Old BG Ironworks Forum - any of you remember?
Sharguild
Member Posts: 186
Back when the games came out, we had a very lively and thriving community at the subject website.
Some of the new folk may find it interesting to know that in fact, two mini-bosses in the game were named after some very prolific (and anti-bug helpful) posters to that site while these games were in their growing pains.
One; is Mencar Pebblecrusher, whom you run into in the Den of 7 Veils in SoA - Waukeens Promenade.
The other; is Gromnir, whom you of course meet in ToB - Gromnir's Tower, in Saradush.
Just a bit of trivia to show just how much Bioware cared about their fans.
If you folk are still around, a long due salute to you both!
Some of the new folk may find it interesting to know that in fact, two mini-bosses in the game were named after some very prolific (and anti-bug helpful) posters to that site while these games were in their growing pains.
One; is Mencar Pebblecrusher, whom you run into in the Den of 7 Veils in SoA - Waukeens Promenade.
The other; is Gromnir, whom you of course meet in ToB - Gromnir's Tower, in Saradush.
Just a bit of trivia to show just how much Bioware cared about their fans.
If you folk are still around, a long due salute to you both!
15
Comments
Let's hope it's not permanent. I've been visiting it from time to time and don't want to lose a place that reminds about 2000-2002 years:)
I think Draconis also posted on there and another (hard) mini boss was named after him
The web site is available (again?). Quite ancient. The latest new member was added 2007. The last site update was 2015.
There is a BG2 forum archive. It contains ~100K posts from november 1998 to november 2001.
It was a labor of love - a game made with simple intent of making people happy (or somewhere in that ballpark) about playing a game - hence the resoundingly positive response.
At the time these websites were island sanctuaries in a sea of uncertainty for a relatively small playerbase, among others that served as a repository of content for these games. Nowadays, despite the sheer amount of (good) games that have come out since then, websites like these are rare - very few people do non-walkthrough write-ups about RPGs anymore and the push towards "optimum" setups (which are laughable without context) has pushed other would-be game resource-authors towards hoarding what they know (which usually, at the very least, provides a unique perspective that can be useful for other gamers) for fear of humiliation or criticism. This on top of many others who are just plain lazy - having been conveniently spoonfed everything they needed to "succeed", many players now just expect more of the same.
Note that - if the D:OS/Pillars games are any indication - despite the current tactical RPG playerbase now numbering at least a million or so, the actual number of people who are willing to step up and do something as simple as add more info to a wiki page seems ridiculously small. Whatever that number is, it seems to be a very slowly-growing flat number (it's probably just the same people responsible for all the IE game knowledge websites we know) instead of being ratio/percentage-based.
This is the road we're on atm.
I loved Gromnir's sig: "Hah! Good fun!" His posts were great. He typically made trenchant observations about the game in the voice of Gromnir, lol.
Kat and I played a fair bit of BG multiplayer together. We went on to become admins (in her case) and HDMs (me, the Baldur's Gate region from BG1 and the Moonshaes, also admin for developing a trade system that never got off the ground)) at A Land Far Away persistent world for NWN. The forum for ALFA during the planning stage of the project (before the game was released) was for many of us actually more fun than playing the game, lol. Mandos, Albereth, Kat, Kalbar, Pelham, White Warlock, Tridisus, Indio, Evro, Fionn, Wynna, Lafter, Burt, Bane/Mother... the infamous Karen...
Ironworks was also my conduit to annoy JE Sawyer with lots of questions about IWD, which eventually led to IWD Unfinished Business.
my old school approach to the game, i still use tactics mod and other mods that at the time was the standard difficulty mods setting and i use for some play troughts the original game that does not close exploits that in EE are now closed, is surley deeply influenced by my reading those old forums.
sometimes i feel like a man of 20 years ago that has been teleported in the present time, loosing the possibility to communicate with other men of his age and unable to properly communicate with the people of the time i am forced to live in
ironworks forum has a very special place in my heart, even if i never had the chance to be a member of it.