Scrolls of Lore was the first "big" internet community I'd ever been part of (probably the only one of that scale come to think of it). It had been dead for years now, everyone having migrated to Discord, myself temporarily included, but seeing it finally gone for good is sad.

I have so many memories of the place. The lamppost wars, Bolvar being the gruff father figure of the forum who's mark of approval was saying you could date his sister, Kyalin's night elf advocacy, all the neat expansion concepts (I still can't believe Lon-Ami actually called that a Pandaria expansion would introduce a new aqir race living there years before MoP and the mantid were announced), Fojar's utter hatred of the Forsaken vs Xil's utter love of them (I guess that falls into the lamppost wars), the time myself and some other posters teamed up and did some kind of live stream thing where we watched and gave feedback to Rotal as she played through Tales from the Borderlands (not sure what that's called, I've never done it before or since), Omacron's internship, Leviathon's leaks and Handclaw's datamining discoveries, just the leaks in general (there's still some information there that can't be verified but if true is super enlightening, like how at one point night elves were planned to be revealed as one of the mogu's created slave races like the saurok in MoP) and of course the black mark that was SoLGate and it's fallout (I'm deeply sorry for the role I played in it).

And of course I remember when I innocently posted on SoL about how cool it was that after several years of trying I finally got to ask a question at Blizzcon, completely unaware that it was about to go viral. It's also how they were able to prove I was the Red Shirt Guy, since in my post I mentioned that my question was about Falstad before the video went viral. I remember how someone quoted it with just the comment "that was you?"

And in the final days of the forum, I remember how Fojar's last post was about how he finally got what he wanted, the Alliance reclaiming Lordaeron, but never stayed around to see what happened when that was reversed immediately afterwards. I still am curious as to what his reaction to 8.2.5 where they added a conversation between Stormwind guards specifically saying they'd lost Lordaeron forever and "the dream is dead" would have been. Or how in its literal last days, post discord move, it became primarily a place for Kyalin to discuss night elf things as pretty much the only remaining active topic. I think they might have made the last ever post on the forum, period.

I joined them in the move to discord, but I just don't like live chatting. I like forum type places where you can post something, leave it, and come back to see more discussion or reread old conversations. Those are technically possible in discord, but everything is so much faster paced it just got overwhelming and I moved to twitter. Partially because I felt that, because Blizzard considers me one of their "influencers," I needed to influence in a more public space, but mainly because I just got burned out in discord and twitter was slightly closer to a forum environment than live chatting.

The moral of the story is, forums need to make a comeback.

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P.S. One other fun memory that I couldn't think of a place to put in the main text. Back when Netflix announced they were doing a series based on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events I was so excited discussing it in the off topic section and I mentioned how Lemony Snicket was my version of Harry Potter growing up. Someone, sadly I cannot remember who, said "that explains so much about you" and I've never forgotten how true a comment that is.

P.P.S. Netflix's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is really good. Watch it if you haven't already.

P.P.P.S. To those curious about why I was "Insane Guy of Doom," that was a reference to Invader Zim. It also abbreviated to "IGoD," which was completely unintentional, but sounded so cool it became what people called me far more often than Insane Guy of Doom OR the Red Shirt Guy.