

[ImLawBoy]

Heat .Net is now an HVAC site.

Heat.net, holy shit! There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I remember buying a starter kit that included a T-shirt, I think, from Target in '98. I didn't even have the internet yet. Once I did, I was disappointed by its free games... I don't think they worked very well via AOL.

You guys have bookmarks going back that far? That's insane. Though I guess I have all my old systems somewhere. I just never bothered to import anything.

Heat.net was where i first used ImLawBoy. I was signing up to play some Kingpin online and tried to use LawBoy. It was taken, so I said, "But I'm LawBoy!" The rest is history . . . .

[Blackhawk]

I joined up with heat.net to play Battlezone online, my very firstest multiplayer game. When you played games on heat.net, you earned 'degrees' that you could cash in for rewards. Those degrees bought me the original Half-Life.

[Sudy]

Battlezone 98! I have the vaguest memories conjured by seeing screenshots. I think it's from the demo I played on my uncle's PC with my cousin. He was the first in the family to get online, and visiting his house and getting to use his computer was like crack. I remember one of the first times I ever used the internet, it was to go to Decipher's site for the Star Wars CCG. He kicked me off after ten minutes concerned the connection was costing him too much money.

[Blackhawk]

Battlezone 98! I have the vaguest memories conjured by seeing screenshots. I think it's from the demo I played on my uncle's PC with my cousin. He was the first in the family to get online, and visiting his house and getting to use his computer was like crack.

It's entirely coincidence, but I've been playing the remaster (Battlezone 98 Redux) this week. It's still fun, but much more challenging than I remembered.

It's one of the few games from a burgeoning genre that I loved, but which, sadly, disappeared by the mid-2000s (first- or third-person strategy games where you commanded armies from the field, like BZ and BZ2, Sacrifice, and the first couple of Spellforce titles.)

[hitbyambulance]

i'm on a BBS from my home area that started in the early 90s, then moved onto the web in the late 90s. a large handful of users from 30+ years ago still post regularly on that.

one thing that has certainly happened over the past 15 years is the huge fragmentation of the Gaming Scene - it's really hard for me to discuss games with nearly anyone now, as they haven't played what i played and i haven't played (or more likely, i am not interested at all in) what they play. that ofc applies to this board - i don't own any of the last two generations of consoles, for one, and there are not a lot of 'roguelike' fans, 'retro' enthusiasts/collectors and 'masochistic gamers' here (or in general). e.g. i've finally found a go-to game (Noita) that i seem to never tire of, but the only other people i know who play this are my brother and my nephews. (also, PLAY THIS GAME! IT IS AMAZING!) but even when i attend local indie game dev meetups, many of them are not familiar with specific titles out of many hundreds of admittedly decent non-AAA studio games.

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

20 years, wow! I think I'm still wearing boxers from that time.

What happened to godhugh? I saw his posts on the first page, and looking at his profile, it's been over four years since his last post. I've never been a major contributor here, and I've mostly been in uber-lurking mode, so I probably missed something, but he was so integral to the community, it just shocked me that he is gone.

[Blackhawk]

I just came across this. How many remember that OO ever had a front page?

[Kraken]

My first online home was a small BBS called Argus, which was absorbed by a bigger BBS called Channel One after a year or so. The Channel One people didn't like us Argonauts because we used screen names, so I joined several other Argonauts and made the leap to Usenet, which was my first encounter with the real internet (but with little to no sense of community). GG was the first web forum that lured me away from Usenet.