I'm now 23 years old looking at the forum. I was 14 when I joined. Good to see people I knew from back then running the forum (MAF, DO, I see emrakul is a mod too). Seems as if robbie56 hung on for longer than I ever would have expected, seeing posts from him in 2019. Whatever the case, shout out to CLAW, Counter Strike, Black Armour, the 2016 reporter team, and whatever friends I made along the way. Unlikely any of you see this, but that's by the by, wish you all the best.

wat

Ah, this forum never ceases to amaze me, man. ThirdOnion has been kind enough to point out something that should've been obvious to you, but, let's have a backstory: - Shaft is my favourite turret to use in Tanki Online, so much so that I MU'ed it to nearly M4 before I even got my first paycheck. Whilst I'm not knocking your "advice", if we can call it that, in terms of "underappreciating" Shaft, you are talking to the wrong person.

Rest in peace. My condolences go out to his family. This isn't the time to attempt being humorous.

An excellent read, with very effective birds-eye view maps I never thought to use back when I was writing. Well done.

It's a sinking ship, both the game and the forum.

This page alone strengthens my case.

Nice to hear from you too, splitter, but to answer your question, I honestly couldn't tell you. It's almost like I was the very thing I'm scorning now, but in a whole different kind of way - I spoke in such an argumentative way over things that could have otherwise turned into a good discussion. I can only apologise now for my cringeworthy, childish ways, even if it is 3 years overdue - I don't remember your case in particular, but it most likely happened, since it happened to almost everyone. It was precisely this aspect of my personality which gave me a reputation before I became a staff member - whether good or bad depends on the individual. This post comes from a more mature, modest individual who has watched the forum progress (or regress) over the years. It might be a tad bit harsh, as it normally is from me, but I think it is well articulated and justified.

I don't think there are any active people on the forum today that can boast being a "top forumer", excluding the staff, which doesn't count, given they have a higher responsibility. All genuine "top forumers" have left/become inactive, and what we're left with are spammers who see a high post count as the holy grail, people who try way too hard to be funny, and pointless arguments. Those who know me know I dabbled in many arguments and debates when I was active here, sure, but they were almost never based on trivialities and unnecessary pedantry. I still visit for two reasons: to see how the Newspaper's doing, and to see what controversial updates the game has made since my last visit, but this forum simply isn't what it used to be. It's true that most things change, even slightly, over time, but it has been overwhelmingly negative in this case.

The fourth iteration of this contest, and it's only now that people are pedantic about the title? How this community has changed.

welcome, hermits

Hm. The newspaper might be in decline, but I feel like it is obvious that a good, simple contest will still garner an impressive amount of entries. Agree with it or not, contests are the first thing people look at when a new issue comes out (most, not all; I'm aware that there are ardent Newspaper fans), partially because a lot of contests are time-based. One thing I question is the practicality of using a random number generator to determine the winners. Before I became a Reporter, I too used to enter (and somehow place) in a lot of contests, a lot of which I spent more time than I perhaps should have. Hence, I completely relate with the people that scored well in this contest, only to receive nothing. Given that I have hosted a contest exactly like this four times, speaking with winners and losers, I know this contest in particular takes a lot of time to get right. More time than it takes us to make them. I understand that you were up against a wall, but I believe RNG wasn't the way to go about it - people have essentially been screwed over here. You could make the argument my quizzes were not worth it; if you didn't place in the top 10, you won nothing, and lost hours of your day. But, at the very least, people knew what they were dealing with. I guess what I'm trying to say is, although you were up against a wall, it shouldn't have got here in the first place. I made a couple of mistakes in my quizzes, but I feel this was an astronomical error. A contest like this shouldn't have a "giveaway" prize system. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, or bring down on the host - I just felt like sharing my thoughts, given my experience in this particular type of contest. Don't let this deter you from bringing a third batch though; as you've found out, these contests are clearly a hit.

Not that it's not allowed as such, more just... the time you must have. I used to no-life the game and the forum for years, and you're still a good 400 posts ahead.

I honestly don't understand how you managed to post over 9000 times in a span of 7 months.

You were educating someone on the rules only to then go and break the rules. I'm trying to figure how that works out.