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Who is Geoffrey Zboards?

Hello everyone. This is a strange thread, I hope this is the most appropriate place for it. Simply put, I'm hoping the community here can help me find more information about the attached image.

Some backstory: Years ago, several friends and I were looking up information on now defunct Zboards. While trying to find images of them, we found this picture of a man sitting at a computer. It is/was only found on a Chinese version of a celebrity/entertainment gossip website called FansShare in a gallery about the WoW movie and titled "Geoffrey Zboards." That's the only information we have.

The image is very dated given the CRT monitors, desk set-up, mouse, knick-knacks, etc. and it's pretty clear that he's displaying the WoW branded Zboard peripherals, but it doesn't seem to be promotional given the other copywritten character figures and general amateurness of the photo. The website on the screen is the homepage for Stratics (which is why I'm here). Using the release date of Burning Crusade and the internet archive for this website, I was able to date the picture to sometime in 2007, possibly early 2008.

I know this is weird, but my friends and I have been wondering the story behind this picture for YEARS. I'm not looking for personal information on the guy in the picture or anything like that. I'm just looking for context around the picture since it's so shrouded in mystery. There's nothing at stake here except my own sanity, I'm just hoping you all here can help us out since it's clear that he was a member at one point.
 

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Lord Frodo

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:facepalm: Shameless post of a WOW player. You do understand that this is a UO Forum so why would we have anything to do with a WOW player.
 
:facepalm: Shameless post of a WOW player. You do understand that this is a UO Forum so why would we have anything to do with a WOW player.
Thanks for your interest, Lord Frodo. I don't actually play any MMOs myself, but I know that this site used to cater to a lot of different MMO communities, including WoW. However, since the WoW threads are archived, I was sure no one would see my post there (If i can even post to archived portions). So I thought "Off Topic" would be the best place to reach out. I'm hoping that some members of the community may have been around since then and could shed some light on my mystery.

Of course, that's a skateboard brand. The Zboards I'm talking about are keyboards that featured swappable keysets. Pretty mundane nowadays with the prevalence of so many mechanical keyboard manufacturers, but 15 years ago, it was pretty novel. They were often branded with different games and had keys preprogrammed with specific actions for that game. As far as I know, it was only Blizzard games (Diablo, WoW, Starcraft, etc), so I wouldn't expect a UO player to know about them.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to include some photos of the keyboards for your reference
 

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Lord Frodo

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Thanks for your interest, Lord Frodo. I don't actually play any MMOs myself, but I know that this site used to cater to a lot of different MMO communities, including WoW. However, since the WoW threads are archived, I was sure no one would see my post there (If i can even post to archived portions). So I thought "Off Topic" would be the best place to reach out. I'm hoping that some members of the community may have been around since then and could shed some light on my mystery.



Of course, that's a skateboard brand. The Zboards I'm talking about are keyboards that featured swappable keysets. Pretty mundane nowadays with the prevalence of so many mechanical keyboard manufacturers, but 15 years ago, it was pretty novel. They were often branded with different games and had keys preprogrammed with specific actions for that game. As far as I know, it was only Blizzard games (Diablo, WoW, Starcraft, etc), so I wouldn't expect a UO player to know about them.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to include some photos of the keyboards for your reference
LMAO Did you even click the link and look at the top row of images, NO.
 

Captn Norrington

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While Frodo came off a bit harsh in his posts, he's right that there's pretty much no possible way anyone here is going to be able to give you any insight into this picture other than that he's a WoW player who presumably used to post on our WoW discussion forums. There have been hundreds of thousands of users of this website over the years, and unless the person was a well known staff member the chances of someone here knowing them based on their real world picture is slim to none.
 

Danpal

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Hello everyone. This is a strange thread, I hope this is the most appropriate place for it. Simply put, I'm hoping the community here can help me find more information about the attached image.

Some backstory: Years ago, several friends and I were looking up information on now defunct Zboards. While trying to find images of them, we found this picture of a man sitting at a computer. It is/was only found on a Chinese version of a celebrity/entertainment gossip website called FansShare in a gallery about the WoW movie and titled "Geoffrey Zboards." That's the only information we have.

The image is very dated given the CRT monitors, desk set-up, mouse, knick-knacks, etc. and it's pretty clear that he's displaying the WoW branded Zboard peripherals, but it doesn't seem to be promotional given the other copywritten character figures and general amateurness of the photo. The website on the screen is the homepage for Stratics (which is why I'm here). Using the release date of Burning Crusade and the internet archive for this website, I was able to date the picture to sometime in 2007, possibly early 2008.

I know this is weird, but my friends and I have been wondering the story behind this picture for YEARS. I'm not looking for personal information on the guy in the picture or anything like that. I'm just looking for context around the picture since it's so shrouded in mystery. There's nothing at stake here except my own sanity, I'm just hoping you all here can help us out since it's clear that he was a member at one point.
If we take a closer look at the picture we can conduct that we are looking for a Red haired German man that would be in his mid 40's I am unable to make out the writing on the screen but from the items around him the garden gnomes the smufs and the picture of the football team(soccer for you Americans) he has bad taste in clothing red dress shirt with tan pants with a old flip phone in pocket. Likes sponge Bob and marven cartoons so. All of witch was big in Germany and the Netherlands. From his facial characteristics would be European so does that help not really but fun
 

Jepeth

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The Zboards I'm talking about are keyboards that featured swappable keysets. Pretty mundane nowadays with the prevalence of so many mechanical keyboard manufacturers, but 15 years ago, it was pretty novel. They were often branded with different games and had keys preprogrammed with specific actions for that game. As far as I know, it was only Blizzard games (Diablo, WoW, Starcraft, etc), so I wouldn't expect a UO player to know about them.
Jeez, I remember these dumb things. I used to work at a CompUSA and we had a machine set up to demo games with one of these as the keyboard. For fun people kept taking the keyboard apart and cracking the flimsy hinge on it.
 

Danpal

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Jeez, I remember these dumb things. I used to work at a CompUSA and we had a machine set up to demo games with one of these as the keyboard. For fun people kept taking the keyboard apart and cracking the flimsy hinge on it.
I owned one before. Came with my Warhammer online game. Was alright to use. But grew tired of it
 
While Frodo came off a bit harsh in his posts, he's right that there's pretty much no possible way anyone here is going to be able to give you any insight into this picture other than that he's a WoW player who presumably used to post on our WoW discussion forums. There have been hundreds of thousands of users of this website over the years, and unless the person was a well known staff member the chances of someone here knowing them based on their real world picture is slim to none.
Yeah, I know it's a long shot. But given how posed the picture is, it seemed important to him that he's showing the front page of Stratics. I thought it may have been a picture specifically for an event or promotion on this site and that someone might remember. Stratics is the only lead we have given the lack of any other identifiable things in the picture. Are there any staff or mods that have even been around that long?

If we take a closer look at the picture we can conduct that we are looking for a Red haired German man that would be in his mid 40's I am unable to make out the writing on the screen but from the items around him the garden gnomes the smufs and the picture of the football team(soccer for you Americans) he has bad taste in clothing red dress shirt with tan pants with a old flip phone in pocket. Likes sponge Bob and marven cartoons so. All of witch was big in Germany and the Netherlands. From his facial characteristics would be European so does that help not really but fun
It does help! I wasn't able to figure out what the team picture was, but I think you're right. Like some sort of co-ed or intramural soccer team. Ultimately doesn't help given context, but you're right that it's fun anyway.

I owned one before. Came with my Warhammer online game. Was alright to use. But grew tired of it
I never had one, but I can hardly be motivated to change discs in my PS4, I can't imagine it was fun and easy to switch out keyboards all the time if you had more than one Zboard.

LMAO Did you even click the link and look at the top row of images, NO.
I did. What you linked is the Bing image search results for "zboards" which includes results for some other models of the skateboard brand. I'm sure what you meant to link was the results for "+zboards" which is the Bing operator for essentially telling the engine to only show you webpages that contain that phrase. When you do that, Bing suggests some other search terms related specifically to the keyboards. Searching on Bing is a bit different from Google and people get confused pretty often, so don't sweat it. Regardless, I'm aware of what zboards are (the keyboards and the skateboards), but thank you for sharing it with me.
 

Lord Frodo

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Yeah, I know it's a long shot. But given how posed the picture is, it seemed important to him that he's showing the front page of Stratics. I thought it may have been a picture specifically for an event or promotion on this site and that someone might remember. Stratics is the only lead we have given the lack of any other identifiable things in the picture. Are there any staff or mods that have even been around that long?



It does help! I wasn't able to figure out what the team picture was, but I think you're right. Like some sort of co-ed or intramural soccer team. Ultimately doesn't help given context, but you're right that it's fun anyway.



I never had one, but I can hardly be motivated to change discs in my PS4, I can't imagine it was fun and easy to switch out keyboards all the time if you had more than one Zboard.



I did. What you linked is the Bing image search results for "zboards" which includes results for some other models of the skateboard brand. I'm sure what you meant to link was the results for "+zboards" which is the Bing operator for essentially telling the engine to only show you webpages that contain that phrase. When you do that, Bing suggests some other search terms related specifically to the keyboards. Searching on Bing is a bit different from Google and people get confused pretty often, so don't sweat it. Regardless, I'm aware of what zboards are (the keyboards and the skateboards), but thank you for sharing it with me.
LMAO If you would have looked you would have seen an ICON with this "Zboard Gaming Keyboard" and it would have led you here Zboard Gaming Keyboard Must have been beyond your ability Google and Bing both have a lot more info than Stratics.
 

Larisa

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Yeah, a few surprisingly. @Nexus @Larisa @DreadLord Lestat are the ones that come to mind.
You callin me old?? *glares*

Yes I have been here since late 2006 but that picture means nothing to me.

It had to have been some sort of contest/promotion through the WoW boards, I do remember them doing that alot. *Take a screenshot of you playing X game* or something along those lines so it was probably from something like that.
 

DreadLord Lestat

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I have been here since 2001 or 2002, don't remember exactly. My first account (Lestat) was lost in some sort of data wipe in 2004. When they brought everything back online, I was able to change to Dreadlord Lestat. I have been staff since 2007 or 2008, not entirely sure. I did not do much at all with WoW Stratics so I am unfamiliar with the picture and background behind it.
 
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