WileECyte

I knew I was approaching 10,000 posts, and somehow managed to totally miss it... again. At any rate, I had a post all worked up in my head and now that I blew the chance, I figured I'd go ahead and blog it.

I've been a PC gamer for what seems forever. I got my first PC in 1985. Technically, it was purchased so my dad could bring work home, but that didn't last long. At the time, this was high tech. IBM PC. 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 640k RAM (640k is all anyone will ever need, right Bill?), Dual 360k 5.25" Floppies (FTW!), Hercules CGA adapter, and a 13" Princeton COLOR CGA monitor. All said it was a rather pricey system, back in the day ($3500). Initially, we used it for word processing and the like, but eventually I started frequenting Electronics Boutique and Babbages at the mall and buying games. As time went on, my friends all started getting PCs. We'd trade games amongst ourselves as we finished them. The first game I ever bought was a game called Rogue. Other early games that I played included the King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest series (and Leisure Suit Larry, but don't tell my parents) as well as Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator, Top Gun, and pretty much anything Epyx ever released.

Somewhere along the way (1988 or so), I saved up my money and bought a 1200 baud modem. This was the beginning of my online life. The internet was still mostly used by the military and universities at this point, but bulletin board systems were all the rage. I had a list of a dozen or so local BBSes I frequented. Some of these BBSes hosted online games. Most of them were forgettable, but there was one that consumed a LOT of time, TradeWars 2002. This game was EPIC. It puts me in mind of Eve Online, except it was all ASCII based. You were given a fixed number of turns each day to move about space, collecting/trading/fighting. My friends and I had our own corporation on one of the BBSes, Anarchy, Inc. My BBS activity came to an end when I went off to college, but that was when I discovered the Internet.

The Internet opened up a whole new world. I was heavily involved with IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), so much so that it caused my grades to suffer. It was during this time, that I really didn't play many PC games. I spent my time chatting on IRC and mudding with my friends. Eventually, my friends all started playing games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. At first, we'd play the games via direct modem-to-modem matches and later using Kali.net to play multiplayer matches as a group.

In the late 90's, the gaming world underwent a revolution. In 1996, 3dfx released the Voodoo Graphics Card. This was a 3D add-on board that took over the rendering of 3D graphics. It was different than today's 3D cards. You daisy chained it off your 2D graphics card. It was about this time that games like Quake II and Unreal were popular. They still were not internet aware, but it was about now that my friends would have LAN parties. We'd swill Mountain Dew, eat pizza, and game to all hours of the night. Good times.

Then a company named Dynamix released a game that changed my world, Starseige: Tribes. This was the first game I played that really emphasized teamwork. Sure you could work together as a team in prior games, but this game introduced us to 'classes' that each had unique abilities. I played Tribes VERY heavily with my friends for a couple years until the next big game came out. In 2000, Blizzard released Diablo II. I never got into the original Diablo (although I did go back and buy and play it.) I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours of this I played. I played single player and eventually multiplayer coop with my friends on Battle.net.

Then DICE released Battlefield 1942 in 2002. Battlefield 1942 was another genre defining title. I played the heck out of it, and then discovered the Desert Combat mod. I played 1942 and DC for several years. It was about this time that I lost touch with the PC gaming world for a couple years. My gaming rig was in disrepair and I didn't have the cash to fix it. Eventually in 2006, a friend gave me a Radeon 9600, and I bought Battlefield 2. I was about a year late getting into the game. I started out as a lonewolf, roaming from server to server and getting my ass handed to me by people who had already invested hundreds of hours into the game. Eventually, I stumbled upon a server for a clan named the Old Farts. These guys squadded up, used their mics and worked as a team. It was like a whole new game. I eventually joined their clan and went on to continue playing BF2 and moved on to 2142 when it was released in October 2006.

Eventually the Old Farts moved on to MMOs, and I was wandering adrift with the few guys left playing the Battlefield games. In October of 2007, Valve released Team Fortress 2. I was immediately hooked. I wandered from server to server until one day I stumbled upon the Texas Teamplayers server. I had finally found a new home. It became harder and harder to get into the TTP server and in late October, I joined the site and bought a reserved slot. Eventually I met a few members of the 5th Column, Mury McStrange, Redeye and Angellmagick. They eventually rekindled my interest in 2142. In December, I joined the clan. Most of the clan played 2142 and I found myself playing TF2 less and less.

So this got really long-winded, but that's basically my story as a gamer and how I found TTP/TPG. Three years and 10,000 posts later, and I couldn't be happier.