Where did all the older Escapist users go?

[thenumberthirteen]

2007 FTW!

What are you implying? That I tracked down anyone older than me and secretly packed them into shipping crates? That's just silly! How could I afford a shipping crate?

I rarely see anyone older than me, but they are there. I sort of want them to have a 4 and 5 year badge since I already got the 3 year one.

ah black bird man (i identify people by their avatar) its been a while since i have seen you. what is this 3 year badge you speak of?

The Landmark badge is for 36 months of posting. It's the one with 3 beer glasses.

 

[xitel]

I came here for ZP, signed up out of boredom, and got sucked into the forums.
While I have not posted anywhere near my first year's rate, I'm still around. Just not lately.
A mix of games and not having anything really worth saying in threads has kept me from posting for a while.

But a lot of older users either left of their own volition or got banned.
I haven't seen Ultrajoe, Labby, or a bunch of old guard in a long time.
But I'm sure they're both around.
Somewhere.
I refuse to let my guard down.
[sup]I still fear the bansmop[/sup]

Nah, the oldguard has all but upped and left by now. There's like, two of us on IRC, me and Nuke. The rest pop in from time to time, but other than that they've moved on. Speaking of which, you should get on IRC more.

As for the OP, howdy. I for one spend all my time on IRC rather than the forums, personally. As for where everyone else went, it's already been covered. They moved on, packed up and shipped out, hit the ol' dusty trails. S'what happens. Time passes, people move along. Such is life \o/.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

They moved on.
Got banned.
Still hang around but don't post much.
I ate them all.
They all got pissy about a certain user-group trying to have fun and left. Not really, I'm just joking about this one.

Take your pick.
But there are some still active, you just need to keep an eye open. I know there's a 2004 user lurking around somewhere.

2004? Wasn't that in the dark ages of dial-up/very early unpredictable broadband? Were there even memes back then?

Wait, so I'm an older user? Huh. Guess I have been here for 2 years (dammit, I missed my 2nd birthday). Once Demented Teddy and Furburt got banned, the rest of that group (the core of PRIATE, mostly) just kind of drifted off or ended up with too much real life work(and/or were covertly removed by NNIJA's elite strike teams). The rest of us just kind of get buried in the influx of new users that appear each March. And each Wednesday.

Sassafrass (hi!) and NeonBob are pretty much the only old users I recognise around here anymore...

As for why I came... A friend introduced me to ZP, then I stumbled across the forums. Suspect it's the same for a lot of people around then, since there weren't as many shows here.

 

[easternflame]

I don't know, heaven?

 

[RanD00M]

I came to the Escapist largely for There Will Be Brawl. Around about the time it ended was the time when I stopped posting as frequently. I don't want to sound like one of those pretentious, deluded people that goes on about how everything was better in the past, but the quality of posting here at the Escapist really dropped right around the time Zero Punctuation's popularity boomed. There was a time when this site was known for being the last bastion of intelligent discourse for the gaming community. It's little better than any other gaming forum, nowadays.

Not that the editorials and the magazine itself aren't still great, mind you. It's just that things have changed, and I think a lot of the older users moved on when they realized that.

Yeah gotta agree with you there unknown stranger. The bigger the popularity of Zero Punctuation for, more people joined and the Escapist wasn't as close of a tight knit community like it was. That tight knit community was a lot different from the Escapist of today and the forums were a lot more closed off to new comers, not that they weren't welcome, it's just that inside jokes were many.

 

[Josh123914]

I tend to post much less frequently on the forums these days.

The reason is that snarky, cynical condescension seems to be the most popular form of communication here at the moment and I'm not a fan of that, it doesn't make for good discussion.

Oh the laughs we had at you're videos, oh the countless replies we made to you that you never responded to, then you teamed up with the site and everything was great BUT, then Bioware approached you and the honeymoon was over, now you have HUNDREDS of thousands of supporters (I don't know if you've went on those forums but loads of people has petitions wanting you're Dragon Age/ Mass Effect songs on that little radio-clock..... thing up in the Normandy's cabin)

Good times.

 

[Jonluw]

They're either banned, have run to the forum games and user groups, or have left for Furburt's forum.

Oh right, discussion thingy.
I came over here back in 2007 when I found a link to the zp review of halo 3.
After three years of secretly watching you guys discuss stuff like some creepy Edward Cullen type, I signed up for an account.

 

[Scrythe]

How old is old? I don't really consider myself "old" as far as this site is concerned.

I would have left long ago after a ton of very bad decisions made by The Escapist over the years, but one of the two main reasons why I stick around is the awesome community.

The other reason? Where the fuck else am I going to get good gaming news? IGN? Joystiq? Blistered Thumbs?

Spoiler: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

On the good side, this site does contain the Holy Trinity of Yahtzee, MovieBob and the LRR crew. And who could forget the awesomeness that was There Will Be Brawl?

On the bad side, this site was responsible for Game Dogs, Doraleous and Associates, Rebecca Mayes Muses and Anthony Saves The World.

On the ugly side, this site is also responsible for Critical Miss, Jimquisition, and the loss of ENN, Top 5 with Lisa Foiles and a certain event I'm sure I'll get banned for mentioning details. Oh, and there was that bit a while back when The Escapist decided overnight "This is a T for Teen rated site, so no cursing everyone!" which really meant "We're banning posts with naughty language and censoring all of our videos except for our cash cow Yahtzee." Luckily this only lasted a couple of weeks.

 

[countrysteaksauce]

Didn't most of them get banned for one reason or another? Nothing like a good purge every now and then.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Oh the laughs we had at you're videos, oh the countless replies we made to you that you never responded to,

I do my best to respond to everyone who messages me on this site. If I didn't respond to you at some stage it was probably because I didn't see it.

 

[GideonB]

I've been here a few years (hell that picture is from a few years ago, I have a beard now and I stopped eating blackberry phones and started eating real blackberries)

I came here for ZP and found quality content like all the time
Plus LRR is here now which is even more awesome

 

[Jedamethis]

*snip*

Yes, I'm quite annoyed that I'm not allowed to put the FEAR back into the hearts of users. I recall a time when the very mention of my name struck terror into the hearts of thousands.

Now my exploits seem forgotten, unrecognised for the glory that they were.

Uh. I know of your expolits, but I haven't yet endeared myself to anybody who'd tell me.
...

Spoiler: Hello there. :3

I make an effort to come into OT

On topic: We're around, we're just flirting with the staff not as hip as you new kids.

That explains alot. o. o

OT: 'tis NO. INCORRECT. *SLAPS* happens every year really. People get bored, get banned either via request or by Law, disappear into the RP Forums etc etc.

>.>
<.<

 

[Irridium]

Something I recently became aware of was the lack of older Escapist users on the forums. That's not to say they're not there, but they appear rarely. In 90% of the threads I enter, 20% are 2011, 30% are 2010, 20% are 2009, 10% are 2008 and the rest are older.
Obviously I welcome every newcomer. I'm not even that old. All I saying is it seems really odd. Where did everybody go? Was there an exodus with extra cedits that I missed? Because I feel sort of lonely these days...
To make this discussion worthy, post why you came to the Escapist. For me it was Unforgotten Realms, before it was shit.

They got bored, got banned, or became admins, for the most part.

The forum health bar did indeed contribute, but most had dropped off before it was implemented. Ultrajoe still posts occasionally (although I've not seen her in a while), LaCoil, Anarchemitis, TheRootOfAllEvil... There's a few others. I remember when Furburt and Teddy and that lot were the newbies and there was a big furore over how post count seemed to denote superiority rather than time invested in the forums. That made some of the members inexplicably angry. Although it was before the usergroups were implemented, where post counts of more than 4000-or-so were rare. Now ever little two-character smiley you post in a usergroup counts.

The only things that keep me here now are, really:

1) The Religion and Politics forum, because I don't have anyone prepared to talk about that stuff irl.

2) All those usergroups I've founded as part of the general PC group. The TF2 one being the main one. I used to be much more active in that but since delegation I've been letting others basically run it for me (and they do it very well, I must say). I can't just *leave* though. I'm friends with too many of them now.

You need to play more TF2!

 

[Worgen]

The ultimate fate of all users on these forums is banning, the stupid health bar really needs to go up every month or 2 instead of 6 months.

 

[Irridium]

Swollen Goat

Swollen and I had good times. I still miss the guy.

Same. We'd have the best of fun derailing threads together.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Same. We'd have the best of fun derailing threads together.

I remember Swollen Goat too, that dude was fun.

 

[Irridium]

Why, they died 10 years ago.

If you ever die, I'll kill you. YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME!

 

[Josh123914]

Oh the laughs we had at you're videos, oh the countless replies we made to you that you never responded to,

I do my best to respond to everyone who messages me on this site. If I didn't respond to you at some stage it was probably because I didn't see it.

relax, every notable poster on the site misses SOME replies

 

[trooper6]

My Join date says 2008, but I have been here since the beginning...i.e. when The Escapist was still going for New Games Journalism...before Yahtzee and the forums and all of that. I held off joining the forums for a while...because I really wasn't all that interested in them. I ended up joining for some random reason.

I've was involved in the forums more heavily for a while...but I've been less interested more recently because the forums have, it seems to me, become heavily populated by a lot of really sexist and transphobic posters. Which I'm just not interested in all of that over and over.

The loss of female and progressive voices in the creators of the source content has made the features generally less interesting and more encouraging of hostile posting behavior, in my opinion.

So I'm an older escapist...I don't have any problem with the health bar on my end--because I don't tend to insult people. But I've found that the community itself is more belligerent, hostile, and problematic than it used to be...which makes me less likely to participate.