I found Eric's original site a good while before the release of 3e. I'd been a lapsed gamer for years, but in the late '90s I was new to the internet and would search for AD&D sites just to see what was out there. Dragon had started running the "countdown to 3e" articles, and my interest was piqued. I started looking for any other news or rumors that might be floating around.
When I ran across Eric's "3rd Edition News" site, I began to check it almost everyday. It took me a good while before I even realized it had message boards! I lurked them for a while before signing up.
It's amazing what this site, in either incarnation, has witnessed. For a while, when WotC's forums were down, Eric's boards (or had it become EN World by then?) were the de facto message boards for WotC. 3e designers were posting all the time. Gary Gygax eventually showed up, and I promptly started a flame war with him (I didn't know it was him, I swear! Plus, I was stupid).
If there is anything that fully demonstrated to me how wondrous the internet could be, and how cool this community was, and is, it's the presence of Gary Gygax. You can't beat that - the most recognizable name in RPGs, the guy who was D&D as far as I was concerned, was here and fielding questions and shooting the breeze on a regular basis.
Plus, we have been treated to all manner of RPG luminaries posting here throughout the years. I'm still disappointed that Merle Rasmussen began (trying) to post right before a particularly nasty board crash, and I haven't seen him since (but maybe he eventually came back and I just didn't know it).
I lurk more than I post now, but I was pretty active in the early years. I'm pretty amazed at how this community has evolved, and how it continues to thrive. Oddly, it seems like it's been here for much longer than 10 years, or even longer than it's been around since it was Eric's site. It's been an internet constant for me, which is extremely rare on the internet.
