Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

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SheenaTheWomanizer
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Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by SheenaTheWomanizer »

Hay for anyone that might be here that was a part of the Castle of Kain I was wondering if those forums are still floating around the internet someplace? I know it is a long show but I would love to go read through some of the old threads from there. Man I miss that community.
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Vextor
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by Vextor »

Quite late answer, but unfortunately all of the content from the message boards were erased due to how EZboards was hacked and we lost all of our content.
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wataru14
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by wataru14 »

That's sad news. That site is how I first got introduced into the fan community.
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Vextor
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by Vextor »

Cool, who were you in Kain?

If I recall correctly, after EZboards exploded, we moved the forums to some other DB-based message-board program -- I forgot what it was though.
I really don't remember how COK ended -- I think the whole site actually was only active for about a year.
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wataru14
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by wataru14 »

I was Crowley. My biggest contribution was getting killed off in a collaborative story by another writer, which caused a bit of a situation since it's bad manners to do that to someone's character without asking permission. After that it became sort of a running gag and I randomly died in several stories. The fact that Crowley resurrects in in-game history wasn't really known at the time, but kinda funny in hindsight.

I remember I found SuikoX not too long after KoC.
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by thcrock »

Maybe on the way back machine, but I don't even remember the CoK Url in order to search for it.

Yeah no forums as Vextor said but some of the site pages got archived

https://web.archive.org/web/20010219193 ... eater.org/
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Vextor
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by Vextor »

Things were really chaotic back then -- the internet was still fairly new and we had no idea how to run a community.
Some things that I did back then make me cringe -- but hindsight is 20/20.
I can't remember the fanfictions where Crowley gets routinely killed, but I remember we banned two members and made elaborate animated .gifs to illustrate their execution... I think it was Zamza and Gijimu -- the quality was really bad but it was funny as heck... but that sort of stuff cannot happen these days for sure!

To think 20 years have passed since then -- that is scary.
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by thcrock »

Yes, I don't even remember much of that year or two we were doing that. I'm sure there were things I did that I don't want to remember. I do remember the Zamza and Gijimu thing now that you bring it up.

Looking at the archived version of the site, you can see how people responsible for content on the site were getting more interested in compiling information. Suikosource was inevitable. Also I had totally forgotten about those Civ2 scenarios.

The community style back then was charming. I liked how people made their own corners on the site as their characters. Now that individuality tends to get expressed through memes which just don't seem as charming anymore.
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by wataru14 »

The story where I first died was the Wedding of Jowy and Nanami collaborative one. I remember someone (I forgot who) had Yuber pop up to kidnap Pilika and I had Hellion and Crowley show up to stop him. The next author had Yuber just up and kill them both in the next installment. After that, I remember "and Crowley died" showed up in a few stories for a while. Never when I was a plot character, just as a random aside. I found it kinda funny.

But I have even more fond memories of SARS and SuikoX. That place was magic and the war game was a thing of beauty.
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Vextor
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Re: Is the old Castle of Kain site still around anywhere?

Post by Vextor »

With Castle of Kain, yes the collaborative aspect was fun -- it seemed like every day some additional thing was added by someone else, and everyone was highly motivated with adding their own content. I really don't remember how the place ended -- maybe it died down and people simply moved away into other things.

The "and Crowley died" had me laughing uncontrollably there!

Thanks for complements regarding SuikoX.
The system there worked well, but it was a lot of manual work, and nation leaders probably were getting stressed out over how they should run their country.
I mean, the tension between countries was really quite strong, and some people were super "in to" that game to the point it was toxic. I don't know how I was able to create something like that, but it was really an experience running that thing and also a revelation in many ways regarding human nature and organization management. Right now in real life I run dozens of project teams all over the world with group managers who are not direct reports to me. I think SuikoX allowed me to develop skills related to that sort of thing...

I do wonder what could have happened if I didn't pull the plug in 2009.
We had people starting to make interactive game engines related to SuikoX back then, and it was just around the dawn of SNSs and smart phones really haven't hit the market yet. We probably would have had someone creating apps related to SuikoX, allowing people to get "points" for walking, and stats derived from "fit bit" stats, etc...
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