James

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/celebrating-20-years-of-guild-wars/
"Twenty years ago this month, ArenaNet launched the first Guild Wars® campaign, which would eventually be called Prophecies™."
MEMORIES!

I think that's what I love about randomly checking in here. It's not what it used to be but it's wonderful to see familiar faces pop in to say hello every now and then. I also hope you're all doing well!

I hope y'all had a great Christmas and New Year!

I hope y'all had a great Christmas and New Year!

It's been a long time, so maybe my memory is fuzzy...but I always liked you, and thought you added value to discussions here. To be fair, the way we perceive ourselves is often not the same as the way others perceive us. ?

Well who would join me if I did?! Hm...?
I feel like it’d be a lonely RPG...

I was deeply saddened to hear about Des' passing. It feels even worse to realise how long ago it happened. You just don't expect someone so young to go that way. He must've only been about the age I am now, and it seems devastatingly unfair for him to have suffered how he did. It was almost unreal to read his series of tweets and realise that this was the last people heard of him.
 
It's been a very long time since I (or I guess, many of us) had much to do with this forum. Des was a fixture though, and a fantastic member of the community, who helped make it the welcoming, friendly and active community it was. He was the epitome of what this board represented. For someone who lived half a world away and who I haven't spoken to in probably ten years, I think he might be the closest person I know to have passed away.
 
I think everyone's comments and memories here show how well loved he was, and I'm sure that he continued to make a positive impact in his life post-OB.
 
Vale Desbreko.

Des.... This is what I get for not logging in often. Drink some tea up there for me, big guy! Sorry to find out about your passing a year too late. Your last visit to oB was 8-6-16... I shall now go re-read the RPGs we rocked way back in the day. Thanks for all you've done to help with Jitsuryuku and OmniShore! 

This news sucked so much. Des will always be cool and awesome to me. The world sucks more without him.

I suppose the cruelty in having grown up in such an amazing place like this is that it may take over a year for you to find out that an old friend is gone. 
According to the obituary, your anniversary was exactly a week ago, and I am so, so sorry to find out you're gone. I just don't even have words tonight. 

I am sorry to bump this thread.  Des and I barely interacted, but his posts were always non-combative yet full of passion for the stuff this forum was for: video games and anime.  Even when two people were going at it (e.g., I think his name was PoisonTongue? lol), his post would have a complete lack of judgement on either side, just focusing on getting things back to the topic at hand.
Doing what he does - going through life enjoying his passions without getting in the way of anyone else's - is something I've only just started to appreciate, but still fail at doing.  I'm at a place in my life where I have to hear a lot of life stories, and cancer is always such a jarring end to a narrative.  The strange thing is, the most frustrating part of this to me is that Des did not get to enjoy Breath of Wild...
I did not know Des personally, so I will refrain from saying he had a life well lived.  However, I can say adamantly I want to go through life the way he did.

I don't keep up with OB very often, I check back from time to time and to hear of Desbreko's passing is heartbreaking. I knew he was going through treatment, I thought that he'd make it. Like everyone here I have very fond memories of his presence here. Cancer sucks. RIP Des. 

This is a little late but I want to thank Ginger and SunfallE for beautiful flowers you sent in memory of our son Jonathan (Desbreko).
I has been really heart warming to see how many friends Jon had and how well liked and respected he was.
I want to thank all of you for your expressions of sympathy.
Desbreko's Dad

Greetings. 
So I reached out to the family and they told me that everything has been paid for. However if you would like to, they would rather you donate whatever you are willing to the places that helped Desbreko with his treatments to further the cause of finding a cure for cancer. I have found them for you guys and the links are below: 
City of Hope
American Cancer Society
Stanford Medicine
Thanks for the willingness to help guys.
Laura/Japan

I think about OB every now and then. A decade ago, it was my favorite place on the internet. It's kind of strange to see so many familiar names in this thread.
I didn't know Desbreko personally. He invited me to join the OB staff when I was 14 years old. I remember being so excited and telling everyone I knew that I was going to be a moderator. I think my name on here was Amelia back then.
To his friend and and family, I'm sorry for your loss. Des helped me grow here on OB and I'll always fondly remember the time I spent here.

I was thinking...cancer treatments and funeral costs are expensive even with insurance. If Desbreko's Mom (or even Laura on her behalf) want to set up a gofundme page I'm sure that we could all pull together and help a bit. I know that there aren't a lot of us left around here and the total raised won't be a huge amount, but if we can help the family of a young man that meant so much to this community, then I say that we show why we are a special place and pull together! 

A few things have changed the past years like working full time, co-habitating with another human, and using a very different set of slang these days, but apparently I'm still staying up way too late when I should be sleeping.
Hey guys, been a while.
I was at work when Laura messaged me about Des' and my original thought was "no f--king way... holy crap."
I got along with Jonathan really easily. He didn't let stupid things rile him up and couldn't be bothered by petty dramas that we tended to observe from... others. He was my never-emptying source of prime screencaps all through the many years of caption battles and still the guy I think of when I see anything Rozen Maiden. Dude was awesome and I'm sad I didn't have the chance to tell him that more sooner.
That said, I won't lie, I have definitely not been broken down the same way as some of you guys have. I'm very sad that Jon is gone and that I didn't message him more before the end, but overall I'm still going on alright.
I am and always will still be the old man who has seen too much.
I had a friend from work pass away from complications of leukaemia some years back (Graft vs Host Disease is seriously messed up), and I actually ended up being a pallbearer during his funeral. I've had a very close friend who has been dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts for a lot of the past 3 years as well, and in a lot of ways he has put my mind into a degree of preparation for what I may have to deal with some day (though I hope to all hope that day never comes). And a lot of you may still remember that one week many, many years ago one of our closer friends here almost got away from us in a similar way.
Who knows, maybe I'm running out of tears to shed? Probably not.
The worst things really can happen in an instant. Sometimes we can see it coming, other times all it takes is a tree and a windstorm like what happened to one poor local boy a couple weeks ago. Things can and will happen to us and the people around us, and with technology the way it is, the world is a whole lot smaller and our groups of friends are getting wider and wider.
People we know will one day not be there. This is part of the life experience. It still sucks, but that's not gonna stop this truth.
That said, while a lot of us have drifted away from this site, we can't help but acknowledge that we've been shaped by it a lot, and a lot of our younger formative years as sort-of adults started here. We all grew into the people we are not thanks to the people we met here.
And this is why even though the last time I threw a message back and forth with Jonathan was in 2013, I can still tell people around me now about how chill and easygoing he was, how he was probably a huge fan of at least one thing they love, and why so many people now, all around the world, will still grieve for him so much now.
Let me tell you guys something kinda ridiculous: I started posting here less, more or less abandoned my duties as a team member on this site (still really sorry about that, Adam!), and overall only popped back to write an essay or two about how my life had been going about girls I took far too long to get over. Despite that, my Firefox homepage is still "theotaku.com/backroom/".
Even if we don't use the site as much now, we don't have to close the connection.
Des' worked hard to help code that stuff, damnit...
....okay, maybe it was actually really easy for him...
Either way, even if this reunion is for the worst reason, just let it remind you all that everyone who affected your life here will continue to do so once you're well into your grown-assed adult lives now.
We're all still here. And you all still mean something to everyone here...
...oh crap...
............I was supposed to have a cup of tea in Des' honour today. Oops.
Sorry Des'. I'll fix that tomorrow, promise.

No one will see this. They're 5 now. He loves his hot wheels roads, she is really good at coloring. I'm happy one of them got my artsy side. Their dad is a good artist as well so one had to. 

I do not have as lengthy a response. I was a huge matrix nerd back in the day. Posters, merch, etc. Lol. I was very pumped to get back into that world and see something new and different. I enjoyed it, though 1 & 2 were my favorites, but that could just be because I was so influenced by it as a teen. I had a few qualms with it but I don't know how to put them into words. I think I wanted more action, less psychological chit chat in his video game world... But that's also the old teen in me. ?‍♀️

This is my overarching thought too. When I first came out of the cinema, I really wasn't sure how to feel. Did I like it or not? I'm a huge Matrix fan (having argued passionately in favour of the sequels on these very forums for years, heh) but I was genuinely confused about Resurrections initially.
But over time - after watching some commentary on it, and re-watching - I've come to appreciate it. 
It occurs to me that The Matrix trilogy is a very neat triptych; trying to extend the story was always going to be a daunting task. I think Lana Wachowski took the right approach by applying a meta lens on the whole thing. At the same time, she actually provided a very plausible chronological sequel (the front half of the film is wonderfully cynical, while the back half is lovingly earnest and digs into what happened after the events of Revolutions).
I suppose that my biggest criticism of the film is that its special effects aren't nearly as mind-bending as the original trilogy. Don't get me wrong, there are some wonderful shots
but I feel that the special effects here aren't as ambitious. That said, I like the transition to natural lighting, and I think you can see that Lana Wachowski leveraged a lot of her learnings from post-Matrix films (the cinematography feels less "tightly controlled" here, and more natural - aligned with the lighting, I guess).
I can't say really what score I'd give this, because it almost defies numerical scoring for me. In some respects, I think Lana pulled off the impossible with this film. She actually made a sequel that simultaneously extended the plot of the trilogy while also itself being a super unique and conceptually ambitious movie (in a similar way to the original film). I think I have to accept the reality that no movie is going to completely replicate the impact of the original trilogy for me, which is okay.

Yeah I really regret dressing our RPGs up with so much html. Almagest in particular is something I've tried to go back to, but in general it's too difficult to read.
My PMs go back to December 6, 2002(!) My first message is from @James, sending a reassuring message after I came out on this site. I'll always be grateful for that (and the flirtation it spawned!)
Also: My PMs are FILLED with planning and strategy for our rpgs. I forget how involved stuff like Final Quest For Glory 2 was, and all of the controversy surrounding it.
- Shy

Me too. Last night I went into my private messages on here and realised they'd all been retained! My god, it was a cornucopia of wonders from (almost) the last 20 years. At one stage, Kevin from AE invited me to participate in a podcast debate about AE/OB...haha. So bizarre to read that (and my response) from the time.

Oh yes I saw this on Discord. Congratulations!! Such gorgeous photos. ?

You too mate. I must admit, this COVID-19 situation kinda has me hankerin' to create an old-fashioned OB RPG...

You too mate. I must admit, this COVID-19 situation kinda has me hankerin' to create an old-fashioned OB RPG...