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What forums did you use to frequent but are now largely empty?

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The official Nintendo forums until they were shuttered back in like 2004?/2005?

AbsolutePunk.Net 2004-2009

SpoilerTV/DarkUFO 2008-2010

NeoGAF 2009-Now
 
Penny Arcade Forums just turned into 20 megathreads that never turn over.

They have threads started in 2010 on the front page right now.
 
Next-gen forums were my go to.

As far as my quiet little, hole-in-the-wall forum, I used to frequent a place called Game-assault.com
 
TheNintendoBox said:
sarcasticgamer, such a shame what happened to the site
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What actually did happen with that site? The podcasts were really fun to listen to in their prime, but it sounded like Lono was been a huge dick top Dave and when dave left the site just kind of died soon afterwards. Was there even an official reason?
 
SnowTeeth said:
What actually did happen with that site? The podcasts were really fun to listen to in their prime, but it sounded like Lono was been a huge dick top Dave and when dave left the site just kind of died soon afterwards. Was there even an official reason?
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it was basically lono was a huge asshole to everyone so everyone but lono and doc left to make their own site called bigredbarrel,
 
SoundPulse said:
2007, actually. Ran from 2003, so it had a good run.
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I was young when I used to lurk there (never was an actual member), but was there any forewarning for Nsider's closure? All I remember is going on one day to be greeted with a message saying it was shutting down within one week. Did that just come out of the blue for everyone? And was there ever a real reason they gave for shutting it down?
 
I remember TRMK (The Realm of Mortal Kombat) up until after MK 9 was released being active. Haven't been there in a while, but I remember after a year that MK 9 came out it felt like the user base started dying.
 
TheNintendoBox said:
it was basically lono was a huge asshole to everyone so everyone but lono and doc left to make their own site called bigredbarrel,
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Yeah I remember catching 1 or 2 of the podcasts with just Doc and Lono and whilst I enjoy listening to those two talk it just wasn't nearly as good as the best of the SG Podcasts. Shame, they had a good thing going there for a while.
 
Common Knowledge said:
I was young when I used to lurk there (never was an actual member), but was there any forewarning for Nsider's closure? All I remember is going on one day to be greeted with a message saying it was shutting down within one week. Did that just come out of the blue for everyone? And was there ever a real reason they gave for shutting it down?
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Yeah, it was just out of the blue. They just posted this one day:

Nintendo is working on a major overhaul to Nintendo.com to support the continued success of Nintendo DS and Wii. As we prepare for this huge site update, Nintendo must unfortunately close the Nintendo NSider Forums message boards indefinitely beginning Sept. 17, 2007.

For more than four years, these NSider Forums have fostered engaging, robust debates, a strong community and friendships. While their future remains uncertain, in the interim we invite our fans to build on the spirit of community by starting their own Nintendo discussion sites. Remember also that the unique features available with Nintendo DS and Wii give Nintendo the opportunity to communicate directly with fans, while also enabling fans and friends around the world to communicate with each other.

Nintendo has the greatest fans in the world, and it is because of their support and passion that Nintendo DS and Wii have become so hugely successful around the world. We hope that the faithful Nintendo community members will look forward to the future games and website updates that will enhance Nintendo's global community of Wii and Nintendo DS owners.

Starting Sept. 17, existing NSider Forums will be available in Read Only format for one week. Private Messages will be disabled. On Monday, Sept. 24, the forums will be removed from public view.

To visit the Read Only version of the NSider Forums, click here. Thanks for your understanding and continued support. We'll see you soon elsewhere on the Web.

NOA_Andy
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There was no real reason given. If I had to guess, it was largely a cost-saving measure mixed in which Nintendo's shift in focus with the Wii. Paying employees to moderate the forums probably didn't make a lot of sense anymore. They never really had enough moderators for how active and strictly moderated the community was.

They had (have?) forums that are specifically just for technical questions, I believe.

Fun fact: The lead admin, NOA_Andy, had a band and he wrote a song about his experience.
 
Janime - A small anime forum with a good active community back in 2007. The owner of the site disappeared one day and the tech admin who managed the sites server took over the forums admin duties. He basically went full on dictator on the site and pretty much drove the regulars away. Literally died in one day after he banned some popular moderators when they called him out on the stuff he was doing (like spying on members).

Club Bleach - Another anime forum which focused on the series Bleach (back when it was popular and still considered good). When Bleach's popularity started to dwindle so did the sites member base. There was some attempts to save it like changing it to a general anime forum but it was far too late.
 
Achieve360points.com during the first 2 or so years of the xbox 360. I eventually became a moderator on there until the site just died and went away.
 
Tip.It RuneScape Forums

http://forum.tip.it/

They're not completely dead (and I still browse them and post once in a while), but when I first joined back in 2007, these boards were really active and had lots of users posting.

Unfortunately, they (and other RuneScape forums) have gotten a lot less active because most forum-style discussion for RS has moved to the official subreddits of r/runescape and r/2007scape, for the most part.
 
SoundPulse said:
Yeah, it was just out of the blue. They just posted this one day:



There was no real reason given. If I had to guess, it was largely a cost-saving measure mixed in which Nintendo's shift in focus with the Wii. Paying employees to moderate the forums probably didn't make a lot of sense anymore. They never really had enough moderators for how active and strictly moderated the community was.

They had (have?) forums that are specifically just for technical questions, I believe.

Fun fact: The lead admin, NOA_Andy, had a band and he wrote a song about his experience.
Click to expand...

Common Knowledge said:
I was young when I used to lurk there (never was an actual member), but was there any forewarning for Nsider's closure? All I remember is going on one day to be greeted with a message saying it was shutting down within one week. Did that just come out of the blue for everyone? And was there ever a real reason they gave for shutting it down?
Click to expand...
I think it had to do with Nintendo Power selling off. The old Nintendo website was pretty much ran by Nintendo Power.

NSider was great. I truely miss it. The leveling up, or member status titles (whatever they were called) made posting very addictive.

The tech forum is still there and you can continue to sign in and use your old avatars.
 
From top of my head

Teamxbox
FFalpha - few of them members from there are still here
FFAura - some ex-FFAlpha folks are there
IGN Boards
Gamefaqs
Ubi's Prince of Persia
Gamespot's Forums - after their merger with Gamefaqs... It was really bad.

EDIT: Forgot about Toonzone... Great place... Truly be missed. : (
 
MUDcentral. Good times. Last I checked, every single post for over a year was automated spam. And that was a few years ago.
 
I used to visit this forum called dgz when I was knee deep in playing yugioh. I even became a moderator there. Now the forums are pretty much dead and what's left of it has become a diet Reddit.
 
Apolyton civilization forum early 2000s. Haven't been back or posted in years. Lots of good times with group pbem civ games. Just lost time for that sort of game right after iv was released, though I was on the beta testing team and have an autographed Sid Meier box.
 
Forums I used to frequent:
GameFAQS (I was 10 or something! But went to shit post when I got banned here temporarily)
GBAtemp (high school and up till I found Neogaf)

Neither are dead but I like this place a lot more.
 
I used to post on a heavy metal forum called The Gauntlet all the time when I was in high school. Pretty cool place, it eventually just became a handful of regulars posting. I think I tried checking up on it a year or two ago and it was completely gone. Thinking about it, I also used to post on the power metal band Blind Guardian's forums, but not regularly.

When I was really young, like in middle school, I used to post on the roleplaying forum at Neopets.com. I didn't even really play neopets, but I was a regular poster on the rp forums. Also used to post on game FAQs back in those days.
 
BSN back around the time Mass Effect 2 came out. I was there for a couple years. Then everything went to shit. That being said, I still talk to a few of the friends I made on there.
 
I used to frequent the swedish Gamereactor site alot as a teen. But they started focusing less and less on the forum which was basically the reason why i visited it. That and the editor in chief got increasingly annoying with whining about the "pc mob" and similar shit, while he had a following of annoying dudes who essentially saw him as an idol of sorts who'd barge in at every discussion and go "YEAH FUCK THE PC MAFIA, YOU'RE TELLING IT LIKE IT IS". When members called him out on his continous bullcrap he'd cry about being attacked and banned them. This, combined with every interesting writer leaving the site over the time, the community dying because of their shitty forum management. i basically ditched the site in the end when the community mostly seemed to consist of a few longterm forum members and kids sitting in their echo chamber crying about "pc culture". I guess i come back from time to time to shitpost, but the community on that site is practically dead compared to the good o'le days.

Met my best friend on that site, and alot of other friends whom i still hold of importance in my life.

Good times
 
MacAddict (Later MacLife [M|LF] when the magazine changed its name before its death)
AppleAddict (Built by MacAddict refugees)
DigitalPress
AtariAge
My own GeekPub (Which was built by some of us from the FunXbox forums when that site was bought out and shut down, it was pretty big for a while but eventually died off. Some of us log in from time to time for no reason.)


I haven't been to the Penny-Arcade forum in a while but I assume it's still pretty lively.
 
Not exactly on topic, but I'm still amazed at how busy Luelinks (now End of the Internet) is whenever I pop back in once a year or so. The original LUE on GameFAQs and then the spin-off were my life for a good chunk of years.
 
Use to hang around the forum of a site called animecrazy for like 2 years

Site no longer exists but back in the day that was like the site every anime fan knew about.
 
IGN community forums specifically the PS2CB back in the day. I also did a lot of posting and found my missus in the IGN Vestibule of all places.

Another one would be HardOCP forums that was the place to hang when you had a rig and wanted to show it off back in the day.
 
Pretty much most forums end as the users age and/or the thing the forum is about stops being popular. Message boards are truly a thing that they have "their" time where the community is at its best and then go down over the years with only the most hardcore regulars staying but they aren't enough, new blood really is needed to keep forums alive. I have been a member of many forums and most of them have died or changed radically through out the years.

Uzumaki Goku said:
Me, I went to several about 10 years ago.

Toon Zone: I haven't been to this site in years, but during the 2001-2006 era: the Justice League/Teen Titans days, it was very active and you'd get a lot of new information at Toon Zone, doesn't seem like it's that way anymore.
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Toon Zone turned into crap and was at its best when the DCAU was still airing but as soon as the DC shows like TT and the others stopped the forums only lasted a few more years. I was actually banned for saying their April Fools celebration was stupid but it was way after the best days of that place. I posted for a while more under another account (my username backwards) but left the place. A few years later I was asked to come back and the forums were not only empty but the site was over saturated with crap.
Sou Da said:
Pokecommunity, though that isn't nearly as empty as these others.
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haha another forum I used to frequent and got banned from, this time for being disrespectful towards the mods but they were indeed very hypocritical again like the previous forum I was asked to come back later but I was a teenager and didn't care anymore. The forum was never that big though, I remember I used to post in the smaller Pokemon 2000 forums and a bunch of Pokemon sites joined up to have a bigger forum that could compete with Serebii's forums but it was never able to do so.
 
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