Part I. Jan08 - Jun08: From Zero to Gantic in 30 Weekends
In the beginning, the Forums were small. Half of the forums we see today, did not exist back then. Some were conceived immaculately and others in a messy budding process. This was the beginning of the beginning of the Golden Age of Armor Games. It was the height of admin/mod/user interaction. It was the golden acorn that would grow into the mighty rotting oak we see today. The forums were, in essence, like any close-knit community: pure, perfect, silly awesomeness ever marred by the ubiquitous feckless preteen. (Henceforth, the ubiquitous feckless preteen will be referred to as a "ten year old", although most of them were twelve and most of those were thirteen and some of those were nine.)* More importantly, it was active.
Some of the memorable personalities of the Golden Age didn't exist back then, but some of them did. Some of them were good and some of them were bad. How bad? Drama queen bad. With two! Two drama queens in a short span of six months!^ Back then, good was bad and bad was good, but drama queen bad was always bad bad unless you were bad good, because then you could laugh at bad bad and the good bad who stuck by bad bad. These bad times were the good times. Everyone was pretending and it was cool to pretend to be bad when you were good and ten year olds liked to pretend to be good because anyone could become moderator just like anyone could become president! It was like the difference between pretending you were chaotic without minding the good and pretending you were lawful but ignoring the stupid. Snark was in and Stupid was out. And it was glorious.
But Gantic! You didn't even have an account back then! How do you know all this? Are you a poser? Every. One's. A. Poser. Get with the program! Were you there when Hitler took over Europe? or when Obama became president? No? Then stop talking about World War II and 2008 like you know what you're talking about!
In the beginning of the glory days, were glorious ideas and glorious systems that mostly disappeared by the time of Gantic. Philosophical giants, some you've never heard of, sparred in the WEPR forum, dwarfing the ten year olds who argued endlessly and pointlessly about Christianity, evolution, Christianity, homosexuality, Christianity, Obama, global warming, Christianity, communism, and the 2012 Mayan apocalypse that nobody ever believed would happen but it was worth creating a thread over to tell other people how you believe it won't happen and to ask if other people thought it would happen even though nobody believed it would. The giants set up The Great Debate, an arena like the Coliseum for such ten year olds to, perhaps, learn better arguments than 'nuh uh', 'Jesus', and 'says you'. This would go on for a year more, but the giants quieted down with time when other things came to greater importance.
Ten year olds are why we can't have nice things.
There was a chat for Armor Games. It could not be managed and that disappeared more quickly than the moderator with the shortest tenure ever. (Not because he was a bad mod, but life gets in the way as it does with all mods, especially the ones you haven't seen in over a month or twenty. Also, it was because he was French.) There were Armor Points for referrals. And that lasted longer, but it was disabled by the time I created an account (and completely removed shortly after) because of one ten year old who decided to create multiple accounts for a piddly 200 AP. (Referrals were worth 2 AP each.) Merit-worthy comment nomination was a thing! But that didn't last too long either with every ten year old nominating one another using the same "you scratch my back I scratch yours" system politicians use. And SHOPS! The Spammer and Hacker Organization Prevention Society! Admin approved, user run, and 100% bad idea. It was like putting a five year old in charge of a cookie jar, except these were ten year olds in charge of other ten year olds, basically like the inside of a maximum security prison.^^
But Gantic! All you're doing is complaining about ten year olds! What's so great about that? Oh, the amount of care they had! They had far-reaching dreams of having the most AP, being the most popular user, becoming a moderator, earning the most merits! And it was delicious! Why? Well, blind conceit and sense of entitlement is tastier than the best rib eye you've ever had. (Okay, maybe not the best rib-eye, but definitely better than the second best!) Also, there were cool people that drowned out the annoying stuff.
Cool people? What cool people? Well, only the best Community Manager ever!** And some of the most loved mods, users, and trollish users ever! And more were to come in the second half of eighters! And by ever, I mean ever! I can't name one niner, tenner, elevener, or twelver even worthy of such honor. Admins and all seven of the moderators were actually active on the forums! And they helped shape the progenitors of the most memorable threads of the AMW that would last through 2009. Heck, the AMW was cool and fun instead of weird and emo. 2009 was essentially the tail end of the Golden Age, but that is a story of a later time.
Also, the forums displayed which users were active within the last five minutes at the bottom of the forum, but that wasn't really important unless you were into stalking Carlie.***
All this at less than one hundred thousand users and it was only about to get badder and better.
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Addendum
*A few of them were actually eight.
^According to statistics, Salvidian is likely to cause drama that will go down in Jun13 - Dec13. There's just something about 'opular' male users under the age of 18 that start with a capital 'S' that screams 'switch on the drama queen train!' This means he's going to slip up and the mods will expose his fraud with the evidence they've already gathered, but he will try to garner all the attention he can and try to turn the community against the moderators.
^^Snitches get stitches. I don't have official statistics of stabbings or killings, but there are a lot of threats on record and seeing as we haven't heard from any of these users, I think we can safely assume that it happened and the victims found themselves in the hellish afterlife called Kongregate. I think that's what happens. You die on Armor Games and get sent to Kongregate.
**She wasn't Community Manager until around June.
***Or Asherlee, but it's kind of hard to stalk someone who's never around. Also, it's not cool to stalk people.
