Lot of spontaneous acts of random generosity, either through fun, festive, gimmicky giveaways. A stronger sense of friendly diversity, with people being quite open about their different horizons, religions and gender identity. I'll always remember it at the time where a transgender forumer was being vaguely insulted by a transphobic twat and didn't feel supported by the community, and I was (naively) asking her to not pay attention, because said twat didn't represent much in front of the silent background sympathy of forumers who didn't want to fuel a flamewar. A couple of years laters, the trumputinian gamergaters that found refuge in these unmoderated boards made it clear that this place expected you to either be a white male straight christian playing white male straight christians in games about white male straight christians, or to be destroying civilization. All the green of the cheerful mutual up-repping got replaced by a permanent column of low rated posts, and expressions of mutual hatred replaced the old knee-jerk gifting reflexes.

So, essentially, it was a bubble of warmth and solidarity, with very different people, simply united by a dislike of DRM and launch clients. Troll farms and political polarizations transformed it. Although, I suspect that, right from the start, there were two categories of friendly and generous people : those who were friendly and generous to others because they didn't care about skin color, nationality, religion and gender identity, etc. And those who were friendly and generous to others because they assumed that all others were of the same skin color, nationality, religion and gender identity as theirs. Something unmasked these two categories. They didn't get along. Things got sour. Cool people left. Legitimate mistrust settled in.

And gone was the era of gog forumers liking each others, and assuming the best of each others by default.