My first board I ever signed up on was Gameglow.com's Legend of Mana board in 2000. Let me tell you, there were plenty of freaks and elitists there. Not an ideal place for a newbie, but I still have some fond memories of some of the people there.

Since gameglow shut down for whatever reason, our community migrated over to EZ board and then to another board system a couple of months later. It's a blur but I'm sure we've jumped boards and sites no less than 6 times, losing people each time. I know we're still stationed somewhere with few originals left, I just can't access the forums at the moment.

The next place I can think of that I signed up to was IGN's boards in Nov 2000
with this username, ClaudeLv250. I mostly wandered the Gamecube forums at first
and ended up fighting all the trolls that frequently swarmed them. Afterwards I
started looking around IGN's other forums and somehow made the SSB forum my
mainstay after getting caught up in the SSBM hype in the summer of 01. If any of
you guys have heard of Solar7, he's an ass. He made a "regular elite" group that
was supposed to defend the board against trolls (even though there were mods),
but then had a nervous e-breakdown, disbanded the "group" and then flamed a
couple of respectable members before throwing a big fit on the board about how
he was "leaving IGN and never coming back."

He came back a few months later.

And then they made him a mod.

That was the first sign of IGN's apocalypse.

I didn't realize how bad the SSB boards were when I was there, though. But it
was one big chaotic mess, full of users. It was one of those boards where people
have posting gimmicks to get noticed, because it was one big popularity contest.

Sometimes I can't believe I posted there.

Then IGN's apocalypse finally came a few months after SSBM came out. The boards
went insider only. Every single board required an insider account. I absolutely
refused to pay $20 to use their goddamn boards, especially when I refused to pay
that for the service beforehand in the first place. So IGN was a lost cause, and
our community was effectively ripped apart. I was one of the lucky ones that was
told about a refuge site, but the damage was done nad most were lost. The ones
that stayed on IGN changed into elitist bitches of their insider accounts. To
think these people use to be some I consiered friends. One of them even had the
audacity to say smething like "20 dollars is too much to pay for your friends?"

Bitch, like I'm going to pay $20 for a service I'm not going to use just to talk
to you on the forums. Strut your elitist ass out of my face with your shiny
avatar you had to pay for.

IGN's boards eventually dropped the insider-only BS (well, most of them). I went
back to the SSB board only to find it dead and a shell of its former self. IGN
certainly did a number on its communities. They'll never be the same again. Now
new people have populated it so I rarely post on IGN as a whole, just the Star
Ocean and Metroid forums, really, like once a month.

My main forums now are on Medaverse.com...this was the refuge site I mentioned
before, so most of the regulars there escaped IGN's corruption. Hilariously,
Solar7 actually did visit once to try and "convert" us back to IGN. He was promptly PWNED. It's mostly the same community there now that was there after
IGN's insider only fiasco, though some of the crappy users have long since left
and the site transformed, as the owners are now making the WiiWare game
Gravitronix.

I also post on GameFAQs. I registered there back in 2001, mostly on and off
posting there at first but now I have like 2000 karma so I certainly know my way
around the place and have quite a few of the trolls under my boots. I mostly
frequent RPG boards there, like the Star Ocean and Wild Arms boards.

There were also a couple of smaller boards not worth mentioning, so other than
that, I just post at Meda, GameFAQs, IGN occasionally, and now here since 2
months ago. And I can't believe I just typed all of that. I'm saving this in a
file.