Wow, 10 yrs already? I've been around here for almost 9 of them. I remember playing TDU for the first time on a friend's house. Since that first drive on an orange Corvette C6, I was hooked to the game. I remember not having a powerful enough PC to play it, and my first purpose built PC was mainly because of TDU. When I installed the game, it was like nothing I've ever seen before (But we can leave that for another post), and not too long after it, I found this site. I shared my first ever pictures of a racing game here, a 288GTO. It was always so good to visit the picture thread for updates and encounter so many works of art (This still happens today, though).
Sadly, I've always been outside the TDU meet ups, because I had a pirated copy of it. Getting PC games down here, in Argentina, was difficult and too expensive in those times. Also I've always been outside FM races, because I've never had a xbox, actually, that console officially "arrived" here no too long ago. But, despite of it, I always came back here again again, to check pics, and then mods... Oohh I remember the hype around tool831's Audi R8, the level of detail in it was awesome. But Forza models arrived shortly after, expanding the variety of high quality cars exponentially. And after that TDU slightly faded away, but many other games appeared, keeping this site alive.
Somehow, with mine and the site's ups and downs, I always end up here. Seeing photos, reading about some user's problems, arranging to play any other game... It's always a pleasure to be here, and we all enjoy being a part of it. The site grew up, their users grew up and of course I'm no exception. During my almost 9 year-stay here (With no check out date) I have: Finished High school, obtained a driver's license, obtained a boat driver's license, obtained a pilot's license, got a girlfriend, split up with her and met my current girlfriend, traveled through 4 continents (Haven't met any of you guys so far, I hope to revert that in July) and clear half way of my engineer's degree. During that time, I have always checked this site, and saw how it morphed from a dedicated TDU site to a racing gaming site, with new functionalities, new contests, new users and so much more things, I can't recall.
Wow, what a ride! Let's hope it just keeps going!
Cheers!