What keeps you involved?

[VSMIT]

My experience with BZ started with BZ1, which came with a video card that went in my first computer, in 2000 or 2001. Got BZ2 in 2005 and found BZ2MD in mid 2006, joining BZU shortly after. Started hanging in the IRC in 2009. The rest is pretty much history.

I stick around because of the few people I enjoy talking to that are still here.

[General BlackDragon]

The people help a lot.iluvuvismit

[Red Spot]

I think GBD has an iPhone/Pod, as he likes to 'i' more than he needs to ...

[Nielk1]

Side note, I started with BZ1 that was packed with a Thrust-master my father got, though he couldn't really handle the game. I finished the campaign but didn't have a connection attached to a computer capable of playing it online.

I was also about 10.

[sabrebattletank]

So my question is, what keeps you involved?
It's been hard for me to stay involved, as I'm currently abroad. But I like to check back every now and then. When I can, I play the game because of the unique (basically: the only comparable game is Battlezone [the first one]) gameplay in terms of balance between first person shooter (read: I can shoot stuff) and real-time strategy (read: I can build and design my base and order units to shoot stuff). Basically Axeminister said it very well on the first page.

And when did you hook up with other players online, either discussion boards or networked games?
Hard to say for me the timeline. (Huh, neat construction.) At this point I can't play very often, don't think I've played in months. But it's good to come by the boards once in a while, make sure that when I can get back into the game I can. You know I'm now remembering what it was like when TimeVirus passed last year. I played a couple games that night. I would say I come back for the community. The game is great, and frankly the lack of being able to find something similar has turned me off to other video games in general, but as everyone here knows time only gets harder to find, as do BZ2 games.

[Dataanti]

I found the game on the side of the road, still in the package and everything, we had a dell dimension 4100 (I still have and it runs fine ) but no games so my mom let me install it. After she played it and beat it I played it and It's the first game I have ever played. Also it's the first online community I have been involved in. I played offline IA for years on stock before I even knew about patches, one time I made a MP game so I could just build a base, I assumed I was the only one who played it cause I never seen any matches in the list (this is before I knew anything about networks ,routers and ports) and then someone joined... That someone was Axe and he told me about the community and the patches and I forgot why he came to my game. So that's when I became a part of the community . After about a year of being with you guys, out of nowhere in the IRC, GSH asked me if I wanted to be a beta tester... I said yes... I was a tester for a little while and then I blew that :S (I made you boyfriend? husband? ex?) mad and then he kicked me out of the IRC and then I did something else and got kicked out of forums, and then made a few more mistakes and almost left the community and game all together. But I didn't, and I'm not sure why. That's my story as far as I can remember .

I have had the game o the year of release so I have been playing since I was 6-7 years old (I'm 18 now).

[Clavin12]

I started playing it young and was intrigued by the game-play and the characters in the single missions, especially the early missions on Pluto. Since then I've been caught up in the community and development of the game.

[Kite]

This game kind of represents my teenage years. Doing some modding stuff years back basically lead me into my current career. If my dad didn't bring home an old copy of BZ2 that one day, I could be very well doing something else with my life.