Sobend

I joined here in the late summer of 2005 on the old forums to advertise a shop a few friends and I were holding out in a building located in Varrock. I knew the idea was silly, but I thought I might as well have some fun with it. It died quickly of course, and that was that. I stayed here because I was interested in reading Runescape stuff from the general discussion board and the screenshot fake section.

Sal's Realm eventually became the place I would visit each day I got home from school. I remember coming home and seeing that "The Big Move" just took place. I began to make some friends here as well, who helped me do some bossing and such. By the end of 2006, I had around 1700 posts. It was a good time, but I became disinterested with the game and discontinued my membership in December 2006. I became inactive on all forums but the clan ones.

Earlier, I became entrenched in the clan community, with a clan named The Ultimate Pkers. As you can tell by the name, it was disorganized and the leaders left early in its history. They turned over the reins to me and a friend named Okm in late 2005. We were able to get some good members to help us out, like a great guy named Pkpete, and actually turned out nicely. Eventually, a clan named 3v0lution X wanted us to become their junior clan. This polarized our community as some wanted to do this and others (such as myself) did not. Eventually Pkpete and the majority of the clan left, forming a clan named 3xtermination in late 2006. We were left with about six or seven members. What followed was in my eyes an meteoric comeback I never saw coming, and we eventually became a top 50 strength Runescape clan. We had one horrible war that killed our momentum and had a slow fall. I quit in the fall of 2007 due to sports commitments and the clan was dead by the time the wilderness was removed in December.

And that was the end of my Sal's Realm experience, or so I thought. I didn't play much Runescape anymore so I didn't post in the Runescape sections. I tried to get involved into the conversation in the Scape Lounge and Off-topic sections, but I didn't feel right being there. To me, these sections seemed to be a massive inside joke everybody but me was in on. But I never truly left the forums, and I'm not sure I ever will. The memories of the good times I've had on here always brought me back, for better or for worse.

Well in 2012 I started getting active on here again for... no apparent reason really :P. Looking back, I think the smaller community size made me feel more comfortable. Later that year there was a guide drive because a new combat system came out on Runescape and a lot of stuff needed to be updated. I did about 15 minutes of work each day for around two months and came in second place. This won me a month of Runescape membership. So I figured this would be nice; I could have one last hurrah with a game I played in my childhood. Big changes were going down in my life at this time so it only seemed fitting to revisit this. I used my membership during the summer of 2013. It took some time getting used to 6-7 years of changes, but I enjoyed it. Runescape 3 came out during this stretch so that was cool. I also submitted more stuff to the site; I think I wrote five quest guides and some more stuff. After my membership I figured for all intensive purposes I was done on here and Runescape.

So much for that idea. I checked back in October and found that all of the material I submitted hadn't been added to the site, nor was there any sign that it would ever be. I spent a ton of time on it and I was understandably upset that everything I did was never going to be used. I made a (dramatic!!) topic called "State of the Site" in the feedback section basically telling all of the staff that they looked really pathetic. Immediately after hitting the post button I regretted posting it because of its blunt nature, but what was I going to do? I wasn't going to edit it all quickly and say "oops, thot this was facebook L0LZ." I went with it :P. Well anyway, the topic got a pretty good response surprisingly and many good changes were made. It's definitely the best thing I've done on this forum and I'm proud of doing it, well, as proud as you can be for doing something on the internet.

Following this I was asked to be a distinguished member and more importantly was given access to edit the site. So yeah, I got all of my crap I submitted onto the site B). I kept my activity up here, renewed my Runescape membership in early 2014 and am now playing actively for a 12+ month period for the first time in over seven years.

And that's about it. So between me and the two people in the whole world who would read all of that, thank you for reading. I don't like delving into my real life too much but I'm into sports (namely baseball), reading, and spending time with people I like. I come from the Philadelphia area and had a relatively nice childhood. I'm not a gamer; Runescape is the only game I've spent major time on in the past 10 years. I'm pretty well known for being into baseball around here, which is somewhat surprising since I don't talk about it too much. Probably the Mickey Mantle avatar I've had for quite some time plays a major part. If you ever want to talk about baseball with me, just shoot me a PM. Unless you're a Mets or Braves fan :(((.

:)