My time at the RWP
I first joined this community in February 2001. I had just found out about Stop 'N' Swop and wanted to find out more about it but the forums I was at weren't that great (Banjo-Kazooie forums at
www.gamewinners.com ) so I ended up here.
My first post was the most noobish post I have ever seen. There was a guy who said he'd discovered a code in Banjo-Tooie that was over 100 characters long and was used to complete Stop 'N' Swop. Obviously the mods had been doing their job because he posted a topic complaining that 'the members had a right ot know the code' and if we wanted to learn it we should show the mods our protest by replying to the topic with 'We want the Stop 'N' Swop secret. We want it now'. So my first ever post at the RWP was 'I know I'm new but... We want the Stop 'N' Swop secret. We want it now'.
That topic must have been deleted because when I came back a week later no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find it. I began visiting RWP more and more and gamewinners less and less until I just stopped going to game winners and was here completely.
My first contact with Rareware, the game company, also happened that year. A guy called 'The Messenger' appeared and claimed his name was Alex Murphy who worked for Rare and that Stop 'N' Swop was dropped. I figured the best way to find out if this was true or not was to send off an email to Rare themselves. Leigh Loveday replied the very next day saying he had never worked there and even if he turned out to be a tester at Nintendo had no rights to be making such claims.
The Snitz version of the forums was always associated with the most activity because it was around the time Banjo-Tooie had come out, however I think the forums are a lot busier than the Snitz now that BK: N&B info has been released.
Back in the Snitz days the running joke wasn't the RWPunch but was infact cheese. I forget all the details but it appeared that cheese had taken over the forums. I also forget when the RWPunch was invented but I do know once it took hold, cheese didn't stand a chance.
One member I'll never forget is DarkTemplar. He was a DBZ fan like I was and he showed me sites to download episodes from and would help me with any websites I was making. Looking back on it I probably annoyed him
but hey, I was new and he had been there longer than me.
Banjo Discussions is also a good memory from the Snitz board. I get up one day to find all the topics had been deleted from it. I was like 'What?!' Turns out, while in an unhealthy state (read: hungover) Ice Mario accidentally deleted all the topics (he later said it was ok because there was too much crap in there anyway
).
The UBB was only around for such a short time but there are a few memorable things.
1) Changing display names. You couldn't always tell who was who because we were allowed to change the names displayed to the community. Not one of the best options to be enabled
.
2) {The First One 01} - LeGeNdArYbAnJoEgGs prided himself in being one of the members who had been their the longest and started a sig trend in which you put {The First One } in your sig with the year you joined. Ice Mario followed along by placing in {The Real First One} in his sig.
3) CGI-Timeouts. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. Trying to load a page, and getting the CGI-Timeout error. Sometimes it would be so bad I couldn't actually post messages for days. Think of the recent 'Server is unavailable' messages... multiply the effect by 1000 and add 10 angry points and you end up with CGI-Timeout.
Finally came the vBulletin forums in 2003. The RWP had been down for a long time.... I forget how long but it must have been a year? I would still check the site every now and then... fortunately it was revived in July and we started trickling back to the forums (though a lot of members have never returned). Thank God for the lack of lives otherwise we might not have ever come back. I was still a registered user back then, however once it was decided to add moderators to the forums (which took like a month or more) I was added to the team (I had been applying for years but was always rejected... now that no-one else had come back I could slip right in
).
Sometimes it's hard to see where 7+ years have gone, other times it feels like it has been 7+ years but obviously we all like the community otherwise we wouldn't keep coming back (I am convinced that the RWP makes up more than 90% of my Internet browsing and time).
There's too many members that have left to remember them all but they were a part of the community that kept me here so that must be saying something
