Josephine [1923258] —
Original article
We all hear stories of what Torn used to be like, but have you ever wanted to see for yourself? Let's take a visual journey down Torn's memory lane, narrated in a tone dangerously close to satire.
You wake up in a shack, head pounding as your heartbeat accelerates and adrenaline pumps through your veins. Where are you? Who put you here? As you look in every direction searching for an answer, you find yourself staring at a sepia skyline full of ambiguously shaped buildings. Buildings you will never enter and streets you will never walk through, regardless of how many beat-up people you leave on them. Eight red letters hover in the sky, and all your questions are answered.
Welcome to Torn City, circa 2004.
"In the very early days, I wasn't really going anywhere [with the original look]. For me, the gameplay was the only priority. It all started with a three-celled table."
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"Mobile phone browsing certainly wasn't a thing back then, and pretty much everyone had the same screen resolution. Those were the good old days!" - Chedburn
The first hit for Torn City was registered on August 11th 2004, but its official anniversary is November 15th. Anyone who logged in before November would have found what Chedburn described as "a basic shell of a game", consisting of the gym, a few crimes, Big Al's store and a simple attacking system. There were only a few players back then, many of whom were Chedburn's friends. And in its early days, Torn's simplicity was a blessing.
"Without having to worry about looks, design, coding standards, optimisation or balancing, I could smash out brand new features almost daily - obviously without being able to ever build upon them or fix their bugs because internally it was all trash."
But as more and more features were added, Torn began to grow, and Chedburn started to tinker with the aesthetics of our city too. Thankfully, the internet has preserved many of these old versions of Torn for posterity. As you'll soon see through the sheer number of old screenshots we've acquired, if someone tells you that things online are easy to forget, they’re lying. Some shady guy in a basement is probably keeping a stash of your AOL Mail s**tposts on their Windows Vista right now. The internet never forgets, even if sometimes it might be hard to find old things.
The same applies to Torn. Asking “what was old Torn like?” in the forums often leads to nothing more than a bunch of angry old players complaining about how good mugging and stocks were in the olden days, and longing for the return of Dogs (excuse me, Dongs*). They'll moan how Torn used to be great, and no longer is. But if you truly believe that, if the past is always so glorious, then feel free to tell me how the attacking system of 2004 is so much better than the one we have today.
Pictured: This fight with Jeffie may take some time.
Unlike the memory of players, the internet archives contain static snapshots. They won’t forget a name, they won’t forget an image. This makes them a perfect source for content in our quest to investigate what Torn looked like earlier in its life. I was a baby by the dates of some of these results, and most active players today weren’t playing back then, so most of this will be new to many of us.
Obviously, this trip down our context-less memory lane is more for novelty’s sake than anything else, so the tone of this piece will be half informational, half mildly traumatized by the results. Additional screenshots have been graciously provided by sugarvalves to aid us in this journey, but thankfully, they are also completely devoid of context, and therefore do not ruin the spirit of this walk down second-hand memory lane.
Torn as we know it didn’t exist back in 1998, but Torn.com did, and alongside two broken images, we were led to the shadiest email login page ever.
By October 1999, the page turns into what can only be assumed to be a freaking demon. It looks like something you could get tattooed on your forearm for $20 by a guy who works out of a bus shelter.
This reporter mustered the courage to click it, and thankfully nothing happened, so I proceeded to keep scrolling through the results. The demon dragon persists until late 2001, at which point the domain goes back to being a shady email. Funny as it might be to see those results, we do have to keep in mind that Torn was originally named Torn City. The first result for torncity.com as a domain is this...
When Torn's anniversary strikes on the 15th of November, 5,574 days will have passed from when this page was uploaded. That's 15 years, 3 months, 4 days since Torn went live. If you want to feel old, in that time you could've had a child who is now fifteen years old. And if you spent that whole time playing Torn instead of raising them properly, they could be having a child of their own right now too.
Of course, Torn's anniversary is celebrated on November 15th. Apparently, in 2004 the game was still running Final Earth mode since it was constantly resetting. As you know, Torn is a never-ending game, so I think we can all agree that it's for the best those days are behind us.
Before you say this looks like a bootleg version of Torn, keep in mind that pretty much every long-running website probably looked like a knockoff of its current version during their early years. Once you were signed up, you'd probably head straight to the city page. There's a low-res version of that here, but below is a much clearer image of the City as it stood in 2004.
There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, voting. Second off, point-earning? Then there’s the fact that you used to be able to see Federal Jail. Finally, 182 people in jail? No wonder busts and bails used to actually matter back in the day. Oh, and answer those mails, Anonymous; can’t believe you’re keeping those poor 2004 people waiting!
Moving on to 2005, we can see from the Crimes page that the highest criminal acts only required 12 nerve in the form of GTA crimes which still exist today, with Counterfeiting, Kidnapping, Arms Trafficking, Bombings and Hacking yet to come. Also, we can see that Anonymous STILL had unanswered mails, ffs.
The layout of the items page from back then is pretty similar to the current one, it is simply devoid of the graphics and general aesthetics the current page has. From what this reporter gathers, most of the old Torn pages are similar in structure to the current ones, it's just they were exclusively text-based back then, whereas now they've been tarted up. As we move on to 2005's items page, we can see that Anonymous STILL has two unanswered mails, but it has come to my attention that he carries an axe, so I’m going to stop poking fun.
But how can I afford more of these wonderful luxuries, your 2005 self might ask, as you consume your fourth and final pack of Bon Bons? Well, you'll need employment of course, and here's what the Army job page looked like back then.
Most of these shots were taken from the Wayback Machine, which involved roughly one trillion clicks of the "next" button. Thankfully, those kind souls in the forums have helped us out with a few snapshots of their own, including this image of the 2005 forums when the servers went down. Thanks to Titan for this shot.
As you can see, Titan is giving us the full retro experience on the taskbar there, with IRC, MSN and Yahoo Messenger all fired up. I often wonder why our generation is too afraid to take phone calls these days, and now I know why - three chat portals open at once? We were deluged, deluged I tell you. And that's before you've even logged into Torn, where the chat with Peachy continues via her profile.
Titan has also supplied us with an image of his own profile, a federal jail message and the events page as they looked in 2005, along with this snapshot of the Hospital from the same year. As you can see from Titan's profile and his hospital records below, he was hospitalised using the Banana Phone, which was an exclusive staff item given only to him.
Moving on to 2006, we can see that the job page has been improved immeasurably, and following that we have the faction page for Engineered Plague, led by Peachy, with both images once more provided by Titan.
Now before we move on, there are one or two screenshots in our possession which look super old but are currently undateable. We think these may come from Torn circa 2005 or 2006, but we cannot be sure. First up, we have the gym, which consists of nothing more than a value box and a drop-down list.
Pictured: Drop down and give me 20, literally.
Next up is the Casino, which looks slightly ritzier due to its use of the colour orange. Note how your victory in this simple slots game is signified by the use of the word "yay". Simpler times, eh?
2007 is the year after 2006, and this dictated the next year I should investigate. Boy was I not disappointed! This reporter has no idea what the context for this banner design, but it’s undeniably a hidden gem in Torn’s history books.
There's a lot going on here even after we've taken in the Grand Theft Auto vibe. The first thing I noticed is weird eye guy watching us on the right, and if you look just beneath the car on the left there's another random eye above Torn City. Then there's the guy in shades in the middle whose face is almost entirely obscured by angry smoking hat man and bizarre mouth lady, who seems to have had another man's head grafted onto the back of her own.
A close look behind the grey login panel also shows the arm of angry smoking hat man coming out from where bizarre mouth lady's leg should be, which is funny. And if you really zoom in, you can see the designer has decided to show just the tiniest hint of ass cleavage, with a snippet of buttcrack visible through the hole in her dress. Mr Chedburn, what say ye?
"No comment."
If you're interested in what the 2007 hunting page looked like then here's a shot courtesy of needajoint. But we're going to let Chupacabra give us the final taste of Torn '07 with this tragic day on the stock market, and this neatly categorised items page - note the inclusion of the dearly departed Dongs at the bottom.
Imagine if you could set your player status to Pregnant. Rainbowsaurus might be pleased, but it'd be quite macabre if you ended up beaten and left on the streets with that status hanging over you. Let's not think about that for too long eh? Moving on, towards the end of 2007 and early 2008 the revamped login page had been ditched, Torn had settled on its preferred font and the word "City" was dispensed with. Their logo isn't too different to the one we know and love (and click on for free stuff) today.
Chedburn told us he was experimenting a lot with the home page at the time. Given that it's the first part of Torn new players see, they were "split-testing like crazy trying to find the most optimal design & layout". And while they were working on that, Torn's loyal early followers were also treated to some brand new merchandise! If you’re wondering what that merchandise looked like, don’t fret, for someone called Olavi Saarelainen posted their collection online. I'm sure some of you have these lingering in your wardrobe somewhere!
In their defence, these shirts look relatively fine for that era. However, they certainly lack the satirical edge of the current Torn merchandise, and this reporter feels that a mug making fun of Harley is way more interesting. These items were supposed to be advertised on a merchandise page, but when we looked wayback, it instead contained Torn’s unofficial slogan.
In terms of in-game screenshots, 2008 has given us a massive trove of deliciousness to gaze upon. Pictured below is what the cars used to look like.
By 2008, the crimes had expanded all the way to 18 nerve!
Factions also gained text tags and image banners at this point, although we were still deep into the old systems here, so their respect was far below the millions we see nowadays. There are many things that are of interest here, but this reporter is currently more concerned as to that first column. Chedburn has confirmed it represented a faction's member count, but how and why did Torn City Shadows have 0?
You can see what the home page used to look like when you logged in with a bugged laptop, circa October 2008, courtesy of this screenshot supplied by Ticket. We also have several shots provided by Chit, including this one where he seemed particularly active on the messageboards. Our favorite is the one below, which shows the awards page on one of five tabs Chit has open - four Torn, and one Youtube page playing Lordi. Remember them? They won Eurovision in 2006. That was thirteen years ago. How. The. F**k?
Onwards to 2009, you can witness what the home page tutorial used to look like with this link here. But our next screenshot, originally taken by LouBaker, showcases parts of how Torn had evolved by this point. For example, property “tax” had become the upkeep we have today, and weapons were accompanied by graphics rather than being represented by a plain line of text. Oh, and congrats to Lou on the 666 busts. Ave Satanas.
Sifonjerce was apparently named Bd9912, and entitititiitititiit (or however that’s spelt) hadn’t been banned yet, being named BoxingGloves at the time. King_Ace's <800m stats were enough for the top 5, and a long-gone player wit the glorious name of “i_kill_u_4-free” was still active. RIP. Last action 2,500 days ago. Such a glorious name.
The blog section is also glorious. Many things were promised, including a rebuild of the crimes system (can't wait for Chillyspunc to have another tantrum at this) as well as some new companies and specials.
Pictured: It's 2019 and there are not Architects, you freaking lied to me.
Pictured: I guess that explains the joke…
After you log in you get through to the homepage, and everything feels awfully familiar once more. This shot is courtesy of TD_raidernation, and you'll notice it shows there's an update going on and the City Watch has just been introduced.
Cablebox and LordZezima1 gave us a whole heap of images from 2010 which we'll quickly run through now. Here's a picture of the crimes page which now comes with little tiny icons to show you what terrible deeds you're doing. You'll notice we also have fancy weapon images on both Big Al's page and the item page, and the newspaper has also undergone a bit of an update. If you click that last link you'll see the paper used to have horoscopes! #bringbackastrology
Oh, and it was around this time that our Education page got a snazzy refit by the looks of it. No, your eyes aren’t fooling you, those are indeed the same education images we get now. No point in updating a classic!
By 2010, the gym had evolved away from being a dropdown menu. I, for one, am glad Torn did away with those yellow tutorial messages too. So garish!
We've also got a screenshot of what successful crime results looked like back in 2010. Younger players might not be aware, but as the below screenshot implies, you once needed donator status to have a friendlist or blacklist. Good guy Ched eventually removed that requirement, because as they do with many things, people complained.
Finally, let's return to the front page blog once more, where we can see some old shots of Halloween Town. I never visited Halloween Town myself, but just from seeing these screenshots I find myself being incredibly curious as to what it was like. If anyone wants to send Sugarvalves some screenshots he'll post them here. For now, this is the only one we have.
Pictured: Who the heck is Sarah? And why has her mother gone missing?
We now find ourselves in 2011, and while this reporter might have said there would be no more making fun of Anonymous, it cannot be denied that the idea that he’s level holding at level 0 is adorable. He’s a sneakier level holder than Shoogs! Anyway, here's another picture of the newspaper someone is browsing while they wait to lose their money and walking abilities in Russian Roulette.
Pictured: No seriously, wtf was on the horoscopes page?
It appears that the casino had an update around this time, and below you can find an image of the slots machine. The animation back then was probably slower than 6 seconds, so be grateful you live in 2019. Also, this image was supplied by Carrot94, who was also looking for "Easy Torn City Money" according to that second tab. How about you don't waste it all in the casino, Carrot94!
You might notice the sidebar changed into something similar to its current version around this time. I did not give this much thought until fellow Reporter Bones pointed this out to me.
Of course people were mad. People are always mad. And if you wanted to complain to our lord and saviour Chedburn in 2011, you could do so by visiting his profile here, with this image supplied by Leafeh.
The home page on Wayback Machine remains almost the same throughout the year of 2011. But by 2012, we can see an older version of the “paths” promotion on the sign-up area. Roles not included on this graphic are "The Multi", "The Exploiter", "The Troll" and "The guy who joins the committee and uses insider info to benefit themselves in a super obvious way". R.I.P. MightyGoober.
It was around this time that Torn’s gym page morphed into something closer to what we have now, complete with the different gyms to be unlocked and so on. This page was almost identical to our current gym system until the recent update.
By the early days of 2013, we can see plenty of the homepage details that endure to this day. When looking at this, in comparison to the older snapshots we have seen here, we can appreciate how Torn evolved throughout the years on its way to becoming the Torn we know now.
Pictured: The most underwhelming review of all time.
As a further reminder of how much time has passed, there were once only four level-100's, while now there are well over 300. Many things have changed over the years that have made leveling easier, so it can be hard for younger players to understand the fact that wasn't always so easily done.
Panth has supplied our next set of screenshots, which begins with 2013's version of the City page. Check out the Divorce Agency on the South Side, and the Big Brother House on the West Side. Any images of these would be gratefully appreciated!
A quick trip to the City Center would take you to the Travel Agency, where all four tabs are displayed for your various flight options. And in the Red-Light District, Torn's Casino now looked like this.
One particularly eye-catching screenshot is this next one of the 2013 bank. Take a look at those rather disturbing interest rates! And beneath that, the item market in 2013 was a dropdown menu hell, but it was no doubt well-organized.
The forums had gotten just a little bit closer to looking as they do now because names now had their honor bars shown on the forums rather than just text. It’s worth noting that you can still make names text-only by turning honor bars off in your preferences if anyone wants to go old-school for the day! Fun fact: By this point, faction tags had become images, but you might notice that in the current forums main page, only the name of the poster shows up now.
By 2015, the snapshots of Torn look very similar to today's iteration; the Torn we’ve all grown to love and simultaneously complain about. Sugarvalves did suggest that we should change the login page to the GTA 2005 one for our 15th anniversary, but apparently this was more complicated than it seemed. Shame!
Check out that Users Online figure for an idea of where Torn has been and gone in recent years. Torn peaked at 48,131 users over a 24-hour period back in March 2009, and aside from a brief anomaly in January 2012, the lowest we could find on the graphs at City Hall was 14,641 in November 2015. But since then, Torn has bounced back in style, more than doubling its daily user base to around 32,000 at the time of writing.
Cosmetic changes are a huge part of that. As Torn continues to grow, you have to imagine that the changes to our city will come at an ever-faster rate. Today we have looked mostly at Torn's aesthetics, but there were also many alterations to gameplay over the years too - that’s a discussion for another day. What I would say is that Torn looks and feels far more easy to navigate thanks to the adjustments we've seen in this article.
Many people whine about cosmetic alterations because they want new game mechanics instead, but upon reading this article, you have to admit that these small changes have mounted up over the years, and given us a much more user-friendly experience as a result. This place has come a long way from where it once was, but despite all the differences we've seen, Chedburn feels there is one thing that has never changed in Torn's 15-year history:
"Very little has remained the same, we have however kept our trademark #CCCCCC background."
BONUS SHOTS
Finally, as a bonus, here are some of the screenshots that couldn’t be chronologically placed with accuracy due to their lack of a timestamp. We'll add any other interesting ones that we're sent to this bit if we can. First, here’s some individual losing to The_Legend for some reason.
Here’s the old stock portfolio, featuring a duck.
We can also provide an example of what the auction house used to look like.
Captcha back in those good old days was glorious, too.
Also, check out this screenshot provided by CloudJumper of what the old warbase used to look like.
And in case you’re curious how ye very olde profiles appeared, here’s possibly the most traumatizing example possible.
Please make Torn show times married on profile again.
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Welcome to Torn City, circa 2004.
"In the very early days, I wasn't really going anywhere [with the original look]. For me, the gameplay was the only priority. It all started with a three-celled table."
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"Mobile phone browsing certainly wasn't a thing back then, and pretty much everyone had the same screen resolution. Those were the good old days!" - Chedburn
The first hit for Torn City was registered on August 11th 2004, but its official anniversary is November 15th. Anyone who logged in before November would have found what Chedburn described as "a basic shell of a game", consisting of the gym, a few crimes, Big Al's store and a simple attacking system. There were only a few players back then, many of whom were Chedburn's friends. And in its early days, Torn's simplicity was a blessing.
"Without having to worry about looks, design, coding standards, optimisation or balancing, I could smash out brand new features almost daily - obviously without being able to ever build upon them or fix their bugs because internally it was all trash."
But as more and more features were added, Torn began to grow, and Chedburn started to tinker with the aesthetics of our city too. Thankfully, the internet has preserved many of these old versions of Torn for posterity. As you'll soon see through the sheer number of old screenshots we've acquired, if someone tells you that things online are easy to forget, they’re lying. Some shady guy in a basement is probably keeping a stash of your AOL Mail s**tposts on their Windows Vista right now. The internet never forgets, even if sometimes it might be hard to find old things.
The same applies to Torn. Asking “what was old Torn like?” in the forums often leads to nothing more than a bunch of angry old players complaining about how good mugging and stocks were in the olden days, and longing for the return of Dogs (excuse me, Dongs*). They'll moan how Torn used to be great, and no longer is. But if you truly believe that, if the past is always so glorious, then feel free to tell me how the attacking system of 2004 is so much better than the one we have today.
Pictured: This fight with Jeffie may take some time.
Unlike the memory of players, the internet archives contain static snapshots. They won’t forget a name, they won’t forget an image. This makes them a perfect source for content in our quest to investigate what Torn looked like earlier in its life. I was a baby by the dates of some of these results, and most active players today weren’t playing back then, so most of this will be new to many of us.
Obviously, this trip down our context-less memory lane is more for novelty’s sake than anything else, so the tone of this piece will be half informational, half mildly traumatized by the results. Additional screenshots have been graciously provided by sugarvalves to aid us in this journey, but thankfully, they are also completely devoid of context, and therefore do not ruin the spirit of this walk down second-hand memory lane.
Torn as we know it didn’t exist back in 1998, but Torn.com did, and alongside two broken images, we were led to the shadiest email login page ever.
By October 1999, the page turns into what can only be assumed to be a freaking demon. It looks like something you could get tattooed on your forearm for $20 by a guy who works out of a bus shelter.
This reporter mustered the courage to click it, and thankfully nothing happened, so I proceeded to keep scrolling through the results. The demon dragon persists until late 2001, at which point the domain goes back to being a shady email. Funny as it might be to see those results, we do have to keep in mind that Torn was originally named Torn City. The first result for torncity.com as a domain is this...
When Torn's anniversary strikes on the 15th of November, 5,574 days will have passed from when this page was uploaded. That's 15 years, 3 months, 4 days since Torn went live. If you want to feel old, in that time you could've had a child who is now fifteen years old. And if you spent that whole time playing Torn instead of raising them properly, they could be having a child of their own right now too.
Of course, Torn's anniversary is celebrated on November 15th. Apparently, in 2004 the game was still running Final Earth mode since it was constantly resetting. As you know, Torn is a never-ending game, so I think we can all agree that it's for the best those days are behind us.
Before you say this looks like a bootleg version of Torn, keep in mind that pretty much every long-running website probably looked like a knockoff of its current version during their early years. Once you were signed up, you'd probably head straight to the city page. There's a low-res version of that here, but below is a much clearer image of the City as it stood in 2004.
There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, voting. Second off, point-earning? Then there’s the fact that you used to be able to see Federal Jail. Finally, 182 people in jail? No wonder busts and bails used to actually matter back in the day. Oh, and answer those mails, Anonymous; can’t believe you’re keeping those poor 2004 people waiting!
Moving on to 2005, we can see from the Crimes page that the highest criminal acts only required 12 nerve in the form of GTA crimes which still exist today, with Counterfeiting, Kidnapping, Arms Trafficking, Bombings and Hacking yet to come. Also, we can see that Anonymous STILL had unanswered mails, ffs.
The layout of the items page from back then is pretty similar to the current one, it is simply devoid of the graphics and general aesthetics the current page has. From what this reporter gathers, most of the old Torn pages are similar in structure to the current ones, it's just they were exclusively text-based back then, whereas now they've been tarted up. As we move on to 2005's items page, we can see that Anonymous STILL has two unanswered mails, but it has come to my attention that he carries an axe, so I’m going to stop poking fun.
But how can I afford more of these wonderful luxuries, your 2005 self might ask, as you consume your fourth and final pack of Bon Bons? Well, you'll need employment of course, and here's what the Army job page looked like back then.
Most of these shots were taken from the Wayback Machine, which involved roughly one trillion clicks of the "next" button. Thankfully, those kind souls in the forums have helped us out with a few snapshots of their own, including this image of the 2005 forums when the servers went down. Thanks to Titan for this shot.
As you can see, Titan is giving us the full retro experience on the taskbar there, with IRC, MSN and Yahoo Messenger all fired up. I often wonder why our generation is too afraid to take phone calls these days, and now I know why - three chat portals open at once? We were deluged, deluged I tell you. And that's before you've even logged into Torn, where the chat with Peachy continues via her profile.
Titan has also supplied us with an image of his own profile, a federal jail message and the events page as they looked in 2005, along with this snapshot of the Hospital from the same year. As you can see from Titan's profile and his hospital records below, he was hospitalised using the Banana Phone, which was an exclusive staff item given only to him.
Moving on to 2006, we can see that the job page has been improved immeasurably, and following that we have the faction page for Engineered Plague, led by Peachy, with both images once more provided by Titan.
Now before we move on, there are one or two screenshots in our possession which look super old but are currently undateable. We think these may come from Torn circa 2005 or 2006, but we cannot be sure. First up, we have the gym, which consists of nothing more than a value box and a drop-down list.
Pictured: Drop down and give me 20, literally.
Next up is the Casino, which looks slightly ritzier due to its use of the colour orange. Note how your victory in this simple slots game is signified by the use of the word "yay". Simpler times, eh?
2007 is the year after 2006, and this dictated the next year I should investigate. Boy was I not disappointed! This reporter has no idea what the context for this banner design, but it’s undeniably a hidden gem in Torn’s history books.
There's a lot going on here even after we've taken in the Grand Theft Auto vibe. The first thing I noticed is weird eye guy watching us on the right, and if you look just beneath the car on the left there's another random eye above Torn City. Then there's the guy in shades in the middle whose face is almost entirely obscured by angry smoking hat man and bizarre mouth lady, who seems to have had another man's head grafted onto the back of her own.
A close look behind the grey login panel also shows the arm of angry smoking hat man coming out from where bizarre mouth lady's leg should be, which is funny. And if you really zoom in, you can see the designer has decided to show just the tiniest hint of ass cleavage, with a snippet of buttcrack visible through the hole in her dress. Mr Chedburn, what say ye?
"No comment."
If you're interested in what the 2007 hunting page looked like then here's a shot courtesy of needajoint. But we're going to let Chupacabra give us the final taste of Torn '07 with this tragic day on the stock market, and this neatly categorised items page - note the inclusion of the dearly departed Dongs at the bottom.
Imagine if you could set your player status to Pregnant. Rainbowsaurus might be pleased, but it'd be quite macabre if you ended up beaten and left on the streets with that status hanging over you. Let's not think about that for too long eh? Moving on, towards the end of 2007 and early 2008 the revamped login page had been ditched, Torn had settled on its preferred font and the word "City" was dispensed with. Their logo isn't too different to the one we know and love (and click on for free stuff) today.
Chedburn told us he was experimenting a lot with the home page at the time. Given that it's the first part of Torn new players see, they were "split-testing like crazy trying to find the most optimal design & layout". And while they were working on that, Torn's loyal early followers were also treated to some brand new merchandise! If you’re wondering what that merchandise looked like, don’t fret, for someone called Olavi Saarelainen posted their collection online. I'm sure some of you have these lingering in your wardrobe somewhere!
In their defence, these shirts look relatively fine for that era. However, they certainly lack the satirical edge of the current Torn merchandise, and this reporter feels that a mug making fun of Harley is way more interesting. These items were supposed to be advertised on a merchandise page, but when we looked wayback, it instead contained Torn’s unofficial slogan.
In terms of in-game screenshots, 2008 has given us a massive trove of deliciousness to gaze upon. Pictured below is what the cars used to look like.
By 2008, the crimes had expanded all the way to 18 nerve!
Factions also gained text tags and image banners at this point, although we were still deep into the old systems here, so their respect was far below the millions we see nowadays. There are many things that are of interest here, but this reporter is currently more concerned as to that first column. Chedburn has confirmed it represented a faction's member count, but how and why did Torn City Shadows have 0?
You can see what the home page used to look like when you logged in with a bugged laptop, circa October 2008, courtesy of this screenshot supplied by Ticket. We also have several shots provided by Chit, including this one where he seemed particularly active on the messageboards. Our favorite is the one below, which shows the awards page on one of five tabs Chit has open - four Torn, and one Youtube page playing Lordi. Remember them? They won Eurovision in 2006. That was thirteen years ago. How. The. F**k?
Onwards to 2009, you can witness what the home page tutorial used to look like with this link here. But our next screenshot, originally taken by LouBaker, showcases parts of how Torn had evolved by this point. For example, property “tax” had become the upkeep we have today, and weapons were accompanied by graphics rather than being represented by a plain line of text. Oh, and congrats to Lou on the 666 busts. Ave Satanas.
Sifonjerce was apparently named Bd9912, and entitititiitititiit (or however that’s spelt) hadn’t been banned yet, being named BoxingGloves at the time. King_Ace's <800m stats were enough for the top 5, and a long-gone player wit the glorious name of “i_kill_u_4-free” was still active. RIP. Last action 2,500 days ago. Such a glorious name.
The blog section is also glorious. Many things were promised, including a rebuild of the crimes system (can't wait for Chillyspunc to have another tantrum at this) as well as some new companies and specials.
Pictured: It's 2019 and there are not Architects, you freaking lied to me.
Pictured: I guess that explains the joke…
After you log in you get through to the homepage, and everything feels awfully familiar once more. This shot is courtesy of TD_raidernation, and you'll notice it shows there's an update going on and the City Watch has just been introduced.
Cablebox and LordZezima1 gave us a whole heap of images from 2010 which we'll quickly run through now. Here's a picture of the crimes page which now comes with little tiny icons to show you what terrible deeds you're doing. You'll notice we also have fancy weapon images on both Big Al's page and the item page, and the newspaper has also undergone a bit of an update. If you click that last link you'll see the paper used to have horoscopes! #bringbackastrology
Oh, and it was around this time that our Education page got a snazzy refit by the looks of it. No, your eyes aren’t fooling you, those are indeed the same education images we get now. No point in updating a classic!
By 2010, the gym had evolved away from being a dropdown menu. I, for one, am glad Torn did away with those yellow tutorial messages too. So garish!
We've also got a screenshot of what successful crime results looked like back in 2010. Younger players might not be aware, but as the below screenshot implies, you once needed donator status to have a friendlist or blacklist. Good guy Ched eventually removed that requirement, because as they do with many things, people complained.
Finally, let's return to the front page blog once more, where we can see some old shots of Halloween Town. I never visited Halloween Town myself, but just from seeing these screenshots I find myself being incredibly curious as to what it was like. If anyone wants to send Sugarvalves some screenshots he'll post them here. For now, this is the only one we have.
Pictured: Who the heck is Sarah? And why has her mother gone missing?
We now find ourselves in 2011, and while this reporter might have said there would be no more making fun of Anonymous, it cannot be denied that the idea that he’s level holding at level 0 is adorable. He’s a sneakier level holder than Shoogs! Anyway, here's another picture of the newspaper someone is browsing while they wait to lose their money and walking abilities in Russian Roulette.
Pictured: No seriously, wtf was on the horoscopes page?
It appears that the casino had an update around this time, and below you can find an image of the slots machine. The animation back then was probably slower than 6 seconds, so be grateful you live in 2019. Also, this image was supplied by Carrot94, who was also looking for "Easy Torn City Money" according to that second tab. How about you don't waste it all in the casino, Carrot94!
You might notice the sidebar changed into something similar to its current version around this time. I did not give this much thought until fellow Reporter Bones pointed this out to me.
add something about the sidebar changing, that was HUGE
people were so mad ched made it so you could use the old side bar for awhile xD
Of course people were mad. People are always mad. And if you wanted to complain to our lord and saviour Chedburn in 2011, you could do so by visiting his profile here, with this image supplied by Leafeh.
The home page on Wayback Machine remains almost the same throughout the year of 2011. But by 2012, we can see an older version of the “paths” promotion on the sign-up area. Roles not included on this graphic are "The Multi", "The Exploiter", "The Troll" and "The guy who joins the committee and uses insider info to benefit themselves in a super obvious way". R.I.P. MightyGoober.
It was around this time that Torn’s gym page morphed into something closer to what we have now, complete with the different gyms to be unlocked and so on. This page was almost identical to our current gym system until the recent update.
By the early days of 2013, we can see plenty of the homepage details that endure to this day. When looking at this, in comparison to the older snapshots we have seen here, we can appreciate how Torn evolved throughout the years on its way to becoming the Torn we know now.
Pictured: The most underwhelming review of all time.
As a further reminder of how much time has passed, there were once only four level-100's, while now there are well over 300. Many things have changed over the years that have made leveling easier, so it can be hard for younger players to understand the fact that wasn't always so easily done.
Panth has supplied our next set of screenshots, which begins with 2013's version of the City page. Check out the Divorce Agency on the South Side, and the Big Brother House on the West Side. Any images of these would be gratefully appreciated!
A quick trip to the City Center would take you to the Travel Agency, where all four tabs are displayed for your various flight options. And in the Red-Light District, Torn's Casino now looked like this.
One particularly eye-catching screenshot is this next one of the 2013 bank. Take a look at those rather disturbing interest rates! And beneath that, the item market in 2013 was a dropdown menu hell, but it was no doubt well-organized.
The forums had gotten just a little bit closer to looking as they do now because names now had their honor bars shown on the forums rather than just text. It’s worth noting that you can still make names text-only by turning honor bars off in your preferences if anyone wants to go old-school for the day! Fun fact: By this point, faction tags had become images, but you might notice that in the current forums main page, only the name of the poster shows up now.
By 2015, the snapshots of Torn look very similar to today's iteration; the Torn we’ve all grown to love and simultaneously complain about. Sugarvalves did suggest that we should change the login page to the GTA 2005 one for our 15th anniversary, but apparently this was more complicated than it seemed. Shame!
Check out that Users Online figure for an idea of where Torn has been and gone in recent years. Torn peaked at 48,131 users over a 24-hour period back in March 2009, and aside from a brief anomaly in January 2012, the lowest we could find on the graphs at City Hall was 14,641 in November 2015. But since then, Torn has bounced back in style, more than doubling its daily user base to around 32,000 at the time of writing.
Cosmetic changes are a huge part of that. As Torn continues to grow, you have to imagine that the changes to our city will come at an ever-faster rate. Today we have looked mostly at Torn's aesthetics, but there were also many alterations to gameplay over the years too - that’s a discussion for another day. What I would say is that Torn looks and feels far more easy to navigate thanks to the adjustments we've seen in this article.
Many people whine about cosmetic alterations because they want new game mechanics instead, but upon reading this article, you have to admit that these small changes have mounted up over the years, and given us a much more user-friendly experience as a result. This place has come a long way from where it once was, but despite all the differences we've seen, Chedburn feels there is one thing that has never changed in Torn's 15-year history:
"Very little has remained the same, we have however kept our trademark #CCCCCC background."
BONUS SHOTS
Finally, as a bonus, here are some of the screenshots that couldn’t be chronologically placed with accuracy due to their lack of a timestamp. We'll add any other interesting ones that we're sent to this bit if we can. First, here’s some individual losing to The_Legend for some reason.
Here’s the old stock portfolio, featuring a duck.
We can also provide an example of what the auction house used to look like.
Captcha back in those good old days was glorious, too.
Also, check out this screenshot provided by CloudJumper of what the old warbase used to look like.
And in case you’re curious how ye very olde profiles appeared, here’s possibly the most traumatizing example possible.
Please make Torn show times married on profile again.
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