A 27-year-old tech forum with over 100,000 Warcraft 3 modding threads is closing its doors

“Anyone want help on anything.” That’s the title of the oldest post I could dig up on The Helper’s Warcraft 3 world editor help forum, posted by Neo_HoJo all the way back in July 2002. It’s one of over 100,000 similar threads, collectively containing approximately 859,700 comments. It seems to be the biggest forum on the site by far. But just as Warcraft 3 grapples once again for a new lease on life, The Helper is turning in.

The announcement came in the form of a post from an admin also called The Helper. “Wow, it’s been a ride,” the post reads. “Over 27 years of this site from a personal homepage, to a Blizzard [games] tech support site, a world editor help site, and then a community of helpers from then until now.

“[For many years] I was a lost soul floating around the dark side of the Internet, skimming the edges and really just not having any kind of focus. That has changed. I am no longer a lost soul. I am now on Team Jesus and unfortunately my path moving forward does not include having this site competing for my time … The site will be archived. The content will be available for people if they want it. It just will not be advertised or out there in any forum that bots or search engines will get it.”

The site is a listed affiliate of Hive Workshop, a popular Warcraft 3 modding community prominent members of which recently collaborated with Blizzard directly on the new official Forsaken Kingdom campaign. It has other forums for Atari, world news, AI, and even Nuon.

“Some might say this is the end of an era,” The Helper’s closure announcement post reads. “I like to think of it as more of a beginning. At least for me.”