Using a friend's forum account right now, FC apparently has no more community reps working for AO anymore, game account works with the free month they offered, but not forum accounts. Not just the players that have gotten the heck outta dodge it looks like.
I had to remind myself again the other day that the darn game, with the way it is now, was once worth playing. So I popped open my old computer and looked at some of my old pre-SL screenshots. Thought some other oldschoolers here might be interested in taking a look, or those who weren't around during those days. It's definitely not the best collection of oldschool screenshots, as many are missing. I don't know what happened to the rest or if I had split them up or anything, but the only ones I have are from pvp or funny lines in the game. Those looking for level 40 stromm in steel ribbed screenshots will be disappointed, but those who recognize the old names, old pvp channels, arena freaks, orgs, blabbermouthed omni leaders, and old pvp habits should enjoy it. For some reason I also had 4 of Cyboot's screenshots on that comp, but I included them in anyway. They're not in order, though.
All in all, I decided that after watching the FC devs pat themselves on the back for ruining their own game in their '7th anniversary AO mini-documentary' it shouldn't hurt too much for the players of this game that's supposedly 'still going strong today' to weigh in on whether they agree with what they all had to say. It's really disappointing what they did to this game, they obviously put completely out of sight and out of mind what older players preferred and knew about the game before LE and just turned the PvP into a WoW clone. I mean yeah, everyone says 'its what sells' but I'd bet that if FC rolled the game development back 1 or 2 years, or maybe even 4 or 5 years, they would make more money off of subscriptions than they do today. I know countless people playing other MMOs or who have stopped playing MMOs period who say that they would go back in an instant if FC hosted a classic server.
Here it is:
http://files.filefront.com/Screensho.../fileinfo.html
edit: and yeah, sorry about the low-detail graphics in some of the screenshots. I had to do that every once in awhile, I never did much online gaming prior to AO. Noticed that also, the screens can't be viewed one after another in windows fax/pic view, that sucks, but I didnt know how to configure that to a zip.