History of the LEGO Message Boards

Here is the history of the LMBs that is always growing! ''This article is different from the Timeline article. This is the overall history of the MBs, whereas Timeline records all the more specific events, such as new forums being created.''

1999 - 2006:
The MBs went through a Beta Test from 1999 to 2001. At that time, vast amounts of the LMBs were still unexplored. At first, there were not as many topics to post in; so many users had a relatively low post count. In fact, JuniorBuilders in this period could have a stud. New ranks were slowly reached, such as Artisan, Inventor, Old Timer, and even Maniac. In 2005, an adventurous user named KRRouse became the first Maniac. Everyone was making progress, until the 19th of May 2005 changed it all. This major event was called The Great Migration.

LEGO was updating the account system for security purposes, so users received emails to update their older LEGO accounts to a newer version. If the user didn't respond within a month, their account was deleted. Unfortunately, the people who were inactive at the time, or didn't get the email, got their accounts deleted. One of these users is believed to be KRRouse, because he stopped posting around that date. KRRouse retired from the LMBs with 15,500 posts, and was soon forgotten.

2006-2008
In 2006, the Roleplays were started, when a user named Kit-Fisto7 created the first HQ topic. They became pretty popular, with the first Roleplay Subforum added in the Star Wars Forum. The first HQs were full of spam, and users began to play unfairly, so a user named Treecleaver talked to the moderators about rules for roleplays, then Treecleaver wrote the rules. After that, the mods started making new roleplay subforums because of their popularity. Now, roleplay exists in almost every single forum, with the exception of the Parents Forums, the LEGO.com Forum and a couple of others. In 2008, another version of the Great Migration occurred, where users had to upgrade their accounts to a LEGO ID, and more users lost their accounts. Two victims of this event were Eagleeyedan2 and BusyCityGuy02, who originally had the accounts Eagleeyedan and BusyCityGuy (without the numbers), then lost their accounts in the switchover and had to make new accounts with "2" and "02" at the end.

2008-present
In 2009, 4 years after KRRouse retired, another user reached Maniac. His name was Empire981, a user who was relatively spammy, and famous in the MLN Forum for his huge collection of Thornax and his willingness to trade any other item for them. Empire retired in October 2010, with 13,802 posts. After Empire became Maniac, other users soon followed his footsteps. Rock-o-Ages became the next Maniac in December.

Also, in 2010, rumors about a New MBs in development sent users into a frenzy. One of MKM's posts sparked fear that another Great Migration was going to take place. Many users feared that they could lose their posts, ranks, studs, and possibly their accounts. For the next few days, a large amount of users began asking the mods if they would really lose their posts, and complaining angrily that they did not want to lose their posts. Some users became furious, such as Dude777477, who threatened to leave immediately if he would lose his account. Fortunately, MKM managed to calm the users down, and the MBs were back to normal. However, many users are still skeptical about this issue.

Meanwhile Rock-o-Ages had begun to work his way up at an enormous speed. He quickly gained posts until he passed 15,500 posts, becoming the first user to topple KRRouse in 5 years. As Rock-o-Ages gained more posts, users began to predict that he would reach a new rank at 24,064 posts. This mysterious, undiscovered rank was called "Rank X". Near the end of 2010, Rock-o-Ages drew closer and closer to this rank. He finally became the first user to reach Rank X, after a Mod Party. However, when he became Rank X, he had no picture for his rank. On some browsers, it showed a "Picture Not Found" picture, and on others, it showed none. But on Internet Explorer, it showed a red X, and Rank X became true to its name. Back in 2001, when the MBs were still in development, no one had ever imagined that a user would ever reach 24,000 posts, so the picture was not made. However, two more users began to get Rank X, Dude777477 and Genralaustin. Users began to request a real image for the new rank, but for several months, nothing happened. Finally, on August 3rd, 2011, Rank X was given a name, "Legend".

Now, 11 users have become Legends. The list contains:


 * Rock-o-Ages
 * Dude777477
 * Generalaustin
 * Alemas
 * Marcel77799
 * Michealyoda
 * Eragon3443
 * Guacamole1998
 * Cr9
 * Lego.minifig
 * 8ObiWan88

In this time period, many users have also achieved the rank Maniac.

In February 2012, a new moderation squad was formed from the previous moderator teams from both the LMBs and LU.



On July 13, 2012, the MBs vanished for a short time, instead showing the default "Page Not Found" message. After the MBs reappeared, the search bar worked for users who were not logged-in.