First year of college. Finally having internet 24/7 was a godsend.

I found art of a user's deer on Deviantart, and they had a link to the game (At least I think they did? That, or I went and looked it up myself.). Decided to install it and give it a run. Was immediately hooked. Myu was my very first creation, but she was a character of her nearly immediately. I should pop her back in sometime...

Even if the place has lost its magic and wonder of the old days, I still love it.

I found it in '08 looking for games similar to Wolfquest, rofl. I played as a nameless for a few times before finally deciding to sign up because originally i was freaked out at the human-faced design. I was hooked after I signed up, however, and Kaoori eventually became her own character. I signed up around Halloween; and even though Kaoori was too young her first Halloween to get any of the sets, it was so much fun and i met a lot of great people on here. Many aren't around anymore, and I still think of them from time to time.

Draak: I think I actually kinda remember Halogen... At least I remember seeing the username XP

Mjrn: I kinda feel the same way. I'm not sure how much of the loss of magic is due to the fact I got less and less time as days went by. Probably the same for a lot of us.

snow: I remember being really fascinated with the human faces, so it was funny being one of the few people who wasn't creeped out |D

Kimi: WOLFQUEST OHMYGOD I remember trying out that game like in 2011 and hating the ever loving crap out of it omg it's soooo bbaadddd lmfao. And I didn't even go near the community. Speaking of Halloween, I remember that when I joined in late March the creepy dance music would still play instead of the regular dance music, so when it finally changed back in like April or May, I was devastated. I love the Halloween dance music :C

din: Yeah, took me a while to remember! Freakin' wolfquest omg.

I enjoyed reading these |B

Same with the WolfQuest thing. I played it for maybe a year before getting all eh about it. Looked up on yahoo answers "multiplayer animal games like wolf quest" or something like that. The Endless Forest was mentioned a couple of times, so I checked it out. Would be about a year until I found the community out.

Where did my life go

I was told about TEF in late 2009 - 2010 when my friend found it. We were desperately searching for animal MMORPGs that weren't Feral Heart and stuff, namely stuff about horses and dragons because that's the kind of kids we were, haha. She told me about TEF as a weird game about deer with human faces, and I thought that was the coolest thing. She showed me the game itself when we went on vacation together, and I was sold.

The first account I made was Ara, though I quickly forgot the password. I never got to get in-game because mom said I couldn't download the game on her computer. However, after the summer passed I remembered the game and made a new account in October 2010. I'd already had experience with roleplaying and I saw on the community on my first account that most people had characters, and so Ryff was born!

Well, I joined TEF not long ago. 2011 I believe, since that was when I first posted art of one of my characters on dA.

As for how I found out about it?
Hmm... I'm not entirely sure. I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of art I came across while browsing deviantart, maybe saw it mentioned in a journal of a person/group I watched.

I dunno.

Back in '07 someone I watched on DA posted a journal about the game and even some art. I got intrigued and checked it out.
I think I was hooked since the first time playing, it was still phase 2 going on with the game so there weren't any fawns around yet. So when I got some pretty pelts on myself (beluga and fan pelts were my favorite) I was sold for this game. :'D

I'm not sure if everyone turned into fawns at first or did I still have some fawn-time left when the Phase 3 came out... POOF, my mind was blown when my deer woke up as one. I was so excited, I remember momentarily getting some other fawn friend (at the time I didn't pay much attention to others, I was more interested in exploring fff) and mindlessly running around in the new Birch Forest.
Not long before we got the Halloween stuff and I think I lost my soul for this game.
For a while I played just as 'myself' in the forest but my first character Quamar slowly began to evolve.

I happened to find screenshots of the game floating by on my Tumblr two weeks ago. Went to search for the tag and here I am!

4 years ago little 11 year old me searched for games like Feral Heart and found this, along with the community. In the beginning I disliked the faces and wanted a chatbox but then it became more normal, and I often had addiction phases to it. I remember crying because I missed my first Halloween abio. Alice was OOC at first, like Tuhka I played 'myself', but then she became her own character. She's what keeps me here, and is one of the most important things in my life. %) I miss a lot of people I used to know back then, but I've made more awesome friends this year so it's all hunky dory.

Ohmygooodness so many comments! I don't think I can reply to all these :'D I really love reading these, so thank you all!

Thinking back on it, I remember just falling in love with not having a chat box. There's just something about (relatively) anonymous online play that just speaks to me. Nothing available to judge the other person on, and we're all on the same level because we all have access to the same emotes. It's why I love Journey so much. You can run around and make noises and emotes and, for some reason, form such a strong emotional attachment to whoever is on the other side. In traditional RPG MMOs I hardly ever use the chat box because my social anxiety is pretty bad, on top of my being an introvert and a bit of a curmudgeon *smacked*, so the getting comfortable with the other person without speech first helps me a lot.

Found it through a drawing on DA. No clue which one anymore.. But I went and googled it, registered before even checking it out. It looked great to me! I never got into any other online games really, but I think I played a lot of Gaiaonline back then? Pf ages ago.

Sort of skipped fawn phase actually, got a set from an old member and just stuck to it. Very OOC, hahah. Didn't really get into the whole character thing until I found this place, which was thus over a month or so after I found the game. It's really amazing to me that after all this many years, I still find inspiration here and get to do art stuff with other people! I'm really grateful for the people I've met on here, think that's the biggest reason I have never found myself thinking about leaving.

I was on a French forum, and the "purpose" of this forum was to do photomanipulations. There was a pub section, and someone talked about TEF and said how funny and amazing it was. I immediately was amazed by the concept, and so I created Solaya, who was my first character.

Five years later, I'm still here and happy to have found such a community. Moreover, it helped me to improve my English - even if it's still a pain for everybody to read what I'm writing. I think TEF is one of these games which are really missing now, so it's a very "rare" game. It's really warming to see how relationships between players are easily created here. Moreover everyone loves their characters, and I think it's very important. Finally, what interested me at first in this game was the fact that we don't need to speak in the game itself, and that we communicate with actions - or by the help of the community, which is again very interesting, and the name itself of "community" shows a lot about the goal of TEF. I never found a game in which the chats were absent before. This game is, according to me, a sort of "jewel".

[edit] sgsdfg I thought I was writing with my main account, "Laiia". Nevermind. c:

@Okami Well for me, it's more or less the thrill of playing it the first time, and getting to see the beauty of the Forest, and all the weird but intriguing designs of each individual deer. I actually recall either the first or second time I popped in (I registered as soon as I found the site.), I got to see both the gods dancing by the Pond. Of course, I also had no idea what the hell I was doing, and I was pretty much scared of everyone. Still am, sorta.

That, and there's certain songs that I used to listen to all the time when I played, and when I hear them again these days, it fills me with a lot of nostalgia from those times.

Plus, just the older players, some who aren't around as much, or as active as much anymore, and creating those first few key relationships. I've met a lot of awesome people through here, and if anything, I find them to be my friends moreso than any RL friends i may have left idk lmao

I didn't even play Wolfquest until after I started playing TEF. I always stick to single player, it's more relaxing that way. (':

Awhile ago, (maybe 2011) I was searching online for deer games (I've always been a sucker for animal simulation games). A bunch of deer hunting games came up, with the expectation of TEF. I was immediately fascinated by it, and attempted to download it, but to no success (I think I tried to download it off of a website which probably would have given me a virus D:).

I forget about it until about a year later, when I decided to look into it more thoroughly. I eventually found the actual site, signed up, and was hooked from there on in. c:

Stumbleupon took me to the game site and I gave it a try because it was an art game that felt silly, fun, light-hearted, and had strange looking characters (I actually strongly dislike deer as animals in the real world). Chugged on my then-computer and I was rarely able to connect to the server so La spent a lot of time alone, poor little doof. I stopped playing when I ended up living somewhere with no consistent internet.

Later the game showed up in one of my textbooks for a math/art/programming course when I was a freshman in college, and if I hadn't already known about the game I would have tried it then (but it wouldn't have worked because I was living somewhere with bad internet).

The exact date I made my account on TEF is murkey but it was some time before Christmas 2006, and the first TEF inspired art I made was from January 2007, SoftWing who was an owl deer before there where any other owl deer pretty sure. Got lots of weird, creeped out comments whenever I drew him, ha. But as far as what brought me to the game first, I can't quite remember, I think I saw people talking about it on livejournal, which at the time was a community I was very active on. It was purely an artistic interest, a living painting to explore and I and the other people who where interested in it viewed it that way. Usually whenever I did go in forest, it was rare to actually see any other players anyways. It was a pretty empty place most the time. So getting spells was rare. I don't recall that anybody at that time had any TEF "characters" in fact when I came back to the game some years later I was really confused what all the character stuff was about actually. Weirdos. Oh and the fawns running around confused me. And the addition of the birch forest. It had gotten suddenly so big! So it took me a while to adjust. But I embraced it. Glad to have returned.

I found The Endless Forest when I searched up 12 Games like "WolfQuest".

^_^