Removing the cobwebs from my memory to recollect what gaming was like in the fall of 2002 is no easy feat but honestly, I remember it well. I had three Half-Life killbox servers running. Named: GDawgg Killbox 1, GDawgg Killbox 2 and GDawgg Killbox Low-G. With the passage of time the Low-G (as in low gravity) server would become the most popular. We didn't know that yet. Seemingly the same people played in my servers on a daily basis and I liked to keep track of who the badasses were. I was a fair player back then. Not great but not a complete suck-ass either. I created a "Top 75" list of the players who played in my servers regularly. Here is a version of that list on the left hand-side of GDawgg.com from January of 2001: http://gdawgg.com/pgds/egd1a.jpgI made mention of two awesome players in the previous post, Sarge and Spam I Am. As you see, they're listed at #1 and #4 respectively. The guy at #5 was no slouch either, my good friend GULL. Before I took on the player name of mooseD I went by the name of Putrid. There I was at #9. Two other good friends are listed at #20 and #49, Whole Lotta Holes and W/O Remorse aka Slash. All five of these guys would later become GDawgg Clan members.
First though, I must tell you about the very first player I recruited to join my brand new clan. It was October 21, 2002. It was morning. I was in my GDawgg Killbox 1 server talking to a guy who I'd met in my servers and became friends with. IP_Sitting_Down was his name. IP was a funny guy and very exuberant. He was chock-full of ideas. He presented his ideas with passion, always. As I said, he was a very funny guy. I never asked him about his name, I mean, did IP really sit down to pee? If he did I didn't want to know and I sure didn't want to know why. I simply assumed that he was morbidly obese and peeing sitting down was the less messy of the two options. Or, that he was a punster making a play on the term "IP", internet protocol. I asked him once if he was a guy. He said he was. In retrospect, he might have been lying. What I did know was he enjoyed playing Half-Life killbox as much or more than I did and he was a lot of fun. Also, IP was Canadian. Whether he was lying or not, it really didn't matter. Whoever this person was on the other end of his internet connection was a damn good Half-Life player and he had a ton of imagination. We chatted on numerous occasions about all kinds of things. This guy had more ideas than there is sand in the desert.
Now you've met IP_Sitting_Down. Yeah, he was kind of weird but most gamers were back then. Eleven years ago there weren't millions of gamers like now. Most of us pc gamers were quirky in some way or another. Back to the morning of October 21, 2002, in GDawgg Killbox 1, I say, "hey IP, you wanna join my clan?" "What clan?", he said. As if offended because he'd never heard of it, I said, "GDawgg Clan, what are you thinking?!?!" We both typed "lol" or "lmao" in chat and IP said, "sure! I'd be honored!"
For that day, at least, we were a two-man clan. That didn't last long. My motivation for forming the clan was to have killbox clan-wars with other clans. The idea was to kick some butt. To never lose and for GDawgg Clan to be feared throughout all of Half-Life. You know, typical "guy" stuff. In order to pull this off I needed Sarge and Spam I Am in my clan. Before approaching either of them I told IP about my plans. His response surprised me. He said, "you're just recruiting 'ringers', that's no good, we should build this clan with regular players like me and you..." Yada, yada. IP threatened to quit the clan over this issue. He tried to make me see that my motives were somehow foul or mis-placed. Ok, so they were. That didn't make them bad ideas. I had world domination on my mind. Or, at least, domination of the world of Half-Life. No way was I going to be side-tracked by my Canadian friend and his crisis of conscience. I couldn't afford to lose him as a clan-member either. That would make me a "clan of one". No good. We easily resolved the issue, agreeing in the end that winning clan-matches wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. Then we both began recruiting and initiating new Dawggs.
To be continued...
