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I heard a rumour that MySpace is making a return and it made me think about the internet I loved growing up, so I decided to check in on the boards. Imagine my delight that things are still live! The tl;dr version of the last 20 years: Moved to Sydney, met my now husband Moved to the UK with him and my best friends Eloped to Scotland during the pandemic Eventually had a wedding reception in Australia Found a job I really love working on and in cities. Have started paint by numbers in the past few months, and now am looking to go to an actual class and learn how to paint things myself. No kids, and may not have any -- I really admire those who do but I must admit that the state of the world makes me very nervous to consider bringing kids into it. And financially I think we would struggle. I don't understand how people make it work!

I cannot believe this computer still has my login saved. Love this for me. I am not a massive boardgamer but my husband really does enjoy them. I find I enjoy party games (think the Resistance, Codenames, etc) that don't require ongoing thought. I can enjoy a round of Catan or Carcassone, but if you are looking for strategy games then I am not your girl. I have been really enjoying Wingspan, though, which my husband was given for his birthday. I really like the gentle nature of it. My husband is currently playing Gloomhaven with friends, has finished Pandemic Legacy, and will quite happily sit down for several hours to play Terraforming Mars. So that's probably my vibe if anyone has any good recommendations for other games to try? Also it's my husband's birthday in two weeks so if you have any suggestions for his present they would be very much appreciate!

I keep forgetting to reply to this. I'm about to head to bed but here's a quick rundown! I moved to Colorado to be with my wife (10 years in September!) back in 2017. I inherited her two kids and now have one of my own who turned 5 last month. My friend and I who have been working together for the better part of the last couple of decades did a major relaunch of our site, The Spriters Resource, last August. I've been working in IT since December 2014. Not exactly new news but I'm still actually with the same company despite moving half way across the country. I think that covers the major stuff. Perhaps I'll eventually remember to expand on some of this but for now, I'm off to bed. It's great to still see familiar faces show up here though!

I'm definitely... not the same Shinje that used to frequent this board. I went from Christianity to Atheism. I'll spare you the details on that to avoid any intense religious debates that could possibly flare up (although us last surviving members tend to be a lot more chill now, eh.) I am teaching myself to become an artist in a world where Gen AI is making that path more and more ridiculously difficult each day. I have inexplicably climbed the ladder in a line of work I considered temporary, from trolley collector to night shift supervisor, not the path I thought I would walk, career wise but it's cool, it's a job, it pays well. I met my partner, Jacob. We've been dating for around 4 years now, which makes me happy. I am finally comfortable being me, and that is really the biggest change in my life since OB. It's nice to see some other people have stumbled back into the boards with a quick update, I hope more people come back to share what they've been up to and how their lives have changed since being regular here.

A bit late, but my god I cannot believe this place is still here when most other sites are distant memories. I just happened to remember the name while talking to someone about old roleplays and how these days its become impossible to do long form story.

She recently played catan Jr and LOVED it

Sup! Long time since the last Board Games thread here 8D Go!

I approve of your Kiddo's hobbies!

I've been listening to big bang lately. Ugh... Their reunion is coming up

Okay okay....I'm here. Kiddo is five, homeschool, ballet, lowes and home depot crafts and swedish cultural club take up her, and my time these days. I work homecare part time but I'm trying to apply for disabilty. Health and disability is worse with mobility and chronic pain. My hobbies have greatly reduced due to time and health but I do love to cook and garden. I've also gotten pretty holistic too when it comes to remedies since covid. Kiddo is totally my mini me. Loves to read and cook (and loves board games and learning chess @Boo). She's also very creative and artistic. As for me, I run a few facebook groups for my neighborhood and also the social media manager for my local neighborhood council. I have a super cute chihuahua miniature pinscher named Sancho Panza (Our dumb little sidekick) I've gotten pretty skilled at a lot of Japanese food. I'm trying to learn Korean food next. I also want to make flour tortillas and sourdough bread. I did learn how to render my own pig lard. Man I have gotten old and boring.

Yeah man totally rad

The Dear Hunter too 🤠

Yooo, both A Perfect Circle and Karnivool are touring again! Who's going?!

🩻 @JoelEchoER: Patient came in from subway incident. No visible trauma. Arm felt… off. Like a bruise that happened hours ago. Checked vitals, imaging confirmed microfractures. Weird. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: My ER brain says: "don’t overthink it." Hands say otherwise?! Ever get that feeling where your body knows before your tools do? Is this what people mean when they talk about Intuition?! 🤯 I figured I already knew that feeling, but... I guess not! 🔉@georgie_lowend: Anyone else ever feel like the subway shows up before you hear it? Standing on the platform and I swear I felt the train coming through my boots first. Stockholm transit hits different? 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Second patient tonight, same incident. Same sensation. Like a pressure wave passed through muscle and bone, then vanished. Charts don't love that description. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: no, I’m not diagnosing by vibes!!! Scans backed up the calls BEFORE I posted about the cases. I just… get there faster lately, I guess? 😅 🩻 @JoelEchoER: At this point I would like to clearly point out that I am tweeting this as an individual and in no way am representing the hospital I work for!.. 🤐 ♥️ Tweet Liked by @NYCMercyUTH 🩻 @JoelEchoER: We train for car crashes, falls, blunt force. This feels different. Distributed. Like the injury didn’t start at a point but in the space around them. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Third case now and my hands were buzzing?! ⚡️ That’s new. Gonna hydrate, step out for a minute. If you were in the NYC subway incident tonight and feel "fine but not fine," please don’t ignore that. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Not trying to scare anyone. Just saying bodies keep receipts. Sometimes they take a while to print. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Update: admin asked me (politely) to stop tweeting “speculation” during shift. Fair. Last one for now. 💊 @MedStudentRina: Re carefully but I assisted on 2 of those cases. Same station. Same 'nothing obvious, something wrong' vibe. Imaging matched your calls. Thought it was just me. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Appreciate you saying that, @MedStudentRina. Document everything. Even the parts that feel dumb. Especially those. 🚆 @NYC_TransitWatch: JUST IN: NYPD and MTA investigating brief service disruption on multiple subway lines this evening after reports of "unusual vibrations." No derailments. No confirmed cause. Service restored. 📰 @LocalNewsNY: VIDEO: Commuters describe a "deep rumble" moments before trains arrived. Officials stress there is no danger to the public. Full clip at 11. 📺 @CableCityNews: Authorities downplay reports of a "subway vibration event" affecting several Manhattan stations tonight. Medical officials confirm a small number of ER visits with minor injuries. No link established. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: For the record: patients didn’t report falls. Or impacts. They reported feeling "shaken" while standing still. 🎧 @IndieLiveClips: Crowd video from a Stockholm show is going around—watch the mic stand during the low end 👀 Probably just bass physics but… comments are wild. 🩻 @JoelEchoER: Logging off. Hands still buzzing. That’s not normal for me. Will write it up the boring way and let smarter people argue. 📢 @STHLM_NewsNow: Following reports of vibration-related incidents in multiple cities. Experts caution against drawing connections at this stage. 🌚 @RandomReplyGuy: So the subway did it? Or the concert? Or the gas? Or nothing? Cool cool cool. 🩻 @JoelEchoER:Last thought before sleep: different cities. Same feeling. If that’s coincidence, it’s a very specific one. Right? RIGHT?!!?!

@aisha_patterns: Seeing a lot of questions about whether recent anomalies are connected. Short answer: unclear. Longer answer: systems rarely fail independently. Correlations don’t announce themselves loudly. Something I wish more people understood: models don’t suddenly become wrong. They "drift". Residuals widen. Edge cases multiply. It feels like standing on a floor that’s still solid but no longer level. @aisha_patterns: Permafrost thaw isn’t just about volume. It’s about composition. We track the usual gases well. Trace compounds less so. That gap matters more than people think. @DrEliasKade: Caution here, @aisha_patterns. Trace anomalies at low concentrations are expected during rapid environmental change. Again: We shouldn’t imply causality without evidence. @aisha_patterns: Agreed, @DrEliasKade. Though historically, many causal links were first noticed as persistent "rounding errors" before instruments caught up. This might sound abstract, but if your model residuals suddenly make you uneasy - even when diagnostics look fine - don’t ignore that! Double-check assumptions. That’s often where real shifts hide. @DrEliasKade: And that’s exactly why structured review matters. Intuition is useful, but policy has to be grounded in verifiable data. @aisha_patterns: Absolutely. Intuition isn’t a conclusion. It’s a prompt to look closer. Preferably before thresholds are crossed. @STHLM_NewsNow: Experts agree: recent gas anomalies unlikely to cause harm. Full analysis from leading climate scientists. #ClimateWatch #Permafrost @aisha_patterns: Quick clarification: no one said "no risk." Nuance matters. Residuals are widening. Trace compounds exist. Statements like "experts agree" misrepresent discussion. Let's hope your readers' media literacy is sufficient to think ab @TrollBot_9000: LOL @aisha_patterns experts agree vs residuals widen…sounds like someones afraid of losing their funding $$$!! Can we trust any of these "scientists"? 🤖 #GasGate

@georgie_lowend Stockholm is all gray water + clean lines. Played Debaser tonight, crowd polite but listening. After load-out my fingers are buzzing like I never took my bass off. Cold maybe? Or jet lag. Tour brain. 🎸 @NordicRiotMag Tonight at Debaser: touring indie trio STATIC LINES delivered a set built on restraint and tension. Bassist Georgie M. anchored the room—low end you didn’t just hear, you felt. Stockholm crowds noticed. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ @georgie_lowend Anyone else ever feel like the subway shows up before you hear it? Standing on the platform and I swear I felt the train coming through my boots first. Stockholm transit hits different? @georgie_lowend Ok this is dumb but I plucked one string in the hotel room and the desk lamp started rattling. Not loud. Just enough to notice. Please tell me old hotels do this and I’m not losing it. @georgie_lowend My ears are weird tonight. Like I can mute background noise if I focus? AC, hallway voices, traffic… gone. But the bass note in my head is LOUD. Is that a thing or am I just tired @georgie_lowend If I accidentally break something tomorrow by playing too hard, no I didn’t. Also if Stockholm collapses due to excessive low end, I apologize in advance. 😬🎶 @ScienceFrontiers 🧵THREAD: As Arctic permafrost melts at unprecedented rates, researchers are increasingly concerned about the release of long-sequestered atmospheric gases. Some are well-known (methane, CO₂). Others are not. Early studies suggest trace compounds—previously locked away for tens of thousands of years—may interact unpredictably with human biology. While most people will experience no effects, scientists caution that rare physiological responses cannot yet be ruled out. Research is ongoing, data is limited, and speculation is already outpacing evidence. In short: climate change isn’t just warming the planet. It may be changing us. More to come. @DrEliasKade There’s a lot of noise right now about “strange occurrences.” Let’s slow this down. First of: Isolated anomalies are expected during periods of rapid environmental change. Evidence first. Conclusions later. @DrEliasKade For clarity: most gases released by thawing permafrost are well-documented and occur at concentrations far below acute risk thresholds. Panic helps no one. Monitoring helps everyone. @DrEliasKade I’m seeing speculation about "human effects." At present, there is no verified causal link between atmospheric changes and physiological anomalies. Correlation ≠ causation. This is Science 101. @DrEliasKade That said, governments are right to invest in preparedness. Early detection systems, public transparency, and clear response protocols are signs of resilience - not fear. @DrEliasKade I’ve been asked whether we should "wait and see." We can do better than that. We can observe and act responsibly at the same time. @DrEliasKade For those asking what they can do: stay informed, support climate research, and resist sensationalism. The planet is changing. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost control of the situation. @DrEliasKade I’ll be joining @GlobalNewsHour tonight to discuss permafrost research and why cautious optimism—not alarmism—is the rational response. @POTUS45_REAL EVERYONE keeps asking me about these socalled "gas events." I’ve spoken to TOP scientists (very high IQ, some tested off the charts just like me) and they say I understand this stuff better than anyone. Incredible really. FAKE News wants you to panic: if there are problems, it’s coming from Radical Democrats and their weather manipulation schemes. They’ve been messing with the climate for YEARS. We’re looking into it. STRONGLY!!! @georgie_lowend No, but for real. Is anyone else feeling... a bit more... intense I guess? in some regard?

I'll have you know that I did not get nearly enough messages with people's "bank account number, credit card number, access codes, login codes for OtakuBoards, picture of you, picture of you naked, and a picture of your mother via private message on this website". So much for community, people.

I agree.

You owe us a tale, John 😞.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/29720/Guild_Wars_Reforged/ "Step into Guild Wars Reforged, the award-winning online roleplaying game enjoyed by millions, now re-energized with system enhancements and Steam Deck verified. Experience the complete saga— from the fall of Ascalon to the desperate stand against Nightfall. Your adventure is just getting started!" Pretty impressive how little they actually updated for this release.

Just a quick reminder that the OB Overlords were graceful enough to keep the OB Graphic Worms alive even after 15+ years: https://www.otakuboards.com/graphicworm/index.html I would really like to know what happened to @Sara's Art Career, because I definitely did not give enough attention to those awesome pieces of art of hers back in 2010.

wait. hang on. 😠

Sorry to hear about your loss, K. Oh, I totally get that. Ever since I started working more in the Tracking & Data Analytics side of things of Online Marketing, my scepticism of the internet went through the roof. I also got rid of TikTok and Facebook and most other platforms besides IG (mostly because we have the the board game account) and Discord, and even there I severely limit what I share. i.e. we don't ever share the name, voice and face of our daughter publically (and insist others respect that), and really to keep her digital footprint to a minimum. For the same reason, we seldomly share a location of where we are at that moment. Did you know that, even before AI, there are companies who "openly" sell view-tracking for TV advertisement campaigns (so normally very difficult to attribute properly) by listening in on peoples' phones, and when their phone hears the video ad of the advertiser, it tracks it and sends the data back to the ad platform. So much fun. At some point it's hard not to feel paranoia about things. But yeah. Sharing online has become pretty unpersonal, with good reason. At the same time, it feels kinda cathartic to return here in the deep well of nostalgia and spill.

That was a great read @Boo thanks for sharing. I don't think I could share so intimately the details of my life as openly as I would have when I used to post here, but I'll give it a go. Basically, a lot happened in my life during and soon-after pandemic. A non-exhaustive list: My dad died. My wife and I got married. We bought a house in the suburbs. So I had to learn to drive a car. We bought our first car. Had our first son. Then our second. Changed jobs. Changed jobs again. Made friends. Lost friends. Lost touch with people who will always be my friends. Reconnected with people who have been my oldest friends. Disconnected from social media. Disconnecting from social media was a big one for me, actually. My phone is still logged in on Discord, Instagram, and all the big sites. But I basically use social media reactively; I stopped creating content after my first child was born. My YouTube channel has a video up from the hospital as my final upload. My Instagram might get the annual Santa Photo with my sisters but my wife and I intentionally don't have any pictures of our children online. We stopped sharing all updates of our lives like we did pre-pandemic so now the world doesn't get to know what I ate for lunch. Social media, and even this website, all feels too public these days. There was a sense is anonymity back in the day which is lost on the modern web. My career is actually also in software (Android app development) so maybe I'm seeing how the sausage is made too closely. I get to see how analytics data ties everything you do to your public identity. And, like you said, the political climate is so full of hateful rhetoric that I wouldn't want to make it easier for anyone to target me or my family in any way. I'm caught up on that last sentence and my usage of "you". I know I started this post as a direct response to @Boo, but the is a public forum. Others are able to read and respond to this response. It feels weirdly rude to continue directing my comment at only one person. I would have navigated this so confidently when I was active on this website all those decades ago. But, then again, I was always so confidently incorrect.

Ayo! Everyone is going to update us about their life now. So, I'll go first: my little one is turning 4. She's super cool. Her biggest hobby is reading with us and so she's now very much into learning how to read and write. I moved from the Netherlands to Cologne, Germany at some point. Just too late to meet up with @Korey when he was out in Mainz, not all too far away from here. Womp womp. Got married during the biggest COVID-19 Lockdown, and came out the other end of the pandemic all the more enthusiastic about each other, so that's solid as a rock. Some of my favourite books in her collection are everything by Anna Kemp & Sara Ogilvie (Dogs Don't Do Ballet, Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes, The Worst Princess, ...), A Dress With Pockets (and it's sequel) and basically and book that features some kickass traditional roles defying hero(ine). Also Rob Biddulph (Penguin Blu, Blue Footed Booby, ...). But my wife and I are awful, as neither of us believes in budgetary limits when it comes to her books, so it's really kinda getting out of hand. She has multiple bookshelves full at this point (about 50/50 Germany/English, with some stray Russian and Dutch books). So obv. I'm open to more book recommendations. Did you know that @Shy actually wrote a children's book (amongst a tonne of other amazing work)? It seems awesome. I try to find it at book stores here in Europe, but so far no luck. I shall be accepting offers from the US. Super impressive gentleman, he is. Besides books, we're super duper into boardgames in this household (collection). So much so that we created an Instagram account about it (mostly to have one place to get updated). Any boardgamers here of any kind? Otherwise, I work in Online Marketing and Webshop optimisation stuff, probably mostly because I learned to abuse HTML tables for all sorts of stuff when that was trendy for RPGs here back in the day. Used that skill to make websites. I lead the marketing team here, and the pressure of being a Milennial Manager is real. But it's also rewarding to, you know, be able to help provide and protect a much healthier work/life balance and attitude to work for some people than I learned, just like I'm able to break some generational curses with my daughter. The weight of it all does get to me sometimes though. Can't compare it first hand with how other generations felt, but it feels like we're all doing a lot of the heavy lifting to fix stuff on many levels, that our parents' generation just dropped the ball on. The political climate doesn't really help either. The way the USA is rapidly devolving into the dystopian novels, as if they were instruction manuals, is not only alarming by itself, but it's also inspiring others around the globe, including here in the Netherlands and Germany, to be racist bigots openly. The whole thing sucks, man. Genocides and war out in the open world wide web for everyone to witness, unable to miss. And we're just supposed to pretend like we got our act together smile and recycle and smash the patriarchy and stuff? On these types of days I especially miss the days of just coming home from school or whatnot, logging onto my computer, and just getting my OB updates in.