Tell me a tale...

I'll try to write something down, I know the history of the FF Europe and FF community quite well.

 

Ok, here comes the history of FF community, and some general FF history up until the merge with the JC.

FanForce History

Some time in the end of May 2000 rumours were starting to spread, a new forum was being opened up somewhere in the vicinity of TF.N and the JC. This rumour was probably helped quite a lot when it was announced on the TF.N newspage, the kick-off was made on the anniversary of the TPM premiere.. Being curious about it people started to register and the FF forums started to be settled by SW-fans from all over the world. It should be said though that this was not the real ?birth? of FanForce. The idea of having a community where people could meet in real life had come to life sometime in May 1999, by people standing in line together for TPM. This is why when the forums opened up there were already a couple of active FF chapters around.

Now what about the forums: Well they were the same kind of UBB boards that the JC used at that time, which meant that they crashed from time to time, but you could have some cute ezboard icon when you posted. North America was already organised in different regions, I?m not sure about the rest of the world. FF Europe only had one general forum, or maybe there was a French forum as well.

Among the forums there was a FF Community forum, and in there the Empire was strong. Azeem had started up a thread called ?Join the Empire? for some lighthearted role playing, well the rebels were strong as well and after a while of fighting inside the Empire thread a thread titled ?Rebels rise? was created to battle the evil forces. This thread was created by Wedge Antilles, or Commander Antilles as he was called on the JC.

The first week in August the FF boards got more than 1000 members, eventhough a couple of them had just registered in order to have a place to be when the JC was down for some days when those forums moved from UBB to Snowboard. In order to celebrate the number of members a thread called something like 1000+ was started. Whenever a new nice number of members was reached that was celebrated as well. It became sort of a sport to be the first to announce the number of members. After a discussion of eating fish in order to become intelligent and drinking beer the sushibeer was created. This became and still is the official FF Community drink, and its use has been spread outside that forum as well. Me, Obi Anne, and emilsson are so far the only people who have tried sushibeer in real life. At the last count before the move to the JC/Snowboards there were 1808 members, November 25th 2000. The whole 1000+ thread was reposted in the From 1000+ to 1850+ a tale flooded with sushibeer.

Some time during the autumn the news were spreading that the FF boards would have to move and merge with the JC. Not too many were happy about the decision, we would leave our little community and become part of something that was totally different and much bigger. The exact date of the move is a bit hard to find, but looking at the oldest threads in various FF forums the earliest post that I?ve found dates from 29th of November 2000 (In this still active Swedish thread), and Nwalme Jade states in the Guide to the FF Community that the UBB era lasted until 4th of December 2000. So that was probably the day that the old boards were totally shut down. (The Guide to the FF community is a great read that explains quite a lot of the FF community forum).

 

When asking around in the CR forum it seems as if Erik aka m0rpheus is the person who started it all, and that it happened in Dallas. Toronto and Montreal are also two chapters that have been active from the start.