Ngamer's Top 15 Users (2008)

Ngamer's Top 15 Users, as ranked in March of 2008 when casting his vote for Board 8's Top 100 Users of 2008.

Board 8's Top 15 Users
Off we go!

#1. - creativename creative is my longtime partner in crime (if you consider winning Oracle Team Challenges so easily you might as well call it "stealing" a crime- and I do!), but more importantly he's the person who has done more than anyone to make GameFAQs Contests a delight for anyone who cares enough to look deeper into the results. Popularizing x-stats was one thing, and his great website with all the match pics and match stats and x-stats calcing is another, but what I most appreciate is the automatic updater he constructed years back and which has tracked every 5 minutes of every Contest matchup ever since 2004. PLUS, last year he added graphs to every single match result- heck, that alone might have placed him as my number one!

#2. - Carvey Carvey came onto the B8 scene as a mysterious but helpful user a little while back, but boy has he made an impact since then, as this #2 position can attest! Saving topics from the purge is well and good, but Carvey's that rare user that goes the extra mile by archiving good B8 topics and events himself, and later adding the info to the wiki where we'll always be able to look back on it. You could even say that Carvey is to the B8 social scene what creative has been on the Contest side of things over the years, and that's saying alot! I couldn't ask for a better right hand man when it comes to our B8 Wiki work.

#3. - TRE Speaking of archiving, here's the King! TRE's always been the most likeable and helpful user on the board, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but what puts him over the top for me is the great work he's done with not only keeping the Stats Topic archives current (and also tracking other big B8 events), but also running the First Vote contest for many years now. Unfortunately my job schedule combined with the early start time these days has kept me from being as active with helping out there as I've been in the past, but maybe I'll be able to FV it up some more in this coming Game Contest.

#4. - King Morgoth KM's another real class act, as all the guys near the top of my rankings are. You simply can't overstate the impact he's had on this board in terms of Contest season- with the Oracle userbase having exploded in recent times and only getting more and more popular every Contest, it wouldn't be possible to have continued running the competition by hand like solar did back in the day. Well, not without putting a huge amount of time in every day, at least. KM and his partner Kax have done a fantastic job of bringing the Oracle into the modern age with a scripting program, database, and website that run so effectively that results are updated only minutes after a match goes final every night. Talk about sweet! The only thing that could move KM up even higher would be if he'd ever get to those website updates he's been dragging his feet on for two years!

#5. - Kaxon Let me tell you a true story about Kax. A few months back I needed stats from past Oracle Results in order to update all the Wiki match pages, make some cool Top Tens, and stuff. So I sent out a mail to Kax and KM asking them to get back to me when they get a chance, because I'm really excited about moving ahead with this project. Kax mails me back to say, "Sorry Ngamer, I just had a major operation and am laying in a hospital bed right now, typing this message out on my phone. But don't worry, I'll send you an Excel file with all that info as soon as I can get back on a computer." And a couple days later he delivered. That's the kind of dedication it takes to make an Ngamer Top 15!

#6. - yoblazer yo's been a pretty awesome guy for a long while now. The fellow obviously knows his GameFAQs Contests, as his bracket history makes very clear, and he's always been one of my favorites when it comes to Stat Topic discussions. Apparently he's also been making some pretty serious waves on the B8 social sea as well, because I was both surprised and delighted to see him emerge as a legitimate User of the Year contender this past season. He was active in the past couple UotYs as well, so after taking over the reigns from Smurf I'd often consult with yo to see how things had been done in the past, and he was always quite helpful. Truly one of B8's finest!

#7. - tranny Even though the tran man never ranks me in his own favorite user rankings, he's been near the top of my own for a good long while now. tranny is, bar none, the name I most enjoy popping up when I scroll through the latest Stats Topic postings. He knows his stuff and can back up his picks, but he manages to do so without the immense arrogance and overconfidence that you'd see from nearly any other Stats poster. During matches, he's always our calm center, the eye in a hurricane of "OMG Vincent lost 5 votes that update- this match is over!" who has an excellent understanding of match trends and makes good use of it, allowing him to not call close matches in the opening minutes or when one character makes a short run, as so many others embarrass themselves by doing. Also, when tranny sets out on a project, like his 2007 PCAs, the result is always fantastic. In summary, if tranny was the poster that the rest of the board strived to be like, I'd find B8 something like 5x more enjoyable to browse.

#8. - HaR Well, I may not be as excited when I see that HaR has made a new Stats post as I am when it's yo or tranny, but that's probably only because those two post less frequently. I consider HaR (along with one other user I'm coming up on) to be the backbone of Stats, the one you can always rely on to give an opinion on what you just asked, and to come up with a discussion point of his own afterwards to keep the debate lively. Plus he's doing the board a major service at this very moment by running this Game Contest Nomination Rally. True, a rally for games isn't really NEEDED, but I still wish the topics were getting more attention than they are right now, because really the point of the NRT is just to get everyone hyped up for the real Game Contest that SB's going to be announcing shortly.

#9. - Ed Bellis From my own observations over the past couple years, Ed Bellis is the heart of the B8 social scene. And they couldn't ask for a better ringleader, either- Ed's as nice as they come, always positive and upbeat, and a great contributer in his own way, whether with this WWYD that's been such a huge success or that ask the user series he tried, which was a very good idea despite not gaining as much interest. It's difficult for a non-Stats user to crack the Ng 15, but Bellis does so with flying colors!

#10. - Haste Haste is the other poster I was referring to in HaR's writeup- these two are the ones I see as the backbone of Stats and Discussion. Both keep the discussion lively even during the off-season, and are two of the more level-headed Gurus when excitement is happening come Contest time, which is certainly appreciated. Although Haste hasn't gotten as involved in outside projects like the one HaR's running so well right now, he has the advantage in that he's been a fierce Oracle competitor ever since Day One. yo's ability to craft excellent brackets year in and year out is one thing, but I think I value the kind of knowledge it takes to finish Top Ten in the Oracle four times even more highly.

#11. - AKJ I said that the day Josh would realize he's always going to be a B8er and not a LLer would be a cause for celebration. Well, the day came and went... and I was correct! Like Ed, AKJ's one of my very favorite posters who falls more to the social spectrum than stats, but what really puts him over the top are his recent B8wiki contributions. Hopefully we'll be seeing more in the future, especially as it relates to user pages, because Josh has a level of expertise in that field that I could never hope to match.

#12. - ESY Easy E's a cool fellow. We've been working together on the Hit It project for quite some time now, which is always a good time, and I appreciate that he's kept the series running despite some rough patches he's hit in his life over the past year. He was also one of the first B8ers to add me as a Brawl friend; unfortunately we haven't been able to go head to head yet, but hopefully that steak will be put to bed soon!

#13. - lefty Prior to three months ago, I hadn't heard much about lefty aside from constantly seeing his name list atop the rankings of various users contests that have been run in the past couple years. But I got to know him a little after I became more involved in this past season of UotY, and boy, talk about a good first impression! The guy's a real class act, and on top of that he's been coming on like a house on fire over on the Wiki, throwing up a ton of excellent new content and always looking for ways we could improve the site. Within the next 31 hours I'm going to get back to him on a couple wiki questions he has, and that will surely take our relationship to a whole new level.

#14. - HM From 2003 to 2006 or so, HM was legitimately the face of Board 8, as far as I was concerned. For periods in the stretch you could have made a good case for Ulti, or maybe someone like Icon, but no one captured the minds and hearts of posters everywhere quite as consistently as HM. So he gets plenty of credit there, but I have to be honest in admitting that the current incarnation of HM is far from my favorite. I'm fine with the transition from ultimate FF7 fan to rabid Halo 3 fan over to the #1 backer of all things Snake/MGS4, but it's no fun when he's not passionate about it. HM at the top of his game could spin an argument with so much passion and conviction that even a user well-versed in GameFAQs Contests would have to step back and think, "whoa, this guy makes some good points... maybe Mega Man really can take down Link this year!" Of course after taking a minute to close the topic and clear their head they'd realize, wait a minute, that's ridiculous. But that split-second lapse of judgment was pure HM magic. Here's hoping that passion will flare up once again when he sees the MGS series represented three times in the upcoming Games bracket!

#15. - Ulti Despite taking a step down in activity over the past five months, Ulti remains the most important user in Board 8's history since early 2004. Even if you don't like his attitude, you have to appreciate all he's contributed to the board in that time; his PCAs were hugely entertaining, his Battle of the Bands and Video Game Battles were all kinds of fun on top of being the most successful Contests in GameFAQs social board history, and his work in promoting the Stats topics and Guru Contests can't be overstated. So even though he still falls back on his old "this place is so boring right now; better troll a little to create some entertainment!" routine from time to time, that silliness is vastly overshadowed by all the good he's done over the years.

Honorable Mentions to ExTha, a fun guy who I enjoyed talking with this UotY season and hope to get in some quality Brawling time with soon, and also, *sigh*... swirldude. But only because he'd cry himself to sleep tonight if he didn't earn a mention!