About This Site

The Official Greg Discussion Archive is a site dedicated to preserving online discussions with BIONICLE author Greg Farshtey in a form that is easy to browse and search. These discussions have become an important part of canon BIONICLE lore and are cited extensively on BIONICLE reference sites such as BIONICLEsector01 (BS01) and The Great Archives. The archive consists largely of forum posts containing question-and-answer sessions with Greg that are no longer available on the sites where they were originally posted.

Go to Full List of Sources

Background

Greg Farshtey was one of the chief creative minds behind the BIONICLE story during its 2001-2010 run. Although not responsible for its original concept, Greg authored the vast majority of BIONICLE's written material, and in the online community he was considered an authority in matters of BIONICLE storyline.

For many years, Greg actively participated on online BIONICLE forums such as BZPower and Mask of Destiny. On BZPower, he replied on an almost daily basis to questions which members asked him through the site's personal messaging (PM) system. In his answers, Greg often teased upcoming storyline or revealed pieces of information which have never been stated in published material. In a few cases, Greg even canonized suggestions from fans about additions to the lore, such as assigning the name "Toa Mangai" to Lhikan's Toa team. Fans would then catalog this information on reference sites like the BIONICLEsector01 (BS01) wiki.

Early on, in order to keep track of the steady stream of information from private messages with Greg, BZPower established an "Official Greg Discussion" (OGD) topic where members could post Greg's answers for all to read and discuss. This turned out to be a boon for BIONICLE lore, as Greg's responses were often used to clarify unclear points in the storyline or to expand on details that would have otherwise gone unexplored.

There were three iterations of the "OGD" on BZPower. The original topic, titled "Official Greg Discussion," began in March 2003. In January 2008, after the topic had reached well over 300 pages of posts, it was decided to close the original topic and start a fresh one under the same name, although it was later renamed the "Official Greg Dialogue." The OGD topic was refreshed again in September 2010, when it was decided to split the topic into two parts: an "Official Greg Quotes" topic for posting answers only, and a separate "Official Greg Discussion" solely for discussion among fans about Greg's answers.

LEGO discontinued the BIONICLE line in mid-2010, and within a year, activity on the OGD died down drastically. Additionally, in the spring of 2011, LEGO instituted a company policy that prohibited its employees from communicating online with children under the age of 13. Since BZPower had many members under this age and did not have an age verification system, Greg complied with this policy by ending his activity on the site entirely. It seemed that the golden days of story-building through Greg's answers were over.

Even worse, in 2013, an unfortunate technical mishap permanently erased all of BZPower's forum data up to 2011, including the OGD topics. From April 26 to July of 2011, BZPower had worked on deploying a major upgrade to its forum software. During that time, the previous contents of the forums were backed up into a read-only archive, which remained available for a time after the upgrade was finished. However, in early 2013, a malicious individual caused the archive and its backups to be deleted from BZPower's server. Sadly, on July 24, 2013, the BZPower staff announced that the archive appeared to have been permanently lost. Consequently, all BZPower topics from before April 26, 2011, including all of the original OGD topics, are no longer available online in their original form.

Fortunately, at some point before this incident, BZPower member fishers64 had compiled these topics into a set of text files, which were later made available for download. It is from these text files that the OGD archives on this site have been reconstructed.

In the summer of 2013, the BIONICLE community was pleasantly surprised when Greg Farshtey returned to answering fan questions, this time on the LEGO Message Boards in a topic titled "Chat with Greg Farshtey." Over the next three years, Greg personally responded to messages posted in this thread. Although this coincided with the BIONICLE reboot of 2015-2016, Greg was not involved in the new project and only answered questions pertaining to the original BIONICLE run.

The "Chat with Greg Farshtey" topic continued until early 2017, when the LEGO Group abruptly decided to discontinue the LEGO message boards. In March 2017, LEGO permanently took the message boards offline, and the "Chat with Greg Farshtey" topic is no longer available in its original form. The data for the "Chat with Greg Farshtey" archive on this site comes from the original source before it was taken offline.

In late May of 2017, Greg was able to return to answering questions once more, this time in a dedicated "Ask Greg" section of the TTV Message Boards. Greg responded on-and-off to questions until 2022.

Greg left the LEGO Group in August 2022, ending his official affiliation with the BIONICLE brand.

Who Runs This Site?

Planetperson is the name I go by in the BIONICLE community. I am always very happy to hear comments, suggestions, or criticisms about this site, so if you have any, please feel free to get in touch on Twitter via @GreatArchives or join the Discord server.

This site is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Greg Farshtey or the LEGO Group.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following people for helping out here and there:

  • fishers64, for saving the all-important text files containing the OGD post data and providing information about the file format early on.
  • OnionShark, for pointing me to many of the lost BZPower topics.
  • HahliNuva, for pointing out a discrepancy in the page numbering of the Official Greg Dialogue.
  • emily (peri), for pointing me to an old audio interview with Greg on BZPower and all of the old BZPower news interviews.
  • JrMasterModelBuilder, for scraping the Wayback Machine for old BZPower topics from Greg Farshtey with a Node.js script.
  • joint-Dogg, for finding more information about Greg's interview with the LEGO Club Show.
  • Swert, for pointing me to copies of old BS01 Podcast episodes that are no longer available.
  • toaskello, Gonel, and Wolk for feedback on the usability of the site.
  • Dag, for pointing me to a large number of lost BZPower topics.