What was your first forum before the technodrome?
 

Just asking

I don't really want to say my first forum

Hentai Foundry

IGN when the boards opened in 2000. Been on IGN since 1997 during the N64.com days, but they didn't have message boards till the year 2000. Hard to believe there was once a time even message boards didn't exist for a gaming site.

I was only 12 years old back then too. Mostly posted on the N64 or Pokemon board, then IGN community board when I tried to become a 13 year old mod. Those were the days.

Some videogame forum which no longer exists and whose name I've forgotten. This was back in 2001 or so already.

IGN was my 2nd one. Joined it in 2004 and was mostly active there from 2004 to 2006 or so. IGN Boards are still around, but they're a former shell of themselves these days.

I was 14 when I joined IGN. I mostly posted in the Ninja Turtles and wrestling boards. The SmackDown board was the most popular IGN forum after the vestibule. Back then IGN had boards for nearly every big enough property.

The fall of IGN's boards began in 2009 or so when they made a board update that forced people to log in with their e-mail instead of their username from then on. People need to remember that a lot of the big IGN users had 2000-2007 accounts, which was before everyone simply used gmail. A lot of people used hotmail, outlook, yahoo or other providers. Hell ISP e-mail accounts used ot be a thing! Which means a lot of people either no longer remembered which e-mail they had associated their account with or just could no longer access it. Plus, a lot of people loved IGN Insider. Crazy to think you used to have to buy a subscription to be able to quote, post thumbnails, URLs, have avatars/icons, etc. but IGN made a lot of money with that back then.

I think the only IGN forum that's still active nowadays is The Vestibule. And it turned into a place full of political arguments and arguments about social issues and such in the past 4-5 years or so.

I joined a Bionicle board when that was in its greatest height. Had to do it with "parent permission" because I was that young (I was in...fourth grade, maybe?) and my mom talking to a mod/admin about how many other elementary-school aged kids were on the board. And was assured it was pretty common.

All the ones where I really started to plant my internet roots were in Invisionfree boards...and that's pretty much gone under.

This was my first forum.

Drome's my first also.

www.dune2k.com I think.

While I knew of Serebii, Gamefaqs and IGN beforehand, this was the first forum that I actually joined.

I think this was my first.

I think an old site called toonzone might have been one of the first. I'm pretty sure that was the name and I think it's still around. also HT Forum.

have not been to either in years.

Technodrome and He-man.org are two of my oldest though...way back in 2002.
Thinking of giving up the latter..it's getting too woke and politically sensational.

I can't remember, especially if you count those early bulletin boards of the mid/late 90s which were the predecessors to what evolved as forums.

Enix.com, Rave-3.com, ign were all early forums I was a big part of back in 1999/2000

As I said IGN, but I think my history went like this:

IGN in 2000 for all gaming stuff
Toonzone in 2004 for discussion about the Bruce Timm DCAU mainly
The technodrome here for TMNT in 2004
Serebii in 2004 for Pokemon
Bulbagarden in 2005 for the same reason
Gamefaqs I always read for faqs/cheats, but didn't make an account on the forums till 2015
Smash boards in 2013 (yes, THAT Smashboards)
Kazenshuu in 2015 when Dragonball Super started
TVtropes around 2015
reddit around 2014-2015 or so
Rangerboard in 2012


There's also various other forums I have accounts on but only stuck around 3-6 months on and left. Mostly for "stealth lurk" purposes as I would find people across multiple sites.

I am now spreading my influence all over social media and discord, educating people on things that need to be educated.

Man, I wasn't kidding when I said I'm on around 15 different forums and social media sites online. I've probably forgotten some too. I'm everywhere on the internet.

The first forum I joined was GameFAQs in 2002 when I was 15 or 16, though I was a lurker there since 2000. I had tried registering in 2000 but it wouldn’t work for some reason. Maybe because the registration process wasn’t compatible with the Dreamcast internet browser which was my sole way of accessing the internet not counting IT class until I got a computer in 2002.

full list of forums I was active in?
forums.enix.com from like 99 until 2001 when they merged with Square
IGN from 99 until they started charging for avatars on forums with Nsider (circa 2001)
Rave-3 gaming forum that replaced the Nsider forum with NOA people 2000-2002
ToonZone during the DCAU/Teen Titans days when it was active 2004-2008
Serebii 2001, 2004, never very active there, usually just to get spoiled on the anime
Pokemonelite2000/Pokecommunity-2004-2005 being angsty to mostly little kids/furries
bulbagarden - for a bit in 2006 when I used to write for them
technodrome - 2004-present, only semi active when new DVDs of the OT came out, more active after 2009
Jurassic Park Legacy 2000's
JPToys 2000s
LoudForum - a forum about music 2002-2007
Korn Forums - 2001-2007
rangerboard 2005-2008 I talked plenty of power rangers there
ranger central 2006-2010, i think that was what it was called
Sonic HQ forums 1999-2002, back before I knew how deep the rabbithole of Sonic fandom went
NeoGaF -2006 -2014 before it went to hell with extreme left users
Reset era since it began until now, because I hate myself

Can't believe I never joined/read Gamefaqs, always seemed like a trashy place to me but everyone seems to have been there in one way or another.

But besides those i've joined plenty of smaller forums i've forgotten about like the Mighty Max Archives, a Thundercats forum, Astro Boy forums, saint seiya, nintendo forums etc where I posted like a few times before forgetting they existed

You don't even like power rangers, why? leave rangerboard, leave it alone :lol:

Icq
 

I used to chat international sometimes by the late-1990's, using the ICQ.

Why not? I am sure that you have grown since then in maturity.

Oh gosh, I don't even recall. Assuming I correctly recall a simple style of forums or similar existing in the early/mid-90s, pretty sure I mildly participated a little in a few, but not enough to really remember what they were. I mean, it's been 20+ years... At that age they may have been celebrity and genealogy related, with a few other random topics in between.

The first one I was notably active on however, and was one of the few that have been "home" to me online (the 'drome is home at present, btw), was a small Native one, with a mix of good people, both Native and not, who I will be forever grateful for tolerating and accepting 20-something me (as most of them were older) at a young adult age that can still be kind of annoying in hindsight (:toops:), and during a period of hard grief and I really needed something else to put my mind on and keep it together. What led me there initially was related to trying to turn my attention back to my interest in genealogy, but I found something else there.

They have no idea how much they taught me and helped me grow. Not only did they (the Native members) help steer me away from being one of those white people clinging to really lame ideas/views about Native people, etc and understand certain stupid dynamics and whatnot in this society, but they (various members) also patiently helped me grow up more, both personally and online. Oh, I used to get involved in flame wars, you better believe it, but I credit that group of people with providing a better example.

I still wonder what became of many of them. Wouldn't doubt that some of the older ones that also spoke in email and had met are probably still in touch, but much of the group eventually wandered off.

I still have the bookmark and looks like a few of the guys still post once in a great while, the same few I saw last I looked in a while back... Been a long time. If I can remember my login maybe I'll stop in and say hi.



After that one and just before this one... I'd got to playing a couple of MMOs a bit and ended up on MMO Champion for a time, posting to a light/moderate extent. Not the friendliest atmosphere (hell, that place makes this one look pretty tame) and I was a private server user for my primary game so once they were a couple of expansions ahead of what I was playing I couldn't really relate to much of the conversations anymore so there was less for me to talk about anyhow so I eventually stopped visiting.

Mine was Marvel.com. Started posting there in 2000/2001, (don't remember exactly) and stayed until they removed their forums to another site around 2007/08. Which, coincidentally, was around the time that BND started up in the Spider-Man comics. I also joined Candlekeep and Chosen of Eilistraee around 2002, both for D&D/Forgotten Realms news and lore.

Goodbye, Super Goku.