Richard Boomgarden, known as Northpike on AMZ, is one of the oldest users on the site. He was one of the first members to become staff and was on staff for longer than any other person, except Ken. He was given ownership of AMZ for three years until he passed it over to Kenko in 2009.

Northpike is 24 years old and currently resides in southern Wisconsin.

Contents 1 Beginnings 2 Effects on the Security Team 3 Ownership of AMZ 4 On AMZ 5 Trivia

Beginnings Edit

Northpike started on Neopets in the early 2000's and had been a part of the "Neopets Police Guild", run by Hrobi. It was through there that he was discovered and brought in by techdude, (now techchick), to a fresh and naked AMZ, still young with 100 users. Pike's interest in security, specifically scammer prevention, was found to be useful. He founded the Aftermath Zone Department of Defense, a user-run initiative to help catch scammers and cheaters. Ken adopted him in as one of the first moderators after determining, by posts only, that a user claiming they were scammed was in fact not, and was trying to frame another member. After this, Northpike was kept as a moderator for a few years, seeing three head mods come and go, and helped begin the development of the Security Team.

After a brief hiatus, he returned to the site full-time. When the head moderator position opened up, he took it, but only after some political sword fighting with an up-and-coming new staff member, Verloren. Northpike shortly thereafter updated the rules to be more objective, and created policies on investigations into scammers, hackers, cheaters, and other security threats.

Effects on the Security Team Edit

Shortly after his new position as manager, he made the moderating staff go through every single shop in the game and look for illegal galleries that affected the game's economy, as well as other major rule violations. He then split the mods into two groups, which would later define AMZ. The first group's job was to help people on the boards and live chat by answering questions. The other group were the moderators who he granted with more power to investigate and freeze accounts. As the site grew, the staff grew, and with this change he began focusing more on the security and moderating aspects of the site. He proposed and passed changes that included "muting" a disruptive member as opposed to an all-out banning of their account. "Muting" was a code written in the game that, when activated, restricted a member from accessing the message boards or Java applet for IRC until the "mute" was lifted. This allowed the user to continue playing the game without being disruptive, and was seen as a milder alternative to a frozen account.

Ownership of AMZ Edit

While the site was still growing, Ken started to become scarcer and scarcer. Soon he barely wanted anything to do with AMZ, and was going to take it down. Northpike asked that he instead take ownership, and let the staff help to run it. It was agreed, however, when Northpike asked for a copy of the backups, they never came.

For about three years after AMZ's collapse, Northpike, with a series of other people, attempted to restart the site. Things didn't look good until he was contacted by Kenko. After some discussing, he handed the reins of AMZ over to him and the site was successfully rebooted. Northpike, who was becoming increasingly unavailable due to work and personal issues, decided to step down from any direct staff responsibility over the site, although he still gives advice when asked.

On AMZ Edit

Northpike currently has one character, Kilroy the Squall. His presence on AMZ is lacking, but he can occasionally be spotted in the forums or on IRC. He is currently an IRC moderator.

Trivia Edit

• The name 'Northpike' comes from the northern pike, hence the nickname 'Fishy'.
• When Northpike came around in the early 2000's, he was about 13 or 14 and refused to give out any personal information. When asked for his name, he would respond with "Kilroy". He took up "Kilroy" as his symbol because "Kilroy is everyone, and no-one." When asked how old he was Northpike would respond with large numbers, ranging from 30-1000 years old, thus the nickname "old man pike". Shortly before the collapse of the orginal AMZ, and throughout his short ownership, he gave out pieces of information about himself, such as his phone number, 555-867-5309.