Planetarion Forums

ChubbyChecker · 16 Apr 2024, 21:55

What follows is my own personal perspective and experience of this forum. If you don't agree or don't care about the perspective of someone you probably don't remember that's fine. It's not like I'm clogging up an otherwise active forum.

I started playing Planetarion towards the end of Round 2, which must have been about 2000 or 2001, I forget which. I was at University so had lots of free time and this seemed like a fun game to play. I stuck around playing the game and hanging out on IRC until the end of Round 5, the first paid round of PA. I came back to the game a few times over the years but never stuck around longer than a Round or so. My love affair with GD was a bit more consistent.

It would be great if we had all the posts and threads from the early days, a forum reset (or whatever) means the logs only go back to 2002 though. By this point I had already graduated from University. This forum kept me posting and entertained during my early career, time that I would have spent just getting work done so no big loss there.

I can't tell you exactly when GD started going downhill. It wasn't so much that the quality of the posts and threads became worse (though there are many who at the time argued that they did) but my activity on this forum did take a nose dive when I travelled the world for a year in 2008 / 2009. By the time I got back I didn't check on GD so much, mainly because there weren't that many threads to read and comment on.

It's only been in recent times that I have been coming back to GD every now and then to read old threads and chuckle at the memories. I don't do it often, though every few months it definitely cheers me up. Hopefully I'm not the only person who does that, there's a gold mine of threads here. Thankfully Planetarion itself is still going and I hope it will continue to do so for years to come, if only so that the database doesn't get deleted and I lose an online copy of those memories forever.

I don't remember exactly when it happened but a lot of GD regulars went off and joined / created their own separate forum. I never joined them in this endeavor, something I regret now since I'm sure a lot of chuckle worthy threads were created there. I doubt that forum is still active or even in existence though, we're probably talking about something that happened well over a decade ago. Even if that forum does still exist it's probably full of discussions about health problems, mortgage worries, annoying offspring, etc.... Typical middle aged discussions.

This forum really was its own little community within (what became) the small Planetarion community. GD meets were set up and (judging by the threads created by those attending) enjoyed. I never went to any, nor have I ever met a GDer in person as far as I'm aware. Which is fine, I was happy enough seeing the online community develop and participate through my keyboard.

So anyway, that's just my take on this forum and what it has meant to me over the years. Like I say I hope I'm not the only one who has fond memories buried in the database of this forum.