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

[Kilkenne]

Alright, so over the last three days that I've been "back" so to say to RWL, I've been doing a bit of thinking (and posting). To give those who don't actually know me a little background/perspective on me, I started playing the actual game in 2002. Yes, that is almost ten years ago. This was the prime of the game, as those of us who were around now speak of it, the 2002-2003 season, when most of the moderation team was between the ages of thirteen and fifteen and was not the moderation team. We were, in short, like many of the younger members here, it just happened that there were a lot more of us, and the game had significantly more people itself. There was also another version of the forums that didn't get saved over, but that's a topic for another time.

It would be wrong of me to continue introducing my background without hurfing a small amount about my past with the game. I'll try to keep this short, as this post will already be a massive wall of text. As I've said previously, I am a "veteran" of the first era, when the game was its most vibrant, had the most players, and of course, was the youngest on average. The strategies were not as refined, because the game itself was not nearly as refined as it is now. You could get by without really knowing what leaders do and make it to the top. I did this. But what I also did that people don't do now is I played a very different game than most do, and that was one of diplomacy and subterfuge. My hurfing and blurfing on the forums became something of legend, and my clans prospered for a large part because I was pretty good at being the bad guy without anyone knowing. I got a good bit of notoriety and did pretty well. I might write this up at some point as "The History of Kilkenne" but probably not. No one wants to read that.

Eventually, however, as we as people are wont to do, I drifted away. When I did quit, it gave me a short amount of time for my young (then) brain to reflect upon the time spent here. I had been on the forums, on AIM, and in game with the people here for 2-3 hours every single day for over a year. I didn't regret anything that I'd done, and I met some pretty cool people here. What I didn't, however, think of was the lasting affect that this would have on me. If you spend enough time doing something, it becomes important to you, even after you are done. This is why, I believe, that so many people coming poking their heads around here year after year, if only just to see "yup, it's still going".

At a certain point once you have been coming back for years just to see "hey, it's still going!", something interesting will happen. The interesting thing of which I speak is that, if this community is still kicking eight years from now, all of you can look back through the saved content and see something that I think is pretty neat. You can see your younger self. I have looked back at my old posts with mixed feelings, but in the end everything that I've thought has been pretty positive. Was I petty sometimes? Yup. Was I rolled up in stuff that didn't matter every now and again? Absolutely. But I also realized how rare of an opportunity it is to be able to essentially see into your own life almost a decade after the fact.

Now, the young crowd that might or might not read this is going to roll their eyes. This much I know, but bear with me. When myself, Shael, Neobaron, Holby, et al were growing up (we're approximately the same age), the internet was still new and exciting. Google was not saving every single thing you did, and nothing left a paper trail. We didn't have to think about leaving some sort of legacy, it was in the back of everyone's mind that when Retto had had enough, that the game would just be done and that was it. Fortunately, this was not the case. You, however, are all growing up in a world where you don't have to rewind anything before you take it back to Blockbuster. You also might not know what it's like to have to connect to RWL and take an hour to run your turns because you are on a 56k modem that runs off of your house's phone line. Chances are you don't even know what a 56k modem is. I'm not sure what some of you would do without google or wikipedia. We are separated by a decade or so in age but the internet has made culture very different in a very short amount of time, so this also influences where I'm coming from.

Coming back full circle, I'd like to raise awareness in all of those of you that are now playing this game, and are contributing on the forums. I'd like to show the younger ones of you that pretty much everything that you do right now is something that one day, Shael-willing, you might be able to look back on in a decade. I'm not going to preach at you to think before you act or post or whatever, because that's lame; BUT, remember that even though this is THE INTERNET, and you are just SOME GUY/GIRL on THE INTERNET, the friends you make here will probably remember you for a long time, if only in passing. Your posts, and your persona will also stay within the community for better or for worse, and when you look back on it, I'm sure you'll want to look on an overall positive experience. Have fun first and foremost, as this is what it's all about, but when someone tells you "it's just a game", yeah it is. But there's a community attached, one that a lot of people have put a lot of time into, and I can promise you this, if you spend a lot of time here, and you are not an amnesiac, you will want to see what all the fuss was about years from now.

Plus, if you're super awesome you can come back and everyone can be like "Whoa, ________ is back! Cool!" as you read your old posts and smirk to yourself. That's what I've done. Apparently I was kind of well liked, who knows.

Anyhow, thanks for reading my long, rambling post, and most of all thanks to the people who have kept this forum running and funded. Every time I pop in I am shocked to see that things are still moving along, even if it is at a snail's pace sometimes. Thanks Shael, Holby, wolf bite, Peace Alliance, windhound, and anyone else that I forgot or don't know that is an admin for keeping this going so that I could have this experience. I doubt that we will ever see a game with 300+ active players again, but the fact that this exists is a testament to all of your tenacity.

[Neobaron]

"old... so old it knows what dial-up means."

[The Lady Shael]

There's a lot more I want to say about this, but for now I'll just say I completely agree with Kilk. I've said this before but this forum documents my personality and mentality changes from being a kid to an adult. It's something you can't get from looking through a photo album or home videos. I know 10 years from now, I will probably be 10 times more incredulous that I can see what 13-year-old me was thinking. It's crazy to think that someday my kids (or grandkids, holy ferrets) might stumble across this and see what I was like and the things I said as a teenager.

Just today I was thinking about posting a topic, where do you think you'll be 5 or 10 years from now? I wish we had posted a topic like this in the beginning, it would've been really interesting to see.

The other crazy thing for me to think about is that I'm better friends with people here than some of my friends in real life. And I will most likely never ever meet any of you. Ever. We've shared all these fun moments together, almost EVERY DAY, for the past 9 years...friends who have shaped me into the person I am today. And I only have the faith that you guys really do exist out there and you're not just pixels on a screen.

Just wait newbies, these crazy philosophical thoughts will hit you someday.

[Kilkenne]

Just wait newbies, these crazy philosophical thoughts will hit you someday.

And when they do, they can check out this thread and be like HEH, THEY KNEW!

I hope they do this. I'm waiting for some of them to call us all crazy people, mostly.

[Holby]

Great post, Kilk.

I agree with your sentiments, especially in terms of not realising the importance of the past (when it was the present, obviously). It never occurred to me that anything I did would still be relevant to me in a year's time, let alone in eight years or more. It's a community I've become very attached to, and I can't underestimate its lasting influence.

I've made some great friends in this game, and spent countless hours plotting and organising, and it's a large part of what I enjoy about RWL. Even in OOC interactions, if it's about the game, I can be as aggressive as my IG character. One moment, I can be ruthlessly assassinating someone's character, and the next staunchly defending them.

RWL seems to bring out that kind of passion in people, however fleeting or fickle. Kilk and I have hardly ever been on the same side IG, but I consider him a punk a returned comrade.

On the topic of the earliest forum... I'd dearly love to see it again.

Klamath was the bomb.

[Gen. Volkov]

I'm far too embarrassed to look at my earliest posts here. I probably had a few years on most of the people playing, even when I first joined, but I acted like I was a year or two younger than everyone else. In 2002, I was 17, and by the time I came back in 2003, I was 19.

[The Lady Shael]

Klamath was the bomb.

I miss her too...I saw her posting on the Terrouge forums a couple months back.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

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.

tldr: you guys are the best.

edit: also chiming in on the 'can't really bear to look through my old posts' thing. I was an odd kid. :D

[Firetooth]

Pretty awesome post, El Presidente.

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Hey, I'm 13, and I ran dial-up, CRT, VHS, you name it.  Except Commodore 64.  Though I do play Zork.  Any of you old guys remember Zork?

[Kilkenne]

Reminder that this stuff was the pinnacle of technology when we were growing up, not a kitchy but neat throwback. It was all there was, also it was more to illustrate how different of worlds we grew up in in just a span of about eight years. But it's good that you know what that stuff is, most kids your age can barely identify a VHS tape, I'd guess anyone born past 2000 can't.

[Neobaron]

I was pumped about owning a tape player when i was young, and only the privledged kids got those round-ish CD things.

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Hey, I didn't have a DVD player until '03.

[Kilkenne]

Perspective: You were 5, then, when you got your first DVD player. Assume that we all got them around the same time, we spent the first half of our lives without them. Again, this isn't an argument on how old you are or what your parents have furnished you with, I used those examples to paint a picture of the different worlds that we're growing up in. Please don't derail this thread with personal protestations about what you had or didn't have, because it'll degrade very quickly.

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

I'm not protesting, I'm just sayin'...  And those VHS were so fun, too.  You can rewind them with your fingers.  Can't do that with a DVD.

What's funny is I still only own three DVDs.  And 200 VHS.