What was/is the whole story behind TGN and the OT section?

[Mo0by]

Dairuka, RocketChild, Metallicaguitarist (used to fly jets all the time and had some groupie called...Cho something?), conscriptvirus, Chris Redfield, Troybob, Eternal-Souljah (Fear and loathing in Las Vegas sig?), Indian Scout, N2K, Nismo, Talus, deathmerchant, solofowaffles and Spik3d

Dont forget Skaggy, Camperstrike, Nefarious, Scinto, davelisowski, Sniper 1432, SyDus, Alpha671, Sars99, Sir Tasty (in fact the whole Sir. Community), that EdddyEdEddwhatshisface guy

The place collapsed because I rage quit.

.......

............Vika?

And let's be honest, most of us grew out of it. A huge chunk of this board was 16-19 year olds, me included. We just moved on.

This. I was a reclusive 15 year old in summer '07 with too much time on my hands, don't play games any more - I'm a grown man son (allegedly, hur hur hur).

Was nice to read and remember all the OT names again, weird how you can spend hundreds of hours doing something and barely recall any of it. Good to see this place still stands as a testament to my wasted youth.

:awes

[Shawn Zipay]

Welp, looks like that's that then. All wrapped up in a nice package, bow placed on top, shipped to grandma's house.

[AllFoamNoBeer]

The place collapsed because I rage quit. Heh.

The primary reason, I believe, is that this place got too big, too quick. It was a simple BF2 website that concentrated a LOT of users to a single game. You're talking a consistent 800-1000 registered users on the forum every day. Within a matter of months it went from Battlefield games to every single FPS on the market that had minor marketing attached to it. Call of Duty is understandable, but MOH? Then the CS merge thinned out the crowd even more.

It's also because at some point in 2008 they started giving out moderator powers to random people. Specially those who frequented the OT area. Which most of the rather dedicated users of the main board found rather annoying. Mostly because the select few OT never really posted on the main board as others.

There were also a group of people, addicted to their post count, who quit merely because of a merge. They lost their join dates, post count, and those weird gaming points you got in the arcade.

There was also a point where some of the better known and more reasonable moderators left. Spawndemon and Talus come to mind. They were awesome.

Finally, this forum also had some famous people/groups in them. At one point, I think, though I am not sure, we had the best F35 pilot in BF2. We regularly had the guy from 'Squadplay' releasing videos on how to play BF2142 as an organised unit. We had those ludicrous Walmart Security dudes pulling off stupid videos. There was a lot of stuff going on around the board.

All this activity drew more people to the OT.

Atleast that's how I remembered it.

And let's be honest, most of us grew out of it. A huge chunk of this board was 16-19 year olds, me included. We just moved on. The concept of the 'phpbb' forum board just got old for some of us. Also, another factor was that we used to have developers of the games as part of this board, rather than the game developer themselves having their own forum. So, people from DICE hung around and took our feedback seriously; Total-BF2 became a key hub for communication.

With every developer having their own forums, or reddit AMA's or twitter profiles; the concept of a centralised gaming board is almost dead. Unless ofcourse you're a media empire like IGN etc.

This is how I remember it. Then again, I hung around in Total-GFX when it was a separate website.

TL,DR
- Too big, too quick
- Nice moderators left
- Dick moderators put in place
- Centralised gaming forums are old; most devs have their own.

[stilla-killa]

Well alright.

[jimykx]

Zips, go for the interview!

[Stev0esque]

Aww.... The other side of the history of the TGN/CSN partnership.

I still hope this forum will flourish again, even if that is being overly optimistic.

[Shawn Zipay]

So this was fun. Though very few, if any, will care about this entire train of comments one bit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...of_the/c9r8q5q

[Hellsent 2.0]

Hmmmm

[stilla-killa]

wat wat..

[jimykx]

wat

[stilla-killa]

If you want to be the popular one at a party, here's a good thing to do: Go up to some people who are talking and laughing and say, " Well, technically, that's illegal." It might fit with what somebody just said. And even if it doesn't, so what, I hate this stupid party. - Jack Handy.

[jimykx]

[stilla-killa]

[signa]

[stilla-killa]

Heh Heh Heh Heh..ATCHOOOh ATCHOOh