Apolyton was founded on this day in 1998.

[Al B. Sure!]

CTP2

The only Civ game I ever actually bought Only cost me $14.99

(I recently bought Civ3 for 3 dollars)

[Fve Crathva]

I have hated Apolyton since 1998, but not enough to register until whatever it says under my name, when I assume Ming's moderation became so intolerable that I felt it righteous to register and troll.

SP

[Tiamat]

Was two years later for me.

[Tiamat]

Holy crap, 10 years here....mmmm not really sure how to feel about that one.

[Jon Miller]

Went to the ultimate site for scenarios/etc. Was active on the old SMAC forums, then when the Civ3 list came here I came here too.

JM

[Carolus Rex]

Poly's best days are still ahead of it.

Seriously, what is the status of Apolyton these days? I'm not up to speed... Forum activity seems quite low, even at the Civ 5 one... Has everyone migrated to Facebook or elsewhere? I also noticed that OT posts count again; a move to increase activity I guess...

It's striking what a pioneer Apolyton (and its ancestors) really was. At the time I felt somewhat awkward trying to explain to people in real life about finding such a camaraderie at an Internet site... The idea of hanging out with unknown (anonymous is perhaps a better word) people via the Internet was viewed, well, as a bit suspect I guess (think "poor lonely nerd")... Today it's the complete opposite: no Facebook friends, not tweeting? Poor lonely, dinosauric, nerd!

I never jumped the bandwagon with Facebook or other social network sites; had my run with Apolyton. It was every bit as addictive posting here as playing the game (Civ 2) itself... It messed up my writing of a PhD thesis too, prolonging the process at least a couple of years... Luckily, I continued to find funding and muddled through...

Carolus

[Robert]

Boris:

There's a bunch of the Dec. 1969 join date guys but who knows when they actually joined. Turns out that anyone who joined before March 1999 ended up as Dec. 1969. So someone like me or Plomp just barely missed it.

Well, I was already a member of the Ultimate Civilization site, I just somewhere during the merger lost my credentials, and decided to make a new account on this new Apolyton site.

I think I was browsing the Ultimate Civilization Site (one of the 2 sites that merged into Apolyton) (Apolyton = ultimate in greek) since 1996, grabbing new units and buildings etc.

[Robert]

That sounds more like you're blaming Apolyton.

Well... I might have finished school if I would not have known about civ2 and civ3....

In that case I would certainly have missed a lot of money, because the fact that I stopped going to school and started to be an IT professional that was educated internally by companies most probably boosted my carreer

[Carolus Rex]

Boris:

There's a bunch of the Dec. 1969 join date guys but who knows when they actually joined. Turns out that anyone who joined before March 1999 ended up as Dec. 1969. So someone like me or Plomp just barely missed it.

What about Jan 1970? I have forgotten why some (like Ming, Theben, and I) have this and not Dec 1969 as our joining date. Do you know? (I'm pretty sure I registered before March 1999)

Carolus

[Al B. Sure!]

Ming has 1969. He posted in this thread.

I know if you registered sometime before March 1999, that you're one of the 1969'ers. I know that much. I registered March 4, 1999 and I remember that when the 1969 thing happened (it used to not say 1969; it used to say things like Nov 1998, etc.), the cutoff date was just before I registered. I think it was Feb. 15 1999 or March 1 1999 or something around there. I just remember thinking I just barely missed it.

Still clueless as to why that was even instituted to begin with.

[Carolus Rex]

Ming has 1969. He posted in this thread.

Huh? How did that happen?!

It definitely read Jan 1970 for the three of us (Ming, Theben and myself) when I posted above a couple of hours ago. That was the reason I asked (I noticed the three of us had different dates than Dec 1969 when reading the thread)...

Strange!

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

It happened again!

After my last post, it changed back to Jan 1970 for the three of us. One date (Dec 1969) before I posted and another (Jan 1970) now... Just look to the left, above my location information: "Join Date: Jan 1970". Same with Ming and Theben now...

Is this only happening to me?

Edit: Maybe it has to do with being logged in... When I first read your reply to me I hadn't logged in and I could see that it indeed read Dec 1969 (as you claimed)... I logged in to reply to you and now it reads Jan 1970... Ah, the mysteries of life...

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Yup, that has something to do with it. I logged off and checked the dates again. Ming, Theben and I all have Dec 1969 when I'm logged off. It changes to Jan 1970 after I've logged in...

Same thing for you?

Carolus

[Ming]

OK... I think this might explain it based on past discussions.
The default setting when logged out is the Eastern Time Zone. If you are in the default setting, or in time Zones "BEHIND" EST, we all show as 1969. If you are logged in, and in a time zone "AHEAD" of EST, it will show as 1970.

[Ming]

Still clueless as to why that was even instituted to begin with.

It had to do with the software being used. When "start date" was added as a record, the site didn't have the records for all those that had registered prior to the software upgrade, so it just filled in the field with that arbitrary date (why 1969, who knows, it was the default) There had been some discussion to use/create a "hack" to change that date to at least something closer to the actual creation date of the site. But general apathy won out, and nobody wanted to spend the time to create the hack and install it.