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The site's twelve now. As many of you know, this means that the Caves of Narshe is certainly what the media folks call a "tween," and I believe it; just the other day, Climmy threw a temper tantrum when I wouldn't buy him a Jonas Brothers poster.

He then proceeded to murder a bystander. The analogy only goes so far.

All that aside, the site is indeed twelve - however, to my eye, she's got the lustre of a site only half her age, and the vitality to boot. It's been a pretty shiny year for CoN, even though some might have wondered last year how many more good years we had under our belts. We might have even wondered it ourselves, and as such, we made the second half of 2008 the catalyst for change and carried that through to now. In terms of development, I think we turned the last year of the site into a pretty significant one, with the launch of the big new Chrono Trigger section. We'd thought about covering Chrono Trigger almost from the very day that we put Final Fantasy IV on the site, and as the stars aligned with the impressive DS port, we took the leap. The result was CoN progress like we hadn't seen in years, with a large group all coming together and really banging it out (in this case, "it" being the first major collection of data for the SNES/PSX and DS versions all in one spot). Not only did we do that, we also put together a new wallpaper section, giving some love to a section of the site that hadn't been loved in over a year and a half. It's the only place to find wallpapers designed with the CoN user in mind, and there are over two hundred wallpapers there among all sizes and designs. Not content with those two big projects, we even rolled out a new way to publish gaming news to you folks, including better ways to organize and browse and even a way to get you guys more involved by submitting your own.

You should think this was enough, right? Wrong, sucka. Got even a little bit more, going up today. First, we're broadening the avatar gallery with a wider array from our newest game, Chrono Trigger and a huge selection of pins from Square's big 2008 hit, The World Ends With You. For those of you who have a thing for CoN History, like we do, we also decided to put together, well, pretty much every page from every previous version of CoN and put it back online. It's goofy, sure, but no more goofy than the quality of the code on most of it, which I've managed to largely leave unadulterated. The CoN History page has links to all four previous design iterations just waiting for you. Please, visit and mock the skills I had back in the time of the ancients.

Finally, and I think this is the big one (hence it being last, and in friggin' bold, duh), is the return of a feature that people loved many a year ago: the CoN quiz is now back on the road and ready to abuse you, with a twist. Now the questions aren't just from our covered games - those only make up the first tier, called "Local" since the questions are, y'know, local to the site. We've got two new tiers of questions, "Regional" and "Global," which are pulled from the entire Square Enix canon and all of gaming, resepectively. So, if you think you know your stuff, there are quizzes open right now. Get started. And, hey, since we like giving away AmaCoN money, here's the new CoNtest for the rest of this year: whoever ends this calendar year (as of 23:59:59 GMT on 31 December 2009) on top of the Top Scorers page for all quizzes (with at least ten quizzes taken) will take home $25 in AmaCoN dollars or their local equivalent. Also, let me take this time to personally thank all the folks who participated in the closed beta for this new project over the last couple weeks; we made some significant improvements that everyone will appreciate, and we'll look to do more of that in the near future.

So, there we go, we have another year's worth of work in place. And it's surely enough to convince everyone that we, unlike most everyone else out there, have yet to give up the ghost. So we'll go into our lucky thirteenth year, knowing that the experience of the previous twelve years will keep us going with new projects and new ways to keep the site going and useful to you guys. We, of course, have a few things planned already to make things better. However, we have also come to learn that you also know what you want, and we're always willing to hear what those things are (even if we don't ever actually, you know, do them). So here's a thread perfect for you to tell us what you liked and disliked this year, and also to tell us what you want to see next year to keep you here and happy. As usual, while we certainly love CoN, it's a lot less lovable if the people who really make it fun, you folks, stop coming. So, I'll wrap up this year by saying that you should keep posting good threads, and keep submitting new content to the site, and that should the mood strike you this summer or any time hence, to come visit us in chat (which has been a bit quiet lately, which makes me quite bored at work), and throw some commentary our way about most anything.

And, speaking of work, well, I'm quite busy today trying to get through the most difficult of my office work so that I have time to put some more effort into CoN yet today. Cheerio, friends, and I hope to see you checking in quite soon to celebrate another great year of CoN with us!

Yay! This is worth changing my avvie for.

You know, this has made me kinda interested in buying TWEWY.

Anyways, the site has been up twelve years? That's almost as old as me

My snake face will end you.

Quote (footbigmike @ 31st July 2009 09:32)

My snake face will end you.

I had no idea that was meant to be a snake face until you said it, and now I can suddenly see it. Crazy.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Also, what's the story behind these pins? Are they used in-game?

EDIT: I also eagerly await the day the work on a FFIII section starts!

This post has been edited by Gigantuar on 31st July 2009 14:05

Happy birthday CoN, from the happiest gator in the world

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Love the avatars and love the quizzes!

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Love these new quizzes. I am a ridiculous trivia buff and writing/following them is going to be super-fun.

EDIT: Naturally, my scores won't count for the prize. I'm just trying to finish each one in about 15-30 seconds and see how I do.

This post has been edited by laszlow on 31st July 2009 17:54

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

12 years old. Wow. Grats on making it this far and I look forward to 12 more!

Well, really, you probably shouldn't be taking them at all, Lasz. I'll only purge your scores later. Nobody wants to see the top six slots taken up by the people who write the bloody quizzes, eh?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

My skull is scared because he is bad at trivia.

(I can't blame him trivia is hard)

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If god is all-forgiving then why do we have to kill people in his name?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 31st July 2009 12:56)

Well, really, you probably shouldn't be taking them at all, Lasz. I'll only purge your scores later. Nobody wants to see the top six slots taken up by the people who write the bloody quizzes, eh?

Yes, and I encourage you to purge, but I just want to see how the makeup of the quizzes turned out

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Congrats, CoN's the best. Excited to take these quizzes too. Good job guys.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Oops! Kane just alerted me to a bug in the scoring reporting - users who have taken quizzes before right now might see that the system tells them that they picked something that they did not. I just did some investigation, and I determined that the scoring is actually accurate - the system is just telling you the wrong thing that you picked. Again, so everyone knows:

All scoring on the quizzes is accurate - even if you took the quizzes first thing this morning, the score we have on the books for you is good. The system will continue to tell you that you chose something else for any quiz taken before 15:30 ET today; you can ignore this, as the underlying score is valid and correct. For users taking the quizzes after this time, you should not see this error.



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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I love CoN and have for longer than I care to admit. I say it every year, but happy birthday and all the best. Congrats on making this far and much love for all the hard work.

The TWEWY pins made me insanely excited. So much so that I finally retired the Sephiroth avatar, which I've held since joining back in 2001.

And seriously, come hang out with us in chat. You'll either leave a completely different person or utterly offended.
Or both.

Wow, this site's, like, ancient. Twelve years...and I've only been around for about four of those. Gotta hand it to ol' R51 for sticking with it for so long.

As for chat, I dunno...I did hang out with y'all there for a while. Didn't really last, but I'll see if I can pop back in from time to time.

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Console RPG Cliches

In celebration of CoN's birthday I shall idle again in chat regularly. (in actuality, I just got my desktop set up with a wired connection and was going to do it anyway)

Happy twelfth, CoN! I'll try to make it in to chat more often. :-)

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SPEKKIO: "GRRR...That was most embarrassing!"

Wow, I didn't know you updated the avatars. Hmm, I wonder which one would fit a Sage?

Edit

Happy CoNniversary everyone!

This post has been edited by BlitzSage on 7th August 2009 18:25

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Praise Be To Helix!

wow i never knew this forum was this old before
its really amazing

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I remember... That night, we talked for the first time. I
didn't know it then, but after that night, everything changed. For everyone...
For me...
~Tidus

Twelve year is impressive. What would be more impressive would be keeping this topic going 'til next year!

Love the avatars btw

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"You know that feeling you get when you're on a merry go 'round, and you want to jump off to make the spinning stop, but you know it'll suck when you land? I feel like that all the time"- Keno

"I stab my girl until I fall down"
-Yukari
Do you like Horny Bunnies?

Now that I see that there are TWEWY pins for Avis I really want to change mine. But I'll keep my Eli Manning Avi.

And Wow Con's already 12?!?!? I still remember the 10th anniversary like it was yesterday.

I missed this thread when it first came out, but now let me just say what a great success this place is and will continue to be. Well done!

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.