Did you realise it's been more than 20 years now?

[Ricold]

There are adults today who were not alive when this iteration of the forums was installed.

But it has been the longest running and most stable iteration of the boards, and while social media has rather taken over from bulletin boards* (Facebook opened to the general public in 2006), somehow we are still here to see the 20 year anniversary of this one.
Please note that I will try and offer the best recollection of these events. However as I often cannot remember what I had for breakfast, my chances of getting it all right is slim to nil.
Ulthuan had a rather tumultuous time when I first joined, somewhere around the turn of the millennium. We went through more than a few domains, and several different hosts and software. As we headed into the summer of ’04, I was a regular member here, but was heading up another message board of my own, for the upcoming Storm of Chaos campaign. Announced in the late summer of ’03, I somehow managed to install and then host the coordination boards for the forces of light. Reaching out to some 10,000 players at our peak, I was getting myself known as a reasonable webmaster. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but the webmaster here at the time would probably have been TimmyMWD, and he asked if I could temporarily host Ulthuan while some issues were going on.
We duplicated the database, only to discover that that iteration of the forums wasn’t going to be stable. So, I did what any friendly websmaster would do, and installed a fresh install.

So, that is where it started. Over the afternoon of 5th Jun 2004, I did a clean install of the forum software and started configuring. That evening I asked Timmy and to look over the forums, check I hadn’t done anything stupid, and just before bed I left a link somewhere the users could find it to start the site up again.
If you have a look at the registration dates of the early end of the list, you’ll see the several hundred users who re-registered over the following week, and they were the core of the community at the time. What has shocked me while looking this data up myself is that there is still a user from day one who is still active. Well done to Aerendar Valandil. You are a crazy, crazy person.

So, to everyone who is active today, I thank you. For a project that was originally just helping out a fellow webmaster, I went on to be head Loremaster, webadmin, and owner at various points. But while this is a snippet of my story, it is *you* who make the community.

Cheers for many more years to come


(*Ever wondered what the bb in phpbb stood for?)

[Csjarrat]

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Anarion]

That's truly bizarre. I don't know if that was a to the day post Ricold but I literally drifted here like a dusty old tumbleweed for the first time in eons. 20 years for this iteration, never mind it was probably at least 5 before that in other forms.

[Giladis]

Indeed time has gone by. One midsummer eve it was 19 years since I have joined Ulthuan.

[Anduil of Elithis]

Long time indeed!
I noticed this even more stark when the German tabletop board that I had joined in my teens finally shut down last year and the 'last survivors' had to move to discord.

Fingers crossed this place continues!

[TyrrenAzureblade]

I remember way back when Island of Blood launched and I was at a loss for where to find resources and advice for how to field my army. Then life happened, and I had to put all my unpainted models away, but I found this site and proceeded to lurk so hard. So many topics going right over my head, but boy was it interesting to read the discussions and theorycrafting and the debates. I’m glad I came back to the hobby and that this site was still around when I finally did. Cheers!