I've been at Ironworks for one year this month (October 2000), although I'd play merry heck to remember what day it was! It was right after W&W came out, I know that much, which was Sept. 29, 2000, so I assume that it was probably mid-October when I became active at Wizards & Warriors.
Memnoch is right...Wizards & Warriors was (and still is, to some extent) its own little island; the third most active forum here at IW, although a far cry away from both Gen Con and BG2:SoA for actual posting activity. We W&W'ers were for a long time a very insular and close-knit group. Those of us who have made the migration to the rest of IW are myself, Moni, Adam Warlock, Skywalker (Mark), Mammawlin (who still posts from time to time), Lady Avalon, Davros, and probably quite a few more as well. This, of course, was about five months later and long after the UBB boards (the "new" forums) were established.
In February 2001, Ziroc created the Wizardry 8 forum, and in March, he enlisted me to be the moderator of that forum. Both Memnoch and Cloudy came in to hail the new "mod" on the block, and that was pretty much the first time I had come in contact with Gen Con, when I posted there for the first time on March 20, 2001. I then pretty much went back to W&W and Wizardry 8 and forgot about Gen Con for a few days when Cloudy came "storming" in (hehe) several of my "hideout" forums and told me to get my butt back over to Gen Con, that the original thread I had created had gone to 60+ posts and I needed to answer it!
Well, this was unexpected. Up to that point, the viewpoint of most of us in Wizards & Warriors was that Gen Con was a wild, savage, untamed frontier that was filled with spammers (we had made several jokes at Gen Con's expense at the 1000+ "spam" post), and none of us had dared to set their noses in there. So I was a bit trepidatious about coming into Gen Con, but then I found everyone there to be very friendly. So, I began posting there, too.
Then Fljotsdale, who I think had just come onto the boards, had posted a request to find out how many female gamers were in Ironworks, so Cloudy put out an "APB" on the female gamers to come and post to Fljotsdale's thread. Thus, Moni, Lady Avalon, Mammawlin, and quite a few of our other W&W female gamers posted over there, and quite a few of them adopted Gen Con as their home. So did Skywalker and Davros. At the same time, we at Wizards & Warriors began attracting some of the Gen Con people, and Black Knight and Rude Dawg, among others, played and finished Wizards & Warriors. Charlie was going to start playing it, but then we lost touch.
Cloudy STILL hasn't finished her game!
Then disaster struck in April 2001: the board went down for 2 1/2 weeks. When it came back up, there were several regulars missing. I had met 250 briefly before the "Great Crash", then when it came back up, no 250! It wasn't until several months later that he found us again. Leonis also disappeared after the "Great Crash". However, we started getting a lot more newcomers in after that.
I was made a mod at Gen Con in late May, 2001, and I guess the rest is history.
Whew, boy I've run on for quite some time now! I feel like I've recounted a major piece of history here. It's hard to believe it's been a year. As the Grateful Dead said, "What a long, strange trip it's been."
Cheers,
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