September 2002. In our first year we grew by nearly 800 members, in our second year we added over 2500, and with that increased membership the amount of posts on the forums was over 10 times larger. What caused this? Well earlier on in the year Stratics went through a bit of a dodgy phase, the forums were often down and database problems meant backups had to be restored and with that came lost posts.

The increase in Membership and Posts though was also helped by two people. Firstly Wikkr who got banned from stratics for stealing their milk or something and this attracted a lot of babblers. The biggest impact though was the arrival of Ozle and his handler Aeribian IV. In less than a year not only had the Ozle and Friends forum been created and superseded by Ozle and Friends 2, but the sequel had already managed over 27,000 posts

These indeed were the glory days of f4g.net, the posts flowed, the posters were happy and I got the sack from work for spending too much time posting/working on forums when I was at work

Shadowbane, Neverwinter Nights, and Dark Age of Camelot forums had joined the party as well as a Blood Bowl league and our own BlackNova Traders game. The Gutter had revealed that even nerds can be a bit perverted and in no relation to the site changing name again to f4g.net an Art and Design forum was getting a few posts.

A boring blue style somehow had replaced the great purple style that only saw action for a couple of months. Which was a shame as after we ditched the purple it suddenly became the next big web colour will all sorts of big name sites going purple.