Forum life - the early days

I cannot really remember when I first started reading and posting on forums. I know for a fact I knew nothing about them nor did I care much about them until relatively late into my levelling Sharkith. It was close to around a major relic raid at the end of Old Frontiers. I had registered on the guild forums but I just assumed thats all the guild used to communicate with each other. We would often chat about in game events and try and arrange raids and things like that. Eventually the guild told us to all register on Prydwen.net I am not even sure it was called prydwen.net and I don't even know why.

At the end of the day prydwen was where most of the Hibernian players seemed to hang out. I registered and suddenly a whole community opened up to me. I didn't know half of the posters, after all I was limited to relatively low level in game interaction. Finding Prydwen.net suddenly got me a whole other perspective on the game. I began to see the politics of the server and the great community that Pyrdwen was back then. They were the underdogs but seemed to stick together. There were arguments and debates but these always seemed constructive.

I started to post on the forums asking questions about the community and why it was so hard to find people to group with. I think back then I was a right pain in the ass to forum goers. I would post all sorts of crap that didn't really fit the context. Like asking when they had stopped to level with people coming through the games. I think any accusation that Prydwenites were not the friendly seemed to grate with them at the time because unbeknown to me they took real pride in their togetherness.

I really don't know. My memory is very fuzzy about what exactly got me started on the game forums. It is not that I didn't know what forums were. I am an old hand at forum debate I was a founding member of Frothersunite after all - a forum that makes Freddys house look like kinder garden. I knew how online communities could start around the oddest of things such as Colonel Marbles Miniatures Masterworks so I don't think it was a surprise that there were forums. I think the main reason was that I was starting to anticipate RvR at level 50 and I needed to get to know my realm mates, but I really am not too sure why I signed up and started posting (apart from the fact that I am as curious as hell!).

The one thing the forums do is that they get you in touch with people beyond your immediate guild and group. They help you start to develop an awareness of the views of different groups in game. You start to learn that the game is played with very different intentions.

At that time there was a divide between RvR guilds and the rest of the realm it seemed. Not a destructive one but there was a palpabile difference in opinion and views about the game. In the end the one thing I was certain about was that my game had opened up even more. It was solidified when it was through the Prydwen forums that the first relic raid I would attend was arranged. It was the last relic raid the Hibbies ever had on Prydwen before New Frontiers was launched. The one where a certain quotation became immortalised. More of that later...