Online Communities – QoTW #7

Question: What was your first experience with online communities?
Short description: Describe the first online community (forum/message board, blogging site, etc) you were a member of. What kind of role did you have there, and how did this affect your perspective of the Internet?

The first community I was a part of was Neopets in grade three. (May 2003) However, I signed up as my age, and therefore, I was never able to be a part of NeoMail. Even now, although I am over an age of 13, I still don't understand the NeoMail. It fails. This was my first community, but I don't really consider it one.

So truly, my first one was RuneScape. In grade 4, I was introduced to RuneScape by a classmate named Allan Zhang. (He's short.) Anyways, it was fun. I didn't understand the game mechanics that well though, since it was my first MMORPG, and the world was overwhelming. I actually got scammed; I apparently sold an uncut sapphire for -25 gold. I didn't even realize what happened back then though. Only a year ago did I remember this incident and realize what happened. Anyways, I found this was fun, but did not really partake in any conversation, except with my friend, Allan Zhang. So I decided to introduce this game to others. I introduced this game to someone you know as Ganzicus, and a friend of mine named Alexander Tong. Up until today, I am terrible with MMORPGs. I have no patience and do things very slowly. However, in the past few years, my patience and determination has grown astronomically. In the 4 years that I played on my first account, Lord Isaac1, I barely achieved anything. How do I know? I remade Lord Isaac1 as Arladerus, transferred all the items (a few weeks before the trade limit. I drop transferred it, actually.) and got to the level of Lord Isaac1 within 2 months. Now THAT'S an epic failure. RuneScape has been with me from grade 4 to 9. My play time depends on my mood, but in general, when I decide to play again, my character grows quite a bit in the few months. Although I barely play other than these few months, I still will not renounce being a part of the RuneScape community. Since I didn't talk with the people other than my friends on RuneScape much, I never realized until recently how poor the RuneScape community is.

The second community I was a part of is MapleStory. I played in grade 5. I joined when MapleStory was still in Beta Testing. The community was kind and open. 3 months later, it was official. Back then, the terms were BMS and OMS. But instead of OMS, people use GMS now. Anyways, I was quite content that MapleStory was released. My friends, who couldn't join due to Closed Beta, were finally able to play. Also, their servers were much better, and there wasn't any loot delay. However, imagine this: You have an apple. If you polish it, it will look beautiful and appealing. However, no matter how much you polish it, the apple will still be ugly if you vomit on it, with your stomach acid burning it down. That's basically what happened with GMS. Very quickly, selfish people joined the game, hoo tok leik diz nd al dey do iz azk 4 teh mez0rz pl0x. But I still had friends who played, which kept me going. After a few years, my friends stopped playing MapleStory. There was nothing else to explore; nothing else to do except grind grind grind. And I DO NOT LIKE GRINDING, unless it's a girl sitting on you.

MapleStory wasn't all that bad though. Because of it, Ganzicus found his way to MMOTales.com, and introduced it to me. I joined this site, as it interested me; I was never part of a blogging site like this before. A forum, yes, but not a blog site. Following in Ganzicus's footsteps, I made a simple 2 panel comic, which was based on the Schrödinger's cat theory. I was extremely happy when I found that my comics had neutral or positive comments, unlike how BasilMarket is like. So I decided to stay. In the first week, I submitted a crapload of comics. I built a pattern and a style that I use up until today. I didn't only make comics though. I also made a few stories (which sucked) and blogs (which sucked, since I couldn't make them long enough). Ah, good times…

Then the site was shut down.

I forgot to mention GunZ Online. The community was always bad, and never got better. I played that in grade 6, as my cousin introduced it to me. I was able to K-Style very well before I quit.

In grade 7, I played RebirthRO. Ganzicus introduced it to me. I was quite loyal to RebirthRO, and even introduced it to a few people. My clone, Kevin Chang, still plays it up to this day. (But he's a noob and calls it "Rebirth-Roe".) Jonathan went off to NiktoutRO, which I objected at first because of the extremely high rates. But then I decided to join and play. And that's the story of how Ragnarok Online got ruined for me. =D

In grade 8, Ganzicus introduced me to WoW private servers. (Or was it the end of grade 7?) I played on a server that was very lag-free, but had almost no people playing in it. (What was the name of it?? O_o) Then, Jonathan went to MirandasWoW. I joined as well. The rates were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher compared to the first one I played. Also, it a server with a lot of custom instances, which I liked. However, the very week I joined, they decided to wipe all the characters because of some bug. They also remade the training grounds (but SDS and all the other custom instances were still there). It got boring though, because I felt like I didn't level fast enough, which is totally ironic. So I quit.

Now it's grade 9. Bryan, our trusted administrator and webmaster has remade MMOTales for us, which we voted in the title VuTales, named after Vusys. IT IS AWESOME.

THE END.