PC then. PC now.

[Honest]

Dat inspiration.

Well, recently I've been reminiscing my time here on PC and realized that oh so much has changed. And the recent username fiasco made me realize that even more change is in store for all of us. Since then, I've been recalling past things such as social groups, member fanclubs, the atrocious reputation system, name changes, and probably multiple other things that I'm forgetting.

That brings me to the subject of this thread: Recall how things were when you first joined PC and compare it to PC today. Has much changed? Do you miss something in particular a lot, or is there something you're glad got obliterated to cyberspace? Feel free to share any memories you guys have! I'm looking forward to the sages on this site who were around before VMs. :3

 

[Sirfetch’d]

Really not much had changed since I joined seeing as I have only been around for nearly a year. However the biggest change was probably the new green supporter names and that isnt a huge change at all so yeah.

I guess I can say the staff looks way different since I joined with the big number of demotions and mods leaving recently.

I am looking forward to the many changes to come so next time this thread is posted I will have more to say!

 

[Sweets Witch]

Member clubs and the rep system. Oh god, I choked on my water when I remembered those. I remember the rep system so clearly and it was really useless and dumb. People either had an ungodly amount of rep, a small amount, or a huge negative amount. There were no in-betweens with it and it was pretty much just a way to measure popularity. I remember looking at members who had a red rep bar and thinking "Wow, that's a lot of negative feedback. I hope they get banned."

Member fanclubs were hilarious too. Looking back on them, I don't really see the point. A popular member gets a fanclub and then the thread is just treated like a DCC thread because you can't really hold that much of a discussion over one person. Frankly, it's creepy to even try. I wasn't around for the death of those clubs, but I'm really glad they're gone.

Other than that, I don't really remember much. I remember the ****posting board (Forum Games) used to be more centered on nonsensical discussion than actual forum games, and every Pokemon RP recycled the same handful of ideas in a new setting.

 

[Captain Gizmo]

The only thing that changed durin my time here were the mods, Japanese entertainment was still around, Forum Games was called by another name, Pokemon B&W and Pokemon B2&W2 had their own forum section. That's about it for me :3

I only stayed here for about 8-9 months 8D

 

[Sableye~]

I remember the coloration of usernames jumping around, DCC being switched over, then this place being renamed.
I hadn't even realized until reading Jz's post that the Japanese Entertainment area is gone. I never strayed there much, so I didn't notice.

 

[Tsutarja]

For me, there were changes in staff over the years I've been at PC, I saw the non-Pokémon boards getting reorganized, and lots more. Also, I joined when the 5th generation section wasn't around yet, but I took a long LoA from like just after joining until the summer of 2011.

Ever since I've returned, I saw the change in supporter colors, the introduction of many new themes, and introduction of the like system. There's a lot more I wanna list, but I could go on-and-on...

 

[Melody]

As a sage of old I remember the times of yore, far far back in time by millions of "internet years". Ok, it's 10 years about in realtime but you get the point right?

Those were my newbie days then. Back in 2004 when I quit lurking and seriously joined I was pretty green, just as many of us were. And still are now...

I Remember the Thunderdome. Ask any old member, including myself, and you'll realize there are not many fond memories of that place. It was a first draft attempt at what we now know as D&D today and it. failed. miserably. Mostly because it was also a place for "adult discussions" and you had to be a certain age to get in to see the section. The place was a train wreck and quickly closed up shop.

I remember when Reputation was enabled, I remember it being disabled, brought back, and disabled again, modified to be positive only, then completely removed and replaced for post comments.
In the old days rep was a joke. It never improved so it eventually vanished

I remember the days before VMs. The days when Member fanclubs made sense. I remember when Social Groups were enabled and failed.

 

[Kura]

Before supportership colours, no VMs, no profile customization, no blogs, no like button, no post comments, the T-Dome, name changes, reputation, memberclubs, social-groups, when the IRC was booming, and lots of old mods who were awesome (Forest Grovyle, Ryoutarou, etc.) when the DCC needed a thread every month because it would reach like over 5k even 10k posts per month.. different ways the forums were rearranged too (like OC now is CCP, Gen Entertainment, etc..)
I don't miss all of those things, of course, (some I disliked) but they were things I remember.

What I miss most.. especially, are.. many of my old friends who used to come here and don't come here anymore.

 

[droomph]

All my memories are shrouded in complete panic of human contact lol :p

But I do remember a couple things being moved around, renamed, etc. not much has changed since I was around.

 

[Hikamaru]

I joined in 2011, which was long after the end of username changes and reputation. I saw several staff promotions, mostly those from members to moderators, 6 to super moderators, and even 4 to staff admins. Also, I remember seeing the Black 2 & White 2 forum getting created, the time when the sections in off-topic discussions all had different names to now, and also back when General Entertainment was called Culture & Media, The Welcome Lounge was New Users / Welcome, Battle Center was once separate sections, the Pokemon Voting Polls subsection in Pokemon General didn't exist, Pokemon Anime used to have a subsection for characters and shipping, and loads more section changes since. And of course the merging of Japanese Entertainment with GE, and the removal of Tabletop Games.

Supporters were blue back in my time, and stayed that way until the end of February this year when the green color was implemented. The main reason the color was changed was to further differentiate them from mods, who had too similar of a color. And of course the DCC, pictures thread and celebrations moved here and this very section went from Other Voting Polls to Chit Chat & Polls. I even got to witness the likes system getting implemented.

So yeah, quite a lot I got to see for someone who's only been here for 2 years.

 

[Cherrim]

...when I joined PC, it didn't even use vBulletin as the forum software. The slogan was "we are working on a better slogan". When I became active on PC, it was in the aftermath of a merge with PE2K forums which was quickly reversed. Almost all the active members left when PE2K became its own entity again and PC had to pretty much drag itself back into activity.

I was first modded because I was a girl. The current mods of the time decided they probably should have female representation on staff and apparently I stood out the most among all the candidates. (Another friend, Arcanine, was promoted around the same time because the self-proclaimed head s-mod, Shining Arcanine, liked his username.) I got to pick the forum I wanted to mod--so mods weren't chosen on a needed basis, they were mostly promoted for the hell of it. I was promoted to s-mod about 2 weeks later. I remember when you couldn't make admin unless you had a popular Pokemon fansite--no matter how much time/effort you poured into the staff, the best you could do was s-mod. I remember when that changed: when we literally had a staff usergroup named "Abby" to accommodate the first person to gain admin powers (but still couldn't be an "actual" admin).

I remember when Ruby/Sapphire was still a forum where people would theorize about what would be in the games! I remember the Member Fanclubs forum, T-Dome, and how none of the forums I modded in the past even exist now. (Other Voting Polls, Other Anime, Other Chat, and Webmaster's Discussion, to use original names.) And that's not even to mention all the features that have come and gone over the years, like reputation, social groups and so on. PC looks like an entirely different place in comparison to way back then. It's become a much more generalized site and attracted so many more kinds of people than just those looking to discuss the next upcoming Pokemon game. It's still got plenty of those people, of course, but the number of lasting friendships (and relationships!!) that have come from this site just amazes me.

I don't think I'd go back to any of those things, though. The only thing I miss about PC is feeling so invested in it. :( I was linked to a thread here the other day and was appalled to notice that I hadn't even visited in a few weeks. Weeks!! I don't miss being so obsessed with PC that I lost sight of a lot of other things, nor do I miss getting so worked up about it; but I definitely miss feeling that drive to come and post here... to leave it open in a tab as I went through my day, checking in all the time. :'(

Honestly though, if you told me 11 years ago when I joined that I'd be roommates with a friend from the US that I met on here? I'd think you were absolutely crazy. I'm so glad PC exists in any fashion, but especially the way it is now!

 

[Aquacorde]

Let's never revitalize 2004/5!PC.

My memories aren't very clear because you know. I was eleven and internet-inept and my memory is absolutely appalling in general. But as far as I do recall and from what I've revisited, everything was chaos. There was a lot of drama and it was pretty clique-y; I think Member Fanclubs certainly enabled and enforced that. The rules were a lot more staff member-subjective. Everything was a lot less formalized... I remember being convinced to RP and taught how as we went along and I was obviously **** at it because I was eleven but nobody seemed to be that bothered? I'm sure Sweets Witch can correct me on that one lmao. I remember Fun Time In PokéLand aka the Spam Pit. I remember pairing and PC families being a huge deal with elaborate lists in the threads, I remember PC Weddings, I remember a thread which was like 'throw something at the member above/below'. I remember when glow tags were the vogue for signatures and ~ was used as punctuation way too often. ^_~ and similar were popular smilies, everyone was advertising their clique-y InvisionFree spinoff forums, signatures were generally blinding or boring. Legacy was default, as was Forest Grovyle's Legendaries, which was my forum style until it vanished like two years ago. ;___; Other than that skin, let's not bring back the old haha.

 

[gimmepie]

I haven't been here long at all really but I have seen a few changes.
I have seen a few re-workings of the various forums, new mods and I think I might have been here for the Green usernames for supporters (how long have emblems been here? Possibly them but I don't think so.)

Most recently of course was the, as Bloodex so eloquently put it, username fiasco. I'm so glad they changed that back it looked hideous.

 

[Aslan]

When I first joined back in August under the name of Rainbow Arcanine, there was quite a bit of differences. Not that significant but there were still a few things that aren't like today- there was no such thing as a Like Button, the supporters were blue, the staff were quite different from memory and yeah that's about all I can remember. There were a lot of forum name changes as well, along with no X/Y section, because the games hadn't been announced yet. All in all, even though I've only been here for almost a year, there have been quite a few changes.

 

[Nick]

I don't really like how the forums functioned then, but I like the feeling I had when I came here. Everything felt new for a long time. I enjoyed so much more of the people, but I think part of that is because I allowed myself to socialize with them a lot more. I was more involved with the friends I had and we would talk a lot more.

That's really the only thing I miss about how PC was back when I first joined, the people and the feeling that I had when I was here. I value that above all else, like many others.

I prefer the way the forums operate now because I feel like we're much more progressive, and if you know me, you know that that's something I think is very important in this day and age for internet forums.

 

[Black Ice]

when i joined there were a lot of promising hacks that were incomplete and a lot of people with weird names and some people i didnt like

pretty much the same thing for the past near-decade i guess

 

[Treecko]

I've only been here for about a year and a half, but it seems a good amount has changed since then. Not as much as it has been for older members like Kura or Lightning, but still there's been a good amount of changes since February 2012. For starters , we didn't have a like button back then. General Entertainment was called Culture & Media and Japanese Entertainment was still an individual forum. Tabletop Games was still a forum and that no longer exists. I remember when only when Black & White existed and when Black 2 & White 2 was still new. Fourth Generation Gaming was still under Current Generation Pokémon Gaming when I was new and until about March or February of this year. Many forums have been renamed and rearranged too. And finally Chit-Chat and Polls was once Other Voting Polls and the DCC was part of Other Chat and Discussions and so was Celebrations until they were moved to here. Then one of the biggest changes next to the like button was supporters changing from blue to green.

The staff has gone through alot of changes too. I can't remember who all were on staff back in February of 2012, but I remember Meganium90 and Snivy063 modded what was then New Users/ Welcome, Team Fail modded Computers &Technology I think, and Mr Cat Dog was still mod of Culture & Media until he was re-promoted to SMod. Snivy063 in particular was banned which was weird to me cause I'd never thought a mod would get banned and he the moderator userbar still exists under his name/on his profile. But he's no longer a staff member. There's been many people like him who were demoted or left staff for personal reasons and there's been many people who've been promoted to moderator or a higher rank too.

 

[Zebeedoo]

A lot has kinda changed since I first joined here.. well for me anyway. I joined in Jan 09 and was inactive until March 2010, around then I started talking to more people and their friends and I had made a lot of good friends.. I remember B.E.A.D.S. lol... and while it's not part of PC, I miss the huge MSN convos we used to have everyday for about two years, they were always so fun and made me smile.. such good memories of being here.. I just don't feel the same vibes though nowadays which is why I barely come on. I try being active but I just.. I don't really feel part of PC anymore lol.

 

[Sammi]

Uh, I think the only three things that are the same now as they were when I first joined May 2004:
1. Steve's an admin
2. The slogan
3. s-mod color is #FF9900

Those are, like, the universal constants of PC. :p Ignore the fact that the s-mod color hasn't always been orange. Or the slogan. Actually, I think Steve is the only real universal constant on that list.
I'm not going to really reminisce about how things were back then, because other people already have, and I am very lazy.

Personally, I don't really miss anything so much that I wish it were back. PC changes, and it's almost always for the better. It's very interesting to see where the years take us.

The most exciting changes are either vB software changes/new plugins, or promotions, because I will forever love promotions.

 

[Sydian]

Sooo much has changed since I joined. So many staff have come and gone, one of which became my best friend and has been nearly four years. I've seen a completely new smod team come in and I've seen an almost completely new moderator team come in after I was modded. That in mind, it's hard to believe I'm the second oldest mod, behind Astinus.

I remember when Video Games was Other Games and when PGC was General Pokemon Gaming and BEFORE THAT it was all in Pokemon General. And purple supporters. And Fun Times in Pokeland or whatever and MEMBER FANCLUBS mine was terrible lol. And the old rank bar style...and green admins...and BeachBoy...and PokeSpe Club...

-cries- I spent my teenhood on PC.