Hi!
{iDA}HogsWild
is here. This is a long overdue project... actually, 4 years overdue. I've been
asked to tell history of iDA many times before especially during first
months of UT2k4 team formation. Unfortunately, I never had time for that. Besides,
writing an epic story about game clan is just stupid. For history sake and for
those curious minds, who still visit this site, this story may still be
interesting and even educating.
First version of the story was somewhat posted in the old
forum in 2004 and lost when proboards.com killed our host. UT2k4 part was added
just recently in December of 2009.
Originally the story was inspired by WTF/Jovy and db/Laughy
articles about history of their clans. Good readings. Eventually my story grew
in something more than a story and strategy guide. I also intentionally tried
to stay away from strats and organizational lessons.
Like I said, I'm not about to make a monumental story and
documentary. This is just a game. {iDA} was a tag worn by a many people at
different point of time. Some of them were actual friends, others - not. Some
played game for fun in spare time, others were just pure addicts, third ones
were using game to get away from day job stress. Not all of them were even
trying to be #1 in a competition, but many did.
One thing in common was that all these people loved playing
LowG Instagib and they wanted to play it as an organized team. Simple as
that. Taking gaming too serious is
stupid. On other side, iDA'ers spent tremendous amount of time practicing and
playing game which was not always a fun. The goal was to be competitive and win
matches as a team. People had to
sacrifice their personal time, taking it from other fun things, job, school,
kids, family, girlfriends. Competitive
gaming is a little bit more serious than just a game.
Beginning
In the beginning was an instagib. First official appearance
of Instagib was in Quake2 in 1997. It had became quite popular, in Europe
especially. Unofficially there was similar mutator with excessive damage from
rockets and rail gun as a part of so called Arena mod in Quake1/QuakeWorld.
Quite popular but not as popular as regular Rocket Arena. Rocket or rail gun could
kill almost always instantly, unless player had full armor and health.
Interesting enough, people in 3D Realms while working on
Duke Nukem Forever fell in love with IG that much, so it became the only mod
they played in the office. :)
I'm skipping other parts of how instagib made to the official list of mutators
in Unreal Tournament and how it became an instant hit (sorry for the pun) in UT
world. Instagib became the most
played mutator in CTF and TDM.
Anyway, somewhere in 2002 few people who played regularly
Low Gravity Instagib on ML2 San Jose server, thought about making a clan. Low Gravity
community actually passed its peak at that point and making a new clan was not
that common. In fact iDA was the last long lived clan formed in LGI 100
community. ML2 server was still extremely popular back then and new people were
coming to it every day (I was one of them actually). Getting on ML2 in evening
and late night was not that easy. It's been always packed.
I believe first talks about making a new clan started when
server regulars like BossyGirl, Term2 and Rampage had an idea to set up a new
server because they were frustrated about ML2 moving to UT2k3 along with its
server. Those folks may correct me there. I did not participate in those chats,
so I may be completely wrong.
So iDA should be thankful to ML2/PeacefulWarrior for its
foundation and existence.
Story repeats and in 2005 iDA helped PeacefulWarrior to recreate his clan as MD
in UT2k4. I will tell that story later. Also second team of IQ clan was created
on ruins of ML2. Anarchy, Real_Dad, Jesterr. Mannsaki and other founding dedicated
players were originally from PW's ML2 clan.
Idea of creating a new clan came along at one point. Bossy,
Term2 and Rampage put {iDA} tags on and started recruitment. That was in
December of 2002. Their first recruits were {iDA}Romeo, who is known as
{iDA}3Day in UT2k4, and {iDA}OmegaRed. Interestingly enough, all members
including the first captain and founder, BossyGirl, did not have much, if any,
experience in clanning. So no one had a slight idea of how to run the clan.
That's why they quickly picked another noob called himself 100_Wild_Hogs (this
nickname deserves a separate article).
I, i.e. Hogs, was probably the worst player among all, but I
was also the first who came through a serious tryout and even an interview.
Hehe. I took 1on1's very seriously. I remember I had close game but lost it to
Bossy, won another one against Term2 and did not have a chance to score against
OmegaRed in third tryout. OmegaRed was one of the best fragers on ML2 server
and noticed by all other clans. Surprisingly nobody picked him up until
iDA!
After I was recruited, I told news to another regular
Vicious and recommended him to Bossy. Bossy thought we had enough people at
that point and made an exception for Vicious aka Rob as he seemed to be a nice
guy. Funny enough, we made 3 more "exceptions" right after that
recruiting Suicidal, death.incarnate and temudjinni. So original lineup was Bossy, Term2, Rampage,
Romeo/3Day, HogsWild, OmegaRed, death, temudjinni, Suicidal.
We started practicing and scrimming other clans in January
2003. And we did that hard. Problem was we did not understand how to practice
as a team, though few of us had some experience in clanning, no one stepped up.
I was probably most experienced one at that point as I played team games before
in Team Fortress and Quake Deathmatch... back in 1997-1999, but I never wanted
to be a leader and besides my communication skills were not that perfect. Bossy
with help of Rampage, who was another experienced clanner (sniping arenas), led
first practices and scrims and managed to make some sort of organized team at
first.
First scrims were a complete disaster as we lost badly to
many clans, but we learnt from every loss and quickly won our first scrim
against very organized clan IQ in the end of January, which I consider as a big
success. To add screen here!!!
Then we lost key members. OmegaRed could not keep playing in
scrims and practicing, because of family matters. He was our frager #1. Romeo/3Day could not play regularly,
because of babysitting duties. Rampage chose his old sniping clan over LGI and
left us in February. So iDA became a noob-fest clan from top to bottom with
some talent, but with the worst shots in the league. We've joined OGL ladder,
but first matches against BAD, NBA and IQ were lost badly.
We had to recruit again. New members were MasterOfReality
AKA CrazyRussianDrunk and Doody AKA Elle (don't confuse him with Elle from
UT2k4, though both actually used the same name in UT2k3 J ). Both guys were good shots.
Again, both guys were not in any clans before. We kept practicing and had close to 100% attendance. Here's
one good advice to startup clans. Unless you're packed with top notch pro's,
get your own pub server and use it for recruitment. Without server, you
dramatically reduce survivability chances for your clan.
I remember our TeamSpeak during first scrims. Everybody was
screaming like crazy and nobody was making game related calls... at all... I
wish I had recordings from TeamSpeak. Just in couple months got things organized,
came up with solid strats for most popular maps. Good discipline on TeamSpeak.
We were still a raw material, but at least we became a team.
We played several games in a row and lost 3 to BAD, DAM and
IQ again. BAD was owning us on the CTF-Football. Ironically, CTF-Football will
become iDA's signature map in just couple of months. However, in the match we
beat BAD on CTF-Thorns and that's probably when we finally felt that we can
beat better shooting teams by our strats and organization.
Simple and basic rules: Better shooters should be playing D
and Offense should not shoot enemies back while moving through the middle of
map, - could sound obvious now, but back then it was something that made us
much stronger. We found out that Bossy was more efficient at defense, for
instance, death.incarnate and Vicious were very good at running flag, while Suicidal
and MasterOfReality were good at... messing around... I mean, playing as freelancers.
And we all kept improving as fragers.
Well... Things never went right for us in the beginning.
Family tragedy struck Bossy and she could not play for couple months. As most
active clan member I ended up being an admin and clan keeper while Bossy was
away. She was our best shot and the best defender. Actually the only dedicated
defender who played in all matches. Nobody else felt like stepping up as a
captain, but at the same time nobody left the team.
Core was the same: Term2, Hogs, death.incarnate, temudjinni,
MasterOfReality, Suicidal, Doody/Elle. Plus we recruited other regulars of our
own server: Doc, Bite and KaiserSoze. All mature and respected guys, who were
great addition to the team. Side story is about KaiserSoze jumping in the
middle of the game to sub Term2 who lost his connection playing D. Kaiser saved
the game and we won. He never practiced with us before and knew CTF-Football
from pub games only. So there was some place for heroics in this game too. J
Along the way I met another future member of iDA who went
under HDs alias. Interesting thing about him is that few knew about him in LGI
world, though he played on iDA server a lot. I spoke with him on IRC and found
out that he's been in RGI community for years and seemed to be a very nice guy.
Funny thing about him is that there was another guy playing under name =HD= and
most LGI people thought that both of them are the same person. J iDA server had stats
and what really struck me is that HDs had highest number of flag pickups and
best efficiency in capping those! And he had terrible shooting efficiency at
the same time.
HDs shared his ideas on how to play old school RGI maps in
LGI and showed map tricks he knew. And on top of that he turned out to be the
best flag runner in the clan! At that time he ran [] (bracket clan) and did not
feel like joining other clans. However after chatting with me, where I
described him how bad we're at CTF-Foobtall, he got quickly excited and
promised to help us at practices. And we started practicing Football hard.
In fact, everybody liked iDA back then, so guys from ex
clans like WTF and db spent a lot of time with iDA just practicing and helping.
Thanks to WTF/Jovi, db/Legien, db/Laughy and then WTF/Breeze, who joined our
lineup for short time, for helping us out. HDs also brought his friends over to
help iDA in practices and scrims. Special thanks to Gunman for helping us
second Rebel team.
We went through number of scrims, won few, one of which was
against #1 clan WTF on CTF-Football.
Breeze played on our side, while db/Laughy was subbing for WTF. Weird
game, but that scrim showed our potential. We learned a lot from others and
were ready to show our homework.
The only drama we had in the clan happened when Bossy came
back from long absence, and shortly after she quit the clan. We had a set of
victorious scrims and matches. We lost our first and the only captain. I was
elected a new captain shortly after Bossy's departure.
Here's a picture from {iDA} beer event in San Francisco
shortly after those events:
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/beer1.jpg
Left to Right: death.incarnate.ida, IQ.Jesterr,
{iDA}MasterOfRelity, ida.temudjinni, SevilAlucard.
We spent a lot of time practicing, and endless hours of
practice started paying us back. We were not the best fragers yet, so we sucked
at open maps, especially where we needed two dedicated defenders. In fact, I
was the only dedicated defender in the team. We did much better at closed maps
like CTF-Football, CTF-Esprit, CTF-Maelstrom, CTF-Lucious and
CTF-DefiniteChance. We were ok at CTF-Thorns, but preferred not to play it as
well as CTF-Stadium and CTF-Bridge. Since our best shots did not want to play
D, I had to step up and take that role. Never enjoyed actually. J From other side, it
was a good school for me as a captain. True, defender is most stressful
position in the game. But on most maps we played, it was also the best post for
watching and controlling game. You may argue that freelancing is better
position for a captain, and you will be right too. It depends on the map. On
open maps (Thorns, Stadium, Bridge) D position actually give you more time to
live, you don't have to hide and camp on O side (you can't see game field while
you do that!) and also you have better view from D position.
We still lacked a second defender. For CTF-Thorns Suicidal
was kind enough to take D position and for other maps I was usually playing together
with MasterOfReality, who hated playing D from the bottom of his heart. J
And we started our winning streak. We beat both BAD, both IQ
teams (we played IQ teams 5 times in a row), became #3 and were ready for
challenge for #1 spot.
Another illustration. iDA team in November of 2003 (from the
LAN party in Fremont, CA):
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/iDA_LAN.jpg
Left to Right: SevilAlucard, ida.temudjinni, {iDA}HogsWild,
{iDA}KaiserSoze, ida.death.incarnate
Picture of all participators (expcept for ex {iDA}Rampage,
who had to leave party ealier):
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/LAN1115.jpg
One more beer gathering in Fairfield, CA (October/November
2003):
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/beer3_001.jpg
{iDA}Suicidal, ida.temudjinni, ida.death.incarnate
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/beer2.jpg
{iDA}Term2, ida.temudjinni, {iDA}HogsWild, ida.death.incarnate
and the last one group picture:
http://idaclan.org/files/photos/beer2_001.jpg
ida.death.incarnate, ida.temudjinni, IQ.Real_Dad, {iDA}Suicidal,
Too_Dam_Wide AKA WideLoad and {iDA}Term2
That's where common sense left some other teams who were
frustrated at losing games. What is blamed first when you lose a game? Right, the
lag. 100sp LGI ladder has been regular nonZP from the very beginning, and old
school players never wanted it switching to ZP. iDA members opposed that and in
fact majority of players did not like that move. However, vocal minority prevailed.
At the same time iDA planned a team split. We had 12 active
members and some of them had little game time in matches. We wanted to split
team into two full fledged but friendly clans.
Term2 and Doc wanted to take a lead in the second team. Core
of the first team would be the same: Hogs, death, temudjinni, MasterOfReality,
Suicidal, Vicious plus HDs. Split was successful. That was a good thing. Bad
thing was that switching to ZP happened basically at the same time. HDs and
Gunman did not want to play ZP, and they left official roster. Shortly before
that HDs brought one more friend to iDA. Atrytone was very solid all around
player with crazy aim and flag running skills. HDs and Atrytone played only two
matches together as iDA'ers. Fortunately, Atrytone agreed to stay on ZP ladder.
Clans that wanted to switch to ZP that bad (i.e. NBA and
DAM) did not know what struck them.
Clan #1 at that moment, MUTT left the ladder because they did not want
to play ZP either. DAM became #1 automatically and eventually lost top spot to
NBA. Shortly after that we beat DAM and became #2.
Ladder switched to ZP, we split into 2 teams, lost 2 members
instantly. We ended up having just 7 members. Nobody outside iDA cared about what's going on with us. Before
the match we discovered that HDs and Atrytone will not be able to help us. So
it felt like we were doomed. We lost best flag runner, best shot, and we're
going to play CTF-Football and CTF-Esprit, maps where HDs and Atrytone were the
best!
But we were finally playing for #1 and we were excited. Besides,
that was our core team of 5 people, who played and practiced from the day 1. I
don't remember all scores, but I remember how close those games were and how
tough and exhausting that match was. Does anybody remember what was the third
map we played actually? Bridge? CTF-Esprit and CTF-Football were played for
sure. Football – win 1:0, Esprit 2:1. Esprit: Suicidal and temudjinni
played D, me – freelancing, Vicious and MasterOfReality – O.
Vicious' solo flag run brought us a victory. Football: temudjinni – solo
D, MasterOfReality and Me – Middle, and Vicious with Suicidal – O. Suicidal
had flag run that was a key to the win on Football.
That's how we became #1. Amazing! Guys who started team,
started on the bottom of the ladder , ended up on top of the LGI ladder!
Ironically, switching to ZP helped us a lot. We were a California
based clan while other clans had members spread across US and Canada. iDA'ers
preferred to play on California based servers with low ping. We sucked badly on
East Coast or centrally located servers as we did not practice much with higher
ping. When we switched to ZP, our shots improved tremendously! ZP makes
shooting much easier. Especially on defense and if you remember, defense was
our Achilles heel.
Basically every map could be stalled with two good shooters
playing on D or in the middle of a map (depending on map configuration and
type). Very similar to how many games were won by some clans in UT2k4.
Our main opponents wanted to beat MUTT by eliminating lag
factor, but ended up making iDA beating them with their own weapon. J Isn't it funny?
Blaming lag is the last and worst thing that serious player
should do unless he/she wants to ruin his/her reputation. I'm so glad that our
UT99 and UT2k4 teams never did that!
Remark: It does not negate the fair ping ladder rule. Matches still should
be played on a server where average pings for both teams are as close as
possible.
Some said that #1 was a fluke, and iDA will not hold on at
#1 for long. Probably. We barely had enough players to play. So we had to go to
available LGI players and ask them to join us. If you remember, switching to ZP
made MUTT clan quit the ladder. At the same time, 3 of ex MUTT's still liked
LGI and wanted to keep playing. LazyBoy aka Fleas(ex HOC), Torment (ex IQ) AKA
Killer, and Ugly AKA Jolt (ex qf)
were kind enough to lend helping hand. That was a tremendous help. Needless to
say that Ugly was the best shot in the league, while Fleas was the most
experienced LGI player and arguably the best defender. For about 6-7 months our
lineup was Hogs, temudjinni, Vicious, Atrytone, Jolt, Killer, Lazyboy.
MasterOfReality and Suicidal by different reasons could not help us much in
matches in the end of 2005.
Another helping hand was lent by Slavik, he was an RGI player as well.
He helped us in couple matches while we were missing couple members. Thanks
Slav! We really appreciate your help!
In that period we lost #1 spot only once to KRU clan that
shortly came from RG ladder. In very intense game we underestimated fraging
abilities of KRU's and deserved the loss. Our revenge did not wait long. We
reclaimed #1 in next match.
UT2k4 Story Short
I'll try to make it shorter and focus more on analyzing what
was wrong with the clan and LGI community in general.
Somewhere in April of 2004 when we became #1 in UT99, 2k4
demo was released. We set up a demo ONS server right on the day of its release.
I remember us playing and having fun in ONS right after match with NBA for #1.
Our ONS server was packed 24h a day!
Several people from the server approached me asking to start
ONS iDA franchise. After discussion inside the clan we thought about giving it
a try, as some other members wanted to play ONS as well. Among those were
Vicious, temudjinni and Romeo/3Day. We also found a new guy, who agreed to
organize things. PrimalRage.
That's where things went somewhat wrong. I did not have much
time for ONS gaming. At the same time, nobody else fully understood how
difficult this game is and how much time organizational work takes. But we kept playing UT99 until the end of 2004. Essentially ONS is more time consuming game type than iCTF.
Needles to say that for 6v6 games clan should consist of 10-12 active members
and somebody needs to lead them in pubs, scrims, practices etc. It's a full
time job.
ONS team was not a disaster though. First scrims were not
pleasant and we lost few ladders matches. But we also had wins and grew as a
team. We were especially successful at 3v3 ladder matches. J
That's when Vicous and 3Day out of boredom switched demo server
to LGI. We actually considered to play LGI in 2k4, but eventually realized that
nobody in the old team was really hooked up. Addiction to the game is the first
step to dedication. I intentionally avoided temptation to build IG team. At the
point when 3Day set up LGI server, I was about to quit gaming completely as I
wanted to move in life and career.
Surprisingly to me, LGI demo was a big hit and drew the same
amount of people as ONS demo. 3Day and Vicious talked me into making a team
where 3Day was taking over organizational and recruiting duties.
So what was wrong with this picture?
First, we did not have a captain and leadership in the beginning.
3Day did a great job at recruiting people, but did not want to lead team in
practices, so he delegated that to me again. I really sucked at LGI 2k4 to be
honest and teaching people in that position was just plain stupid. Anyway, we
started a team and recruited really great talents like Rookie who eventually
became our 3d captain in May of 2004. When young recruits accustomed to the
clanning and gained skills, things went much better.
Second problem. We recruited TOO MANY people. Some of
recruits were too young.
Third problem. UT99 players from old team helped us but were
not dedicated to the team. We never had the same lineup for practice , scrim
and match. That really killed our team game. We got a weird mix of old schoolers
from UT99, young kids, older dudes and people in the middle with different
interests in life and completely different schedules. We were also
geographically spread. If you remember UT99 team was all California clan with
some exceptions.
Fourth problem. None of us had a great shot, except probably
for Breeze. Playing frag maps with poor shooting and strats = disaster. Only
maps we could play well were old UT99 maps like Football, Bollwerk and
Esprit.
Yes, at later stages we were packed with great talents and deadly shooters, but other teams improved
a lot as well, so we never had advantage in that department.
Fifth problem. We wanted to be competitive, so we needed a
core team and stable lineups for maps. Our rotation was too big. We used all
players even ONS ones in LGI matches. Stupid? No. Everybody wanted to play! Why
not!? It was fun, but had negative effect on match results. I accidently
discovered an old IRC log with captain of another clan that we were going to
play shortly. We were negotiating a ÒfairÓ server. My argument was that some of
our members could not play on the server, because their ping was too way high.
Those are not your best players, why do you care? Your best 5 ping just fine
there. - said another captain. We DO care in iDA about all players. All of
them will play., - my response. And we did use all available players in
rotation, while other team used only 6 out of 10 or even more.
Anyway, we were very close to take #1 and played 2 very
tough and close matches vs FTP. The last one was especially tough. FTP had to
recall retired players. Scores were 1:0, 2:1. My shot sucked, and we still could
not tell Ugly into playing matches, though he and Eyerate helped us in a scrim and few practices. With Ugly
on our side, FTP would not stand. :P But who could blame the guy who a) hated
UT2k4 that much, b) who was going to marry... our original founder Bossy?
Our best lineup was Rookie, Pup/Fuzz, Ya, Breeze and me,
where I was a weakest point. That was probably the best lineup we ever had.
Sixth problem. If you want to win #1, practice hard on your
aim before the match, not after. :)
In August/Spetember of 2005 Rookie and 3Day rebuilt team and
started it over, but it was also my third attempt to exit the game. I also
stopped bugging old school players. Except for Breeze and 3Day, all other
players (including Rookie) were essentially new recruits.
Again we played for #1 and failed that time. Why? Well, look
at the list of "Tips from Hogs" below. Some things just don't have
explanations actually. Luck, experience, confidence, aim. Everything is
important.
I missed the last match where iDA played BRU for #1 as I
came back from skiing too late for match. I don't think it would make any
difference, if I played. That lost moved iDA to the brink of extinction as
Rookie out of frustration decided to leave the clan.
At that time Breeze went back to UT99, 3Day got busy with
family life and I was going to start a family life myself. I got engaged in
January and married in June of 2006. It was a good time to leave the
competitive scene for third time. It turned out that iDA still had about 8
active members(!) and kept growing again. Still nobody wanted to take captains
duties. Amazingly enough, without any direction and practically with zero
competitive games, iDA kept being active as a clan until end of 2006. Thanks
Menace and other guys for keeping fun going. Again, amazingly enough we kept
scrimming and even beat those clans we could not beat in matches. It happens,
when you're playing just for fun without any obligations.
If I start saying thank you to all members who went through
iDA 2k4 team, I would probably miss many of them. More comprehensive list of ex
members is located at www.idaclan.org/members.shtml
Anyway, it was a fun ride. I would also like to say sorry to
those who think that I personally let down as a leader. I honestly wanted to
delegate leadership role to other people and leave active gaming. I failed, and
it was one of the real reasons why iDA did not become #1 again. I would have
either spend as much time on this game as I did in UT99 times or quit it
completely I guess. Sorry for inability to resolve in-clan issues. I did not do
my best.
On the bright side, iDA existed as an active clan for 4
years. I don't remember any other clans in 100sp LGI (and even RGI) that
existed for so long. All these years I met many great people and players. Learned
and lot and probably taught something too. I don't regret about time I spent
and dedicated to this game. Good times. Not sure about you, but I made a lot of
new friends in UT as well.
Tips from Hogs
For those who read through all this nonsense to this point
and who got here by accident. J
This is just a list of tips, rules and mistakes that iDA (and
other clans too) as a clan and me personally came across during our wild ride.
This should be useful for those who want to build a competitive clan from
scratch or thinking about joining one.
Tips for Captains
1.
Don't make clan big.
2.
Recruit rather a friend than just a skilled
player.
3.
Never rely on semi-dedicated players even
they're best in the business.
4.
Don't tolerate in-clan dramas and ask people
involved either chill out or leave immediately. However stand for clanmates
against external attacks.
5.
You can't be a friend with everybody, but try
your best to become one.
6.
Communication inside the clan is the key to
success. Stay in touch with clanmates.
7.
Running clan comprised of experienced players
and newbies are two different things. In the first case you may get away not
spending time for practicing and organizing things at all or doing that rarely.
However, never forget about practices and constantly improve team play even if
you're #1. In the clan of newbies your job... well.. will be like a real part
time job. No doubt experienced players bring more stability and results. However
building clan from scratch is more rewarding in the end... well, only if you
succeed at that.
8.
Be a good example to follow in everything. Your
skills should not be the best, but you should be good at many things.
9.
Don't put too much pressure on your gang. You
have to motivate, criticize, support, teach, insist, argue, but always listen
to people you're playing along. Too high expectation may kill your team in
minutes. Be reasonable and balance pressure and expectations.
10. You
actually have to babysit clan and its players entire day... Tough gig. :)
Tips any Players
1.
Practice, practice, practice. Know maps as your
own fingers. Work constantly on aim and communication during scrims.
2.
Don't worry about how much points you score in
match or even a pub game. You play CTF, not DM!
3.
Don't miss team practices. Remember that missing
a practice actually hurts other teammates, will let you down in a real match
and ruins your reputation.
4.
Respect others and help newbies! Never make fun
of those who have less skills than you. NEVER!
5.
Support community and follow rules of ladder,
pugs. It's important.
6.
Stay with the clan regardless results of a
match. Eventually you'll win if you're persistent and talented enough. Don't be
easily frustrated.
7.
Help your leader to organize things. One captain
is not enough for everything. You should help him/her.
8.
Be loyal to clan.
Extra stuff, don'ts and does
1.
Wanna be a respected player? Don't brag about
your wins. Instead support losing side.
2.
Don't promise something you can't achieve,
deliver or give. Simple, but many forget about that. Particularly,
don't promise to be #1 or wina game.
3.
Deduction
from #2 – Don't say that somebody else WILL or WILL NOT achieve something
as eventually you'll have to eat your own mouth. :)
4.
Another
deducation from #2 – If you promised something, do your best to achieve
that.
5.
Be self-critical, it
helps to improve yourself in all regards and also deserves respect from others.
6.
Deduction
from #5 – Learn on your own mistakes.
What was Wrong with LGI Community
Some observations...
Plain and simple fact: UT2k4 was not
a good game.
It was polished much better than UT2k3 or UT3, had good
backend and modders/mappers support. However, it did not go far away from UT2k3
in sense of gameplay. Player models were still huge and easy to shoot at any
distance, poorly animated and extra moves like double dodge just did not make
much sense. UT2k4 IG felt worse than in UT99 in general. Most old maps turned
into frag or camp fest. Boring hide&seek type of maps did not add more fun
to gameplay. Few new maps were designed with IG and UT2k4 specifics in mind.
Actually most mappers kept porting old UT99 maps to UT2k4, instead of trying to
come up with more playable maps adjusted to UT2k4 speed, size and moves.
Another interesting theory I've heard about IG in 2k4. Since
shooting in 2k4 is so much easier, average Joe could master fragging skills
much faster than in UT99. Many people keep getting motivated as long as they
get better and while they have room for skills to grow. Since it was much
easier in 2k4, people were getting bored with game much faster. Probably true.
If you want to hear all 1000 theories about why UT sucks, just go to
beyoundunreal.com forums. :)
About UT2k4 LGI community.
Couple demo servers on west coast did not cut the deal. It
was not enough for sustain growth, though iDA server was enough to found couple
clans including another version of ML2 – MD. MD was the only one that
lived for quite some time. There were other short lived clans that were formed
on iDA server as well. We don't count them though.
We all should say thank you to 3Day for setting up an LGI
server and letting others to recruit on iDA branded server. Without him, ladder
would close in a month after opening as it had only 2 active clans: FTP, BRU
and probably MX. We also need to say thank you to GIA who was chasing us and
pursuing us to join the ladder. He left the ladder shortly after we joined it.
Nobody can blame iDA for killing LGI as we brought to the
game practically every single player it could bring. Ex UT99, ONS and even reg
weapons players we knew, all came to play. Servers, drama, competition, we had
it all! We also did our best trying to involve RGI community, but alas
premature death of pugs killed the initiative in the very beginning.
We should not stand people who were bullying and making fun
of newbies on public servers. That's a big NO! You were a noob once too! Funny, now this moto shows up in UT3
splash screen.
The simplest way to kill a small gaming community is to
start scaring newbies away. To make game fun you have to follow some rules of
sanity and make sure that game is fun not only for you, but EVERYBODY ELSE! One
of such examples was aliasing and breaking rules during pugs. Sad, it was the
only place to learn how to play organized games outside scrims and matches.
Group of young self-centric folks ruined pugs pretty
quickly. They also scared away few ex UT99 and UT2k3 players who were thinking
about coming back to LGI, but after couple pugs they were not impressed with
level of maturity of 2k4 community. :(
That's where community and clan leaders should shown unconditional
intolerance to such behavior. Unfortunately, we were just crying and not taking
any actions. Pugs were over in few months after they started, but they were the
only place to improve team game and draw more people into competitive scene.
Supporting pub servers is very important. Outside of demo
servers, we did not have much action going on, unfortunately. Even RGI
community did not know much about what was going with LGI.
Again, bullies and butt-holes should NOT be tolerated as
much as cheaters. Period.
Bullying, double talks, flames, childish attitude, non
supportive nature of the community had its toll on popularity of the LGI mod in
general. Playhead count shrunk very quickly, faster than UT2k4 community was
shrinking in general. Sad. LGI in UT99 actually kept blooming when UT99 was
already dying. Big contrast!
Another banal thing. Be a GOOD SPORT
or else...
We were not perfect, but we never whined about lag or trash
talked during matches like some did. If we complained about something, it was
about things that are described in ladder or pug rules.
It's always a GG regardless game outcome and what you think
personally about your opponents. Unfortunately my collection of screen shots
with disrespectful comments before and after game is somewhat big in UT2k4.
Sad.
Hall of Shame
I had screens, forum links, IRC logs and demos with
butt-holes in action posted here. However, I decided to remove those as so much
time passed since then. There're no reasons to stir up the old stuff and be a
butt-hole myself.
In UT99 we actually had only one dude who made to the list
for bullying noobs and pushing them away from the game. All cross-clan brawls,
flames and hot discussions (not necessarily involving girls) were pretty much
natural for a big family as we were. Yes, uncivilized conflicts took place, but
maturity prevailed in the end. Nobody was hurt and ladder did not die because
of conflicts. It died naturally and peacefully. :(
There're few people from 2k4 community who deserved to be
mentioned in this list. I believe they know whom I mean exactly. I honestly
believe they grew up now and feel sorry for words they said.
Special thanks to one UT2k4 clan that did not report a loss
on OGL replacing it with a forfeit win just because one dude wanted to keep his
unbeatable reputation intact. We actually had two(!) unreported wins on OGL,
and one match was reported incorrectly with correction in favor of losing team.
Hard to imagine such thing in UT99!
P.S. Sorry for formatting issues. This doc was written in MS Word. Its
HTML converter sux.
And one more thing...
GG's and Have fun!
