I had originally written a blog all about my origins and what my first few games were like, but I've spoken about that before. XD
This time, I'm going to try to talk about how Tengaged was when I started and all the changes I remember from over the years.
6 years though! That's a quarter of my life! O_O
When I joined, the only 2 games on the website were Castings and Rookies and they were both 10-player games.
Ten-gaged.
Ten people engaged in a game. :P Randomize logic (y)
I only managed to join one 10-player Castings and I was logged off for most of it. Still got 2nd. :P
Before I joined, T$ didn't exist. To join games, you paid with the karma you earned from games. So the very old accounts could have had more karma if they hadn't spent it joining games. :P After T$ were added, blogging was added as another way to earn them.
When I joined, Castings cost 6T$. You started off with 12T$ so you could join 2 initially.
Rookies cost 12T$ and enrollment was still at yellow level.
A while after that first castings, Jubbzy insisted that I join another one.
And would you know it, my second game was the FIRST EVER 20-Player CASTINGS! O_O
I got 7th in it against some very experienced players. XD
Originally, the 10-player castings was like rookies, 24-hour day change, except all the nominations were algo and there were no HoH/PoV/immunities.
The first 20-player castings were NOT apples/keys. Here's how it worked.
The nominations were algo-based. Every even score (20th,18th,16th...6th) were evictions and every odd score (19th,17th....5th) were algo-evicted inactives. It could be someone who wasn't even nominated, like the deaths are nowadays.
So every 12-hour day, 2 people were evicted, one voted out, the other was algo evicted.
Rookies stayed as a 10-player game for a long time though. One consistent factor of rookies which hasn't been removed is the betting.
Originally, you could bet however much you wanted (eg. 100s or 1000s of T$) and 10% of the total bets were rewarded to the winner.
But problems occurred when people noticed that Phanne won rookies quite a lot. She would end up with huge bets on her, it was insane. XD And one day, Rando did not reward her with the 10%! He removed that and the unlimited betting. :'(
Could you imagine if we still had it? The bets in charity games would be HUGE! O_O
One key thing about 2008 is that you could access everything on the site at yellow level. So there were very few people who had high levels and I remember how Bowler23 was the first ever black level. How shocking it was. XD
So Stars appeared on the enrollment page with a "Coming soon" sign, we were ALL hyped up!
Wow! Something for high levels!
As a yellow level noobie, I watched the first enrollment. It was so exciting! Public voting, popular players were in it, it was incredible. :3
The other exciting addition to the site was Survivor. The enrollment was so fast that even though I was online during the first opening, I only got in the 3rd one!
As a result, I was the 3rd person to be evicted for 20th in Survivor. Teehee. :P
I thought Survivor was so cool, that I decided to join it for my 100th game....I didn't do very well. :X Charities didn't exist back then, so.....yeah....
I don't remember which one changed first - castings or rookies.
But I'm going to talk about both changes next, starting with castings.
Castings was changed into the apples/keys castings we have today. With the minigames for immunity too. I hated it with a passion when it was added because it just removed the social aspect-it became a spam-for-a-key game. XD I believe it still cost 6T$, but that of course has no changed. XD
I believe Duel was added close to when Rookies changed to a 13-player game. That was also when rookies basically had the Frookies format - algo HoH, minigames PoV, day change occurs after everyone votes, otherwise it was a 12 hour day. However, it also had the Crookies betting for day 1 and day 2, it considered the possibility of the 24 hours for betting, but it mostly ended up being 20-minutes-to-shove-your-bets-in-folks.
That was the reason I personally didn't like the Duel - it meant that you couldn't leave the computer for 5 minutes without coming back to insults. :/
The first rookies I won was with that format. Just imagine a quick game with the Crookies rewards. Let's just say it was premade paradise and charity chaos. XD
Those were the big things before we got the site we have today with the games that we have.
Structurally, Fastings are a good way to get into Crookies, and Castings are a good way to get into Frookies for noobies. But playing both helps new players to adapt to the fast speeds and the set day lengths.
Also Hunger is great, but since I have never played it, I can't say much about it. :P
Here are a few little things Rando has fiddled with over the years:
- When you signed up for this site, first you filled in the form and the next page was for editing your avatar. So very few people started out with the default avatar because editing it was part of making your account. Now that page is gone, so lots of people start with the default avatar.
- Originally, the order the players appeared in games was based on when the user joined the website, not the order they enrolled in like it is now. When you play immunity challenges in Castings, the order the names are are in the original order (I'm usually on the top) :'(
- Clicking on your avatar on your profile used to do nothing, now it goes to editing your avatar!
- Yellow-Ranks on top blogs didn't exist before, in fact there is no way to know how well your very old blogs ranked.
- You could enrol in 2 Castings or 2 Rookies at the same time.
- Originally, there was an option to choose which language of game you wanted to play. I believe there was French, German, Spanish, Italian....Japanese? And one more...I don't remember what it was. Anywho, that was removed because those foreign language games took SOOOOO long to enrol. The issue was that there were a couple of users who were trapped in these games with no escape, always having one less game to play in.
- Polls was something which was added to groups, it wasn't originally there. So when Jubbzy originally started the Big Stars Giveaway, votes were done by mail (RIP His Inbox!) When Rando added open polls, he jumped on it! XD
- Tagging users was my idea. ;)
- Hash tags was Retsdir's idea. ;) loljk - lots of users suggested those ideas too! But we suggested it very close to when they were actually added. XD
- Multi-plussing was either a -10 or it was a 1 vote +0 on blogs. HOWEVER, a multi-neg was worth +20! Serious glitch! I told Rando and he fixed it. :P Both the plus/neg became -50. Teehee
- You know how your old mails sometimes disappear? Well, Rando deletes them to save space.
Did you know that Rando actually deleted all of our old games at one point as well? The game circles were removed from our profiles! We couldn't see our old games any more!
This caused chaos on the blogs page. Rando added it back like an hour or two later. But he removed the chats. I guess it was a fair compromise - at least they still existed! XD
- When Rando was testing designs, he made a Misfits t-shirt in honour of the Tengaged Alliance. He gave that t-shirt to...I think it was Lockie? I don't remember. XD But he didn't know why he got it, all of our minds were blown! The next time Rando gave out free designs was for the BSG players. I had a female Stars shirt, but lost it because it was never an official design. XD
- Halloween is always memorable on here. XD And I'm not talking about Halloween, even though he is pretty epic. :P I mean how Rando funks up this site for the occasion. But in 2008, he tested it a week before. Everyone thought it was glitching, Rando removed it and claimed it was just a glitch. ;) Halloween came and our avatars were insane! :P
He's done things for Red Nose Day & for Christmas. =] Looking forward to whatever he does this year! ^_^
I'm pretty tired and I'm definitely missing stuff. Like when auctions and shops came out, fraternities being added, adverts, embedding videos to profiles, stuff like that.
If I'm missing anything, add it to the comments. XD
But 6 years! My last 2 goals on here were to get black level and play one last stars.
I'm now gold level, 33 karma away from sky! O_O
And I just played that stars.
So....I could go now....
But as I said to Torres, I'm going to go when my freetime < life. Tengaged isn't causing me any problems, I am. XD And I'm mature enough to not take it personally...but that Stars game...
I want to thank the #Brits for being amazing and Catch_a_falling_star for being the only person I know irl who stayed here. XD
Vlog will be up tomorrow. It's nothing that anyone suggested. ;)
I had originally written a blog all about my origins and what my first few games were like, but I've spoken about that before. XD