Nostalgia for websites/forums from one's first internet experience

Lego.com, anyone? So much time spent on those internet-games...the Mata Nui point and click adventure in particular was absolutely breathtaking to me when I was a kid.

TOW?

The Other Wiki aka Wikipedia.

This was my first foruming experience. Now I'm a member of the old guard on that forum. Only one I've been on.

Which has me saying that you guys should really go over there and join the forums. We need more regulars.

Lemurian:Yeah, that's how my childhood was too. From there, I found BZPower, which was one of the things that led me to explore more of the internet.

I thought ezone.com and its Lenny series was the best thing when I was 5 or 6.

In hindsight, I ask why.

edited 25th May '12 1:14:26 PM by hnd03

Now as far as my first FORUM goes it has to be here, around December 2011. Yeah, I'm really new and this whole thing confuses me, but I'll get the hang of it.

Well, my first forum was a Harry Potter one called Xauror, I cried when it shut down.

edited 4th Nov '12 6:51:36 PM by ThreeDaysGraceLove

Yahoo Answers! was a big one.

The Bioware Forums before it got real mean was one to.

I actually got a free sticker from Yahoo Answers! at one point, though I lost it. This was back in middle school, though, so this is going, geez, 6 or 7 years back?

I still frequent my first chatroom. It's maybe the last safe chat-haven on the internet outside of IRC.

And it's my secret

Neopets. Sadly they change a bit too much since then :<

Wikipedia, Bob's Animal Fights, and Newgrounds.

edited 5th Nov '12 1:18:52 AM by eternalNoob

Screw Attack. I could go on for ages about that place. I'm still somewhat sorta active in that community, to a minimum degree, though I've pretty much left the place for good. Though it was the first community oriented site I ever joined, though.

edited 5th Nov '12 3:08:25 AM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

The Neoseeker forums. I still frequent one of the forums there, just not nearly as often as I used too.

I seem to see a lot of people talking about the Neoseeker forums, but I've never known what Neoseeker is.

It's pretty much an alternate Game FA Qs from what I've seen.

The Serebii.net forums when I was in middle school. First website I ever joined. It still exists, but I don't think any of the "famous" members from my time still go there.

I don't really have much nostalgia for it, because looking back the people there were kinda pathetic. There were a ton of character fangirls/fanboys. Ash was one of the most popular targets, which is kind of baffling to me. And there was this one person who would pick a series, character, or crack pairing, obsess over it for months, and then drop it and start obsessing over something else. And don't get me started on all those awful sprite comics...

OK, maybe there is a bit of nostalgia involved. But most of it isn't really the positive kind.

That said, I ended up playing Skies Of Arcadia because of hearing people talk about it, and I ended up loving it to pieces. That, and there were a few good fanfics I found there. One of these days, I'll have to look up Quest for the Legends and see if it's as good as I remember it...and for that matter, if the author ever stopped revising long enough to actually finish it.

Webkinz. I kind of lost interest in it, but it was fun while it lasted.

I remember Serebii, but I never joined the forums (mostly due to not having known that they had forums for a long time and not really caring when I found out). I did use it for all my Pokemon news for a while, though.

edited 15th Nov '12 8:38:54 PM by 0dd1

So I decided to look at the remains of the old TR's Rockin forum again after seeing a cursory mention of the site on Bulbapedia, and I found this thread. Basically, it's the few remaining people in 2008 trying to figure out a way to breathe life into the forum again, and...well, it's incredibly depressing. Especially since I actually recognize and somewhat remember the names there in that thread.

It's a damn shame. Site used to be one of the biggest in the Pokemon community (at least, in the Pokemon glitch community). After the site was ended (hell, even before then—the site ended in 2011, but the forum and the site apparently broke off from one another in 2008? Wow, it's really been a long time since I was last a regular member there...), the forum completely went to pot. Apparently, the last time anyone's ever posted in any thread there was back in April of 2012. If ever there was an internet ghost town...

edited 15th Jan '13 1:20:19 AM by 0dd1

Lego.com was great. I was obsessed with the early Bionicle stuff: the Mata Nui adventure game, et al. (I was actually able to procure a downloaded copy of that on my computer a few years back. Still great, even though it's quite obviously a Myst derivitive.)

Also, does anyone else remember Joe Cartoon or Amish Donkey? Both really immature and often racist humour sites that I used to visit very frequently with my friend. They were pretty much Meme factories, though. I remember it taking hours trying to load videos on my crap dial-up internet connection. I look back at them now seeing just how dreadful they were, but hey, I was like ten or eleven at the time. I don't know if they still exist, but last time I checked, the latter had not been updated since 2003, or so. Kind of sad...

Then, there was Newgrounds. I discovered that later on, fortunately after I had gotten a better internet connection. They had a bit of everything. It's what got me interested in Flash animation. I would spend days stuck on that site. In fact,I still have an account and I go there quite a bit. There's actually some really good things there.

edited 22nd Jan '13 1:24:23 AM by Ficus

On lego.com there was a game called "spybotics: the nightfall incident" or something. Was BRILLIANT. SO MUCH FUN, AND SO MUCH CHALLENGE. Remains one of the top 5 browser games I've ever played, right up there with fancy pants man and the submachine series.

I actually found it through jayisgames.com, which was a great website. It's still pretty good, imo.

I got an automated "Happy Birthday" e-mail from my first forum. I haven't posted there in at least 5 years.

Anyone remember the Nintendo Power forums? I used to lurk there a long time ago. That's all I ended up doing, though. Never got an account or anything. :P