Post by xShadowLordx on Jul 18, 2009 22:37:53 GMT -5
The Forum That Changed My Life
A tribute to the Dan-Ball Forums and all the wonderful people here.
January 16th, 2008. I was playing Powder Game that day, as usual, when I went to the Powder Game comments section for no real reason. And there, I saw a strange advertisement for some sort of “Unofficial Dan-Ball Forum” website. “Hey, that sounds pretty cool”, I thought to myself, and I decided to check it out.
This was back when I used to be an Internet Explorer fan, so after I clicked on the link, I had about 5 or so seconds before the page loaded. And that was perhaps the most thoughtful 5 seconds of my life. I thought about what the site might be like, what the people would be like, and of all things, the mind-bogglingly small chance that I might somehow get addicted to this new site.
Well, when the page finally loaded, I wasn’t very impressed, but I wasn’t horrendously disgusted either. Not too flashy, not too dull. I saw before my eyes a clean-looking web page consisting of varying shades of light brown. Comforting, soothing shades of light brown I might add. So I looked around.
Clicking on various boards and threads, I read all kinds of conversations, some about Dan-Ball games, some about complete nonsense. I spent at least an hour reading as much as possible, without even writing a single post of my own. Little did I know that this site was all but dead, and the people who had written all those posts I read were long gone. The site was almost completely abandoned, except for two members by the names of TheListo and Swearingworth.
But of course, I was clueless to any of this. Me being such a stupid noob and not even thinking to look at the dates of the posts, which might’ve been days, even weeks old. So, thinking the site was alive and kicking, I created an account, and I named that account The Shadow Lord.
Now, being the pimp-my-ride kind of person I am, the very first thing I wanted to do was, what else, “pimp” my profile. I walked through all the (dead) Dan-Ball Shops, or the online forum equivalent of walking. I saw custom stars, avatars, name colors (ooh-la-la!), things costing hundreds, even thousands of Dan-Balls. As I looked at my own Dan-Ball counter, which read “0”, I thought to myself, “Man, I’ve gotta make some money.”
As I looked around, I saw an announcement by Frogmaster, the site owner, saying that due to the decreasing activity, 25 Dan-Balls would be awarded to anyone for each new member they recruited. My mouth watered at this generous offer, and I got straight to work posting advertisements on the Powder Game comments, even making uploads advertising the forum. I watched the member count rise from 52 (I remember for a fact I was the 52nd member) to 55, from 55 to 60, from 60 to 70. Over the course of 3 days I had recruited 20 new members, which translates to………(thinking)……….500 Dan-Balls!!!
As soon as I reached the 20 member mark, I PMed Frogmaster telling her that I’d recruited 20 members and I’d like 500 Dan-Balls. A day passed, two days passed, three days, and she never replied. I then sent TheListo a PM telling him about my Dan-Ball request and how Frogmaster wasn’t replying. TheListo gave me the 500 Dan-Balls, but more importantly, he and Swearingworth told me the story of the forum. They told me how the forum was dead and how Frogmaster herself had abandoned it. TheListo and Swearingworth were virtually all that was left. And the advertisement I had seen on the 16th of January was one of their last feeble attempts to bring the forum back to life. TheListo went on to publicly congratulate me for bringing the forum back to life.
At first I thought to myself, “How stupid am I?! I came to a dead forum!!” But as I looked at the fiery custom stars I had bought with the 500 Dan-Balls, I realized I done a great thing, and that this forum needed me. I decided to stay. I began recruiting more members. 70 members turned into 80, 80 turned into 90, and I proudly watched my Dan-Ball count rise higher and higher.
==========================================================
By February, I was feeling pretty good about myself. The member count was around 115. The forum was seeing a lot of activity from the new members. One of these new members went by the name of G. I saw that G had become a moderator literally 2 days after I recruited him! I thought, this is crazy!!! I got jealous and I decided I wanted to become a staff member.
A few days later, TheListo posted an announcement saying that they were looking to recruit new staff members. Apparently due to the surging number of members, TheListo and Swearingworth couldn’t handle the forum on their own. I immediately PMed TheListo my application, in which I spoke quite humbly. When he accepted and made me a Moderator 5 minutes later, I was overjoyed!
Over the course of the next few weeks, things kept getting better and better. Me and TheListo raised the member count to 250 by early March. I would constantly help out TheListo in any way I could, to earn his trust. I guess I was a bit of a suck-up. I was eager to get a promotion, mainly to compete with G, who had recently been promoted straight from Mod to Admin.
With the newly recruited members came some of the most active and dedicated members you see today, such as RiftRipper, Memzak, Qwertyuiop, and Shirogake/ArchZero/Nightmare (or as I like to call him, Too Many Names). With the introduction of badges, I wanted to help out even more, and compete with people. I remember beating Too Many Names to 1,000 posts (YES!!!).
By July, I had arguably become the most active and most respected member on the forum. I had become an Administrator, alongside TheListo and G. And best of all, the site had recently become the “Official Dan Ball Forums.”But then things came to a halt. In August, I would be moving cross-country, from Florida to California. I told everyone beforehand and said I would be back, but….
==========================================================
After I moved, I didn’t get my computer in the moving van for over a month. When I did get it, I didn’t really have much spare time anymore. School had started, and my family and I were busy unpacking and such. When I did have spare time, I did other stuff. Every few weeks I would go to the forum and just check how things were going, but I never logged in or posted. Months went by, and I stopped coming back.
One day in July 2009, I decided to log in for the first time in months, to say hi to everybody and tell them I wasn’t gone. But when I tried to log in, I found my account was deleted. Everything was gone. My admin status, all my Karma, my Dan-Balls, my excessively long string of badges. All of it. All gone. It was as though I never existed. All that was left next to my 1,000+ posts were the words “shadowlord (guest)”.
I couldn’t sleep that night (Fine, maybe I could just a little bit). I thought of all the memories I had, of all the achievements I made. The next day I logged on the forums as a guest, and I learned that the forum was going downhill, and activity was tumbling. I thought once more of all the good times I had on the site, of all the people who used to look up to me, and share laughs with me. I thought of how I never said goodbye, and how I just left them all like that. I said to myself “I can’t do this to these guys.” It was true, I couldn’t just leave the forum to die. On that day, June 16th 2009, I decided to go back. And the rest, is pretty obvious.
==========================================================
At first I only brought the forum back to life for money. But I got something much more that that. Only now have I realized how much I have done. I have a sense of belonging now. We are more than just a forum. We are a community. We are a family. I have made so many friends here, the kind of friends you can’t make in real life. People like TheListo, G, Swearingworth, Linkzkap, RiftRipper, Sandmaster, Qwertyuiop, Maybe Tomorrow, ShiningSilver, Memzak, EvilEntity, General Veers, Too Many Names, and a bunch of other people I can’t remember the names of. I have a deep personal connection to this forum and all of you. You all seem so dedicated to the site, and always eager to help people out. I feel like you depend on me, and I depend on you. I love you all, and I can’t imagine how different my life would be without this site. It just goes to show how even the most obscure forum about some weird Japanese game site, can become a sentimental and emotional place for people like me.
Thank you.
A tribute to the Dan-Ball Forums and all the wonderful people here.
January 16th, 2008. I was playing Powder Game that day, as usual, when I went to the Powder Game comments section for no real reason. And there, I saw a strange advertisement for some sort of “Unofficial Dan-Ball Forum” website. “Hey, that sounds pretty cool”, I thought to myself, and I decided to check it out.
This was back when I used to be an Internet Explorer fan, so after I clicked on the link, I had about 5 or so seconds before the page loaded. And that was perhaps the most thoughtful 5 seconds of my life. I thought about what the site might be like, what the people would be like, and of all things, the mind-bogglingly small chance that I might somehow get addicted to this new site.
Well, when the page finally loaded, I wasn’t very impressed, but I wasn’t horrendously disgusted either. Not too flashy, not too dull. I saw before my eyes a clean-looking web page consisting of varying shades of light brown. Comforting, soothing shades of light brown I might add. So I looked around.
Clicking on various boards and threads, I read all kinds of conversations, some about Dan-Ball games, some about complete nonsense. I spent at least an hour reading as much as possible, without even writing a single post of my own. Little did I know that this site was all but dead, and the people who had written all those posts I read were long gone. The site was almost completely abandoned, except for two members by the names of TheListo and Swearingworth.
But of course, I was clueless to any of this. Me being such a stupid noob and not even thinking to look at the dates of the posts, which might’ve been days, even weeks old. So, thinking the site was alive and kicking, I created an account, and I named that account The Shadow Lord.
Now, being the pimp-my-ride kind of person I am, the very first thing I wanted to do was, what else, “pimp” my profile. I walked through all the (dead) Dan-Ball Shops, or the online forum equivalent of walking. I saw custom stars, avatars, name colors (ooh-la-la!), things costing hundreds, even thousands of Dan-Balls. As I looked at my own Dan-Ball counter, which read “0”, I thought to myself, “Man, I’ve gotta make some money.”
As I looked around, I saw an announcement by Frogmaster, the site owner, saying that due to the decreasing activity, 25 Dan-Balls would be awarded to anyone for each new member they recruited. My mouth watered at this generous offer, and I got straight to work posting advertisements on the Powder Game comments, even making uploads advertising the forum. I watched the member count rise from 52 (I remember for a fact I was the 52nd member) to 55, from 55 to 60, from 60 to 70. Over the course of 3 days I had recruited 20 new members, which translates to………(thinking)……….500 Dan-Balls!!!
As soon as I reached the 20 member mark, I PMed Frogmaster telling her that I’d recruited 20 members and I’d like 500 Dan-Balls. A day passed, two days passed, three days, and she never replied. I then sent TheListo a PM telling him about my Dan-Ball request and how Frogmaster wasn’t replying. TheListo gave me the 500 Dan-Balls, but more importantly, he and Swearingworth told me the story of the forum. They told me how the forum was dead and how Frogmaster herself had abandoned it. TheListo and Swearingworth were virtually all that was left. And the advertisement I had seen on the 16th of January was one of their last feeble attempts to bring the forum back to life. TheListo went on to publicly congratulate me for bringing the forum back to life.
At first I thought to myself, “How stupid am I?! I came to a dead forum!!” But as I looked at the fiery custom stars I had bought with the 500 Dan-Balls, I realized I done a great thing, and that this forum needed me. I decided to stay. I began recruiting more members. 70 members turned into 80, 80 turned into 90, and I proudly watched my Dan-Ball count rise higher and higher.
==========================================================
By February, I was feeling pretty good about myself. The member count was around 115. The forum was seeing a lot of activity from the new members. One of these new members went by the name of G. I saw that G had become a moderator literally 2 days after I recruited him! I thought, this is crazy!!! I got jealous and I decided I wanted to become a staff member.
A few days later, TheListo posted an announcement saying that they were looking to recruit new staff members. Apparently due to the surging number of members, TheListo and Swearingworth couldn’t handle the forum on their own. I immediately PMed TheListo my application, in which I spoke quite humbly. When he accepted and made me a Moderator 5 minutes later, I was overjoyed!
Over the course of the next few weeks, things kept getting better and better. Me and TheListo raised the member count to 250 by early March. I would constantly help out TheListo in any way I could, to earn his trust. I guess I was a bit of a suck-up. I was eager to get a promotion, mainly to compete with G, who had recently been promoted straight from Mod to Admin.
With the newly recruited members came some of the most active and dedicated members you see today, such as RiftRipper, Memzak, Qwertyuiop, and Shirogake/ArchZero/Nightmare (or as I like to call him, Too Many Names). With the introduction of badges, I wanted to help out even more, and compete with people. I remember beating Too Many Names to 1,000 posts (YES!!!).
By July, I had arguably become the most active and most respected member on the forum. I had become an Administrator, alongside TheListo and G. And best of all, the site had recently become the “Official Dan Ball Forums.”But then things came to a halt. In August, I would be moving cross-country, from Florida to California. I told everyone beforehand and said I would be back, but….
==========================================================
After I moved, I didn’t get my computer in the moving van for over a month. When I did get it, I didn’t really have much spare time anymore. School had started, and my family and I were busy unpacking and such. When I did have spare time, I did other stuff. Every few weeks I would go to the forum and just check how things were going, but I never logged in or posted. Months went by, and I stopped coming back.
One day in July 2009, I decided to log in for the first time in months, to say hi to everybody and tell them I wasn’t gone. But when I tried to log in, I found my account was deleted. Everything was gone. My admin status, all my Karma, my Dan-Balls, my excessively long string of badges. All of it. All gone. It was as though I never existed. All that was left next to my 1,000+ posts were the words “shadowlord (guest)”.
I couldn’t sleep that night (Fine, maybe I could just a little bit). I thought of all the memories I had, of all the achievements I made. The next day I logged on the forums as a guest, and I learned that the forum was going downhill, and activity was tumbling. I thought once more of all the good times I had on the site, of all the people who used to look up to me, and share laughs with me. I thought of how I never said goodbye, and how I just left them all like that. I said to myself “I can’t do this to these guys.” It was true, I couldn’t just leave the forum to die. On that day, June 16th 2009, I decided to go back. And the rest, is pretty obvious.
==========================================================
At first I only brought the forum back to life for money. But I got something much more that that. Only now have I realized how much I have done. I have a sense of belonging now. We are more than just a forum. We are a community. We are a family. I have made so many friends here, the kind of friends you can’t make in real life. People like TheListo, G, Swearingworth, Linkzkap, RiftRipper, Sandmaster, Qwertyuiop, Maybe Tomorrow, ShiningSilver, Memzak, EvilEntity, General Veers, Too Many Names, and a bunch of other people I can’t remember the names of. I have a deep personal connection to this forum and all of you. You all seem so dedicated to the site, and always eager to help people out. I feel like you depend on me, and I depend on you. I love you all, and I can’t imagine how different my life would be without this site. It just goes to show how even the most obscure forum about some weird Japanese game site, can become a sentimental and emotional place for people like me.
Thank you.
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