So Giant Bomb has officially launched for over a day now. Let's look at how it's been doing since then. I've made an account yesterday morning, and chalked up 107 posts throughout the day. That said, that number is much higher than my average post-per-day count here at GS.

First, the positives. I'd gamble that more than three quarters of the community comes from Gamespot - so that means lots of friendly and familiar faces to make the transition smooth and enjoyable. In addition, meeting new people is always good, and I've found a lot of these users pretty charming; I've had a lot of fun, interesting discussions, and luls. I also appreciate the sense of freedom due to the lax moderation. I don't swear often, but I like having the ability to do so if I wanted to. As for the non-forum parts of GB, I find the Wiki-styIe contributions addicting and the Bombcast is great. I'm not head over heels in love with Jeff and the rest of the editors like some folks, but I do like them.

However, Giant Bomb is not perfect - not even close. First off, the forums are kind of a mess right now. The main forum page is cluttered with topics from about a hundred different boards - and there are only two *main* boards that have the same kind of content really. The place is also lawless. Yes, lax moderation is a bad thing as much as it is a good thing. For every two topics, there's one topic devoted entirely to spam. People like to spam their way to the "top poster" list and racist/homophobic/flaming topics are sure to come. And in less than a day, GB had it's first pr0n suicide..... and a disgusting one at that. How the TC isn't banned yet is beyond me. When I went to sleep that night, his two-hour-old thread was still on the front page and getting posts. C'mon guys....

In my first few hours, technical difficulties and long page loads were present, but the site just launched so I'll let them slide for now. It's not as bad today. GB's forums lack some basic forum features ATM (smilies, sigs) that I hope we get soon. I'll also miss some of Gamespot's more advanced features (unions, emblems) but hey, maybe I'll be surprised.

Anyway, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. My username is MoldOnHold, so throw me a friend request if you're using the site too. I'm not leaving GS at all, I'll just be juggling the two sites.

One last thing:

Smileys rock.