Laughing-Stork
Veteran XV
Writing the back story of sleepy has inspired my inner tpk/jm5k/suicidetaxi. So, I've been going through old TWL and TW threads and looking through some of my files to piece together the history of Tribes LT since I started playing it in the Summer of 2005. This will be from my POV because that's how I remember it.
If you guys see anything wrong or think of anything I missed, just let me know and I'll edit it in. This might remain a work in progess.
This will basically be my story + some of opsayo and sleepy + a little dare. I can't remember the early part of dare's story enough to write anything.
2005
June 12th, 2005, I decided to start playing Tribes again. I had just graduated HS and had a lot of time on my hands due to no job + no car.
I actually have the stat log saved from my first map -
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/5959/oi8k.png
As you can see, pure dominance.
By September, I had joined a 5vs5 LT team led by Stellar known as "Own/Kill" tag - Ok. We only showed up for two matches and lost both of them. Ok. also had a team on the 10vs10 ladder, which combined with our LT team, had over 40 members at one point.
SS of Own/Kill inter-squad-scrim -
http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/5297/5wzg.png
This is basically the beginning of the Texas Rangers and the end of Kings of Tribes. Other notable teams would be - Undertow, Blood Eagle, The Diamond Sword, Laugh Out Loud.
Eventually, Stellar decided to take the best players from Own/Kill and make a separate clan called "InSaNe KiLlErS" aka .InK. The roster was comprised of Stellar, Mischa, Arcane, Waterboy aka doink, Malice, Asilay, Stork, Hipno, and a few others. We were sponsored by some kind of gaming clan and had a server provided for us known as "Insane Asylum". Stellar went AWOL and was arrested + sentenced to a year in jail before we played our first match. We ended up with a record of 4-5 from Nov-05 to Jan-06. Never once beating the #1 or #2 teams.
The ladder would have looked something like this -
#1 - Texas Rangers(dawar/lix/non/thorin/rufus/revird)
#2 - Undertow(jjwtay/pennywise/desertstorm/suga/cringe/knight)
#3 - Ink(arcane/mischa/stork/asilay/doink)
#4 - Blood Eagle(terra/arma/bravo/lukie/adroit/spiderman)
#5 - Diamond Sword(fishstix/elly/ and some doods)
#6 - Independent Badasses(posr/krayvok/ uhhhhhhhhh)
#7 - Laugh Out Loud(linc/reg/chain2r/zepto/killswitch/luck-n-a-half?)
^probably not 100% correct. There were some other teams that came and went but not really worth mentioning.
Servers of 2005 would have been -
The Onion Patch
Veterans Central
Two IBA servers
The Candy Shop
Not Another Server
Notable matches -
Texas Rangers vs Kings of Tribes -
TWL: Demo Archive
I believe Andrew made the final LastHope release - 1.30 in 2005 too.
2006
2006 started with the end of the Texas Rangers. Full team history can be found here - TWL: Team Match History
13-0 until they failed to show against Untouchable $oldiers.
This was also the end for my team, InK. I think we just got tired of being mediocre. Blood Eagle and Undertow were still around along with Dance(remade Laugh Out Loud) and a few other teams.
In February, LordKermit brought KoV back to TWL with sLaM, Anemix, Dutch, Woohoo, Mr. Hitler, and some others I'm forgetting. I don't believe sLaM ever showed. With a stacked KoV on the ladder, the interest of some of the active elites was sparked. Darksoul made the second version of Elite Hackers aka -e.name- and joined the ladder. The roster was darksoul/lix/fett/japanda/cruelvenom/dawar and for some reason that I still cannot explain, me. I was without a team and was known as a very active, but not very good, player. I had some skill but was completely lacking in the thinking part of the game. I believe I was recruited to just show. They could beat any team 4vs5 but needed me to abide by the TWL rules and have 5 people show. I played LO and basically just dueled the enemy defense.
On 3/1/2006, The Elite Hackers played KoV and the match ended with an Elite Hackers win.
Fett demo here - TWL: Demo Archive
KoV didn't play a match after that due to lack of interest but the two teams scrimmed a few times. I still have an old SS from one of the scrims. - http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/2514/yje4.png
Elite Hackers went on to win 9 matches in a row vs the rest of the ladder. It's important to note that Blood Eagle didn't play them once.
Elite Hackers and Texas Rangers were probably the worst teams to scrim against. Not only would you get beat 8-0 or 8-1 nearly every map, they would beat you playing down a man or two. They beat CDC many times, even with me playing, 4v5. I saw at least one time where they beat them 3vs5. The scores were much closer, which is probably why CDC members claim their team was much better than they really were, but they often pulled out the W. They did this vs InK and BE| as well. Lix would load a second tribes.exe and join the server as silent kill and w/e tag they were using. He would switch back and forth between tribes windows to make it seem you were playing against 5. He would get 1000+ ratings on each client. You can say its unsportsmanlike, but looking back I think it's pretty hilarious.
I ended up leaving Elite Hackers shortly after beating KoV due to them being inactive as far as scrimming goes. I had learned something from them though. Not how to play, but mainly how bad I actually was at the game. I had no idea what was expected of an LO until I played with them. Up until then I had just been trying to kill dudes so my cappers could grab. Then I would hide somewhere until the enemy capper appeared. But they wanted me to camp and get on the home d, which I didn't think was very important.
It's now May of 2006. Elite Hackers are 9-0. I had just joined Misty Mountain Unit aka Mt., which was basically the best members of InK and a few other players. This is when Benediction joined the ladder. I believe Benediction's initial roster was non/dutch/anemix/chump/thorin/tsi/darkforce/etc. Basically any elite that wasn't on Elite Hackers.
The ladder is made up of Elite Hackers/Benediction/Mist Mountain/Blood Eagle/JEWS(undertow + flipper and some others)/vt`(laugh out loud)/Sea Rats/Tical
Misty Mountain once again failed to beat the undertow crew(although it was really close) or any of the top teams and ended with a record of 5-3.
The main event of 2006 was Benediction vs Elite Hackers. It was the last epic match of TWL. Both meetings ended with Benediction narrowly escaping with a win. Matches and demos can be found here - TWL: Demo Archive and here - TWL: Demo Archive
Chump demo on youtube - -e.- vs b| - Chump - LO - DX - YouTube
No team won a map by more than a cap. Pretty awesome.
The losses to Benediction was the end for Elite Hackers. The members ended up joining Benediction to create the most stacked team in LT history. Benediction ended up going 7-0 before dropping the ladder. At this point, the remaining teams were all the mid-level teams that couldn't beat the elites.
Blood Eagle/Undertow crew/Sea Rats/Ink Crew/Linc's team
The Ink crew disbanded and the members joined other teams. I went to Linc's team because to make sure I would be in somebody's top 5. Blood Eagle recruited Chump/Masterace/Rosco/Arcane. They ended up becoming the #1 team, which led to the explosion of Terra's ego, which led to a troll team called "Black Elephants" who's tag was the same as Blood Eagle's - BE|. I forget who exactly was on the troll team but I know nonreg and carn were behind it. Since Blood Eagle didn't challenge any of the #1 teams, The Black Elephants challenged them just to ruin their ego. The Black Elephants stomped Blood Eagle and a lot of drama + good times went down. Black Elephants dropped the ladder and Blood Eagle took back #1.
At this point, me and nonreg had become football-talk pals. Non had decided to make it a point to keep BE from staying at #1. I was on one of linc's team's known as The 1982 State Champs, which consisted of me/linc/reg/chain2r/kevin/some others. I had been on a few of linc's teams while I was in-between variations of the Ink crew teams. We had actually stunned team "We <3 Beer" and beat them in 2 maps. We were 3-0 and headed towards challenging BE for #1. Nonreg then convinced Linc to allow him+carn and phantasma to join 1982 and help teach the team to become better. Non suggested I should stop playing LO and play something that suited my skill-set a little better. So, Non started teaching me how to play home d. I quickly picked up the basics as far as stand d and clearing campers goes. I really struggled with holding the flag though. I was a bad passer and catcher and could only kill things on standoffs. But I was a perfect match for Nonreg's LO style. He would often end up holding the flag and escorting while I kept the base clear. We challenged "Sippin Purple" and beat in 3 maps for the #2 spot. Then we challenged BE for #1. We beat them in 2 maps to become #1. We mainly won due to playing on a Dallas server that bumped chump's ping from 16 to 60.(which made a huge difference) Chump with a regular ping would have made quite a difference. At the time he was nearly unstoppable.
Demos here - TWL: Demo Archive
Non, Carn, and Phant dropped the team after the match. We recruited jjwtay and mischa to help keep the team active. We lost the next two matches to Sea Rats and Blood Eagle before dropping the ladder. Blood Eagle regained #1 shortly after.
It's now November of 2006. A team called "MONSTER SQUAD" joined the ladder made up of dutch/fett/lix/thorin/ice. Monster squad went on to smash Blood Eagle and take #1 but lost their next match to "The Dreamers" which was another Nonreg and Carn team. Demos here - TWL: Demo Archive
In December of 2006, Members of Ink and Undertow combined to make the greatest mediocre team of the late-gen era called "Whats My Stats" tag |wms. Two teams which beat everyone but the elite teams. The team was stork/arcane/mischa/jjwtay/zepto/lukie/desertstorm/malice/couple of others.
We came back in typical fashion to last 2 matches. 1 match to stomp Blood Eagle and 1 to lose to The Dreamers. And then we dropped the ladder. Demos of Dreamers match - TWL: Demo Archive
The servers around during this time would have been -
Hackington(SolidSnake)
The Sanctuary(Nonreg)
Grand Central(Unleashed)
BLT(Terra)
2006 was also when Andrew released a list of players he had caught running lasthope bypasses. Names can be found here - TWL: Lasthope bans.
I can't find the original thread atm. :/ The big surprise was Thorin. I'm not sure if he ever admitted to anything. My guess is that he was using terp due to his 108 ping.
2007
At this point, The Dreamers are #1 and The Sleepers are #2. I don't know who was on The Sleepers other than Flipper. The Dreamers dropped the ladder and another team called "Nope Sri Yer Mom" joined the ladder to beat The Sleepers. Idk who was on either team. Dawar founded nope sri, so I think it was the usual suspects. They went inactive after beating The Sleepers.
JJwtay formed "Jews Against The Degradation of Black Congresswomen" tag - =JEW=. This was once again former members of Ink and Undertow. We beat Linc's team which was playing as "Irrelevant", lost to The Sleepers, beat Irrelevant again, and then beat Sippin Purple in the last LT match to ever happen on TWL. I'm not sure if The Sleepers had dropped and we became #1 or not.
I had become an above average player. I was a decent home d, but wasn't getting much play time at it. I didn't play home D on any of my TWL teams after 1982 State Champs. I was a decent chaser as well, but getting picked to chase never happened back then unless you were elite. I was by no means, a good player. I still had trouble getting picked in pickups. But I had begun learning the thinking part of the game rather than just being somebody who could kill well.
Nonreg made the announcement on 3/11/2007 that the ladder would be closing and the final match was played on 3/20/2007. The announcement can be found here - TWL: Tribes 1
4 months later, Sierra announced they would be terminating the tribes master server. Link here - Sierra announces termination of Tribes master servers. - Serious Discussion - TribesOne Community
This is when the community made the switch to bugs master server.
It's now mid-2007, Hackington and The Sanctuary were taken down. Shithole remains as the only popular base server. For the rest of the year, the tribes competitive community disappeared. I pubbed shithole pretty often and only ever saw dare, snow, and poncho. The main irc channel #thecommunity, had less than 10 idlers. This is what pub's looked like - http://imageshack.us/a/img183/8224/73603917te1.jpg
Tribes was looking pretty dead. Shithole was very active, but only with really bad pubbers. There were no pu's due to no server to host them on. This put my progress on hold. But it did give me a chance to get better at chaining due to constantly chasing in pubs. This is before 1.40, so my 60 ping chaingun wasn't much of a threat. It was definitely my weakest point as far as skill is considered.
2008
Early in 2008, SolidSnake returned to tribes and got tired of playing in shithole. He brought back hackington in efforts to create a better pub server. This immediately brought back the majority of the competitive community. Pickups started back up and I was at war with many players trying get picked. Here is the first SS I have from a pu on 1/25/2008 - http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1954/1vig.png
Nonreg came back as well and started helping me get picked by either vouching for me or picking me himself. We would play together on vent a lot and it really helped me improve at a fast pace. I hadn't had a chance to play home D in over a year. But I had become better in all other aspects of the game. I still wasn't the best passer, but I was getting the flow of the game down.
The big news of 2008 was a new ladder. Lost had a friend of his make and host a ladder for us. Thorin promised Lost a spot on his team if Lost came through with a ladder. When the time came to create the team, Lost was snubbed because Nonreg had convinced Thorin and the rest of the team to recruit me instead.(LOL) Lost was heartbroken to say the least.
I think the ladder had ~5-6 teams on it. I can only remember 4 of them though.
#1 - Hawkbats - Nonreg/Thorin/Lix/Rufus/Dare/Stork/Chump
#2 - Copyright - Masterace/Flipper/Lost/Bizzy/Snapple/Carnova/Korn
#3 - SeaRats - Milk-Man/Danky/Acro/Flipper/maybe Rtcll
#4 - Mode - Adroit/Gavin/Arma/V/ maybe JJ
I believe Copyright and Hawkbats both went 2-0 vs the other teams before they squared off for #1. There was some back and forth drama between the teams. Thorin/Lix/Non all got on vent and went over what I would be doing/looking for/how to play them/etc a couple of times. I think they were slightly nervous to play them with me on home. We didn't scrim much from what I can remember, so we talked on vent a lot instead. We also watched some demos together from time to time. This was basically my coming out as a good player. I wasn't any where near the level of my teammates and would have had a hard time making any of the other team's starting 5. So this was really working out for me in multiple ways.
Copyright vs Hawkbat demos from my pov - http://www.sooflytribes.us/2008-7-28-HawkbatvsCopyright-Stork.zip
Chump demo on youtube - -=h_b=- vs [.c] - Chump - DX - YouTube
These are the earliest demos I have. It's pretty cool to watch how basic my role was and yet how effective it was.
DX was close but SH was a blowout. Lix and Thorin basically beat Copyright by themselves on SH. Lix and Chump both put up 2300+ ratings on DX. These are guys not only owning players, but owning great players. I think a lot of the late-gen guys have no idea why people think Lix and Chump are both two of the best to ever play. Mainly because they haven't been around or in lix's case, they don't care enough to play hard. For instance, this was probably the last time lix chaingunned.
With Hawkbats beating Copyright, the ladder died. Everybody knew there was no beating Hawkbats at that point and other teams had no motivation to fight for second. No other elite team formed to take on HB and the ladder sat still for months.
It's now August 2008, shortly after the hb vs c match. Pickups are very popular and both hackington and sanctuary have active pubs. During the summer months, two players have started watching pickups in observer. These two are sleepy and undercover lover. At first I thought sleepy was a player known as CrazyIvan aka the worst player I could think of and I had no idea who undercover lover was. "ucl" said he was an old base player and said he was on a team with me but wouldn't tell me his name. Finally, he admitted he was rugbug, a guy who was on the 10vs10 Own/Kill roster back in 2005. I remembered that he talked a few times back in the day. He usually mentioned how much he didn't like LT and how he thought base was better. I took him for some older, angry, white dude, but now I'm finding out he was younger than me and asian. @_@
First known screenshots of sleepy and opsayo -
7/28/2008 - sleepy playing - http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/4893/gd85.png
8/20/2008 - opsayo talking in chat - http://imageshack.us/a/img833/2041/zmk1.png
8/21/2008 - opsayo playing - http://imageshack.us/a/img196/2671/ovfq.png
11/2/2008 - sleepy and opsayo playing at the same time - http://imageshack.us/a/img202/9717/jubv.png
sleepy and opsayo became extremely active players at this point. sleepy was getting help from nonreg and opsayo was watching demos/talking to elite players about the game. sleepy had a better rep than opsayo, mainly because opsayo, even though he was new to LT, wasn't afraid to call someone out. Basically, anybody that got picked 8-10 and played poorly, felt the wrath of opsayo. He had a hard time getting picked. His 124 ping pre-1.40 wasn't helping him a bit. When he played, I thought he played pretty well for somebody as new to LT as he was. He couldn't kill anything, but he did his job for the most part. sleepy's problem was being brand new to tribes. His 28 ping helped him out, but he was far behind in terms of skill compared to most of the later-round pickup players. Nonreg helped him get playing time tho. opsayo had a rough time getting picked. He became worthy of a late pick, but his reputation and relationships with the community really hurt his chances of getting to play. In the community's eyes, opsayo was a newbie who couldn't kill and had no competition experience. In opsayo's eyes, the late round players were only picked over him because of their name, not their ability. I actually agreed with him but never said anything because I didn't agree with his actions.(even tho he had a great point)
The two new-comers stuck around for the rest of 2008. Both making leaps in ability and experience. Both of them pm'd me pretty regularly asking for tips and talking about tribes. I was wearing an elite tag and getting picked pretty early in pickups, neither of them knew just how new I was to this deal. I would tell them pretty much everything I knew and what else I had learned since playing on an elite team. Most of the time I felt like I was talking out of my ass. I was learning how to adjust from playing home d on an elite team to playing home d in a pickup with mixed players. I had the mentality that everyone was dumb and should learn how to play with me and that I shouldn't have to play a style that made up for their lack of knowledge. I was far from a home d master, but you couldn't tell me that. I wouldn't escort cappers if my base was camped. I was fully committed to stopping the camp, which I had learned from Non. It was winning games, but I wasn't winning friendly points with any of the cappers. Eventually, I learned how to balance clearing the base and escorting at the same time.
2009
The year of the pickup. The year of snow vs copa. This year was pretty awesome from a pickup standpoint. A lot of the elites were active throughout the year and a lot of other players emerged as good players. There was probably a pickup every single week of the year. They became almost a nightly deal. Everyone would get on vent while playing too.
There was a divided community though. Snow had emerged as the most dominant chaser in the community. He was tough to beat and was playing like nobody had ever played before. The only player who could keep up to him as a chaser was copacetic. The two of them were the constant #1 and #2 picks and faced each other many times. They broke 2k ratings almost every map. Snow's chaingun was the best I had ever seen. Snow's ability was questioned by many of the elites. Most of them said he was terping(which was considered a cheat at the time) and a few said he was walling. But, snow also had his fair share of supporters who said the elites were just mad somebody was owning them. They argued his dueling skill and aim had transferred to LT, as he was known as the best dueler at the time. This led to a lot of drama and even a ban by Nonreg of snow from The Sanctuary. Which led to even more drama which was eventually cleared up by yours truly. (if any of you remember "the court" we had with me as the judge and KillaJ as the bailiff, this was that moment) Snow was unbanned and the drama calmed down. Although, snow was caught later on with some suspicious demos and most of the community believe he was the first to use "superhudbot". Superhudbot is basically a hacked version of the radarhud that allows you to see enemy player iffs @ all times. Still a great player, but not as dominant as some thought.
Skillz brought back 10vs10 pickups for the first time in forever. We had many months of Sunday night pickups usually lasting for up to 5 maps. The server would fill up in a no time and so would vent. It was an interesting clash of old, washed up, base players and newer LT players trying to play together. It was a lot of fun and gg's.
I only have demos from me going disc only on spawn maps unfortunately. Any glimpse of real late-gen base play is lost. :/ Here are some SS's of the pickups -
http://imageshack.us/a/img824/3906/61disc.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img265/3775/discrecord.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img215/4584/baseizez.png
Some of the screenshots might be from early 2010 idk.
Pretty decent group of players imo.
Here are some other SS's from the LT pickups -
http://imageshack.us/a/img594/2710/mlsw.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img41/4048/fnxh.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/3267/rl79.png
2009 also brought the news of playtribes.com. InstantAction first announced PlayTribes in March 2009, along with their acquisition of the Tribes intellectual property. Wiki - PlayTribes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This was huge news to the community. There was a lot of hope and concern surrounding the news. Some hoping it would revive the game, others concerned it would kill the game. Andrew was the lead dog behind the project. Jaymz and [KoV]Justin were also on board. NoFiX, bugs, mj, greyhound, plasmatic, and a few others were beta testers.
There wasn't many news updates throughout the project. By late 2009, people were starting to believe the project was dead.
Pickups carried on the whole year. opsayo and sleepy were getting more and more playing time. opsayo's bad rep stuck with him and he would still get snubbed from time to time. Overall they were both becoming competent and reliable players. They both capped for the most part. sleepy was still trying to get skiing down tho. I once had a hilarious demo of him cratering on almost every route he ran. sleepy was smarter than he was skilled. I personally thought opsayo had the edge between the two. opsayo could ski and hold on standoffs pretty well. Holding was sleepy's nemesis. They both camped a lot, which was their main upside. opsayo was pretty much a flag hog and didn't worry about killing too often. I was ahead of both of them, but they were starting to catchup. I didn't have the chain to become elite.(as you can see in the screenshots) I could chase cg well enough to be good, but close range/dueling cg was pretty rough for me. I had a ping disadvantage to nearly every main pickup player. I don't like using it as an excuse, but later on I found out how much of a disadvantage it really was.
2009 was also when opsayo ruined vanster's life. vanster is still mad at me for not banning opsayo.
By late 2009, me and opsayo were pushing each other's abilities further and further. He would figure out a small trick or a better way of doing something and I would then learn how to stop it/react to it. Which he would then learn how to beat again. Whatever we learned by trying to beat each other, worked against the rest of the community even better. I had a pretty awesome understanding of the timing and flow of the game due to playing against opsayo so much. He ran almost every good route there was. The constant repetition got me to a point when I could guess when certain odd routes were coming. I learned how to stop the back east cap on SH, DS side, just by knowing the timing of enemy cappers was funky. It's a sneaky/cheap route that most people have forgotten by now. I also got pretty good at stopping the back E on HB, DS side, which is also tricky. I started out playing stand D on the easier side/spots to stop cappers. I had come to the point where I could let my D partner have the easier side, and still stop the main routes from the harder side/spots. I'm not sure if anyone has ever put the effort into stand D more than I.
2010
Perhaps the last good year for Tribes. I don't remember the early part of 2010 very well. It blends with 2009 in my head. But something huge had happened and nobody new. opsayo had acquired the latest beta version of playtribes.com known as Tribes 1.40.655. Initially he laid low, didn't over chain, but it was obvious to me and a few others that something had changed about him. I knew Andrew was trying to create a "32 ping feel" for playtribes. I also knew opsayo had many talks with Jaymz about the project. I suspected he either had the client or had a new lasthope bypass that allowed him to "terp". To this day opsayo claims to have never told anyone the truth behind how he got 1.40.
He eventually told me that he had it. He offered it to me and I declined at first.(I didn't want people claiming I had an unfair advantage etc etc) I think the next day I asked him for it, but he declined this time. He didn't want people to notice that, I too had become suddenly much better with the chaingun.
A week or so later after admitting that he had it and after SolidSnake calling him out for it and demanding that he release it, opsayo released the Tribes 1.40.655 to the public. I can't find the initial thread, maybe dare deleted it? I think he released it on 3/1/2010, but I'm not positive. Of course this threw the community into a crazy state. People hating it, people loving it. People writing scripts, people discovering bugs, etc etc. Suddenly everybody was chaingunning, which caused most of the hate towards it. Some said it was a cheat, others said it leveled the playing field. Some people actually quit the game because of it.
It took me over a month to get used to it. I had a hard time re-learning the leads for each weapon. Eventually I fixed a strange fps issue I had and it all clicked. I was putting up stats that I had never even come close to. Constant ratings over 2000, one 3k and many 2500+. Examples -
http://imageshack.us/a/img59/1662/f78a.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/5984/z943.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img89/7420/duc.png
and this gem - http://imageshack.us/a/img197/8923/ma3l.png
the 3k game, still my highest rating - http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/8296/48f5.png
At this point, sleepy and opsayo are hitting their strides and having no trouble getting picked in pickups. opsayo was unleashing the beast now that everyone had 1.40. He held nothing back and quickly became a very dominant force.
In the beginning of the summer months, Coza started the signups for a tournament. Signups weren't huge, but, we had a pretty nice turnout of vets. List of teams can be found here - Tribes Draft Tournament by TribalCozA - TribalWar Forums
Matches and scores here - Tribes Draft Tournament Official Ladder + Scores by TribalCozA - TribalWar Forums
Fett's team was clearly the dominant team. Due to inactivity and drama, some of the other teams fell apart. My team stayed active and turned out to be much better than I expected. I chased this tourney rather than play my usual home d. Milk-Man was a great home anyways so it made sense I played chase.
The finals were held on 7/29/2010, and ended up being Fett vs Coza. Fett had a great roster and was easily the favorite. The maps were SC/HB/DX in that order. Fett chose SC, mainly because my team didn't have much experience playing it. Coza chose HB, because we were undefeated on it. SC played out as expected with Fett's team capping out quickly. HB was a back and forth game that went into OT. Fett actually sat sleepy on this map. We won in OT and forced map 3. DX started out looking to be another capout for Fett's team. Fett had chosen to sit out and let sleepy play. They had a 5-2 lead at one point. My team rallied and tied the game 6-6 with 1:20 left and got the go ahead cap with 26 seconds left. We held on for the rest of the map and won it.
My DX demo is on youtube - 2010 LT Tourney Finals - Stork - Chase - DX - YouTube
opsayo's great post-game thread featuring player interviews - [OFFICIAL] Congratulations to 2010 Tribes Tournament Winners! by opsayo - TribalWar Forums
Tribes went back to pickups, although I think it got pretty slow after the tourney. I was tired of pickups at that point. I really enjoyed playing on a team and competing against others. I got interested in playing T2 at this point. The T2 community had an active 7vs7 ladder and what looked to be a decent community. Just for the heck of it, Fett/Lix/Me/Opsayo/Dare/Anemix/Dutch made a 7vs7 team and challenged the worst team possible. Except for dutch and dare, none of us had ever played T2, but we felt confident in our ability. Dutch ended up no-showing for the match and dare was too drunk or high to even talk. We grabbed HeXy and codeman, who were both on the #1 team at that time and played. Sadly, even though we had leads on both maps, we lost and dropped the ladder in shame and disgust. But, this only further increased my interest in playing competitive T2. So, sometime around Sept/Oct I saw a thread on TWL with a guy wanting to know if anybody was interested in joining his team. I pm'd him, he said sure, and gave me the team's private irc channel. I joined and found Fettuccine in the room. The two of us went on to become the greatest players the game has ever seen. Lix played too but nobody cares.
I still played T1 more often than T2. I didn't care to pub or pickup in T2 so I only played in scrims and matches. I wasn't nearly as active in T1 than I had been for the last couple of years.
On October 23, 2010, it was announced that InstantAction sold the Tribes IP to Hi-Rez Studios, which canceled any future development on PlayTribes. They announced Tribes Universe the next day. The community kinda knew playtribes was dead. So the shock was somebody actually wanting the Tribes IP. But, Tribes Universe sounded terrible so there wasn't much hope coming from the T1 community.
2011
2011 began with me slightly inactive in T1. I played in pickups occasionally. I was pretty busy playing in the T2 10 year anniversary tournament, which was sponsored by Hi-Res. Winner would receive pimp-tight tribe t-shirts and a beta invite to their new game. Hi-Res had put Tribes Universe on hold and announced Tribes Ascend. Many neckbeards and aspergs gathered to drool over whether or not the game should be like t1, t2, tv, chess, or power pete and whether it should have gay vehicles, target laser, dinosaurs, naked women. Many conversations that gave me headaches.
Coza came back to start a ladder and asked me to be the head admin with him. 5-6 teams signed up and some laid back competition had started. Most of the elites didn't join a team. Pickups were decent though. Tribes was pretty alive in late-gen terms. Unfortunately, Tribes was about to be back stabbed.
I logged onto irc one day and was pm'd by opsayo and disk. Both telling me that NoFiX had made hacks for the 1.40 client, he gave them to Alarik, who gave them to Disk and Schmerz, and Disk gave them to Sleepy. Sleepy pm'd me shortly after I heard all of this because we still talked about tribes. I asked him if he had cheats and he denied only to admit it a few minutes later. He then said he deleted them and wanted them patched out. This news reached KillaJ, who then started recording sleepy from observer. KillaJ gave me a demo which had evidence of sleepy using hacks and I decided to ban sleepy from playing on the ladder. Maverick then decided to ban sleepy from his server. Sleepy responded by threatening to release the hacks that he supposedly deleted. Maverick didn't budge and sleepy released the hacks.
Now that I sit back and think about it, I have a feeling sleepy released the cheats under the impression that me and opsayo already had them. As he said to disk in one of their pm's - "I know opsayo and stork have it." Maybe he thought threatening to release would make me flip out as if I was about to lose my advantage. Perhaps this is just a crazy conspiracy.
The hacks can still be easily found today. With no anticheat and nobody willing to make one, tribes became a hack fest. I had played against many greats in the past couple of years and suddenly joe schmo could pull of things even they couldn't. I lost my motivation to play. There was no point in playing well because it would only make the hackers think you were hacking as well. Which in turn would make them believe their cheating was justified. I played from time to time but slowly faded away. Many other players stopped playing as well. Some just stopped caring all together. opsayo stopped playing for the most part.
The Tribes Ascend closed beta started on my birthday if I remember correctly. I played it a few times whenever possible. I ran into Fire a couple times and he said he was my biggest fan. I also battled flip flop proj and greaseburger zprotoss a few time.
2012
I barely played in 2012, same for opsayo. I also stopped playing T2. I got married early in March and stopped gaming for a while. Dare and Sleepy still played. Most of the good players were gone or barely playing. Dare eventually got tired of being accused of hacking and started openly hacking to prove a point. He wasn't hacking before that, but he wanted to show people what its like when he does hack. For those of you who care, Dare and Snow were probably the two best players when hacking, sleepy would be third.
The first attempt of using HMCrasher as a form of anticheat came in the fall. The idea didn't catch on and we abandoned it believing it was too easy to hack.
Tribes Ascend was released April 12th. The aspergs and beardednecks gathered once again to discuss class and weapon balance and whether inheritance should somehow make crocodiles appear on the enemy stand.
I didn't play it much. It sucked and I knew it would continue to suck. I tried playing on lix and fett's team a few times but they only let ppl who showed 4 everything play how gay.
2013
2013 started with the second attempt of using HMCrasher. Opsayo implemented it on his server - BabyLT and sKILLz started hosting HMCrasher only pickups. Shortly afterwards, opsayo released AfterHope, a 1.40 anticheat. I started playing in pickups whenever I had the time. It was nice to see Tribes back in the state that made it a great game.
With the new anticheat, some players suggested we have another tourney, so sleepy actually did something good for a change and started the signups list. Teams can be found here - Tribes 1.41 Summer Tourney Draft Results by The Morning Star - TribalWar Forums
This was a one day tourney, which we found out the week of and we found out the time of the tourney the day before. Totally awesome communication and planning by sleepy.
After much sitting around and trying to gather 5 people for each team, the tourney began. Results can be found here - Tribe 1.41 summer tourney results by The Morning Star - TribalWar Forums
It was gg's and fun times. The finals were never played because nobody really cared.
Here we are now. blah blah blah
Summary
I sucked 05-07, got decent in 08, then made big steps in 09 and 2010.
Opsayo spent a lot of time in obs in 08 and parts of 09 but became a monster when he started getting picked regularly + 1.40. Sleepy was buttass in 08 and parts of 09, got decent in 2010, became a big fat hairy cheater in 2011. Dare was decent in 05, played sparingly until 08(i think?), then played big dog for the rest of the years.
The late-gen years were pretty much elites/vets coming and going over and over. Pickups and some tourneys.(some tourneys that I didn't even mention) Big egos, big chainguns, good times, big cheats later in the game. There's a lot that I'm forgetting or leaving out. But basically that was it.
I'm glad I was able to play this game even in its "dead" state. I had more fun in this game than I would have in any of the games that have come out since 2005. I could have spent the time instead 2 get super good @ COD or BF, but then I would just be an even bigger asperg than I am now. I guess I could have stopped playing tribes and done something more useful with my life, like learn how to do something besides play home D. But w/e, I had fun.
This is every demo that I have set aside throughout the years from my collection. Each demo has it's own statlog so you can checkout if you wanna watch it or not. It spans from hawkbat demos in 08 up till demos from playing with Afterhope. You can see my progression as well as the community's from these. As well as get a taste as to what it was like to have played late-gen Tribes LT. Enjoy! - http://www.sooflytribes.us/Stork%20Demos.zip
If you guys see anything wrong or think of anything I missed, just let me know and I'll edit it in. This might remain a work in progess.
This will basically be my story + some of opsayo and sleepy + a little dare. I can't remember the early part of dare's story enough to write anything.
2005
June 12th, 2005, I decided to start playing Tribes again. I had just graduated HS and had a lot of time on my hands due to no job + no car.
I actually have the stat log saved from my first map -
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/5959/oi8k.png
As you can see, pure dominance.
By September, I had joined a 5vs5 LT team led by Stellar known as "Own/Kill" tag - Ok. We only showed up for two matches and lost both of them. Ok. also had a team on the 10vs10 ladder, which combined with our LT team, had over 40 members at one point.
SS of Own/Kill inter-squad-scrim -
http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/5297/5wzg.png
This is basically the beginning of the Texas Rangers and the end of Kings of Tribes. Other notable teams would be - Undertow, Blood Eagle, The Diamond Sword, Laugh Out Loud.
Eventually, Stellar decided to take the best players from Own/Kill and make a separate clan called "InSaNe KiLlErS" aka .InK. The roster was comprised of Stellar, Mischa, Arcane, Waterboy aka doink, Malice, Asilay, Stork, Hipno, and a few others. We were sponsored by some kind of gaming clan and had a server provided for us known as "Insane Asylum". Stellar went AWOL and was arrested + sentenced to a year in jail before we played our first match. We ended up with a record of 4-5 from Nov-05 to Jan-06. Never once beating the #1 or #2 teams.
The ladder would have looked something like this -
#1 - Texas Rangers(dawar/lix/non/thorin/rufus/revird)
#2 - Undertow(jjwtay/pennywise/desertstorm/suga/cringe/knight)
#3 - Ink(arcane/mischa/stork/asilay/doink)
#4 - Blood Eagle(terra/arma/bravo/lukie/adroit/spiderman)
#5 - Diamond Sword(fishstix/elly/ and some doods)
#6 - Independent Badasses(posr/krayvok/ uhhhhhhhhh)
#7 - Laugh Out Loud(linc/reg/chain2r/zepto/killswitch/luck-n-a-half?)
^probably not 100% correct. There were some other teams that came and went but not really worth mentioning.
Servers of 2005 would have been -
The Onion Patch
Veterans Central
Two IBA servers
The Candy Shop
Not Another Server
Notable matches -
Texas Rangers vs Kings of Tribes -
TWL: Demo Archive
I believe Andrew made the final LastHope release - 1.30 in 2005 too.
2006
2006 started with the end of the Texas Rangers. Full team history can be found here - TWL: Team Match History
13-0 until they failed to show against Untouchable $oldiers.
This was also the end for my team, InK. I think we just got tired of being mediocre. Blood Eagle and Undertow were still around along with Dance(remade Laugh Out Loud) and a few other teams.
In February, LordKermit brought KoV back to TWL with sLaM, Anemix, Dutch, Woohoo, Mr. Hitler, and some others I'm forgetting. I don't believe sLaM ever showed. With a stacked KoV on the ladder, the interest of some of the active elites was sparked. Darksoul made the second version of Elite Hackers aka -e.name- and joined the ladder. The roster was darksoul/lix/fett/japanda/cruelvenom/dawar and for some reason that I still cannot explain, me. I was without a team and was known as a very active, but not very good, player. I had some skill but was completely lacking in the thinking part of the game. I believe I was recruited to just show. They could beat any team 4vs5 but needed me to abide by the TWL rules and have 5 people show. I played LO and basically just dueled the enemy defense.
On 3/1/2006, The Elite Hackers played KoV and the match ended with an Elite Hackers win.
Fett demo here - TWL: Demo Archive
KoV didn't play a match after that due to lack of interest but the two teams scrimmed a few times. I still have an old SS from one of the scrims. - http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/2514/yje4.png
Elite Hackers went on to win 9 matches in a row vs the rest of the ladder. It's important to note that Blood Eagle didn't play them once.
Elite Hackers and Texas Rangers were probably the worst teams to scrim against. Not only would you get beat 8-0 or 8-1 nearly every map, they would beat you playing down a man or two. They beat CDC many times, even with me playing, 4v5. I saw at least one time where they beat them 3vs5. The scores were much closer, which is probably why CDC members claim their team was much better than they really were, but they often pulled out the W. They did this vs InK and BE| as well. Lix would load a second tribes.exe and join the server as silent kill and w/e tag they were using. He would switch back and forth between tribes windows to make it seem you were playing against 5. He would get 1000+ ratings on each client. You can say its unsportsmanlike, but looking back I think it's pretty hilarious.
I ended up leaving Elite Hackers shortly after beating KoV due to them being inactive as far as scrimming goes. I had learned something from them though. Not how to play, but mainly how bad I actually was at the game. I had no idea what was expected of an LO until I played with them. Up until then I had just been trying to kill dudes so my cappers could grab. Then I would hide somewhere until the enemy capper appeared. But they wanted me to camp and get on the home d, which I didn't think was very important.
It's now May of 2006. Elite Hackers are 9-0. I had just joined Misty Mountain Unit aka Mt., which was basically the best members of InK and a few other players. This is when Benediction joined the ladder. I believe Benediction's initial roster was non/dutch/anemix/chump/thorin/tsi/darkforce/etc. Basically any elite that wasn't on Elite Hackers.
The ladder is made up of Elite Hackers/Benediction/Mist Mountain/Blood Eagle/JEWS(undertow + flipper and some others)/vt`(laugh out loud)/Sea Rats/Tical
Misty Mountain once again failed to beat the undertow crew(although it was really close) or any of the top teams and ended with a record of 5-3.
The main event of 2006 was Benediction vs Elite Hackers. It was the last epic match of TWL. Both meetings ended with Benediction narrowly escaping with a win. Matches and demos can be found here - TWL: Demo Archive and here - TWL: Demo Archive
Chump demo on youtube - -e.- vs b| - Chump - LO - DX - YouTube
No team won a map by more than a cap. Pretty awesome.
The losses to Benediction was the end for Elite Hackers. The members ended up joining Benediction to create the most stacked team in LT history. Benediction ended up going 7-0 before dropping the ladder. At this point, the remaining teams were all the mid-level teams that couldn't beat the elites.
Blood Eagle/Undertow crew/Sea Rats/Ink Crew/Linc's team
The Ink crew disbanded and the members joined other teams. I went to Linc's team because to make sure I would be in somebody's top 5. Blood Eagle recruited Chump/Masterace/Rosco/Arcane. They ended up becoming the #1 team, which led to the explosion of Terra's ego, which led to a troll team called "Black Elephants" who's tag was the same as Blood Eagle's - BE|. I forget who exactly was on the troll team but I know nonreg and carn were behind it. Since Blood Eagle didn't challenge any of the #1 teams, The Black Elephants challenged them just to ruin their ego. The Black Elephants stomped Blood Eagle and a lot of drama + good times went down. Black Elephants dropped the ladder and Blood Eagle took back #1.
At this point, me and nonreg had become football-talk pals. Non had decided to make it a point to keep BE from staying at #1. I was on one of linc's team's known as The 1982 State Champs, which consisted of me/linc/reg/chain2r/kevin/some others. I had been on a few of linc's teams while I was in-between variations of the Ink crew teams. We had actually stunned team "We <3 Beer" and beat them in 2 maps. We were 3-0 and headed towards challenging BE for #1. Nonreg then convinced Linc to allow him+carn and phantasma to join 1982 and help teach the team to become better. Non suggested I should stop playing LO and play something that suited my skill-set a little better. So, Non started teaching me how to play home d. I quickly picked up the basics as far as stand d and clearing campers goes. I really struggled with holding the flag though. I was a bad passer and catcher and could only kill things on standoffs. But I was a perfect match for Nonreg's LO style. He would often end up holding the flag and escorting while I kept the base clear. We challenged "Sippin Purple" and beat in 3 maps for the #2 spot. Then we challenged BE for #1. We beat them in 2 maps to become #1. We mainly won due to playing on a Dallas server that bumped chump's ping from 16 to 60.(which made a huge difference) Chump with a regular ping would have made quite a difference. At the time he was nearly unstoppable.
Demos here - TWL: Demo Archive
Non, Carn, and Phant dropped the team after the match. We recruited jjwtay and mischa to help keep the team active. We lost the next two matches to Sea Rats and Blood Eagle before dropping the ladder. Blood Eagle regained #1 shortly after.
It's now November of 2006. A team called "MONSTER SQUAD" joined the ladder made up of dutch/fett/lix/thorin/ice. Monster squad went on to smash Blood Eagle and take #1 but lost their next match to "The Dreamers" which was another Nonreg and Carn team. Demos here - TWL: Demo Archive
In December of 2006, Members of Ink and Undertow combined to make the greatest mediocre team of the late-gen era called "Whats My Stats" tag |wms. Two teams which beat everyone but the elite teams. The team was stork/arcane/mischa/jjwtay/zepto/lukie/desertstorm/malice/couple of others.
We came back in typical fashion to last 2 matches. 1 match to stomp Blood Eagle and 1 to lose to The Dreamers. And then we dropped the ladder. Demos of Dreamers match - TWL: Demo Archive
The servers around during this time would have been -
Hackington(SolidSnake)
The Sanctuary(Nonreg)
Grand Central(Unleashed)
BLT(Terra)
2006 was also when Andrew released a list of players he had caught running lasthope bypasses. Names can be found here - TWL: Lasthope bans.
I can't find the original thread atm. :/ The big surprise was Thorin. I'm not sure if he ever admitted to anything. My guess is that he was using terp due to his 108 ping.
2007
At this point, The Dreamers are #1 and The Sleepers are #2. I don't know who was on The Sleepers other than Flipper. The Dreamers dropped the ladder and another team called "Nope Sri Yer Mom" joined the ladder to beat The Sleepers. Idk who was on either team. Dawar founded nope sri, so I think it was the usual suspects. They went inactive after beating The Sleepers.
JJwtay formed "Jews Against The Degradation of Black Congresswomen" tag - =JEW=. This was once again former members of Ink and Undertow. We beat Linc's team which was playing as "Irrelevant", lost to The Sleepers, beat Irrelevant again, and then beat Sippin Purple in the last LT match to ever happen on TWL. I'm not sure if The Sleepers had dropped and we became #1 or not.
I had become an above average player. I was a decent home d, but wasn't getting much play time at it. I didn't play home D on any of my TWL teams after 1982 State Champs. I was a decent chaser as well, but getting picked to chase never happened back then unless you were elite. I was by no means, a good player. I still had trouble getting picked in pickups. But I had begun learning the thinking part of the game rather than just being somebody who could kill well.
Nonreg made the announcement on 3/11/2007 that the ladder would be closing and the final match was played on 3/20/2007. The announcement can be found here - TWL: Tribes 1
4 months later, Sierra announced they would be terminating the tribes master server. Link here - Sierra announces termination of Tribes master servers. - Serious Discussion - TribesOne Community
This is when the community made the switch to bugs master server.
It's now mid-2007, Hackington and The Sanctuary were taken down. Shithole remains as the only popular base server. For the rest of the year, the tribes competitive community disappeared. I pubbed shithole pretty often and only ever saw dare, snow, and poncho. The main irc channel #thecommunity, had less than 10 idlers. This is what pub's looked like - http://imageshack.us/a/img183/8224/73603917te1.jpg
Tribes was looking pretty dead. Shithole was very active, but only with really bad pubbers. There were no pu's due to no server to host them on. This put my progress on hold. But it did give me a chance to get better at chaining due to constantly chasing in pubs. This is before 1.40, so my 60 ping chaingun wasn't much of a threat. It was definitely my weakest point as far as skill is considered.
2008
Early in 2008, SolidSnake returned to tribes and got tired of playing in shithole. He brought back hackington in efforts to create a better pub server. This immediately brought back the majority of the competitive community. Pickups started back up and I was at war with many players trying get picked. Here is the first SS I have from a pu on 1/25/2008 - http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1954/1vig.png
Nonreg came back as well and started helping me get picked by either vouching for me or picking me himself. We would play together on vent a lot and it really helped me improve at a fast pace. I hadn't had a chance to play home D in over a year. But I had become better in all other aspects of the game. I still wasn't the best passer, but I was getting the flow of the game down.
The big news of 2008 was a new ladder. Lost had a friend of his make and host a ladder for us. Thorin promised Lost a spot on his team if Lost came through with a ladder. When the time came to create the team, Lost was snubbed because Nonreg had convinced Thorin and the rest of the team to recruit me instead.(LOL) Lost was heartbroken to say the least.
I think the ladder had ~5-6 teams on it. I can only remember 4 of them though.
#1 - Hawkbats - Nonreg/Thorin/Lix/Rufus/Dare/Stork/Chump
#2 - Copyright - Masterace/Flipper/Lost/Bizzy/Snapple/Carnova/Korn
#3 - SeaRats - Milk-Man/Danky/Acro/Flipper/maybe Rtcll
#4 - Mode - Adroit/Gavin/Arma/V/ maybe JJ
I believe Copyright and Hawkbats both went 2-0 vs the other teams before they squared off for #1. There was some back and forth drama between the teams. Thorin/Lix/Non all got on vent and went over what I would be doing/looking for/how to play them/etc a couple of times. I think they were slightly nervous to play them with me on home. We didn't scrim much from what I can remember, so we talked on vent a lot instead. We also watched some demos together from time to time. This was basically my coming out as a good player. I wasn't any where near the level of my teammates and would have had a hard time making any of the other team's starting 5. So this was really working out for me in multiple ways.
Copyright vs Hawkbat demos from my pov - http://www.sooflytribes.us/2008-7-28-HawkbatvsCopyright-Stork.zip
Chump demo on youtube - -=h_b=- vs [.c] - Chump - DX - YouTube
These are the earliest demos I have. It's pretty cool to watch how basic my role was and yet how effective it was.
DX was close but SH was a blowout. Lix and Thorin basically beat Copyright by themselves on SH. Lix and Chump both put up 2300+ ratings on DX. These are guys not only owning players, but owning great players. I think a lot of the late-gen guys have no idea why people think Lix and Chump are both two of the best to ever play. Mainly because they haven't been around or in lix's case, they don't care enough to play hard. For instance, this was probably the last time lix chaingunned.
With Hawkbats beating Copyright, the ladder died. Everybody knew there was no beating Hawkbats at that point and other teams had no motivation to fight for second. No other elite team formed to take on HB and the ladder sat still for months.
It's now August 2008, shortly after the hb vs c match. Pickups are very popular and both hackington and sanctuary have active pubs. During the summer months, two players have started watching pickups in observer. These two are sleepy and undercover lover. At first I thought sleepy was a player known as CrazyIvan aka the worst player I could think of and I had no idea who undercover lover was. "ucl" said he was an old base player and said he was on a team with me but wouldn't tell me his name. Finally, he admitted he was rugbug, a guy who was on the 10vs10 Own/Kill roster back in 2005. I remembered that he talked a few times back in the day. He usually mentioned how much he didn't like LT and how he thought base was better. I took him for some older, angry, white dude, but now I'm finding out he was younger than me and asian. @_@
First known screenshots of sleepy and opsayo -
7/28/2008 - sleepy playing - http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/4893/gd85.png
8/20/2008 - opsayo talking in chat - http://imageshack.us/a/img833/2041/zmk1.png
8/21/2008 - opsayo playing - http://imageshack.us/a/img196/2671/ovfq.png
11/2/2008 - sleepy and opsayo playing at the same time - http://imageshack.us/a/img202/9717/jubv.png
sleepy and opsayo became extremely active players at this point. sleepy was getting help from nonreg and opsayo was watching demos/talking to elite players about the game. sleepy had a better rep than opsayo, mainly because opsayo, even though he was new to LT, wasn't afraid to call someone out. Basically, anybody that got picked 8-10 and played poorly, felt the wrath of opsayo. He had a hard time getting picked. His 124 ping pre-1.40 wasn't helping him a bit. When he played, I thought he played pretty well for somebody as new to LT as he was. He couldn't kill anything, but he did his job for the most part. sleepy's problem was being brand new to tribes. His 28 ping helped him out, but he was far behind in terms of skill compared to most of the later-round pickup players. Nonreg helped him get playing time tho. opsayo had a rough time getting picked. He became worthy of a late pick, but his reputation and relationships with the community really hurt his chances of getting to play. In the community's eyes, opsayo was a newbie who couldn't kill and had no competition experience. In opsayo's eyes, the late round players were only picked over him because of their name, not their ability. I actually agreed with him but never said anything because I didn't agree with his actions.(even tho he had a great point)
The two new-comers stuck around for the rest of 2008. Both making leaps in ability and experience. Both of them pm'd me pretty regularly asking for tips and talking about tribes. I was wearing an elite tag and getting picked pretty early in pickups, neither of them knew just how new I was to this deal. I would tell them pretty much everything I knew and what else I had learned since playing on an elite team. Most of the time I felt like I was talking out of my ass. I was learning how to adjust from playing home d on an elite team to playing home d in a pickup with mixed players. I had the mentality that everyone was dumb and should learn how to play with me and that I shouldn't have to play a style that made up for their lack of knowledge. I was far from a home d master, but you couldn't tell me that. I wouldn't escort cappers if my base was camped. I was fully committed to stopping the camp, which I had learned from Non. It was winning games, but I wasn't winning friendly points with any of the cappers. Eventually, I learned how to balance clearing the base and escorting at the same time.
2009
The year of the pickup. The year of snow vs copa. This year was pretty awesome from a pickup standpoint. A lot of the elites were active throughout the year and a lot of other players emerged as good players. There was probably a pickup every single week of the year. They became almost a nightly deal. Everyone would get on vent while playing too.
There was a divided community though. Snow had emerged as the most dominant chaser in the community. He was tough to beat and was playing like nobody had ever played before. The only player who could keep up to him as a chaser was copacetic. The two of them were the constant #1 and #2 picks and faced each other many times. They broke 2k ratings almost every map. Snow's chaingun was the best I had ever seen. Snow's ability was questioned by many of the elites. Most of them said he was terping(which was considered a cheat at the time) and a few said he was walling. But, snow also had his fair share of supporters who said the elites were just mad somebody was owning them. They argued his dueling skill and aim had transferred to LT, as he was known as the best dueler at the time. This led to a lot of drama and even a ban by Nonreg of snow from The Sanctuary. Which led to even more drama which was eventually cleared up by yours truly. (if any of you remember "the court" we had with me as the judge and KillaJ as the bailiff, this was that moment) Snow was unbanned and the drama calmed down. Although, snow was caught later on with some suspicious demos and most of the community believe he was the first to use "superhudbot". Superhudbot is basically a hacked version of the radarhud that allows you to see enemy player iffs @ all times. Still a great player, but not as dominant as some thought.
Skillz brought back 10vs10 pickups for the first time in forever. We had many months of Sunday night pickups usually lasting for up to 5 maps. The server would fill up in a no time and so would vent. It was an interesting clash of old, washed up, base players and newer LT players trying to play together. It was a lot of fun and gg's.
I only have demos from me going disc only on spawn maps unfortunately. Any glimpse of real late-gen base play is lost. :/ Here are some SS's of the pickups -
http://imageshack.us/a/img824/3906/61disc.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img265/3775/discrecord.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img215/4584/baseizez.png
Some of the screenshots might be from early 2010 idk.
Pretty decent group of players imo.
Here are some other SS's from the LT pickups -
http://imageshack.us/a/img594/2710/mlsw.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img41/4048/fnxh.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img713/3267/rl79.png
2009 also brought the news of playtribes.com. InstantAction first announced PlayTribes in March 2009, along with their acquisition of the Tribes intellectual property. Wiki - PlayTribes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This was huge news to the community. There was a lot of hope and concern surrounding the news. Some hoping it would revive the game, others concerned it would kill the game. Andrew was the lead dog behind the project. Jaymz and [KoV]Justin were also on board. NoFiX, bugs, mj, greyhound, plasmatic, and a few others were beta testers.
There wasn't many news updates throughout the project. By late 2009, people were starting to believe the project was dead.
Pickups carried on the whole year. opsayo and sleepy were getting more and more playing time. opsayo's bad rep stuck with him and he would still get snubbed from time to time. Overall they were both becoming competent and reliable players. They both capped for the most part. sleepy was still trying to get skiing down tho. I once had a hilarious demo of him cratering on almost every route he ran. sleepy was smarter than he was skilled. I personally thought opsayo had the edge between the two. opsayo could ski and hold on standoffs pretty well. Holding was sleepy's nemesis. They both camped a lot, which was their main upside. opsayo was pretty much a flag hog and didn't worry about killing too often. I was ahead of both of them, but they were starting to catchup. I didn't have the chain to become elite.(as you can see in the screenshots) I could chase cg well enough to be good, but close range/dueling cg was pretty rough for me. I had a ping disadvantage to nearly every main pickup player. I don't like using it as an excuse, but later on I found out how much of a disadvantage it really was.
2009 was also when opsayo ruined vanster's life. vanster is still mad at me for not banning opsayo.
By late 2009, me and opsayo were pushing each other's abilities further and further. He would figure out a small trick or a better way of doing something and I would then learn how to stop it/react to it. Which he would then learn how to beat again. Whatever we learned by trying to beat each other, worked against the rest of the community even better. I had a pretty awesome understanding of the timing and flow of the game due to playing against opsayo so much. He ran almost every good route there was. The constant repetition got me to a point when I could guess when certain odd routes were coming. I learned how to stop the back east cap on SH, DS side, just by knowing the timing of enemy cappers was funky. It's a sneaky/cheap route that most people have forgotten by now. I also got pretty good at stopping the back E on HB, DS side, which is also tricky. I started out playing stand D on the easier side/spots to stop cappers. I had come to the point where I could let my D partner have the easier side, and still stop the main routes from the harder side/spots. I'm not sure if anyone has ever put the effort into stand D more than I.
2010
Perhaps the last good year for Tribes. I don't remember the early part of 2010 very well. It blends with 2009 in my head. But something huge had happened and nobody new. opsayo had acquired the latest beta version of playtribes.com known as Tribes 1.40.655. Initially he laid low, didn't over chain, but it was obvious to me and a few others that something had changed about him. I knew Andrew was trying to create a "32 ping feel" for playtribes. I also knew opsayo had many talks with Jaymz about the project. I suspected he either had the client or had a new lasthope bypass that allowed him to "terp". To this day opsayo claims to have never told anyone the truth behind how he got 1.40.
He eventually told me that he had it. He offered it to me and I declined at first.(I didn't want people claiming I had an unfair advantage etc etc) I think the next day I asked him for it, but he declined this time. He didn't want people to notice that, I too had become suddenly much better with the chaingun.
A week or so later after admitting that he had it and after SolidSnake calling him out for it and demanding that he release it, opsayo released the Tribes 1.40.655 to the public. I can't find the initial thread, maybe dare deleted it? I think he released it on 3/1/2010, but I'm not positive. Of course this threw the community into a crazy state. People hating it, people loving it. People writing scripts, people discovering bugs, etc etc. Suddenly everybody was chaingunning, which caused most of the hate towards it. Some said it was a cheat, others said it leveled the playing field. Some people actually quit the game because of it.
It took me over a month to get used to it. I had a hard time re-learning the leads for each weapon. Eventually I fixed a strange fps issue I had and it all clicked. I was putting up stats that I had never even come close to. Constant ratings over 2000, one 3k and many 2500+. Examples -
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and this gem - http://imageshack.us/a/img197/8923/ma3l.png
the 3k game, still my highest rating - http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/8296/48f5.png
At this point, sleepy and opsayo are hitting their strides and having no trouble getting picked in pickups. opsayo was unleashing the beast now that everyone had 1.40. He held nothing back and quickly became a very dominant force.
In the beginning of the summer months, Coza started the signups for a tournament. Signups weren't huge, but, we had a pretty nice turnout of vets. List of teams can be found here - Tribes Draft Tournament by TribalCozA - TribalWar Forums
Matches and scores here - Tribes Draft Tournament Official Ladder + Scores by TribalCozA - TribalWar Forums
Fett's team was clearly the dominant team. Due to inactivity and drama, some of the other teams fell apart. My team stayed active and turned out to be much better than I expected. I chased this tourney rather than play my usual home d. Milk-Man was a great home anyways so it made sense I played chase.
The finals were held on 7/29/2010, and ended up being Fett vs Coza. Fett had a great roster and was easily the favorite. The maps were SC/HB/DX in that order. Fett chose SC, mainly because my team didn't have much experience playing it. Coza chose HB, because we were undefeated on it. SC played out as expected with Fett's team capping out quickly. HB was a back and forth game that went into OT. Fett actually sat sleepy on this map. We won in OT and forced map 3. DX started out looking to be another capout for Fett's team. Fett had chosen to sit out and let sleepy play. They had a 5-2 lead at one point. My team rallied and tied the game 6-6 with 1:20 left and got the go ahead cap with 26 seconds left. We held on for the rest of the map and won it.
My DX demo is on youtube - 2010 LT Tourney Finals - Stork - Chase - DX - YouTube
opsayo's great post-game thread featuring player interviews - [OFFICIAL] Congratulations to 2010 Tribes Tournament Winners! by opsayo - TribalWar Forums
Tribes went back to pickups, although I think it got pretty slow after the tourney. I was tired of pickups at that point. I really enjoyed playing on a team and competing against others. I got interested in playing T2 at this point. The T2 community had an active 7vs7 ladder and what looked to be a decent community. Just for the heck of it, Fett/Lix/Me/Opsayo/Dare/Anemix/Dutch made a 7vs7 team and challenged the worst team possible. Except for dutch and dare, none of us had ever played T2, but we felt confident in our ability. Dutch ended up no-showing for the match and dare was too drunk or high to even talk. We grabbed HeXy and codeman, who were both on the #1 team at that time and played. Sadly, even though we had leads on both maps, we lost and dropped the ladder in shame and disgust. But, this only further increased my interest in playing competitive T2. So, sometime around Sept/Oct I saw a thread on TWL with a guy wanting to know if anybody was interested in joining his team. I pm'd him, he said sure, and gave me the team's private irc channel. I joined and found Fettuccine in the room. The two of us went on to become the greatest players the game has ever seen. Lix played too but nobody cares.
I still played T1 more often than T2. I didn't care to pub or pickup in T2 so I only played in scrims and matches. I wasn't nearly as active in T1 than I had been for the last couple of years.
On October 23, 2010, it was announced that InstantAction sold the Tribes IP to Hi-Rez Studios, which canceled any future development on PlayTribes. They announced Tribes Universe the next day. The community kinda knew playtribes was dead. So the shock was somebody actually wanting the Tribes IP. But, Tribes Universe sounded terrible so there wasn't much hope coming from the T1 community.
2011
2011 began with me slightly inactive in T1. I played in pickups occasionally. I was pretty busy playing in the T2 10 year anniversary tournament, which was sponsored by Hi-Res. Winner would receive pimp-tight tribe t-shirts and a beta invite to their new game. Hi-Res had put Tribes Universe on hold and announced Tribes Ascend. Many neckbeards and aspergs gathered to drool over whether or not the game should be like t1, t2, tv, chess, or power pete and whether it should have gay vehicles, target laser, dinosaurs, naked women. Many conversations that gave me headaches.
Coza came back to start a ladder and asked me to be the head admin with him. 5-6 teams signed up and some laid back competition had started. Most of the elites didn't join a team. Pickups were decent though. Tribes was pretty alive in late-gen terms. Unfortunately, Tribes was about to be back stabbed.
I logged onto irc one day and was pm'd by opsayo and disk. Both telling me that NoFiX had made hacks for the 1.40 client, he gave them to Alarik, who gave them to Disk and Schmerz, and Disk gave them to Sleepy. Sleepy pm'd me shortly after I heard all of this because we still talked about tribes. I asked him if he had cheats and he denied only to admit it a few minutes later. He then said he deleted them and wanted them patched out. This news reached KillaJ, who then started recording sleepy from observer. KillaJ gave me a demo which had evidence of sleepy using hacks and I decided to ban sleepy from playing on the ladder. Maverick then decided to ban sleepy from his server. Sleepy responded by threatening to release the hacks that he supposedly deleted. Maverick didn't budge and sleepy released the hacks.
Now that I sit back and think about it, I have a feeling sleepy released the cheats under the impression that me and opsayo already had them. As he said to disk in one of their pm's - "I know opsayo and stork have it." Maybe he thought threatening to release would make me flip out as if I was about to lose my advantage. Perhaps this is just a crazy conspiracy.
The hacks can still be easily found today. With no anticheat and nobody willing to make one, tribes became a hack fest. I had played against many greats in the past couple of years and suddenly joe schmo could pull of things even they couldn't. I lost my motivation to play. There was no point in playing well because it would only make the hackers think you were hacking as well. Which in turn would make them believe their cheating was justified. I played from time to time but slowly faded away. Many other players stopped playing as well. Some just stopped caring all together. opsayo stopped playing for the most part.
The Tribes Ascend closed beta started on my birthday if I remember correctly. I played it a few times whenever possible. I ran into Fire a couple times and he said he was my biggest fan. I also battled flip flop proj and greaseburger zprotoss a few time.
2012
I barely played in 2012, same for opsayo. I also stopped playing T2. I got married early in March and stopped gaming for a while. Dare and Sleepy still played. Most of the good players were gone or barely playing. Dare eventually got tired of being accused of hacking and started openly hacking to prove a point. He wasn't hacking before that, but he wanted to show people what its like when he does hack. For those of you who care, Dare and Snow were probably the two best players when hacking, sleepy would be third.
The first attempt of using HMCrasher as a form of anticheat came in the fall. The idea didn't catch on and we abandoned it believing it was too easy to hack.
Tribes Ascend was released April 12th. The aspergs and beardednecks gathered once again to discuss class and weapon balance and whether inheritance should somehow make crocodiles appear on the enemy stand.
I didn't play it much. It sucked and I knew it would continue to suck. I tried playing on lix and fett's team a few times but they only let ppl who showed 4 everything play how gay.
2013
2013 started with the second attempt of using HMCrasher. Opsayo implemented it on his server - BabyLT and sKILLz started hosting HMCrasher only pickups. Shortly afterwards, opsayo released AfterHope, a 1.40 anticheat. I started playing in pickups whenever I had the time. It was nice to see Tribes back in the state that made it a great game.
With the new anticheat, some players suggested we have another tourney, so sleepy actually did something good for a change and started the signups list. Teams can be found here - Tribes 1.41 Summer Tourney Draft Results by The Morning Star - TribalWar Forums
This was a one day tourney, which we found out the week of and we found out the time of the tourney the day before. Totally awesome communication and planning by sleepy.
After much sitting around and trying to gather 5 people for each team, the tourney began. Results can be found here - Tribe 1.41 summer tourney results by The Morning Star - TribalWar Forums
It was gg's and fun times. The finals were never played because nobody really cared.
Here we are now. blah blah blah
Summary
I sucked 05-07, got decent in 08, then made big steps in 09 and 2010.
Opsayo spent a lot of time in obs in 08 and parts of 09 but became a monster when he started getting picked regularly + 1.40. Sleepy was buttass in 08 and parts of 09, got decent in 2010, became a big fat hairy cheater in 2011. Dare was decent in 05, played sparingly until 08(i think?), then played big dog for the rest of the years.
The late-gen years were pretty much elites/vets coming and going over and over. Pickups and some tourneys.(some tourneys that I didn't even mention) Big egos, big chainguns, good times, big cheats later in the game. There's a lot that I'm forgetting or leaving out. But basically that was it.
I'm glad I was able to play this game even in its "dead" state. I had more fun in this game than I would have in any of the games that have come out since 2005. I could have spent the time instead 2 get super good @ COD or BF, but then I would just be an even bigger asperg than I am now. I guess I could have stopped playing tribes and done something more useful with my life, like learn how to do something besides play home D. But w/e, I had fun.
This is every demo that I have set aside throughout the years from my collection. Each demo has it's own statlog so you can checkout if you wanna watch it or not. It spans from hawkbat demos in 08 up till demos from playing with Afterhope. You can see my progression as well as the community's from these. As well as get a taste as to what it was like to have played late-gen Tribes LT. Enjoy! - http://www.sooflytribes.us/Stork%20Demos.zip
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