tBs - My First Clan

Today I want to regale you with a story of my past gaming glory, before Eve... before WoW... Back in the days of 2002 I joined a clan.... Now, I've read Ready Player One over and over, I do not get this whole "I don't clan" ethos in that writing because back then being in a Clan was the thing.

Guilds and corps in my later gaming life are very different things, this clan was cut throat.  We were

{tBs}

The Butchers

This is where I met my long time co-killer Chaplain (wave, hi chap!) for we were together the scourge of Avalanche.

This is in the Half Life engine mod "Day of Defeat", and it didn't look this good (this is from the later Source version); all important in this game play was the tick rate of the server, most serious clans hosted their own servers and they tweaked them to the max.

I remember our server admin was a chap called Twister, but that's about all, he never much liked any input about the status of the server.  He didn't play very often, so it was always quite curious that us experienced players were not welcomed into giving him feed back; let me tell you as a now professional game developer and server administrator listen to your expert users, they will know when things are off, they may speculate, but they will know and help you spot issues up front they're a resource, use them, never dismiss them.

Anyway tBs were well known, playing on the European Enemy Down ladder we were very often top 10 in Europe, one time top three, playing on again off again matches against the other members of the ladder; we were effectively the second most active clan behind "Scotlands Finest Highlanders" or SFH.

At one time I myself organised our own "Butchers League" and for four weeks in the summer of 2003 I ran the website and helped organise five guest teams to play pre-arranged matches in a knock-out for the win.  SFH won.  Yes, SFH won the tBs League.  That was fine.

What wasn't fine was the reaction of another clan OAP or "Old Aged Players" they kicked off big time, they could not connect their players to the server; they didn't do any preparation up front and get really really angry, really for no reason, when they were disqualified from a match they simply could not raise five players to compete in.  They were offered a different match slot, but they even turned up to that with only four players and a bad attitude.

Within tBs ourselves there were a bunch of interesting characters, but lets talk more about the game.

Day of Defeat

I loved that game, or mod, my favourite map was Avalanche, a wholly unfair map for the allied side (and yes, I admit I enjoyed playing the German side more) but Chaplain and I were demons of the Church.

The Church, pictured above sat on the flank of the map, entered via the smashed bell tower at the top or the rubble strewn wall at the bottom, the actual doors were closed.  Inside you had two side by side, but slightly offset rooms on the ground, then rubble streaming up to a mezzanine level, with then either the option to climb a ladder to the exposed but dominating tower top, or to carry on up and through a wall to the tiled rooves beyond.

As an axis player you began from the top side, coming into the church via the tower.

As an allied player you began on the ground and were forced up through the rubble.

Defending that tunnel route was critical to holding the map, you controlled access to the opposite side for the allied players, you pinned them in their spawn.

Or you held the tower and dominated the center.

It was probably not well thought-out in design terms, but it was such a wonderful piece of level spacing I loved it.

My best memory came playing another clan, we as axis and they as allies.  For some ungodly reason they had a machine gunner run right up into my door way... and it was my door way, I had gone from spawn, swept over the roof into the church and down in sprint fashion time.  This guy thought he could take my church and lay MG fire on my team from my church tower?!  Nope.  A burst of MP40 and he was down, but do was his MG.

Now it was not often ever we took the MG to the church, it wasn't practical in the close-quarters environment SMG was the usual call to arms.  But this day I could not resist, I lay in the rubble pounding their own MG fire down on them.  Their only hope to remove me was to pre-cook a grenade and time it perfectly to explode in my face.  They did not do this; my score was astronomical with chaplain bringing me a reload of ammo and they throwing himself into fire to respawn and bring me yet more.

That was our church on Avalanche.

A few other maps floated our boat, but were were just so good at that map, specialist even that when we played on open public servers we were often accused of cheating, being so good someone is convinced you are cheating is just the ultimate thrill.  I've only managed it through good strong team work.

The other tBs characters though:

Weeman - constantly threatening to self-harm, a disturbed kid to say the least.

Hopper - Cheating chap, he blanked chaplain and I after botting in WoW (and obviously so) undermining any respect we had for this "skills".

Remus - an older guy, interesting fellow to talk to.

Twister - the hard put server admin, who didn't want to know really about our issues.

Dodi - a nice lad who came and went.

Mako - Not the shark he thought he was.

and of course "The Butcher" himself, Butcher being his surname... Always in charge, but never there.

I learned a lot from this, my first clan, I learned about team work, about trusting others and appointing them correctly and appropriately, all from a computer game, backed up with my martial experience in karate I believe I'm quite rounded in letting people both prove and earn their reward and garnering them with praise for a job well done; whilst also being even handed.

All experience for a computer game, and they call is a game; well, isn't life just one big game too?