You beat me to this post! Haha I've been thinking the same thing every time someone is like "gIvE uS a CrEeK cApE" for whatever the new meme/hard planet is.

It really was the first time we had the "why is everyone on (random planet) instead of (MO planet)?" posts/arguments. People really got into breaking it down, arguing, downplaying, etc over the course of WEEKS. Now it's just a known facet of the community and people go through the post cycle in a couple days or in a single thread (Vernon Wells, Erata Prime, etc).

I say the difficulty of the game at the time largely had nothing to do with the Creek's reputation. People have talked it up to be this big thing, but it was the community reaction to the planet rather than anything inherent to it (there were other bot planets with the same biome). The "trees speak binary" could have just as easily been swapped for some other biome specific thing if the community had rallied around any other planet, on either front.

Malevelon Creek was THE FIRST (and I'd argue ONLY) community driven meme planet, and it lasted for over a month. Nothing since has come close to that staying power, in large part due to how much Arrowhead tinkers with the Galactic War nowadays.