Have any of you been to Bemanistyle lately? 

It looks like they lost everything from their previous downtime. I haven't been to the site in a few months, relying mostly on the news RSS feeds. And none of the old threads are there right now either...

Yeah, I was going to post about this, but I got lazy.

I don't know what happened to them, but their new forums SUCK. I tried making posts in various threads and (I think) they all need to be approved by the thread moderator. So while some of my replies/topics got through, others just seem to never materialize. I don't know why the heck they'd require a mod to check everyone's comments when they have the standard sign up process that this and many other forums use to filter out bots.

I really do miss the old bemanistyle layout.  I mostly used their site to acquire simfiles; nice to get single songs over megapacks of unknown junk.  It looks like they kept some of their simpack threads alive at least...

And it looks like Eddie is giving up on the site now, after the latest hacking attempt.

http://bemanistyle.tumblr.com/post/66806357992/state-of-the-site-11-12-2013

He's got a point. I can't recall how many times I've seen people get insulted over at AIJ just for voicing an opinion that goes against popular opinion. ZIV seems like a pretty friendly place without too much hostility (but they're DDR-centric and border on fanboyism). I mostly get my kicks by chilling on this place listening to people talk about stamina play.

So, how 'bout that no-bar freestyle? Eh!?

The community did get pretty hostile, and few were trying to stop it.
Instead of building community, we had things like Bemanistyle's "forum boredom" which allowed and encouraged trolling, many DDR sites had "hands-off" or even absent mods who let users run over them or other users since mods didn't want to offend anyone, a rude and hostile community dedicated to illegally sharing all bemani files, and a highly competitive userbase that would rather pick out flaws in each other's posts and complain about machine conditions than contribute back. (That last part was not targeted towards users here, but if you're feeling guilt then there's still time to change.)

But man, Eddie and the "team" that ran BMS was terribly disorganized and they let the site fall apart years before DDR was finally out the door. The dedication of the site admins really helps make or break a site. That's not to puff myself up here, I don't care about that; but the fact is still true. Z-i-V has continued to grow because the admin there is dedicated to the site and making sure it's working good. He's a part of the community that is trying to make it better instead of just complaining that DDR's dead or that "users are the problem". He helped me get those machine condition boxes we have at the top of every location thread on the site.

I stayed away from AIJ because it was full of the hostile ITG "pros" at one point, and I'm not sure if it has changed since then. It seems like the hostile users are the ones primarily still around at most of the sites since they forced everyone else away, and that's a shame.

/soapbox

I agree.  I've only recently gotten back into the scene (what's left of it anyways) as I just picked up my own machine.  It's tough to recognize that it's not the good old days anymore.  I have many friends from my DDR past who I still keep in contact with and they are awesome.  I was hoping to help breathe some life into the local community once I finished the rebuild of my machine.  But unfortunately the more and more I meet the players today, the less I feel inclined to associate with them and share what I've got.  Everyone seems so opinionated and judgmental.  At this point, I feel like just having my friends from the old days over to play and catch up rather than invite new contaminated blood into the group.

All that being said, I haven't run into anyone here who fits that new profile (other forums, yes).  I hope to meet all you awesome locals someday.  I'll post up when my machine is finished.  It just booted successfully for the first time yesterday.

Awesome!

We're a pretty great group that's left. This community has had some of those types of players in the past, but for the most part I think we've realized that in order to stick together and keep what we have going here, we can't afford to be jerks to each other anymore. And I've been pretty firm about not letting people be jerks on the forums.

I still feel it's the worst of the forums as far as hostility and attitudes go (rivaled or surpassed only by R21freak).

Others say I'm wrong about that, but they're not ones who speak against popular opinion. You're either "in" and a hardcore pro,  or you're stupid noob who's only purpose on the forums is to insult with one-liners and inside jokes.

Aaron himself is awesome. He's PM'd me a few times to say that he shares my feelings and hates how some of these people act, but as you said, he doesn't want to go nuts with the ban hammer or being oppressive. I can appreciate that, but good God AIJ can sometimes feel like I'm standing around a bunch of highschoolers at lunch who just make fun of everything/everyone and pretend not to take anything seriously but getting super worked up when someone questions them or their status-quo.

It really sucks... Where I'm from, we have ALOT of those... *cough* Chicago area *cough*.... I HOPE TO MEET ALL OF YOU GUYS STILL, by the way, at some point

Maybe we can do a meet and greet sometime soon.  I'm not sure how the scene is now, but I feel like it's pretty scattered.  I don't know where/who anyone is, does, has etc.  I don't mind hosting at my place, but my machine is currently still being rebuilt (finished assembling P1 side today).  Let me know if there is interest.  I'm in the Kirkland.

I know this website is supposed to be a "local" forum, but that's exactly how I feel when I've never been able to go to any PNW event or meet any other PNW member (except for Andy, but we only met once since we *sometimes* live in the same town). I feel like the two states, let alone one, are already too big to hold a dwindling community together across the major cities.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to meet everyone eventually, but the long distance (as well as lack of decent public transportation, arcades, music games, etc.) is the major obstacle for me (and for others, I'm sure).

Yeah.  Oregon is a little far for just local activities.  Of course you would be more than welcome to attend.  I do know that there are some people in the Seattle area who are active players.  Was hoping to get to know them.

In the past 3-4 years there have been quite a few tournaments were either WA folks went down to Oregon or the Oregon crew has driven up for WA tournaments. To be honest, our Oregon crew has been dwindling more than our WA crew has been, which doesn't help much.

Times like this are when the Oregon people need to meet and recruit and the WA people can meet-up so that when we do have an event people know people from their local region already. If anyone in either group wants to host a meet-up know you've always got free publicity here as much as possible.

I'm down to hosting it.  My machine won't be up and running for a little while.  But if everyone wants to just meet up for some food and hang out that would be cool.  On the other hand if people would rather wait until my machine is running 100% we can do it then as well.

Bemanistyle is still down. :\

How long does it take a site to be down before everyone has moved on to somewhere else and will never come back? I'd have to guess Bemanistyle has passed that point of no return...

Oh yeah, it's way past that point.

It's funny you mention it though, because I was thinking almost the exact same thing a few weeks back. One by one the forums are going dark.

LOL.  Bemanistyle is back, and relaunched today.

If this forum had a :eating popcorn: emoticon, now would be the time to use it.

I feel like 90% of the value of the site is gone without having the old forum posts restored.

This should be interesting.