How Times Have Changed

[Guest Toa Jalmat]

Hello there.
I doubt any of you will know or even remember me, but I'm "Toa Jalmat", and back in the days I also used the alias "(Toa) Matau" in other BIONICLE-related instances, and sometimes I used the name "Jaller". You can still see my signature just the way it was in 2008, as well as my avatar from 2009 and perhaps various other things. Minus the banner that used to be a part of my signature, of course. It's been broken for long...
I think the biggest thing I've ever done on here has to be this comedy story type of topic I opened, 8 or 9 years ago.
Things lasted a couple of years and then I basically disappeared for long, because one day my interest in BIONICLE began to fade.
I recently managed to log in to BZPower again, which I mainly did in the hopes of finding some of my old BIONICLE friends.
I must've met the first of those people almost exactly 10 years ago now, when I was but 9 years old. It was the month May of 2006 and I was a huge BIONICLE fan. I created my own site using a simple website creator that could be found online. As a kid from The Netherlands, my English was lackluster, to say the least, which probably can no longer be said now, but those type of things did not bother me as much back then and I just kept doing what I did. I also created a couple of forums using Invisionfree for me and those friends, way back then. I only knew them online, but I still felt connected and part of some form of tiny community.
Sometimes it's hard to believe how things have changed. I haven't spoken to any of them in many, many years, and I'm not sure if I ever will again. One often used the names Kopaka (or Kopeke? On this forum at least, one of those two) and Matoro, and he was the first person who came to my website to roleplay as BIONICLE characters, and things pretty much picked up from there. I think his name was Sheragim, if anyone here might've known him. Eventually, I was redirected to BZPower, about a year later, in 2007.
All the other friends I had... I can't really remember their names well, only certain images and things they did.
But it's been a long, long time.

Around 2010 or 2011, I also joined a text-based Rock Raiders RPG on BZPower. No clue what happened to those guys either. My old posts and topics seem to have disappeared. Old friends I met through these sites seem to have disappeared.
So I figured I'd just go and post a topic about this. Maybe receive responses to my own story or hear stories told by other people about how times have - or haven't - changed. I came to BZPower when I was 9... and now, I am 19.

To be frank, I still have no interest in BIONICLE now, but am still a huge LEGO fan and it is part of my history, so there's that.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Toa Jalmat

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

hm, i don't know much, until the revival of bionicle i was in n out of here a bunch myself, oops

 

but i can at least say, (though anyone here could) that the deletion of all those old topics and posts was, if i recall my BZP history enough, an event referred to as "the great datacalysm(?)", all i remember is all old BZP data (except i think members) disappeared, it turned a lot of folks away from the site tbh.

[CyclonatorZ]

To be more specific, all the old posts were put in an archive after the new forum was launched. Then hackers destroyed the archive, and that was that. I'm just thankful I'm suck a packrat when it comes to my computer files, because I still have backups of a lot of my favorite fan-made content from the early years. I even managed to reunite another member with his old fan-fiction about a year ago. But it's really a drop in the bucket; 99 percent of the stuff from the first ten years of the forum is 100 percent gone for good.

Edited May 22, 2016 by ~~Zarkan~~

[TheSkeletonMan939]

I still feel like it's such a shame that archive got deleted. The archive was a look into a better time for BZPower.

[Taria Pakari]

I still feel like it's such a shame that archive got deleted. The archive was a look into a better time for BZPower.

 

Part of me is kind of glad its gone because it means I'll never have to see any of the cringy stuff I may have done back then ever again. :v

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Part of me is kind of glad its gone because it means I'll never have to see any of the cringy stuff I may have done back then ever again. :v

 

Haha, well, part of growing up is looking back and seeing what a dum-dum you were even just a few years ago, and appreciating how much less of a dum-dum you are today.  

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

I still feel like it's such a shame that archive got deleted. The archive was a look into a better time for BZPower.

 

Part of me is kind of glad its gone because it means I'll never have to see any of the cringy stuff I may have done back then ever again. :v

 

 

YES, DESTROY IT, CAST IT INTO FIRE!!

 

uh, i mean, i wasn't terrible as a kid, or anything. < _ <

Edited May 27, 2016 by Rahkshi Lalonde

[Great Being Velika]

Yeah, after my really long vacation, I have noticed way less activity on this site than even in 2014. It makes me sad, but at the same time, new old faces show up, like Bionicle Rex and SPIRIT, so it's not as sad.

[Specter Knight]

I may have already said this somewhere here, but I actually saw a lot of the older topics long before I actually joined (Which was in late 2014). I still have fond memories of the Golden age of comics, where familiar faces like Dark709 and Gavla reigned supreme. It's a shame the comics subforum has mostly become barren, save for a few decent gems here and there.

[Ballom Nom Nom]

 

I still feel like it's such a shame that archive got deleted. The archive was a look into a better time for BZPower.

 

Part of me is kind of glad its gone because it means I'll never have to see any of the cringy stuff I may have done back then ever again. :v

 

Don't worry, the Wayback Machine should have saved most of your cringeworthy material anyway!

[Taria Pakari]

 

 

I still feel like it's such a shame that archive got deleted. The archive was a look into a better time for BZPower.

 

Part of me is kind of glad its gone because it means I'll never have to see any of the cringy stuff I may have done back then ever again. :v

 

Don't worry, the Wayback Machine should have saved most of your cringeworthy material anyway!

 

 

Welp, time to burn the internet.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Don't worry, the Wayback Machine should have saved most of your cringeworthy material anyway!

 

True, but sadly a lot of threads it just didn't save properly. It saved the links in the thread index, but not the threads themselves. And if they did save a thread, it's usually hard to find an archive past the first page of one.

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

Don't worry, the Wayback Machine should have saved most of your cringeworthy material anyway!

 

True, but sadly a lot of threads it just didn't save properly. It saved the links in the thread index, but not the threads themselves. And if they did save a thread, it's usually hard to find an archive past the first page of one.

 

 

with our luck, it only saved the awful, unsightly stuff we all wanted gone forever >_>

[Pohaturon]

I may have already said this somewhere here, but I actually saw a lot of the older topics long before I actually joined (Which was in late 2014). I still have fond memories of the Golden age of comics, where familiar faces like Dark709 and Gavla reigned supreme. It's a shame the comics subforum has mostly become barren, save for a few decent gems here and there.

 

Aw man, Dark709's comics was what actually brought me to BZPower. I lurked for a good long while before actually joining. 

 

Then, after Bionicle was cancelled, I pretty much forgot about this site. Then came the reboot, and I was like "I wonder is my account is still active". It was/is, but much of the good old content was gone.

 

Luckily there is plenty of good new to go around, though!