KaW Memories (Part 1?)

Hey there KaWers, long time no see.
For those of you who don't know my name, I'm Toast/Outdoortoast/iamtoast/etc, I'm six and a half years old and I want a PONY for Christmas, Santa! Okay, but seriously. This isn't the KaW History According to Toast thread I've talked about doing for several years, this is just a very brief collection of a few memories with accompanying screenshots from my first four months or so. It's getting late, and I was going through photo albums and getting nostalgic, so enjoy a couple of things that I thought were worth saving for so many years.

First up: the original, quintessential guide to KaW:

Believe it or not, this used to be the entirety of build information. The only thing missing was relative plunder amounts, but everyone knew how those went. This little pixelated screenshot has everything you need to plan your 25 land build. I referred to this so much for my first many months to compute prices, stats, and whatnot, and it was a staple of the new KaWer experience, back before we even used terms like "KaWer." At the bottom were land prices, because we paid for all of our 24 unlockable lowlands.

Enter the great player and mod dillybar!

Back in the days before you could upgrade your castle (yep, they existed, and for quite a while), the question was always "why do we have a castle if it doesn't do anything?" and "can we please sell the castle to have an additional land plot?" (because again, only 25 lands). Enter the Castle Code Joke. Rumor had it that you could upgrade your castle, but only by entering a special code in a certain location. This rumor persisted to the point where eventually it was a silenceable offense for "spreading false information." Around the time it was transitioning into just an old snarky joke, our beloved Dillybar was a mod. Kaw was in wc, banter was going strong, and kaw was yet again informing a few players that the castle code, sadly, does not exist.
Also seen here is Mr LOL complaining about hire me spam. See, clan ad spam wasn't too bad then. WC was majorly populated by players of all size begging to be hired, because a few inputs of 1m might actually help them (as seen by prices in #1). Not everyone understood the importance of allies, so their plunder was wacky low and their growth stagnated.


Ahh, TCK.
The background here is that this was long before you could click on names in wc to go to their profile. If you wanted to wall someone about wc, you had to remember their name while you typed it into search, and then pray they didn't have capital i's or lowercase l's. TCK was a chronic, mild prankster. Fairly large, established build in the day. He tried to make a little joke and failed miserably as the player is literally impossible to find except on pc.
iJay was a prominent community member and fan fiction writer, if I remember correctly.

Two screenies here, bear with me.


These here were proposed as a form of qualification questions for upstarts claiming they knew their deal. I'll run through the ones that haven't been relevant in a long time.
1. Even with only ll buildings through tier 3 (as seen in #1), this question was harder than it looks. Taking into account each of the buildings and each of their levels, this one gets long fast. I used to be able to do it almost perfectly, but that was six years ago.
2. This is before ATA accounts, facebook linking, or any other kind of automatic linking/transferring was added. The answer was to send both iDevices UDIDs (no other identifying info would work) to support, and clarify which account you wanted to keep of the two. Not exactly the most intuitive solution.
4. It used to be a fixed percentage, always.
6. You may be surprised at how many people didn't max out ally plunder, to the point where this was genuinely useful info.
7. Resetting: you used to be able to reset your account to the tutorial at will. There was (is?) a button on the bottom of your profile. If you reset after buying the 25th land, up to four times, you'd get a permanent item that boosted your atk/def or spy atk/def by 3% or 5%, to make a sort of endgame (plus 8% to all stats). Also, pure spy sucks pretty bad. The answer was "don't."
8. Allies, duh. Upgrades are worthless without the ally plunder boost. We all have plenty of allies now, so it's not really an issue.

The dawn of wallart: it wasn't always as popular as it is now
Really I just wanted to show off majesty (dominated the LBs for years, very quiet and secretive player that hardly anybody saw) complimenting my beginner's wallart. On forums. In public.
Also, me noobing it up. Give me a break, I was 14 and had only had internet access >1h/day for 8mo.
Wallart exploded in popularity just before the date in the ss here, and hasn't declined much since. It's collectively gotten a lot better though.

Thinking back to the castle code...

This isn't actually my photo. I 'borrowed' it from pal. This shows a player with a level 3 castle, years before castle upgrades were released. This picture fairly freaked the forums out. It isn't even photoshopped is what threw a lot of people off.
Image background: jailbroken devices had access to all image files available within the app. There have always been l2/l3 castle images, and the player simply manipulated files to display the l3 image for his l1 castle. I was to say it was J3lackJ3ird who did this, but I can't remember properly.

Following are 4 ss of kaw in wc. Prior to these ss, he had just informed us that new buildings (T4) were soon to be released, and was dropping unit names as a hype-up.




Hooooooooooo boy. Pink dolphins as literally any part of KaW had been a running joke for a while. Rumors of the devs being pink dolphins, pink dolphins living in the castle/being unlocked by upgrading the castle, punchlines on the forums, any possible application of them. We all had quite a giggle at kaw joining in.
Background: tmh is one of the oldest players, and was a mod at the time. Rajang was a significant community member. HeRLiLdeViL is wrong, stables are best. Delphin is still Delphin, was also a major community member. joe_ was a regular forumer and showed his face most often in wc.

I'm ending with the image that made me start this thread in the first place (and these have all been chronological). I wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite posts, but couldn't find a thread that it would be non-derailing on.

EasyCheese contributed to fan fiction and spent a noticeable amount of time on the rest of the forums. Good guy, fun to have in forums.

These represent a very, very minute fraction of all of my KaW screenshots and stories. They're all from my first several months, and aren't nearly complete from that era either. Just a few snapshots that I thought forums might like to relive, or live for the first time. I have no agenda except for a bit of discussion, and perhaps encouraging others to post some of their memories down below.

Love, from Toasty.

 

I'm on my way to bed soon, but I promise to reply to every relevant comment when I wake up, because that's how I roll.

 

Remember when KaW didn't have minor conveniences like being able to click on names in wc, or the ability to designate clan roles beyond admin, and you couldn't post on threads in certain forums from AT?

 

Pinky:
Even just the UI. It's so different it, and every change was hell to adjust to.

Ashes:
Yes, but it'll take a while to look. Partially because it's late and I'm tired, but mostly because I have roughly 10k KaW-related images on that device alone. I'll try, at some point in the future.

Boba:
Spoiler alert: it's just his irl initials. I asked once, hoping it'd be cool. But no. Just tmh levels of brute practicality shrouded in mysteriousness.

 

KA, you were my first silence  I have several screenshots of the process, I considered adding them but didn't want to brag.

 

I've been silenced I think 5 times? Maybe 6? I also convinced the devs to ban me once. And you silenced me, as the resident former mod

Snoopy, those were good times. That's a whole giant set of screenies for me too :lol: third/fourth gen foruming was interesting, there was such a large playerbase to draw from and use by then.

 

Kasama: Oh man, just wait until (or if, really) I get to that era in my screenshots. I have a fair amount of early eb time stuff, TOS had some fun with it all.

But noodle, these are lifesize! Straight from a 3rd gen itouch, before they even added a camera!
Really though, I thought about it. But most of these are grainy and hard to see already.

 

I was an expert wall stalker. I have soooo many shots of random people's walls. Very few of my own however.

There's still a chance for pink dolphins. What if underwater lands are next? Anything is possible.