I think back often to the old days. I remember all Ryusen spoke of, but then again, our join dates aren't so far separate.
I miss a lot of folks. A lot of the core group on the Comic Board was pretty tight-knit in the old days; as I suppose it still is, though I no longer stand in that inner circle as I once did. I could drop a lot of names of people that I miss: zhimoda, GD, Tuna, Durandal, fatalcrash, kryss, Verilidaine, Fastchapter, Kilroy, Kinuki, Ana, Kuro, cupil, Jedi, and Spiffman; all people I'd called close friends then, and all people that I, to my intense chagrin, have let slip from me (or most of the way; as some of them do occasionally post here yet). I regret nothing more than that I haven't maintained those friendships. There are more names that don't come so quickly to the front of my mind, but whose words and presence I valued then and see no more.
What Ryusen left out when he mentioned the name changes is that the policy lockdown happened only like a week after one of the prank weeks, when large numbers of users would change their names or avatars in some predetermined way; so there were several people who ended up stuck with "theCatgirl" appended at the end of their forum logins for a while, until it was finally sorted out that Yash could fix it. Of course, Yash was still something of a frightening robot then, so a lot of people were afraid to come to him for help. *laugh*
I remember when I joined, Trace and Flora and the others had just begun their voyage to the Basidian Isles. We would spend weeks, sometimes over a month, between updates. But at that time, there was so much mystery left in the plot and characters. We spent weeks talking about why a person might identify with Keith or how a particular aspect of magic might work. Perhaps I am just cynical and jaded now, but I no longer see those mysteries. This far into the story, it's hard to speculate with people in the Comic Board because I just tend to see the path laid out in front of us.
I used to always very carefully post a small paragraph that was absolutely on topic for the specific thread title topic, and then post a massive multiparagraph discussion of whatever the thread's
current topic was, so that the moderators wouldn't be able to delete my post or yell at me for being off topic.
I hated to see topics get locked, so it was a point of pride of mine to intervene in heated debates and beg the situation down before anybody got into too much trouble. It gave me a probably undeserved reputation for being the voice of reason...especially considering how rough I'd play in some of those debates with Kinuki, Sebbie, or Scalfin2000 (a user who seemed to post almost solely to get into arguments with me).
Of course, our mutual respect for one another -- that we always tried to remember that the person we were arguing with was an intelligent, thinking individual who had (probably) come to their conclusions honestly -- was how we were able to get away with such rough and tumble debates. Kinuki's long-running series of topics on homosexuality here on the Ranting Board were a great example. We didn't always live up to our ideal, of course, but we did a good enough job that we were able to have those debates. Early in my time on the forum, they were locked immediately; it is to Yash's enormous credit that he had the patience and good will to give us some rope and trust us not to simply hang ourselves. I remember those early debates, treading very carefully to keep the mods happy, as they were uncomfortable with letting a flamebait topic stay open, and were watching everything closely.
unsteddy, your post brought tears to my eyes. You said what is probably the thing I have always most longed to hear; and you have no idea what it means to me. To have someone say that they saw what I wrote and it helped them refine their own beliefs is intensely flattering and is the reason that I ever started posting in those controversial threads in the first place. Thank you.
You know, we wax nostalgic, like the glory days are all behind us, but I have always tried to remember that we were all newbies once. I asked some particularly stupid questions when I was young (though I was too afraid to open topics for the first year or so, which means that my trail of foolishness isn't terribly obvious). And I don't think we've lost everything that made this forum great. We've got some pretty great users among our new(er) users too, people who still post with respect and thought, and it's been as much an honor to know all of you as to know my close friends from times past. It's the way of the mind to cherish our memories. And we had our share of rough times too, as anyone who remembers when "get in the soup" was expected to simply end any discussion will recall. Someday, the people who join today will look back on this year with fondness and remember their friendships here, or so is my earnest hope.
Now that was a very [censored] epic way to tell the tale, Yash! 
Perhaps I should join in the RP-ing to gain some storytelling skillz as well...
And I can't complain, I absolutely enjoy being here with all of you guys 
Though I still get surprised how some people can actually write wall of text comments to every single comic page that comes out... 
