The End of an Era

Well, that’s it. SPUF is dead. It’s gone. Nothing more than an archive. Dead. Done. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up the daisies. Rolled a seven. Gone forever. Poor thing didn’t even die painlessly. It struggled through 503 errors and database problems. It struggled under the requests of people trying to back up the vast number of posts and threads, desperate to archive an ancient forum. It didn’t even get any updates, being stuck on version 3 of vBulletin, despite vBulletin V5 being available for quite a long time now. SPUF died a painful death.

Over the last year or so, traffic might not have been amazing. In fact, some days, apart from This Instant and Moment and wherever I happened to post, SPUF was a bit of a ghost town. But that was just people who posted. Every day, people would use the site, not as posters but as readers, looking for help on all sorts of topics. From general game problems, to crashing computers, to creating your own mods and maps. So much information. Out of all the problems I had, whether it was for my own games or for my brother’s or sister’s games, I found most of my clues, answers and solutions on SPUF. Years of help and advice, fading away.

Really, it’s silly for me to be so sentimental and upset about a forum. Pathetic almost. I even cried a little when the forums first went off without warning and I was worried that they were gone forever then. Being given a few weeks to say goodbye and back things up has honestly only made me feel worse. Something I care about leering towards certain doom. Whoever said that all good things must come to an end is a bastard, because good things make people happy, yet bad things tend to linger in one’s life. How comes all bad things don’t come to an end?

I can’t help it though. I’ve been on SPUF for a long time, registering in 2010. I’ve made over 19,000 posts and have over 7000 reputation. I have made a lot of friends and learned a lot of things. I somehow ended up being considered a pillar of the community, although part of that is just me sticking around after most of the heavy hitters left. I even started writing on a more regular basis, thanks to SPUF wanting its own blog and people wanting to read it. SPUF was a huge part of my online life. It wasn’t a normal community, most people did their own thing, particularly in SPUF’s later days when most people didn’t even really play Team Fortress 2. But everyone mostly got along, despite our differences and arguments. Mostly.

Really, all I feel is hollow now. I’m not at all sure what to do with myself. Alright, I’ve gone and re-joined subSPUF and joined the TIAM group, but apart from that, I don’t know what to do. I’m not really angry, I knew SPUF would die eventually, I just thought we had a good few more years left. A lot of my anger evaporated when SPUF came back briefly, and what remained was replaced with frustration as I tried to use the dying forums amid hundreds of database errors. I’m confused and tired and not sure what happens next.

A large chunk of the TF2 community looked up to me, wanting to know what to do, and I simply don’t know.

All I can do is say farewell to SPUF, and cherish what I remember of it. I’ll continue writing my stories and my articles. But I think a little tiny part of me has died alongside the forums I spent nearly seven years posting on.

Bye, SPUF. It was nice knowing you.