You see, it all happened on the 27th of June. The year was 2006. Tom made a news annoucement telling people ahead of time that he would lock all of the BBS to make proper changes to the site, that included the NG News forum (For fear that his older brother would store his Oh Snap! Threads for the time being.) Every forum was locked and Tom had said that it would be that way for a month.
There was an uproar. So many people had gotten so excited about it that they posted it on their Myspaces/Xangas/LiveJournals/Etc. While others were not all that happy. Where else could they get their daily does of attention whore, drama, repetition, ignorance, and fad bandwagoning? The NG Chat room felt a huge boom as so many NG Users were heading there, but even so, it wasn't the same.
First week passes by...
All the people that would only get on the BBS to annoy people were still seemingly apathetic about it. (You know, the users that say how lame and stupid the BBS is, but run back to it like a stray dog?) While this was going on, people ran to user's Free Forum Sites and started joining and posting like crazy. Three days into it, they realized that it still wasn't the same, but they kept doing it regardless.
Second week passes by...
You'd have to blink to miss it, but Free Forum Site hosters like Jconserv, Invisionfree, and so on boomed. Now everybody was making one. For the people that logged on to the BBS to annoy people, decided to pick a new territory. The NG Chat room. When they all got kicked and were desperate enough to make alts, it had finally hit them how pathetic they were, but they wouldn't admit it. Even with the new Forum sites ups, and annoying people moving on to the NG Chat room, they just wouldn't admit that it wasn't the same.
Third week passes by...
The Mods from the get go had no problem with the NGBBS being locked. Now, what was left was getting their B/P and EXP for the time being. Three weeks passed by and it didn't even phase them. The annoying users moved from the NG Chat to review spamming in not only the Flash Portal, but the Audio Portal as well. When the Mods had noticed this, the few that had the power to ban them did, the ones that didn't, tried to. In the end, the Mods as a whole realized that it wasn't the same.
Fourth week passes by...
The Free Forum Sites set up by the users all failed, even the popular ones before the NGBBS was locked. The annoying users finally realized how pathetic they were, and had admitted that no matter how stupid, lame, repetitve, and predictable the NGBBS was, nothing else would be the same. The wall of apathy broke for just that moment as all users started to miss posting on the BBS.
3 days later...
The BBS was reopened. New buttons and features were added to it, but it was still the same thing. It didn't matter though, the NGBBS forum exploded with users in every forum, and for just one day there wasn't any locked topics. The new high number of registered users online skyrocketed to 629 users. The next day it dropped back down to the usual number, and things went back to the way they were.
Overall, nothing really changed, although people did acknowledge that this forum was one of a kind. Around for many years. The day after the BBS was reopened, 361 threads were locked, 56 users were banned, 31 alts were banned, 12 accounts were deleted, and people went back to bitching heavily about it.
The End