Just dropped by and was pleasantly surprised at the development of FF. I saw the site when it first launched, with a few gren pics and so on, and wasn't entirely convinced. Now I can see there's been a lot of thought and effort put into the whole shebang. Keep it simple and as playable as the old one, minus some of Valves famous 'improvements', and you'll defininitely see a lot of oldskool mongs returning to the TF scene - me included!
My online gaming roots started back with playing Doom 2 over a modem with my mate. Then Quake arrived, and my PC/connection couldn't really take it at the time, so online play was canned until Quake 2 arrived, and then my multiplayer gaming life began to take off. In the beginning, this mainly consisted of running around pub servers, with ridiculous aliases, and finding that you could win a lot by ducking and shooting people in the kneecaps because nobody used +mlook back then (apart from those who knew what they were doing). Quake 2 lasted a little while, and then came that relatively unknown FPS that a few people played.
In fact, I might never have played it at all. I bought SiN instead a few weeks before HL was released, and I was really enjoying stuff like hacking into the computers using DOS commands, and getting that powerup in multiplayer that made you run round as an enraged beast. Luckily, working in a games shop at the time had its perks, and my old boss rather excellently let me take a copy of Half-Life home. The single player lasted all of five minutes (I STILL haven't completed HL1 to this day) and thus began the HL DM era, where I played countless hours getting used to the engine and generally having a whale of a time.
Then in early '99, again perhaps a lucky break, my brother simply would not shut up regarding a new teamplay mod he'd read about that was coming out in around a week. Naturally, I checked it out, and was instantly wowed by the thought of being able to operate as a specialised unit within a team. It seemed as if I had discovered a whole new way of gaming, and an exciting step forward from the recently introduced TDM mode for HL DM, which I enjoyed thoroughly.
When TFC was finally released, I was instantly hooked. I began dabbling on American 32 player WON servers, playing Engineer mostly as my 33.6k modem was being utterly reamed, giving me around 200-300 ping. Building SGs above the door on Rock2 was a surefire way to earn a bundle of kills, and soon I was finding (yes, it's hard to believe) even more imaginitive positions to put my faithful lag-dodging frag machine.
Then one day, I was fragging on the WON servers as normal, and a chap approached me about joining a clan. At this point in time, I really had no idea about the whole picture behind clans, apart from looking at a few badly-made websites when I played Quake 2. I agreed to join, and was curtly asked to change my name... the clan was called DBZ, and were all named after Dragonball Z characters. Not knowing much at all about DBZ, apart from it was a Japanese cartoon, I agreed, and so arose KriLLiN[DBZ]!
Albeit, not for long. This lead to me seeing the clan again a whole 3 times, and also discovering that episodes of the said cartoon basically involved lots of shouting about fighting, 10 yards of walking, and a punch thrown if you were lucky, all within a 30 minute period! But that was besides the point - I was now absolutely inspired by the whole business of clans.
Now I had realised, that *shock horror* pings to UK servers were a whole lot better than their American equivalents. And, by a cruel twist of fate, I happened to stumble across the greatest feckwits ever to grace the world of TFC... no, not [VVV]. I had found the server of [IOU].
On asking for a trial, I was greeted with a sharp refusal and sheperded to an equally matched clan in the feckwittery stakes, [AH]. They accepted my trial offer, and I proceeded to play, on a public server, in the ramp room as Engineer and racked up the whopping total of 24/4. This incredible display of record-breaking talent earned me a place in my first 'real' clan, and the beginning of my 5-something-year TFC journey. And I wasn't some Japanese cartoon character any more, oh no, my current name is in fact still the same thing I chose all those years ago.
As this story is getting rather long, here's a quicker account of what happened. [AH] began to dwindle, and we merged with [IOU]. [IOU] continued on strong for a while, but the emergence of Everquest completely killed the clan. Left and joined [RA] with Astraban, but my phonebill became immense and I was somewhat inactive.
Later, I joined =TGC= as [RA] folded, but some [IOU] returned and we merged with ]IB[ (formerly +DK+). This clan became [IOU]/]IB[, and then IAM. I left =TGC= and stuck with IAM. for a while, then left them too as we just couldn't get the members, and were shafted numerous times. Joined 750 with a couple of IAM. members, stayed for a while, played friendlies for [MP] also. Left 750, joined A&I who folded, joined [BCY]. Was invited by USCMr., found out how utterly pointless dual clanning is, left [BCY]. Had some great times with USCMr., sarcy, moaning bastards! Left due to exam inactivity, and joined [ERA] to try playing Soldier instead of Medic. Left [ERA] after some disagreements and joined [-M8-]. Here my TFC clanning ends, finally leaving as a result of the spam and inbalance that had cursed the game for such a long time.
What's my story since TFC? More recently I have been playing CS for a couple of years (even being part of the DW.cs team for a little while :P) and now since moving to France, I have hooked up with some people to play a few clan games. I even tried ETF a couple of months ago, but it just didn't hold the charm of TFC - plus there's no damn handhelds!
Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to FF, all the best in its creation
