it's taken me years to come to the conclusion that well, I will not be coming back to play Quake in any form. I know I've alluded to my seemingly inevitable Gen return for months because I've wanted to be a part of one final large romp of death and destruction, but I've come to accept that it can all end without the storybook ending.
and that well... time will be extremely minimal to begin with.
and... I suck at FPS games. spare me your comments regarding this, I know it's not all about the skill, but having fun. but you have to understand that I do not enjoy being the shadow of my former [highly capable laggy] self.
for the more significant reasoning behind why this return will not be happening, I'm going to be busy with both school and work. it's my last year of college, there are plenty of fun-filled experiences yet to be had in addition to academically finishing out strong. the workload from one of my film classes alone will be very time-consuming to begin with, because take it from me, editing video takes awhile. now just imagine me having to use Macs in a computer lab to do it, all the while living off-campus -- yes. I'm not a big fan of foreign language either, but I need it to get that piece of paper at the end of the year, and that's going to be another hurdle. factor in that I'm going to be taping football practices and doing speaker remotes for work, yes, there goes the free time.
that's the "real life" perspective, now here's the internet one. I look back now to 1997 to a time when it was [almost] really cool to be a part of a gaming service called Mplayer. sure it was laggy, and shitty, but what made it special was not the service or the games we played, but the moment that it all took place. I remember when if you had 56k, you were a bastard, and if you had ISDN, you were a lucky son of a bitch, and if you went to college, the entire world hated you for having access to a T1 or T3 or whatever. and well, if you had a 28.8, you were average. and if you had a Monster 3D card, you were the shit, cause you got to play GL Quake with transparent water (which was useless on Mplayer anyway, cause the servers didn't allow you to see players underwater). yes, the way I see it, I was a pioneer. I was there at Quake's beginning times. I always wanted to have my own Quake clan, and I did exactly that. it was called Boba Fett's Hunters, and although we rarely got into clan wars (cause, truth be told, we sucked really bad), it was still an amazing experience. but I wanted more... and after settling the score in 2 epic duels with ex-BFH members, slaying them in Castle of the Damned and The Necropolis, I figured the time had come that I need to upgrade. MMA-IronSide paged (the Mplayer equivalent to an IM, if you will) me when I got done with beating BFH-Eraser (or BT-MainMaN) into the ground after a vacation in Wisconsin Dells telling me that MMA was "very good". I wanted in on that. I had a tryout with Zor. a something like 30 to -3 loss later, I was given some advice from Zor to learn keyboard and mouse, since I was a Gravis Gamepad user, and so came a HUGE evolution in my gameplay. I practiced it for about a week and decided to come back for round 2 vs. Zor. I had already made up my MMA username and everything, because I was confident that this time I was going to take him. and I lost again. I would stop at nothing to get in that clan. I had tryout #3 with a different recruiter this time against Songuyver. although I didn't beat him, I still passed the tryout and was officially an MMA member.
I spent about a year trying to find where I placed in the MMA machine. I was a sub for MMA players with dropped connections, and after a poor academic experience in 9th grade, I was finding my time on the comp to be rather lacking. at one point, I lost my internet service and resorted to hacked internet accounts to fulfill my MMA fix. during that first year, I opted to leave Mplayer and try to pursue a new adventure, with a new name, in a different game. it was then in January 1998 that I tried my hand at QWCTF. I had played Threewave CTF on Mplayer months prior when CTF 4.0 was still relatively new, and I felt like I was a part of something when I did this. Threewave CTF was so highly influential on FPS games in general that after the success of CTF in Quake, every new FPS game had some form of CTF included. looking back, it feels very special to have been a part of what I consider the "original" CTF, and that is a big deal to me, as you can see my criticisms of the Quake players of today who do not play CTF "properly" (no hooks or even no runes, err.. techs). I didn't find my true calling until Quake 2 3.19 was released, that was when I discovered RA2. for about 3 of my years, I spent them playing RA2. I did form an ego in early 1999 with MMA, because for about a year and a half, I was the one that was picked on constantly by the other players for my terrible playing skills (I've been accused numerous times of costing MMA matches) ... and now all of a sudden, an HPB in an LPB's world, I was finally learning how to play the game right. I was helping win matches. I was beating up on people that normally talked smack about me before. and after a series of unfortunate events, it came to an end, in favor of a majority of the clan favoring the then-hot new MMORPG, EverQuest. I had a brief stint with Quake on Mplayer in the MXL again and after I fulfilled that, I left MMA. I was fed up with the direction it was all going, but after another series of events, I was convinced that it was my time to step up and do something about it. I helped reform the RA2 team, and while before I was working on my individual skills, this go around we had Vortmax, a Qball legend, leading the team. this time, it was all about teamwork, and although we may not have been up to snuff compared to some of the bigger RA2 clans skill-wise, we had a few instances where teamwork overtook them.
but I wanted more. along with Rayek, Blitz and Zapp, we all forged onward after a massive victory over clan FUQ to create our own clan, AlphabotZ!, which later became shockWave. shockWave was an 8 month high intensity ride of extreme proportions. there was the teenage angst, the invincibility, the trash-talk, the wanting to prove to the world that you were the best -- it was amazing. but as the old saying goes, "the brightest candle burns the fastest" .. never a truer statement for shockWave. factor in that cheating was on the rise during this time in spring/summer 2000 with nosepak and ratbot2 and the like, it was coming to be a time that I didn't want to be a part of the "big leagues" anymore. after an on-again/off-again rivalry with MMA since the time we had left, shockWave wound up splitting and merging with KaZ, and Blitz followed by sn00pee, SiD, Necroid and many other ex-sW's came along with me back to MMA.
people have asked me if I actually had fun playing, or if it was just me strictly in it for the winning. to answer that, yes, I had lots of fun doing it, it was more than a hobby, it was my life for a long time, as pathetic as that sounds, it's the truth. was I in it for the winning in the sense that I wanted to be in a mindless zombie clan? no, never. I was always against that. I always desired to establish relationships with people in the clans that I've been a part of. it wasn't like "show up for practice -- kick ass -- listen to some shitty techno music -- leave / show up for match -- kick ass -- "ggs report loss now" -- leave -- [repeat]" ... I was always against that. truth be told, I have always thought of BFH, MMA, sW and the few other little joke clans I was with as my 2nd families. that's why MMA still exists today, because it wasn't a mindless zombie clan bent on winning and little else. no, MMA was more like that of a family, and it always was.
my time back with MMA over 2000/2001, I feel as if I wasted it. I was more interested in real life and Counter-Strike at this point... the RA2 games were becoming less, and the rare occasion I attended a match, yeah, that was few and VERY far between. I attribute some of this to my LAN party days in the winter/spring of 2001 ... my patience for dial-up were practically gone, and I wanted to play different games. I became pretty good at Unreal Tournament, and I was playing these games with my real life friends. it was a fun party-like experience to offset my rather depressing times. by time I had mustered up the will to want to play RA2 with MMA again, the time when I was ready, the rest of the clan was ready to move on.
it was what seemed to be the end of the road for MMA. factor in my extremely turbulent days during this period, and well... I didn't know what to think or what I wanted anymore. I went home during college for a couple of LAN events, but even those had changed, since we were doing them at a different house. I no longer had Quake, and my interests in FPS games was on the decline. it was around this time that I picked up Need For Speed High Stakes editing and joined NFSCars. the remnants of MMA and the new batch were on IRC -- this is around when Generations Arena .99a was released, and the Wirehead crew joined MMA.
times were changing. every so often though, I wished that it was 1997 again. 2000 even. I didn't care ... I just wanted it to be like the way it used to be. I've tried for almost 4 years now ... longer than the time that I actively played Quake, to recapture the essence of the old days.
the whole Gen episode was unexpected in itself, I never would've imagined that I would've gotten involved with it at all. ConfusedUs, we go what seems like way back. we were both there for one another during the bad times, and around this time, he was about to have a kid in his life, and I wanted to help out. being the one in charge of running the forum game polls, informing PQ of the games, and doing the news was something that I never anticipated ever happening. I had my fun with it. I tried to help out whenever I could. and it's just... I'm not 17 anymore, I got way too much going on, I can't sit down and enjoy it all anymore.
now I'm a senior in college. I have responsibilities. I have to make the most of this last year. I'm sorry but my free time is very tight, and although I would like to partake in the Gen experience again, I would much rather utilize the free time to try new and different things rather than retread Quake for the 5325983rd time. a few months ago, I felt like I didn't accomplish anything during my 8+ year run with Quake, but now looking back, it doesn't matter to me that I didn't win any tournaments or ladders.
I was a part of something that these kids today will never be able to experience, ever: the beginning. and hell, even I wasn't exactly part of THE beginning (DWANGO, anyone?). I was from the Quake era, not the Doom era. it doesn't matter, because through it all, any one of us that had the blessing of playing during that period is truly a pioneer -- we comprised of the body of online gamers that helped make multiplayer online gaming the monster that it is. the technology has advanced so much since 1996, and it advances at a faster rate now than ever before. whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. you can marvel over the graphics and sound of today's games, but they'll never reproduce the classics. some of you shared these experiences with me, and some of you unfortunately never will.
it's been an amazing run. but now, it comes to an end. I thank all of you that have been there for me, and the opposition for being there to face in the arena. whether or not this is the last you see of me remains yet to be seen, but I'm moving onto bigger and better things in life, and I'm glad that you, the Quake players, were there during the journey of growing up.
maybe things will change, and I'll come back again. Michael Jordan and Hulk Hogan have done it enough times... why can't The Mechanix?
only time will tell.
-The Mechanix
