Here's a serious post from Kilk, maybe you should read it

[Ashyra Nightwing]

Some people here will never have heard the  'dialup sound'.

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Shame.  It's so wonderful.

[The Lady Shael]

That was a real heartfelt post and I totally agree with it. I've been thinking similar thoughts recently (since returning in fact) and I've been remembering the old ROC, Terrouge, all those little hand-made Geocities  sites with roleplaying forums where you could join a little Redwall-based community... That was the best thing in the world to little 11-year-old me and now, in the age of 'proper' online gaming, that sort of thing really doesn't exist any more.

It's been a roller-coaster ride of internet nostalgia these past couple of months. RWL's been part of my life since I was twelve. I didn't really get on with the whole social life thing until about 2004? I'm not sure. It's still kind of embarrassing to admit this but there was a point in my life when the ROC was my only real social outlet.  RWL and the people of RWL are such an important part of my childhood and teenage years and I know the memories are  going to stick with me for life.

Ashy, I totally agree with you on the social outlet thing. I was homeschooled when I discovered the ROC, and I was bored often, so the ROC was my only regular social interaction (I barely even saw my family cause both my parents worked at the time and my sister was in public school). I really can't describe how much appreciation I have for all those club sites back then, and the friends I made on them. DAB, Lancepaw's Fort, and a lesser-known club Holt Purple Sunset which was my first taste of HTML. And then programming became my career. =)

That was the best thing in the world to little 11-year-old me

That line made me feel warm and fuzzy inside =D I felt the same way. I was amazed, I remember being fascinated by chat rooms (talking instantly to people across the world?! social interaction ftw). Being a part of those communities inspired me in so many ways, and watching the leaders of those communities helped to shape me become the leader I am today.

[Kilkenne]

I had almost completely forgotten about the ROC at large other than RWL until last night when I was looking for other sites that are active. Shael and I were just kind of discussing it on AIM and I went off on a several-hour-quest to find anyone else so that we might attempt to usher them into RWL...No matter that she had told me that there was practically no one left, I just kind of shrugged it off. I was dismayed to find that we are almost the last ones standing, except for one long patrol super hardcore RP club that I could find. Not to say that there's no one else out there, they're just not active in any way. I remember back in the late 90s and early 00s (before I found RWL) the amount of club sites was absolutely staggering, and most of them were thriving. I don't particularly remember any of the ones that I had joined but numberswise there were a ton of them, and all of them had a good amount of members/stuff to do.

It just feels so strange that over a decade they all pretty much shut down and nothing took their place, but we came up with a variety of theories. Most of these had to do with disinterest in text-based stuff in favor of facebook/reddit/other social media. Just hard to fathom, kind of a fun exercise to think about. It's probably why there aren't many new young'ns around here, it's just not common for their age to go to a site and find this. Then again the changed redwall.org doesn't help anything, they used to have a comprehensive list of sites that was easy to navigate, now you can tell the publisher took over the site itself. I'm not sure how long that's been going on, though, and how much it contributed.

[Shadow]

I have looked back a few times at the ~13 year old me on these forums. It is usually painfully hilarious. Thanks for this post. I wonder what my current self will look like in 10 years? I am going to guess pompous and overly dramatic. Which is so completely at odds with my actual demeanor in real life that I wonder how it actually happens.

[Kilkenne]

The internet does strange things to people. If I act the same in a decade I'll be a little concerned, seeing as I go from goofy to straight serious in about as long as it takes to write a sentence like this. And then I go back to having multiple loose screws. It's an interesting exercise. Shael indicated that she might make a "where do you think you'll be in 10 years?" thread, it'd be fun to see where all the young people think they're headed. I'm more interested in their perceptions of that question than ours, because most of us have pretty much nailed down our life paths. That is, as nailed down as you can get in your early 20s.

[Sharptooh]

Some people here will never have heard the  'dialup sound'.

I remember the dial up sounds :-) I had that for about the first two - three years of my access to the internet . . . I can't believe how slow it is looking back now

Ashy, I totally agree with you on the social outlet thing. I was homeschooled when I discovered the ROC, and I was bored often, so the ROC was my only regular social interaction (I barely even saw my family cause both my parents worked at the time and my sister was in public school). I really can't describe how much appreciation I have for all those club sites back then, and the friends I made on them. DAB, Lancepaw's Fort, and a lesser-known club Holt Purple Sunset which was my first taste of HTML. And then programming became my career. =)

In a strange and round-about way RWL got me into computers a lot more than I was too, I remember I learned about Linux from here via Windy, I'll have to find some of my posts from back then, I was such an MS fanyboy XD and for the record I'm writing this on a Linux Machine

The site also got me really interested in PHP, I wanted to know how it worked and thus learned HTML, then CSS, then a bit of JavaScript (I have yet to learn PHP) And I'm hoping to go into a computerish career (maybe web design)

And I'd love to see a "where would we be in 10 years time" topic, although I'd probably cringe when reading it in 10 years time XD

[Menatus]

Oh man. So nostalgic. ^_^

[Kilkenne]

Hi Tania :3

[Ashyra Nightwing]

http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/

Kids, this is what the internet used to look like


(oh man, comic sans)

[The Lady Shael]

Ahhh Web 1.0. When animated GIFs and fancy marquees were what everyone wanted.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

Remember guestbooks?

Hit counters?

:D

[Holby]

Remember guestbooks?

Hit counters?

:D

ALL OF MY WEBSITES HAD THESE THINGS

[Menatus]

Hiya. :)

Love that! I had so many geocities sites. I love the internet wayback machine. Websites have changed so much now. As in,  nobody makes them anymore because we have wikis and facebooks which make any personal or fan site completely pointless, I suppose. But I miss them.