[NOSTALGIN'] Things I miss about America Online circa 1994

[Fifthfiend]

Modem noise
America Online suspending my family's account because I said "fuck" in a chatroom
The total non-existence of spam filters
Getting outraged when they started charging by the hour to play MUDs
EDIT
MUDs where leveling required you to grind ladder-climbing

[Krylo]

Modem noise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ZxIc5suvQ)
America Online suspending my family's account because I said "fuck" in a chatroom (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxiH7zJCfI&feature=related)
The total non-existence of spam filters (www.hotmail.com)
Getting outraged when they started charging by the hour to play MUDs (http://www.play.net/gs4/info/commands/f.asp)

.

[Fifthfiend]

That's like four different places I gotta go to get what AOL used to provide in one convenient fuck-you package.

[Krylo]

True, but you have to give me points for finding the exact same MUD, right?

I know 'cause I got pissed off when they started charging for that one, too.

[tacticslion]

Geez. Can you believe Mr. Grumpy-modpants here? You try do something nice for a fella...

[Fifthfiend]

True, but you have to give me points for finding the exact same MUD, right?

I know 'cause I got pissed off when they started charging for that one, too.

Fuck Gemstone, Dragonrealms Playaz Club 4 Lyfe

(4:20 GRIND LADDER CLIMBIN SKILLS EVERY DAY)

Oh man wait that's totally going on the list

Muds where leveling required you to grind ladder-climbing

EDIT: You know what was legit great on AOL was this one incredibly shitty multiplayer FPS with like, wizards and elves and shit.

EDIT: Except I think they started charging for that, too. Fuckers.

[Krylo]

That one's still around, too. (http://www.play.net/dr/?refer=TOPMUDS1)

I played both, but I don't remember either well enough to tell you my class and level.

Edit: Here's a free mud where you can grind ladder climbing for stats. (http://www.mudconnect.com/mud-bin/adv_search.cgi?Mode=MUD&mud=After+the+Plague)

'Cause I'm such a nice guy.

And yeah, they started charging for pretty much everything.

[Fifthfiend]

I was a human warrior-mage because I was indecisive and boring.

On the plus side it allowed me to hone the valuable life skill of begging strangers for free shit.

[Krylo]

Knowing me at 13, I was probably exactly the same thing except an elf, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Fifthfiend]

Oh, the other thing!

Every username being taken, including every nickname you'd ever had and your real full name, because every jerk in the world used AOL and had took them already, so you always ended up getting stuck with like Retardedmiddleschooler15692.

Also, signup discs! Sooooooooo many signup discs.

[Premmy]

Man, who the fuck had internet in 1994?

We played with STICKS! and ROCKS! and we THREW EM AT THE KNOWITALL KIDS(me) and and when we didn't do that, we just BEAT THE CRAP out of each other!
I livvvvvveeeedd innnnnn theeeee gheeeeeetooooooo!

[Bob The Mercenary]

-Forsaken Lands. Meeeeeeeeemorieeeeeeees.

-My mom asking me to log off so she could make a phone call. lol

-Visiting porn sites that required you to connect to a different long distance phone number. Then getting caught when the charge showed up on the bill. Not that that ever happened to me.

-Having to choose from that list of a hundred connection numbers in my area. I learned more area codes that way.

[Amake]

I never had AOL, but I did use Televerket's Internet in an age before privatisation, an age where you dialed up and paid a hefty price per minute to connect to a chat room that as far as I knew was the only one in the world. Good times.

Not as good as later on when they introduced several chats. And this wasn't no fancy IRC or anything, you'd write in your message of 5000 characters or less (and some would get pretty close to that mark) and hit send and then scroll through the newest 100 messages. Also a funny tidbit: One of those chats for some reason displayed your IP as [Null]. Yeah, all the others showed your IP publicly with every message. I doubt that'd go over well today. But you could have any name you wanted, even if it was currently taken, unless they had bothered to register it. It was fun to use a bunch of spaces for your name and screw up the format - it looked like your messages were a part of the person above's.

The various rooms included, if memory serves, Entrance, Basement, Retro, Exile (don't ask), 25+, 35+, 45+ and even a row of numbered, "private" rooms where you'd get your freak on in password-protected haven. Unless some voyeur went and guessed your password. My favorite, however, was the Summer room. It was the etherical embodiment of a certain cool song by Fastball (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0wfu3tOrtQ).

Years later I would learn there was a secret, unlisted room where all the cool kids chatted. And then they shut the whole thing down. Sigh.

[Krylo]

-My mom asking me to log off so she could make a phone call. lol

Speaking of this, when my sister would refuse to get off the internet, I had a dialer set up that would disrupt the connection in one or two shots, and then I'd just log on myself.

[DFM]

Finding your first porn site and going "Aw, come on." before logging off because it told you you had to be eighteen or older to enter.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I remember how I learned how to read and write back in 1994.
Good times.

Oh, this is supposed to be about some internet shit, nevermind then.

[Geminex]

What is this "AOL" you speak of?

Seriously, I don't even know. My first contact with the internet was in... '99? Yeah. On IE, I think. Did IE exist back then? Then it was probably on IE.

Though from what I hear, internet was preeetty crappy back then. Man, am I glad I wasn't using it back then. It'd have been so horrible. And I'd probably be fat, and smelly too. I'd be tainted. Man, I'm glad I didn't have to use it back then.

[Krylo]

You're like... German or something, right, Gem?

That'd be why you don't know about AOL.

It stands for America OnLine.

I kinda doubt they'd have it in Germany.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

We had it.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah we had it here too. I never used it myself though. Having the internet anytime before 2000 was like "whoa, and how fucking rich are you??!!"

[Bob The Mercenary]

Finding your first porn site and going "Aw, come on." before logging off because it told you you had to be eighteen or older to enter.

I remember seeing that and breaking into a cold sweat worrying about whether I would click the "enter" button and FBI agents would zipline into my house and arrest me.

[Revising Ocelot]

In the UK, AOL discs made great drink coasters. You'd get at least two a week through the post. People have made collections from all the hundreds of discs they got mailed over the years before 2000 when this so-called "Internet" was largely ignored. The scary thing is just how many unique designs AOL came up with for all their discs... and all for naught. Nobody ever used AOL, and now when the internet is actually widely used, they're all but forgotten.

Except for my uncle, I think he's on AOL. Is forced to use an extremely weird browser, too. Bah.

[tacticslion]

Revo: actually AOL's strategy became quite successful, though perhaps not as much in the UK. Really they were (to my experience) nearly a monopoly - especially after they ate my beloved Compuserve*, the far superior (if older) online service at the time.

In General: Compuserve, incidentally, introduced me to two things: fan fiction, and stories about video games where people actually died, like with blood and stuff. These are important because suddenly the world opened up with new vistas. Someone - not a professional - had written a story. A good** story. About videogames. And I got to read it! Maybe... I could write a story? And people could die. Like, good people, even. In video-games! Wooooooooow.

So, yeah, basically, it gave me the freedom to use my imagination to do whatever I wanted - sure it was someone else's playground, but I'd just been handed an unlimited pass to every playground everywhere, with the notation that I could do anything on them. It was heady liberating experience that I mostly used to read what other people had done because I'm lazy.

*This was, in fact, the seeds of what would become my hate for AOL.
**Shut up, it was before highschool.

[Sithdarth]

-Playing Diablo at 2am because that's the only time no one needed the phone

-Diablo devolving into a battle of who could find the best godmod hack to counter the autokill everything hack

-Getting kicked off randomly because back then the phone line literally ended at my house and so when it cut out nobody gave a damn

Then eventually in post 2000 era cause I was ridiculously behind the times and still doing dial up despite moving from the literal end of the phone line:

-Playing Diablo 2 at 2am because that's the only time no one needed the phone and also because my brother dropped out of college moved back into the house and into my room with his girlfriend. Fun times that.

[Odjn]

Man I remember Dragon's Gate. That MUD was ridiculous because it had playable dragons except you couldn't fly or anything unless you had the character for a year. Actual rl year. Motherfucking DRAGONS yo.

[katiuska]

Wishing you had AOL instead of some shitty local company, because all your friends had it and AIM didn't exist. Having to muffle the internal speaker at 2am to hide the dial-up noise.

Also, signup discs! Sooooooooo many signup discs.

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/8195/aolfortress2.jpg

One of my friends use to have those statements in his AIM profile. I made a drawing out of it, but my scanner just decided to go, "Nope, you're flat broke, so now is the right time to die," so this'll have to do.

[Azisien]

MUDs were great. I played Redemption MUD, a fairly small one, for years. I tried Achaea for a while, a larger MUD, but I found the enforced roleplaying/clans really annoying. And I spent all my time farming rats.

I tried a handful of Star Wars and FFT MUDs that were decent but shut down. And I once tried a beta zombie horror MUD a friend of mine was coding that simply outstripped any other zombie MUD I had tried. Ah, the good old days...

[Magic_Marker]

- Searching for HOURS to find Warcraft 2 cheats so I could beat the next level in a Googleless world.

- The Internet Privacy Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Privacy_Act) on every site with ROMs.

- Being slightly perplexed and confused by my first porn site leading to my dad giving me 'the talk' (Which lasted for a week because he was a biology major)

-Collecting the discs and filing them into chinese throwing stars.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

I totally remember the dial up modem noise.

Ahh the days of a lousy phone connection. insufferable d/l times.

[Donomni]

Totally wishing I had internet, period, or be able to use it, period.

Shit, I didn't have total(as in, at-home) interweb access until I got my first computer some years back(which I shortly traded in for this one once I found out it was borked beyond repair).

Seriously, most of you fuckers? Privileged.

On the plus side, I no longer feel so old. Yay!

[Krylo]

Seriously, most of you fuckers? Privileged.

I wouldn't go that far.

It's just... well you know how some guys really like cars, and they spend every bit of disposable income on their cars when they can get away with it? Meaning even poor-ass motherfuckers that can barely afford food still have spinning rims and shit? Or some dudes really like guns, and spend all kinds of money they don't actually have on those.

Yeah, I wasn't super poor or anything, but I also wouldn't consider myself any more privileged than any other white boy not living in a trailer park (though I did actually live in a trailer on a plot of land owned by my grandparents twice in my life, and was on welfare more than once).

It's just that for my dad the internet/computers were his car/guns/whatever else.

I'd call it more lucky than anything else.

The first computer I convinced him to get was actually, in the mid 1990s, a dos box, no windows, not even a 3.5 floppy drive (just a 5 incher). I got lucky enough that he got hooked on that, and from then on we were going to computer fairs and every damn thing.

Speaking of which, as per thread topic: Going to a computer fair right after the 56k modems were released and thinking it was the MOST AWESOME THING EVER. Also, going home with one, 'cause dad.

Fun fact: We didn't even have any flight sims and he bought a huge flight yoke. We bought flight sims (including TIE Fighter) after the fact.

[Loyal]

Re: The Dialup Noise: Now in musical form! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxIru0vrH-4)

-When a sound card was not a standard part of a computer.

-When games took up a mere 32MB of hard drive space or less

-When hitting the power button at all while the computer was on would instantly shut off the computer, and how doing something like that could seriously damage the computer or so I heard.

[Toastburner B]

I remember downloading the trailer for Star Wars Episode 1.

I had to do it while no one else was home, because it took over an hour to download, because the file was over a megabyte long.

And it really sucked because everytime my connection would hiccup, it would stop the stream.

Also, forget AOL. My experience of the internet was Prodigy. I don't remember much about it, other than I wasn't allowed to do much on it because everything cost extra.

[Fifthfiend]

Having to muffle the internal speaker at 2am to hide the dial-up noise.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my god

...the correlation between this and Dragonrealms was not incidental.

EDIT: You know what I miss about MUDs? Having to figure out where the ass you were going / had been by making your own maps in MSPaint.

[Whomper]

My HP. Man I had some good teenage years on that machine.
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k166/Whompy/desktop95.jpg
Screencap is from last year. Yes, it's still working. However, it will only accept IE 5.5 :(

Oh, and also paying for internet by the "hour". Haha.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Oh my god wow. That takes me back!

[BitVyper]

I remember when I discovered how ridiculously angry and homophobic people would get when I jokingly responded as though they'd been hitting on me and not Angelgirl16. That's around the same time I decided that anyone who let themselves be worked up that easily existed purely for my personal amusement.

[Osterbaum]

Back when;
- the only computers I knew were school property and had Windows 3.1
- that weird submarine game that was the first game I remember playing on a PC
- We got our first "real" computer and I played C&C and Broken Sword on it
- Windows 98 was the hottest new thing
- getting to use the ISDN connection at a friends house and it seemed super fast
- I didn't know shit about AOL
- I started chatting on IRC (this was pretty late actually, like 2003 or something)

[Bob The Mercenary]

- that weird submarine game that was the first game I remember playing on a PC

Operation Neptune! I used to play that all the time, along with Gizmos and Gadgets. Oh, and Midnight Rescue.

[Viridis]

There was some game where you wander around the school at night, doing math or something like that to figure out which robot is really the bad guy trying to destroy the school. I looked it up and realized I was describing the Midnight Rescue game Bob mentioned. I played a lot of that game.

And another that I can't remember the name of. Had two robots (two players?) competing to reach the aliens in a space station first. They were cleaning robots and the bad guys were somehow defeating with a spray for your water gun, if I remember right.

[01d55]

Operation Neptune!

I honestly can't remember if I ever beat that. I really wanted to know what had happened out there in space!

[Donomni]

Lots of stuff about one of the best dads EVER

He really is!

A bit more on topic, I remember using the interwebs at either school or library computers.

I swear to god every fucking computer in my schools were Macs.

Speaking of way back, I wonder if Stick Death is still around.

EDIT: It is! Wow, I had even lower tastes than I thought as a kid. Also holy fuck that site is like a 90's snapshot.

[tacticslion]

Seriously, most of you fuckers? Privileged.

Meh, as for myself, yeah, I was privileged, but probably not in the way you were thinking. We lived in an apartment in Lithuania for most of the 90's (honestly, I really didn't know who the Spice Girls were until my wife explained it as best any sane person can) - that's a small country just north of Poland, and the first to declare independance from the Soviet Socialist Republic (and feel its wrath), for most of you. Because we were missionaries, internet wasn't so much a luxury (although it was) but more of a necessity - we paid only half as much for internet usage as actual phone bills, and email allowed us to leave 'phone-tag' messages with those who were stateside so that when calls were going to come, everyone knew about it before hand. Plus, my mom had (years before I was born) been a computer tech (we're talking really, really old-school room-sized things, here) and with that experience had worked in a similar position once more personal computers came out (usually as well as being a teacher) in various churches and schools we worked at. That meant she was familiar with the tech waves of the time and was able to hook us up. I actually never spent time on MUDs or other things like that - my experiences were mostly, sign on, send the email, get my stuff a) downloaded or b) copied-pasted, then sign off and work off-line. We were never rich, just "privileged" to be in the right place at the right time for me to have those experiences. I kind of think that's true for most people.

I swear to god every fucking computer in my schools were Macs.

I know, right? I actually prefer Apple products over-all, as my experiences have been exclusively positive, however I understand that Apple controls their products so tightly that third-party developers are scarce - that's why we switched to PCs ourselves - everyone else in the mission board was on them. Still, there was always Oregon Trail...

[Terex4]

I swear to god every fucking computer in my schools were Macs.

You mean those box things that looked like a vectrex? I remember playing Oregon Trail on those things. That and the really old apples with the 6 inch floppies that had games made entirely of green pixels.

The modem noise takes me back, sitting there listening to see if it connected or if I got a busy signal. Then trying to figure out why it was always busy at 5pm.

[MasterOfMagic]

That "Where in the World Carmen Sandiego" game on the mac at school.

Finding the demo for the original C&C online, and playing that for months. And Doom, oh Doom, spawner of awkward conversations with my parents.

And then my brother and I found this AMAZING site that let you download MORE games for FREE!!!! OMG.

[mauve]

You mean those box things that looked like a vectrex? I remember playing Oregon Trail on those things. That and the really old apples with the 6 inch floppies that had games made entirely of green pixels.
Hahah! We had those horrible green-text computers back when I was in elementary school. We had Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, and a color-matching game. Why we had a color-matching game on a computer that had ONLY ONE COLOR is beyond me. Yaaay for low-budget rural public schools!

Eventually we got a lab full of PCs in the late 90's or early 2000's, and then everybody played Oregon Trail in color. Although most people only played it for the deer hunting mini game.

[Wigmund]

When I was in school, we played Oregon Trail to leave inappropriate names on the tombstones for later players to find.

"Here lies Sunovabitch, drowned while trying to float across that last fucking river"

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Man. Oregon trail was the bomb. I remember that game. I also remember playing Descent, the original old school one with three people cause we believed you needed 3 to play the game.

[Donomni]

Oh, yes, another bit of school-lab nostalgia: Sim City 2000.

Dysentery pales in comparison to seeing your city burn to the ground by spherical robot alien attacks.

[Tev]

Oh, yes, another bit of school-lab nostalgia: Sim City 2000.

Dysentery pales in comparison to seeing your city burn to the ground by spherical robot alien attacks.2000? 2000!?

Back in my day we just had tornados, and sea-monsters to terrorize our towns!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The robot never did shit- he would just start a few fires then sail away. Hurricanes were more deadly.
I remember we used to play SimAnt and spent ages running ants into the powersockets.

[DFM]

When I was in school, we played Oregon Trail to leave inappropriate names on the tombstones for later players to find.

"Here lies Sunovabitch, drowned while trying to float across that last fucking river"

"Here lies diarrhea."

[Fifthfiend]

Every time I get nostalgic for Oregon Trail I fire up Let's Go Find El Dorado.

Also, Excitebike!

[Terex4]

I found a copy of number munchers for my kids to play at one point.

[krogothwolf]

Blades of Steel!!

[katiuska]

You mean those box things that looked like a vectrex? I remember playing Oregon Trail on those things. That and the really old apples with the 6 inch floppies that had games made entirely of green pixels.

The modem noise takes me back, sitting there listening to see if it connected or if I got a busy signal. Then trying to figure out why it was always busy at 5pm.

Man, I hated Oregon Trail. I wasn't even trying to kill my characters and they'll all die anyway. I tried playing it again like 4 months ago just to see how it went, and it went pretty much flawlessly, so apparently I just sucked at it back then.

We had the Apple IIes until I was in like 5th grade; I remember when the old Macintoshes that came after them seemed pretty sweet in comparison.

Anyway, this is off the original topic of the ridiculousness of mid-90s AOL. I remember a time when I was totally ready to jump into chats / message strangers and have a random-ass conversation with someone I'd never met. Mostly it wasn't that interesting, but occasionally you'd find someone who was completely down with it and it would be awesome. Naturally, the fact that this probably wasn't the best course of action for a 13-year-old girl never occurred to me.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot, AOL users always had to click a dialog box to accept messages from AIM users; for all I know, they still do, but nobody uses AOL anymore so it doesn't matter.

[Lost in Time]

I remember back in the olden days I had to get log off windows and boot up DOS to be able to play Duke Nukem 2. Also my Windows 3.11 machine where the only song I'd play was a MIDI of The Entertainer.

[katiuska]

You had The Entertainer? All we had was Canyon.mid.

Man, that takes me back.

We still have our 1996 Pentium down in the basement. It runs Windows 98. I've considered rounding it out and installing like, AOL and Microsoft Bob and making it a shrine to 90s terribleness, because I have kind of a warped sense of humor.

[Hatake Kakashi]

AOL in 94? I played on Moosehead SLED II, as far as muds go. Best game I've ever played, hands down.

And when that wasn't quite enough to hold my interest (usually when there was nobody on to kill at about two in the morning), I'd cruise the chatrooms, firing up various punters, and kicking people's lame asses offline. Pepsi, Oreo, Assassin, MiB, Bolt, 1-IM, I had dozens upon dozens of programs all specifically made to ruin someone else's day.

[synkr0nized]

stumbling into chat rooms devoted to fantasy settings, thinking it was some kind of game, and then later finding out it's mostly an excuse for people to use the /roll command and cybersex

blowing people's minds by running MSIE (or, later, Mozilla/Netscape) instead of the IE-branded clone inside AOL itself

being super happy when modems that channeled their sound through the PC speaker came out so that I could stealth-login late at night

making fun of Earthlink

initially, learning the difference between the various AOL-spawned "pages" and places within their program and network and the actual World Wide Web


Before that, there was some Prodigy something or other that we dialed into on our IBM PS/2. Oh man wacky things like mad libs and other pages of text awaited our family!

[Wigmund]

I miss the damn Yeti chasing me down and devouring me at the end of SkiFree.
http://media.ign.com/boards/images/icons2/games_SkiFreeYeti.gif