Yaaay, happy birthday RPOL!

Yes.  Seventeen years old.  About time it looked for a job...

Wow, 17?

Congrats!

Is there a way to see how long you have been on the site? I think I've joined around 2005, but want to be sure.

In reply to Eduardo (msg # 3):

Unfortunately there isn't a way to do that.

Happy birthday RpoL! I've been here since 2008, half of RpoL's lifetime.

I came in during 2001. Was on PBW before that and people there told me of this site.

June 2002 for me (I know this because I started a game then).  Also came from PBW.

I tried scrolling through the changelog to suss out when I joined. I know I was here about a year (ish) before GM usernames were displayed with the game name. And sometime after that there was the major visual overhaul. But I can't find the GM name change in the version history.

I'm guessing 2005/2006 or so.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:56, Fri 25 Aug 2017.

Happy birthday, RPoL. You survived robustly long enough for me to find you through a random link on the Talislanta website. Although even simple explanations are mostly now done through video rather than text, you provide a comfortable space for those of us for whom text is our thing. May you outlive the entire video gaming industry!

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 7):

Slight tangent, but what is/was PBW?  Mostly what does the acronym stand for?

In reply to Eduardo (msg # 3):

If you have some spare time and can stand to browse through search results, go to Google and search for: site:rpol.net [your username]

If you've not made a lot of posts in public forums, you should be able to find early posts and narrow down when you joined.  I've been able to narrow it down to early 2008 for me.

If you're a heavy user of the site and have 20000 posts, it might take you time and detective work. :P
This message was last edited by the user at 20:37, Fri 25 Aug 2017.

Well in 2006 I had 6 posts in the public forums.  Still not sure how long ago I joined.  ^___^

In reply to pdboddy (msg # 10):

Another gaming site - PlayByWeb.

I stumbled upon this website out of random when I was seeking for an Inuyasha roleplaying forum.

I managed to stumble upon the chat part of RpoL and met quite a few awesome people that I feel bad for just disappearing on them now that I remember it.

I eventually got told about the PbP part of RpoL and registered and boom! 9 years later here I am.

Still stuck on free-form based games, but out of all sites I ran into online, RpoL is the mst organized and user-friendly one.

In reply to pdboddy (msg # 11):

I don't think we have anybody with 20,000 posts.  I believe the person with the most posts in the public forums currently has 15,420.  :D
This message was last edited by the user at 22:24, Fri 25 Aug 2017.

Just a historical note. PlayByWeb came out before Rpol by a couple years. I found it when I first got online in 1998. A friend who played there told me of it. He had been playing on PBW since 97. At one time it was The place to game, now Rpol holds that title and most of the gamers. But it's still out there and some still use it. Me I use it to store old characters. The one feature Rpol does not have. Allot of the Mods here played there to start, same for players. Every now and then I come across someone else I know from there. Over all this site is more user friendly and that has made a huge difference between the sites.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 15):

Hah, well, if you can't remember when you joined, you might have some searching ahead of you.  That's a lot of posts. xD

Well, I wish RPOL another 17 years, at minimum. :D  I want to be a crotchety old fart still playing here there.

You can get some idea of how long you've been here by looking for your very first rMail message.  Not a definite indicator, because some people were on RPOL for a while before they did anything with rMail.  But you can at least point to it and say, 'Sometime before this date...'  (I know I was on RPOL for months before I ever really looked at any of the public threads, much less traded rMailwith anyone.)

In reply to pdboddy (msg # 17):

Nah, I know exactly when I joined (see msg #7, above),


In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 19):

That wouldn't work for a lot of long term users, since rMail didn't exist until some time between 2004 and 2007.

I can't remember when I joined. I regularly perform housekeeping on my stuff in here, so my rMail list only goes back to October. A Google search like the one suggested above didn't help either.

I know it's been at least 10 years, but that's all I know for certain. Why aren't accounts tagged with their creation date?

I know when I joined, because I put it in my bio line.

Happy Birthday RPoL !

November 2012 for me ... as near as I can tell that was my first game ... but I think I was playing for a few years before I posted my first game ?
This message was last edited by the user at 05:50, Sat 26 Aug 2017.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 20):

It doesn't work that well for me, either, as I have no idea how long I was on RPOL before I sent/received an rMail message.  It gives me a vague ballpark...about as accurate as saying I know I joined RPOL before I joined Facebook, because I remember using MySpace to talk with the friend who first invited me to join and participate in his game...

I can't look for anything from that game.  It's long since defunct.

A good way to get the exact date is if you didn't delete the email they sent you upon registering on the site from the beginning. Should still be in your inbox with the email you used to first sign up and register on the site. I've been using the same email since I registered and I didn't delete the email apparently due to the fact it had my account name and password  in there in case I may have forgotten it and it was also the same email that you had to open up in order to activate your account.

In reply to WhiteComic (msg # 25):

.... I almost wish I had deleted it. That's a very long time ago.

I still use PBW, better interface for phone.

Happy Birthday, RPoL!  Thanks for hanging in there for this long, and here's hoping for many more years of RP enjoyment.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 19):

Oi, thanks for that.  Searched my rMail, and it appears I've been here at least a year earlier than I had thought. :)

In reply to WhiteComic (msg # 25):

Okay, even better than facemaker's suggestion.

Apparently I joined Christmas of 2005!

My last rMail was 2007 however I think I started up in 2006. rMail to the mods all but admitting to a duplicate account :P



I still remember the game that was for but I don't remember much else about it.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:12, Mon 28 Aug 2017.

I've been here long enough to remember the RPoll changing from default character to being forced to select one. That's dated October 2002, so some time before that..

I joined July 2002.

I'm another one from the exodus from PBW, where I was at from 1998-2002.

I've been around since May 2003.

You can get some idea of people's relative signup times by hovering over "profile" and looking at the "ui=" number. Lower numbers = higher longevity.

You can find your own number by hovering over User Preferences.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:29, Tue 29 Aug 2017.

For a long time we didn't record signup dates, so anything prior to.. errr, some date I can't remember are really rough estimates (e.g. "Before 08:00, Sun 23 Oct 2005", "Before 10:53, Sat 05 May 2007") which I only managed to get by dumping old backup copies of the user database and getting a list of who was in it.

Anyone after ~May 2007 have proper accurate signup dates, but the first 42,000 or so users only have the aforementioned rough estimates.

So I can let people see their signup dates, but if your account number is under 42 thousand and something then you'll only get an estimate.

Apparently, I joined June 2003 according to my email stating 'thank you for your registration'. That's a lifetime ago...

Judging on my UI #37,827 compared to others, late 2006/early 2007.

10 YEARS WOOOOOOO

Oh, wow... my UI number is 1224! I knew I'd been around for a spell, but that's waaaayyy earlier than I expected!

That beats me. I'm 1909.

In reply to Heath (msg # 39):

Well, I was also one of those caught-up in the great PBW exodus. I can't imagine I joined much more than a month from when you did. Possibly less.

Where do you find you UI number?

edit: regardless, found my registration email. June 2010. Wow, I really thought I had been on here longer than that.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:25, Wed 30 Aug 2017.

And before PlayByWeb was PBeM.com, which was play by email and has long since been discontinued.

In reply to Darbbackwards (msg # 41):

Hover over "User Preferences" and it is the number next to UI (at the very bottom left of your screen).
This message was last edited by the user at 17:25, Wed 30 Aug 2017.

In reply to Heath (msg # 43):

found it. thanks! #60404

In reply to Heath (msg # 42):

I remember PBEM... I can't recall what it looked like, but I do remember being sad when it went away.

PBEM2 is still around though.

Last year I went around trying to find other websites like RPOL, and couldn't find any that were very active or easy to dig-through. This is definitely still the place to be for PbP!

I loved PBEM.com.  That's been a while...

---

October 1, 2004 looks like for me (from the email).  U#13885

Well, since my UI is #8736 I'm guessing it was before 2005, as I first thought.
This message was last edited by the user at 17:42, Wed 30 Aug 2017.

Well, in so far as I've been around a while, I can't feel too good about myself.

It took me at least five years before I could actually stick to a game as a player for more than a few months before dropping-out, and it was only four and half years ago that I learned how to do the same thing with games that I run.

Obviously came over from our chat room RP site sometime around when Heath did, I'm 2054. This site must have been tiny at that stage...

Hmm, My UI is 1534, I have no idea what that translates as really.

I'm sure I'll get notified if this question is too far off-topic, but is it a good idea for folks to post their UI numbers openly like this?  I'm just thinking about security and such.

If you hover over anyone's "profile," it tells you their number.  What's the difference if it's posted?  It's not secret in any event.

In reply to Heath (msg # 52):

Duh!  You're right.