What was your first forum or online community?

[-Sentinel-]

Or at least, the first one that truly mattered to you?

Mine was GameFAQs, especially the Breath of Fire III sub-forum (and later the Morrowind forum). I must have first joined around 2002, at the age of 13. Haven't been there since... maybe like 2005-2006.

My early days at GameFAQs were the first time in my life that I regularly communicated in English. Of course, my English was rather poor at the time; I would rather not see my old posts ever again!

[flat_footed]

Barroks Tower for me! Lots of good memories from there.

[JoshL]

I am old, so I played around with some newsgroups and BBS back in the day. But where it really clicked for me was e-mail discussion lists for bands. In particular, the list for Australian band The Church (Seance) and the Legendary Pink Dots (cloud-zero). Discovered all sorts of new music, traded tapes and wrote letters with friends, a few of whom were my first online turned IRL friends.

[Imbalance]

Or at least, the first one that truly mattered to you?

Mine was GameFAQs, especially the Breath of Fire III sub-forum (and later the Morrowind forum). I must have first joined around 2002, at the age of 13. Haven't been there since... maybe like 2005-2006.

My early days at GameFAQs were the first time in my life that I regularly communicated in English. Of course, my English was rather poor at the time; I would rather not see my old posts ever again!

I was on the Morrowind GOTY forums around then or bit later, but I logged in through Gamespot when they were in that weird era of shared forums. We may have bumped into one another. Long live SR71.

I've forgotten the names of the earliest groups from the C=64 days, but I distinctly remember spending way too much time on AOL and Yahoo chat servers in the mid-late 90's. The toy board on Spawn.com was my first Internet home. It used to be funny in a novel kind of way when I would say to a young person, "I have email older than you." Now it's more "Google, does antique email have any monetary worth?"

[JadedDM]

I'm pretty sure nobody has ever heard of this place, because even when it was still active it only had maybe a dozen active users at any given time, but it was called Atheist and a Notepad. It was basically just a place where atheists could hang out and talk, and it was very important to me growing up, as I lived in Mississippi at the time, so...one can imagine, it was something of a safe space for me.

[DeadMech]

Ah GameFAQs... I was even a moderator there for a bit on a handful of boards. Most notably the N64 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Not a great mod. Broke the hell out of one of the most popular threads in my section trying to use the mod toolset on my first day. And like less than a year later I got bored of the site and just sorta stopped logging in. I started there probably over 25 years ago.

One of the more notable areas of that site I hung out on was the Seiken Densetsu 3 board. I met the people who got me into roleplaying and who eventually made a now defunct message board, Lore of Dreams Untold.

[DarthArminius]

It may have been this one, back in 2004. I remember how happy I was to find this place.

[Algeh]

I spent one summer hanging out in roleplaying chatrooms on Yahoo in the 90s. I lost touch with all of the regulars from there almost immediately when I stopped. My next major hanging-out places were a couple of Mercedes Lackey related email lists and a GURPS email list, which I spent multiple years on before losing interest sometime around 2002.

I also spent a lot of time on a Digimon message board then or slightly later, along with a Brunching Shuttlecocks messageboard. I eventually followed a bunch of people from those places to LiveJournal,, where I hung out for a really, really long time and got way too involved in the site. Once Brad sold LiveJournal I lost interest in that and haven't really had much of an online "home" since.

Now, I basically just hang out here and also on one blog, in terms of where I comment regularly. I read a bunch more places, but I don't really have a close group of "online friends" anymore the way I used to. The rest of my online time is taken up with convention-related fan stuff rather than online fan stuff.

[Rynjin]

SPUF, the old Steam Powered User Forums, before they tore down the community to drive traffic to Steam Discussions. *sigh*

I made a lot of friends there, many of whom I still talk to, but I miss the old community.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Diablo 2 era Battle.net. There was a particular channel on there I frequented (forgot the name) where there were a lot of people that would go there just to hang out and talk.

[JeenLeen]

Megatokyo. Pretty much just it (well over a decade ago, maybe closer to 15 years) and here are the forums I've been active on.

Though mentioning GameFAQs reminds me that there was a nice community on the Koudelka FAQ. I don't remember if I was active there or just enjoyed reading the conversations, but there were some personalities.

[Zevox]

The old Wizards of the Coast boards, circa early or mid 2000s. I first joined when I started getting in D&D Miniatures and saw the website mentioned on one of the boxes. Wound up a regular on different parts of it at different times - the D&D Minis section, then the Forgotten Realms board, then a play-by-post board called the Core Coliseum for a while, then eventually the off-topic (i.e. everything not D&D/WotC related) board.

Then they started screwing with it in strange ways, shut it down for a while in order to change it, and I abandoned ship and came here instead.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

The old WOTC forums...I can't remember the exact dates, but it was before D&D 4th Edition launched.

I remember that in particular because the time period around 4th Edition's launch was eventful for obvious reasons.

It's funny because I got into the forum after my first tentative steps into tabletop roleplaying that never went anywhere, but I stayed because I had gotten so used to being there. Even took part in some character and class design competitions that the posters came up with.

It was after that that I found giantitp, though I think there was some overlap for a time.

[Sholos]

First was the Sluggy Freelance forums. Met some great people there. Then I flipped between there and here.

[Hunter Noventa]

I think it was an old Final Fantasy related message board, Final Fantasy Worlds Apart. No idea if they're still around, but I spent a lot of time there in high school.

[Malphegor]

Probably the old el goonish shive forums. Briefly tried to get into a fairy roleplay where I was to be this serious character in a world that seemed geared to be kinda cutesy. Never got off the ground, but one day, Taeki, the excessively anime spear-wielding fairy, determined to slaughter all of humanity, will be played.

[Lord Torath]

The now-defunct Eastern Fringe Forums, a 40k site mostly devoted to Necromunda and 2nd Edition 40k was my first forum. It also hosted the Deadlands 3000 browser game (also apparently defunct). I had a lot of good times on that board. Got a lot of ideas for my 40k Skirmish campaign game (see my sig) there.

I was also part of the first Battlenet with the original StarCraft game.

Before that I was part of the Alter Aeon MUD, even had a clan (Eadless, named after losing my head to the Headless Horseman) and was a minor god on the building server.

[Manga Shoggoth]

A little thing called (variously) Baron Zemo's Lair/Tales of the Parodyverse. It was a small writers group who grew out of the Avengers message board. We had a shared universe that we wrote stories (of dramatically variable quality) in - frequently playing off each other.

There were a couple of very good writers (at least one of whom went on to publish books in dead tree space), and some quite amazing stories came out of the most trivial things - one of the biggest being a small comment about green-skinned slave girls (a la the Orions in Star Trek) resulting in the author adding a group of nine of them, and a whole series of stories being written around those characters (surprisingly, virtually all of them were about character displacement and culture clash, rather than *ahem* sensual matters).

We all had different styles, different takes on things, and it was mostly a lot of fun while it lasted.

[Mr_Fixler]

Diablo 2 era Battle.net. There was a particular channel on there I frequented (forgot the name) where there were a lot of people that would go there just to hang out and talk.

I was there too and that was going to be my answer! The specific channel was "Town Square". And it was loosely the in character and role play channel.

There were three types of conversations. Normal chatter. "Super cool edgy mc Edgerton walks into the bar and doesn't say anything. He is so cool that everyone keeps their distance". And "173% buriza for 2 SOJ, message me".

Utter amazing chaos.

[Telonius]

AOL chatroom back near the dawn of time (1996-7 or so). It was a freeform RP room called "Realms of Arda." I still keep up with a couple of the players.

[Lord Torath]

You know, before I joined the Eastern Fringe Forums, I had a character on Alter Aeon. This was back in 1996 or so. The creator was actually one of my roommates. I had about 80 levels or so on my character the last time I logged on.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, there were the TSR forums on AOL, which is where I met a lot of folks. That would've been mid-late 90s... 94 or 95, through 98 or so. After that, I'd moved on to the Palladium mailing list (I rewrote the rules, once, as Pope Nexx), some of TSR's Mailing lists (the moderators of the Dragonlance Mailing list tried to give me homework), Ars Magica, etc.

I think my longest continuous membership right now is Dragonsfoot, which I joined 13 years ago. I've been on Palladium since 2001, but took a long hiatus after my book came out. My start here, in 2005? Feels positively recent.

[Lord Torath]

I think my longest continuous membership right now is Dragonsfoot, which I joined 13 years ago. I've been on Palladium since 2001, but took a long hiatus after my book came out. My start here, in 2005? Feels positively recent.

*Does some quick math*

Uh, Mark? 2019 minus 2005 is 14 years. May want to double-check that Dragonsfoot number.

[LibraryOgre]

*Does some quick math*

Uh, Mark? 2019 minus 2005 is 14 years. May want to double-check that Dragonsfoot number.

Meh. Get off my lawn. *shakes cane*

[Willie the Duck]

Like Mark, my longest held current account has to be Dragonsfoot. The oldest forum or the like I remember the name of was the Red Dragon Inn, which was a local Minneapolis/St. Paul BBS using WWIV (Pre version 5, as I remember it was either C or turboPascal, not C++ based) software. Would have been something like 1988-89. Sometime around then I also would have gotten on Usenet, but I can't tell you if it was before or after that.

[Traab]

Everquest Lanys server board. It was one heck of a tight knit community. So tight that we actually policed ourselves. Like, say someone would loot steal. The victim could come to the board, tell their side of the story, the community replies with related info like "Oh yeah he did that to us too" or "him? No way, dude never loots anything!" And if it was determined the ninja looter was guilty, he would be effectively ostracized and nobody would group with him. Which was a serious threat in old school everquest as you pretty much had to group to get anything decent, and the serves were so small you couldnt even roll an alternate character to try again without it being eventually discovered.

[LibraryOgre]

Like Mark, my longest held current account has to be Dragonsfoot. The oldest forum or the like I remember the name of was the Red Dragon Inn, which was a local Minneapolis/St. Paul BBS using WWIV (Pre version 5, as I remember it was either C or turboPascal, not C++ based) software. Would have been something like 1988-89. Sometime around then I also would have gotten on Usenet, but I can't tell you if it was before or after that.

Oh, man, I forgot about TSR's usenet boards.

[Rysto]

Azure Heights Pokemon Laboratory, dedicated to discussion about the original Pokemon Red and Blue games.

[Traab]

Azure Heights Pokemon Laboratory, dedicated to discussion about the original Pokemon Red and Blue games.

You mean like how bulbasaur is clearly the superior choice to beat the game with one pokemon (not counting randos for hm usage)?

[sktarq]

a BBS group focused on teens in California...not that A anyone could tell then B nor was I a teen yet...
probably full of horrible types and was not a great place to learn how "teenagers talk" (odd subset to be sure) but was rather fun.