Tell your forum story!
I thought it would be neat to hear people talk about the stories of their forum experience. I would prefer if people were more serious about this and not say things like "I am a lord of chaos." or "I am a mummie who loves cauliflower." (Not to pick on specific individuals, those were just the first two examples to come to mind. I swear!) or whatever the case may be. I have a few example questions to give you an idea as to what I am looking for but feel free to tell your story however you see fit.
Why did you join the forum? What did you do when you first joined? What, if any, were the turning points of your forum story? What is your favorite thing about being a member of the forum? What other members were important to your forum story? What was your best experience on the forums? What do you think now, looking back on your forum history?
Why did you join the forum? What did you do when you first joined? What, if any, were the turning points of your forum story? What is your favorite thing about being a member of the forum? What other members were important to your forum story? What was your best experience on the forums? What do you think now, looking back on your forum history?
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I still remember in the early days we had a very active member, Bhaaldog. Unfortunately, Bhaaldog is no longer with us after abusing the feedback system using multiple accounts, which I find strange that they would do. The posts they made were funny or insightful, and I almost always gave a feedback to them. I even made a joke thread about how to earn likes and listed as the most important thing to "be Bhaaldog".
After BGEE's release, I then used my EE character in vanilla BG2. I had ascension installed, and had to ask for help again. I made it to the final battle, where I had to give in to that last battle. I still wished to see the ending so I cheated through the battle. After BG2EE's release, however, I made another attempt at it, along with SCS and insane difficulty. It might seem overboard to do that after failing the first time, but I actually succeeded using all the knowledge I learned from you guys! It was my best forum and game experience that I had all that help to get me through such a challenging experience.
Over my past I've been on and off. During my Mass Effect 3 depression I actually spent a lot of time here just to talk to people about something else. In fact this forum came at a good time, as it came just a few months after ME3's release. During my ESO time I was away a few months playing that very seriously. Luckily I play few MMOs so I had nothing to compare to, so let's not talk about whether somebody thinks that is a good game or not because I was just happy to play with friends in nirn. There have been some other on and offs as well, with me usually being most active when I am actually playing BG. I am not currently, and thus pretty much stick to off topic, every once in a while looking elsewhere when it is slow. That said I also have my active MP game so BG is a fresh topic as I play once a week in that. I look forward to continuing to stop by here in such a friendly community. Never have I seen such a tame community before. It is very mature here, and I like that I can talk about anything without a heated argument
I've just always been a fan of Baldur's Gate. I mean, there are other things I really like as well, games, movies, TV shows, books, but BG is actually the only 'fandom' I've ever bothered to participate in at all. I've written some fanfic, although not walkthrough type fanfic as I tend to get bored of those very quickly (writing them, that is), although I have a habit of leaving a lot of fanfic ideas unfinished. Hopefully that won't be the case with my mods, which is what I'm into now and was an area I never really took much interest in before. I also used to make poser images of characters after I discovered an old version of that software... haven't done that for a while. Might actually be able to make them look good now.
When I joined, I started posting things. I'm no good at introducing myself or the whole social interaction thing. Or smilies... never gotten the hang of those. What's the emoticon for reticent anyway?
Looking back... should probably have spent less time getting annoyed at the same stuff about Aerie over and over again, and more time doing things I actually enjoy doing.
So there was a turning point when I decided I was going to stop writing fanfic (partly because I want to spend more time writing stuff that isn't fanfic), but then I decided to look into writing mods instead. I've written three so far... two are ongoing projects so it's hard to say if they'll ever really be finished.
Tenya is mostly done, since I wanted it to be a smallish mod and not one that would too much overshadow other NPC's in BG1. My Aerie mod is moving along much more slowly because I have so many ideas that I have to cut stuff that would be too complicated and not feasible to do on my own anyway, and I was only looking for ideas and suggestions to start with but then immediately felt pressured into releasing something. But because I rushed I've had to redraft the things several times. But it is getting there.
As for how I discovered Planetbaldursgate in the first place...I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure I had a legitimate question at first, but then it was just for the fun, and the drama, of it - and god, was there drama!! XD Sadly, the drama seems to be somewhat less here, because we're all too mature and sensible to start random conflicts about stuff, or do crazy stuff that gets everybody taking sides and rattling their sabres at each other...call yourselves an internet community???
So naturally when I started playing the game, I had a bucketload of questions... Google search was my best friend for a long time, but the destination was always the same: forum.baldursgate.com. I found answers to questions here that I never would have found anywhere else. Eventually I kept visiting and lurking so often that I just decided to screw it and join.
After that, I posted questions here and there and got responses, but I didn't really come into my own until I shared a bunch of Firefly-Baldur's Gate memes in the meme thread. XD Turns out I'd found some good company--everyone else liked Firefly too! Since then, I've become more outgoing and confident in my forum-writing (although I still lurk a lot and grant very generous likes and agrees
IRT topic;
Saw the original announcement, saw the site had its own forum in June, joined to jump on board the hype train, been hanging around ever since, though not so much recently.
Typically for me, I discussed and argued with people here.There were joyful times here, there were also times when I was utterly disappointed in Enhanced Edition thing. Ultimately, I've decided that it will never be where I would like it to be, so I stopped being angry at the developers. My stress was not worth it.
Still Baldur's Gate is one of my most favourite series and there is no better place for getting info about it than this forum.
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>.>
OK... I'll try to tell something (if I am able to remember) and be funny at the same time.
DISCLAIMER AND WARNING: THIS POST WAS NOT WRITTEN IN ORDER AND MIGHT BE REDUNDANT, OFFENSIVE, OBTUSE AND EVEN WIELDING A SWORD (I've tried to avoid this, but managing posts it's hard when they're big and you have so many... Oh well) OR A PICKAXE.
OK... I don't remember much... I think I became active around an year an 2 months ago... It all started because @Anduin's poor taste in headgear (xD), or maybe I started posting before that... I think I joined because of the meme thread... Or I started reading the meme thread because I had joined? I can't remember anything ;p
For a long time in 2014 I helped in the bugs section, helping people with bugs, fixing them and posting the fix, finding hotfixes and such. Now I've stopped doing so because I started modding and programming more, and @Gate70, @Troodon80 and sometimes Tresset (when he's around) are much better at it (and less lazy, too I suppose). The best time I had with these bug-reporting maniacs (me too, so I can't say much) was before BG:EE's patch 1.3 was released and we spent a good time crashing other people's games (others had fun booting out people, others had fun being booted... As a resume, I could say everyone had fun!) and managing to ``play'' (actually abusing of CTRL+R so our host didn't die from a bunch of skeletons (or Mustard Jellies somebody wanted to pet, but actually made them kill us... Several times), but it was great) without crashing. It was the only time I played with other 5 people (yup, we were 6 in total and I had terrible luck... I was Khalid, and later got struct by lightning and even got accidentally kicked from the session, but well, that made it funnier to tell now, lol).
Also, I've posted a lot of mods that came up as ideas or jokes made in the forums... Some are pretty cool (a mod that randomizes your BG1 items in BG2, as if Irenicus had taken them from you and sold 'em, the idea was @Anduin's IIRC), but others are plain crap. This also encircles me giving random high-level modding advice (opcodes #109 and #175 are the same, but #185 can't be cured with #162 and thus should me avoided IMO) to people whom don't even understand, making (so far one) guides for Enhanced-Edition-specific stuff and helping people with it's new externalization features in general. Most of the mods I made never saw the light, they're fairly incomplete and only in my hard drive (some are also on my github account).
Long time ago, some people (I think it was @Dragonspear, @Anduin or maybe someone else, I think that @Corvino too, @Quartz for sure...) wanted to make a multi-class, multi-idk, multiplayer multi-goofs run and it got me hooked (I think @meagloth also wanted to join, but back then iPad had another version, lol). We could never plan anything, nor the party, nor when to play (anyway, I had decided which portrait to use anyway xD), and it sort-of broke up, since @Dragonspear couldn't get along due the lack of time. So (I think it started this way) I told @Quartz he could MP a bit if he wanted, and then we started an MP run where we spent 50% of the time commenting on a mod NPC we're making (he writes and designs, I give random ideas, and put the things to work in the game) and on werebears (and sometimes other jokes and nitpicks too) and the rest of the time suffering of the slow walking speed while looking at the screen like typical BG players (with a bit of lag sometimes, damned bad internet connection!).
I could say the best people I've come around with in the forum are @Tresset, @Metalloman, @Jepatrienosaksen (some might not have heard 'bout him, but we speak a lot in PMs from time to time), @booinyoureyes, @Troodon80 and probably a lot more people I am either forgetting due to my bad memory or just being thinking about something else. I think I am forgetting so much people that I shouldn't post this... It's a shame... Anyway...
To all the people I've missed in this post (or just as a mention here in the last paragraph): Sorry, and I should use my memory for something else than programming, maths and WeiDU,
luv, Crevs Daak (High Lord of Chaos).
I do remember tho that I started modding back then (not when I joined... I dunno why I joined in the first place) in October 2013... And I created a mod that changed all the Monks in Candlekeep by Beholders, which later @LiamEsler WeiDU-ified for me. From then I got interested in WeiDU and baf-scripting (the Infinity engine's uncompiled scripts), and later on in programming. Around May, I showed my interest in the C family of programming languages and @FinneousPJ told me I should use K&R (The C Programming Language, 2nd Ed., great book, not for complete beginners tho, you'll need to know a bit about computers and using a Terminal), I've read part of the book, but before I could finish it I started modding more and more, and sort-of abandoned programming. Later I got back to programming, and read the whole book. I had read lots of manuals from other languages (C++, Perl, Emacs Lisp, Prolog and Objective-C) through never finished anything, and having used WeiDU for a long time, programming C was rather easy.
I am still a huge fan of the games and have played all three EE versions through (despite being a pretty horrible player overall) and I generally hang out now simply because I like the community. I still plan on going back and obsessing all over again, but just for the moment I am quite happy just lurking here and contributing in my own inimitable style.
Lurking.
At the start, I used the international section of the forum to mainly ask questions. I tried to comment only on the things I knew the most about BG. The majority of my earliest comments were in the Russian section of the forum. But quickly I realised that discussing almost anything there ends in flaming. I could see a strange detail: while nearly almost any international thread I read was generally polite and seemed like a welcome place, the Russian section was a flamefest and a place where nearly everything ended in a dispute with using a strong language. The usual theme of such discussions was the negativity regarding the EEs.
This is how I permanently moved to the international section. Here I was a big fan of @Tanthalas and @Oxford_Guy - these people seemed to be nearly everywhere and comment nearly on everything.
I used to post about 1-2 comments a day. But the generally pleasant atmosphere of the forum was so nice that I wanted to contribute more. The examples of @Samus , @Eudaemonium and @KidCarnival showed that people could be so funny and yet insightful in the same time. Majorly these people were an example of what now I can call "the soul of the forum".
It was (and still is) an honour to listen to @elminster and @Quartz . I had a great respect for both of them and still do. The level of transparency and honesty their posts had taught me a lot. On their example I saw and understood how important it was to be honest in your views and how much effort you had to put into your forum posts.
I started to comment more, at the rate of 3-4 comments a day. It was a dark time in terms of Beamdog, with their problems with Atari. My posts from that period often involved some legal information, my professional view on the bankruptcy of Atari and the copyrights system. They were greatly met by forum members and brought me first portions of reactions.
Then the time of @booinyoureyes and @CrevsDaak came. I still remember @meagloth 's words " I used to be a leader once but then Boo and Crevs came". This was when I discovered the Activity page and understood all the fun it brings. Boo's and Crevs's humour was everywhere. I saw the points charts for the first time. This is when I took part in @Lemernis 's random no-reload competitions. Lemernis was a man that showed me the real treasure of documenting your runs, of the no-reload approach, of sharing your experience with others.
@BelgarathMTH then gave me maybe the best possible advice I could ever get here that I have to react to other people's posts in order to show I read them and I appreciate them.
In the same time, people like Boo and @jackjack told me I have to post more here. It was so pleasant to see my comments mean something. My English improved with every post and I already started to feel the supermassive black hole of the forum.
Although I didn't post in the Russian section, I still read it. And it so happened that an unbelievable even for that section flame war started. It was a pain to see so much hate for Beamdog there and in the same it was disgusting to read how people call names and attack each other in person. @Anton , a moderator of that section, was away for a while, and somebody had to end that. This is how I became a moderator, of which I will be always grateful to @Dee .
Becoming a moderator, I quickly felt the addition responsibility and the need to become more active here. I saw what @Tresset , who became a moderator exactly the same time as I, was doing. I learned a lot from him.
Now I'm happy to call @mlnevese , @Metalloman and @Heindrich my friends. They helped me a lot to settle in the new role and from time to time we speak with each other in PMs and even through emails.
I tried (and still trying) to keep my promise I gave to @Quartz and other forumites that no matter what rights I get here, I would always stay myself.
I started to post more and gradually went on reading nearly everything on the forum, trying to gather as much information about people here as much as I could so that I could get acquainted with with all of the forumites, know them better.
Now, I face the moving between countries and as soon as it happens, I think I won't be able to be here as much as I do now. But before it happens, I try to do my best in participating in discussions and sharing stories with all of you.
But hopefully, soon I'll enjoy the sun, the warm wind, the sea, the economy without restrictions.
EDIT: Why so many reactions, lol?
Later on, I realised that the local forumites are generally quite amusing, so I ended up frequently visiting the off-topic section for lulz and interesting stuff. That's pretty much it.
I've really warmed up to you guys since then, cracking jokes, doing crazy stuff, that sort of thing. I was eventually encouraged by @Blackraven to share my own fictional story, which I have been really serious about completing. I never would have shared anything so personal if you guys weren't so welcoming. Thank you all for being so great.
Lastly, I want to thank @bengoshi, @lolien, @kcwise, @CrevsDaak, @Nonnahswriter, @Blackraven, @booinyoureyes, @wubble, and @elminster for being good friends and helpful posters. This entire forum deserves a
I was on the forum back then, but an accident, operation and such, left me out of things for a while. The day I returned, I could not find my old password and such and was still to sick to bother trying to find them. So I just made a new account and have used that one ever since.
I don’t normally post much on other forums. It is only because of the mature and respectful nature of this one that I have stayed active here. Thank you, to everyone here for keeping this forum the rare gem it is.
Anyway my story is as follows. I'm an oldtimer when it comes to the game, started playing it way back in 1999. In 2012 I downloaded digital copies of BG, modded my install for the first time, and started playing again after years of no gaming whatsoever. (Note that I'm not a gamer really, I just love BG - the only other game I care about but find less replayable is Dragon Age).
I was naturally enthusiastic about the announced introduction of the EEs, so in October 2012 I made a forum account, though with the exception of one comment I just lurked around. In 2013 I actually played and lurked a lot less. Was a good year for me, in which I occupied myself with other things, mostly art/drawing, and some nice traveling. But then a bit more than a year ago, my art studies came to an abrupt end (due to the art school closing and me being too insecure about my creative talent to pursue the visual arts elsewhere). I started working more (teaching English), and in my free time I started playing again, no-reload. That was such a revelation for me and so much fun, that I wanted to share those experiences with others. It resulted in me starting to post my no-reload adventures on these forums. Initially they were quite detailed, narrated accounts, like stories. [Edit: I still like creative writing as a creative outlet, but:] Recent journals have been less colorful, focusing less on the stories and more on gameplay. This is because of time constraints (I started to work more in the course of last year and to do more physical exercise) and because I got a bit tired of having to tell the same story in a different way each time a new character left Candlekeep.
I've never been involved with BG for such a long time as the past twelve months (with only one break in June-August I think). It's something I attribute to becoming part of this great community. I think I connect the most with the people who like me love sharing and reading narrated, entertaining and/or challenging playthroughs. Friends like @Elrandir, @Ravenslight, @JLee, @CrevsDaak, @MacHurto, @bengoshi, @DreadKhan, @BelgarathMTH, @Gotural, @lunar, @Eadwyn_G8keeper, @LordRumfish, @Nimran, @kcwise, @Dungeonnoob, @Nonnahswriter, @lolien, @SionIV, @rufus_hobart, and more recently @Musigny, @Tidus, @Scourge, @Grum, and @semiticgod deserve a shout out here. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone hehe.
Some of these people, and others such as @booinyoureyes, @elminster, @FinneousPJ, @anduin, @shandyr, @Kamigoroshi, @jackjack, @jacobtan etc have brought other things to the forums, be it humor, in-depth knowledge of the game mechanics, interesting off-topic conversation, or ways of bringing forumites closer together. All very commendable activity, for which I'm thankful.
Anyway, I'll post something here for sure in the next future, when I'll have enough time to think about the whole.
Meanwhile: bookmarked! ;D