I received the Spore game for Christmas in 2008. My first few creations were amusingly bad. I remember ragequitting after I made a mistake with one in my early creatures. I tried creating a Sporecast, called the Reunion of Madness. It had a decent storyline, but my creations were not up to par. My creating marginally improved. My playing did as well, as I sought to create creatures from all archetypes. I then just started to make things for roleplays. Then not at all. My little brother plays more now.

I joined this forum in the summer of 2009. I am somewhat amused/ashamed by how I acted then, although I fear I judge myself harsher than I should be. I saw the age in the Sporum where hope was high. People's complaints were that Maxis wasn't doing enough, even as patches and new features and expansions seemed to be coming out every month. Users like MCKSTEALTH, SeanStar25, Arkanay, Cazyshyness, and others posted then who are gone now. Other people are still around, like Ashkelon. Even as the age demographic fell, more and more new members joined. The Sporemasters, Blackbird, LadyM, Parkaboy, and Kaliena, like were universally popular, and the few spammers, like Claw Reacher and Sean1111, were few and far between. Yet no age is purely golden, and this was an era in which large clubs like MUD and RLS and many others I forget regularly had wars to be the top of the hottest topics. It was a forum full of memes then too.

I joined the roleplay section of the forum, on Post-Terra. It was run by PITHADIUS, who is remarkably creative as a roleplayer. I hope that his current roleplay Neo-Terra does not die, though I feel it will with only 2 remaining members. Yet I digress.

I did many things on this forum. I made the juvenile yet still entertaining Spore Gangsta edition. I fought for Maxis to complete the knight archetype. Does anyone other than me remember the glorious Knights of Lusum club? I think I am the only member who is still left. Feedback was full of ideas then, some wonderful, some quite bad like Aravan99's Bacterial Muslim Hermit thread. I made a world-design project, Calanis. It was modeled after zsonicmaster's Cordilleria project. zsonic was a good creator, and that project was the most successful of the world-design projects. Does anyone still remember him/her? I don't know, almost all are gone.

We lasted though 2009, with MetroPolice's Christmas spam attack and the slight delay with the asymmetry patch on Macs and the controversy barely stopping it. Even the early 2010 scandal of the ill-fated robot parts promotion did not destroy the community. The first real blow was when the MUD "glitch" started to destroy various threads to hide whatever they did not want anyone to see (and the Evolutions! thread, but that piece of garbage and its psycho creator should be forgotten. Thrive is much better). Then came the waves of spam and the horrible alt scare and the wiki that made this whole forum obsessed with spam. Thank all the gods that we no longer are so obsessed! If only Maxis could have banned the trial alts then, the Sporum could have been saved.

In the first few months of 2011, I took a break from the Sporum. That break changed my view upon it. I took it less seriously, and became more relaxed. I joined the Emoticone Forum, who I had previously despised. I stopped mini-modding. When I came back, it seemed even better than before. Spore itself had once more became a fun game for me to play, at least for a little while. Yet that additional burst of interest faded, and I felt trapped here simply out of loyalty to my roleplays, as well as the occasionally interesting dramas or science debates. Yet when the roleplays lost my interest, I had nothing left. I soldiered on! I had committed so much to those roleplays, I didn't want to give them up. Yet now I have.

The Sporum is over for me. I saw it in its prime, and I see it now and I saw all things in between. Yet I shall see no more. It was the first internet community I ever joined, and, despite its numerous faults and slow degradation, I will remember my years spent here. Thank you, everyone from this community, whether you know me, liked me, or hated me. Thank you, moderators, those whose decisions I liked and those who I disliked. Thank you especially anyone who read this great big goodbye post of mine, my second-to-last post. I will remember this place for years more to come, perhaps even decades to come. I am LurkerLordB on Wikia, if anyone sees me there, and I am still on the Emoticone Forum as DragonEye4. Unless we meet again in the future, goodbye Sporum. May you do well in the future.

Farewell,
DragonEye4

Because.

It is required.

Goodbye... not forever. Just Here.


And then there were 2....

Yet another person leaves the Sporum... I hope you decide to visit us sometime later, DragonEye4.
Farewell, fellow Sporumer!

Davopotamus wrote:Goodbye... not forever. Just Here.


And then there were 2....

Starting to get thin in here, aren't we

Eyup. Pretty soon it'll only be me and a few others still hangin' around here.

tl;dr

See you tomorrow.

Didzo wrote:tl;dr

See you tomorrow.

Not this time. I know him. He's not coming back. Luckily I won't have to miss him, since we talk elsewhere.

ashkelon wrote:

Didzo wrote:tl;dr

See you tomorrow.

Not this time. I know him. He's not coming back. Luckily I won't have to miss him, since we talk elsewhere.

Hmm. In that case, I'll rephrase my response:

tl;dr

Good job doing what many of us should have done already.

Didzo wrote:tl;dr

Good job doing what many of us should have done already.

Some of us wanted to leave but kept holding on hope that something, anything would come along to keep Spore alive. I think the community has done a pretty good job keeping it alive but even the sweatshop types get tired / fed up and want to move on to a new project.

Once I discovered Sculptris, I knew my time with Spore would dissolve. I hit the ceiling with Spore's limits and, fun as it was, I think I have had enough. Not leaving at this moment but, soon enough, I'll be out.

have fun in the strange, fictional world they call 'reality'

Global_Fragment wrote:...
Once I discovered Sculptris, I knew my time with Spore would dissolve. I hit the ceiling with Spore's limits and, fun as it was, I think I have had enough. Not leaving at this moment but, soon enough, I'll be out.

I just started modeling with Sculptris this week. FUN!

I haven't stayed here for Spore. The mess with GA pretty much killed that for me. I've stayed to chat with the people I only talk to here. Were they not here, I wouldn't be either.

I've mostly enjoyed the people here. I don't like the Romper Room turn things have taken in the last year, but it doesn't surprise me either. *shrug*

Global_Fragment wrote:

Some of us wanted to leave but kept holding on hope that something, anything would come along to keep Spore alive. I think the community has done a pretty good job keeping it alive...

Forum Games DO NOT Count! You guys have not done much by comparison, examples?... but i will bite my tongue...

Global_Fragment wrote:

Once I discovered Sculptris, I knew my time with Spore would dissolve. I hit the ceiling with Spore's limits ...

This game is limitless.

Davopotamus wrote:Forum Games DO NOT Count! You guys have not done much by comparison, examples?... but i will bite my tongue...

I said Forum Games? What SPORE you on, bro? When I say community, I mean the whole community. There are some nice GA builders who never touch the Sporum.

Davopotamus wrote:This game is limitless.

Every game is limitless but boredom reigns supreme.

Global_Fragment wrote:...

Every game is limitless but boredom reigns supreme.

In my case, the shoddy handling of multiple cores destroyed Spore for me. That and the lack of response to direct, repeatable and wholly correctable problems.

Frustration killed it before boredom set in. Now that I've implemented my own fixes, Davo's work is what keeps Spore fresh for me.