I have avatars turned off by default, a habit I picked up when I first started forum-browsing years ago. So, changing avatars don't confuse me. I might remember which poster posted what more if I did have them on, but I know the familiar faces fairly well (especially in the Civ3 forums, but also to a lesser degree in OT, and a few prominent posters in other fora, mostly those who used to be active in Civ3 or are moderators). There's only a few avatars that I associate with users - Thunderfall with the battleship and a couple former Civ3 posters such as TheRat (capitalization incorrect).
I recently switched back to my original avatar after more than a year with a different one. I hadn't intended to switch away for so long, but wasn't often reminded that I'd switched.
My first non-Civ avatar was a small ankh symbol. I vaguely recall having a spider wearing a baseball cap after that, and then I switched to my Spud on a bike. After that I had a random assortment that sometimes had a cat, sometimes words, and there were a couple of Doctor Who-themed ones (anybody remember Romana?). Then I decided to stick with cats. The two that I had before my current one were a Siamese cat peeking out of a shopping bag and Business Cat.
