How did you first find the competitive community?

[m3ss]

I always enjoy hearing the backstory of people's discovery of the online competitive community as it's usually very different for each person. Obviously it's a lot less difficult to find these days, but given that most of us are older gamers I figured we would still have some interesting stories to tell on the subject. It doesn't necessarily have to be the UT community, but how did you eventually stumble upon the online competitive gaming community?

Personally, I was introduced to UT99 and online multiplayer gaming by one of my college roommates. He had a burned copy of UT99 and we would play 6v6 weapons CTF on LAN at the dorm, one suite of 6 people versus the suite across the hall. It was an exhilarating experience to say the least. I was one of the better players in our group so I eventually got into playing online pretty heavily. I was a small fish in a small pond, but thought I was hot shit dominating Face only servers. Until one day a player name Crysta|is came into the server I frequented and straight rocked my world. I had never seen someone that good before, but luckily he took pitty on my poor newbie soul and took me under his wing. He introduced me to IRC, online ladders/leagues, pick-up games, etc. and basically showed me the ropes in the competitive community. It was almost dumb luck to be honest and had he not done that, I might not be here today.

So how did you get here?

[RickJames]

Around 5 years ago or so, I had never played a video game before. I found UT installed on a pc at school, screwed around with it in my free time, and was just infatuated by it. Was weird to be so interested in a video game, let alone a seemingly obscure one from 10 years ago, but the atmospheric visuals and music sucked me in enough that I installed at home and enjoyed playing it so much that it became a hobby for me.

I started looking up "pro UT players" on youtube and watching demos, being fascinated by players like gitz and hypno. Eventually I found a video of some gameplay that my friend se7en had uploaded. I was so impressed by his abilities that I messaged him, and he showed me how to connect to irc and join #tdmpickups. It took me months before I could hit over 10 frags a map, playing on a laptop with a cheap mouse over wifi, but gradually I learned the ropes.

[m3ss]

Nice RJ! It seems you're one of the few exceptions to the rule. I find it pretty cool that such an outdated game sucked you in almost immediately as it really shows how UT99 was lightning in a bottle and is somewhat of a timeless gameplay formula. Thanks for sharing!

[blade]

[d3R]

Good friend introduced me to the demo about when it came out, i played the game at his house with a trackball. After a while i played it at home via dialup and tried every mod/mutator/map i could find untill the bill got so high my parents cut off the internet... Started playing publics again when we got cable internet, some time later i got recruited on a public server for an ictf clan. The guy had to explain what irc was in the server because i had no idea. I had to be the flag-grabber since i couldn't hit a thing and they already had defenders, needless to say we lost practically every single map... One of our attackers used to bunnyhop nonstop and was alot better than me lol. After that came lots of other clans, clanwars, pugs and cups.

[finalzje]

Stole my dad's UT cd and installed it on my computer, became a public legend and roamed around trying different mods and generally being a camping bastard.
Got introduced to irc and pugging by a fellow dutchie, managed to hit 10 frags in my first ever pug.
Thought i was the shit before that happened, swore never to be bad in anything since that...

[Hinata]

My father made a copy of my cousin's deus ex CD because of my endless whine.
Then internet came and I started to play Deus Ex Multiplayer. I was playing all day online lol.
I started competitive play when I joined [MUD] (Master Unit Death), a french clan. I became a recruiter and turned the clan into a mess. I was recruiting every french I was meeting :'D. The problem came when we had to play wars (kinda everyone wanted to play).
So we created another clan with only top players of [MUD] called [nMa] and started to play wars with a static composition (and did good results).

I got introduced a bit late to IRC (on CS:Source for 5vs5 wars) because I was using MSN Messenger to talk with friends and find wars on Deus Ex lol.
I really started to use IRC when I was looking for div1 duel and nwTDM/nwCTF pugs on UT3.

[Serenity]

I remember dates and everything!

I was 13, date was January 1st and I was casually browsing the Internet and see an Unreal Tournament download, so I literally just dove right in, downloaded it and the first ever server I joined was -={SDA}=-'s clan server, turbo sniper. The first person I ever spoken to from Unreal Tournament was Dez (rain) in the server at the time. I played there for about a month and I found myself on top of the servers most of the time. -={SDA}=-nu_D referred me to pugging on IRC in America and I started playing PUG's literally 24/7, not under the name Serenity, though. I played in US servers and PUG's up 'til I was 15 and I met Hysobe from England. He was in SsK| at the time and he told me about Euro pugging. I played sniper in #ugn.pug for a few months and after my best friend passed away during those few months, I adopted her gaming name... Serenity. She was also in love with the name Aislynn & aliased as Rawkzie too (you may have seen me on any of these over the years to recent dates) and that's how I gained my main nickname/aliases.

I joined -unL\\- with Nayan near the end of the year and shortly after, I was recruited in to the IG clan, [SiN] followed by SsK|.
I stuck with [SiN] & SsK|, winning several gold cups with people who play in OW, including: Feisar, Rain, Dewsick & Bleh. I never quit playing in America through the entire time. I've been around the US scene for about 11 years now. You could say I'm a nice NA/EU hybrid. I stuck with [SiN] 'til EU died, the rest is similar to everyone else's story.

\o

[kevinsan1ty]

Played the demo when it first came out and loved it. Started pubbing in 2000 when I scrounged up enough money to buy the full game. Found a fun zeroping IG clan called NeO on Yahoo groups, asked to join, and tried out. My try out was a scrimmage against Jamen. The original turtle clan in the North American scene.

Anyway, joined NeO, and was doing the OGL thing with them until 2003, when they disbanded. Joined a couple other clans (fd in ZP, bAd in reg IG) and stopped playing UT when I went to college in 2004. I'd pop up for an MLUT or two during the summer when I was back home, but found out about GU on ProUnreal right after I got married in 2012.

[Bas]

Got the demo and loved it, went out and got the full game i played on pubs for a while and eventually joined irc looking for clans and found some american dude called pLaYa and decided to join his cause, i think the clan was [Da] we started on ClanBase only for it to all go wrong because the clan was mainly americans and most CB people were euro. So i then joined many euro clans SK` DE [KM] (many more) playing on CB untill i had other life commitments and quit UT in 2006 when all the good clans had quit allready anyway.!

Came back in 2012 and hooked up with some fellow oldskoolers got told about #ipug and have been back playing pc games since.

[PACO]

Started on UTDemo in a clan called <SC> in late 99/early 2000. Within one week of playing the game, I had joined this clan (standards were not high). They were terrible. Our strat was 4 base D on Coret with solo attack. We ran practices on a reg Cali server hosted by a crappy connection. Average ping was 500+.

We joined a ladder that I found out years later was actually developed by kE. Fast forward a month or two, HU told me to hit sideways twice and I started dodging. Joined some middling clans like [-pot-], then started KoD with HU and eventually moved on to greener pastures with =VoD= and then |-NoC-|. At this point, I started using IRC and idling in some clan chans. Some of the |-NoC-| guys were playing the full version.. Extasy, E|ite, Stud and more demo dudes. {uTa}Dexter sent me the full version for Mac (took 7 hours and 5 attempts). I played some games for uTa-R, played in a clan called ]sY[ that was comprised of demo players and we competed on OGL/PG. Eventually started playing pugs and started my first full version team in 2003 with B3|Bear (not the bear we all know and love). The clan had some top fraggers like AsSauLtPoTaTo but the personalities were volatile. I kept everything together but when 15 year old me went on vacation with my parents to Hilton Head for a week, I returned to rubble.

Taking this trip down memory lane just reminds me how much I have enjoyed the ride.

[m3ss]

I've really enjoyed ready everyone's stories so far in this thread. Thanks to everyone that has shared and I hope to hear from others in the future. Like PACO said, it reminds me of what a long, strange trip it's been.

[XhackZ]

I was looking for places to packet and BOOM! you know the rest..

[HULKSMASH]

As a young lass my mates introduced me to this game they were playing: the CS beta. I was instantly hooked. After a few years of CS, DoD, COD, etc. I even took a plunge in the slightly more stigmatised genre - MMORPG. It was one day during my travels in a 'poormanrpg' that I met a curious party consisting of white[choc], rummy, thorpowre and tylerofl. I soon befriended these kind sirs. They told me epic tales of this ancient game called UT99 which they vehemently believed to be the best game of all time.

I was told tales of epic online battles, heroic solo caps, last second saves and bets that consisted of eating shoes. It had a glorious community where frenemies coexisted, cheaterswere given the benefit of the doubt (several times) and where everybody was the best of pals. I was sent videos of ph34r hitting everything and logs of pixie adventures. It seemed an even more magical world than the MMORPG I was playing. Needless to say I was eager to meet these fine gents.

The only problem? utb4chix. Women were the source of all online evil and not accepted into [choc] or IRC. In fact, women didn't even exist. They were just men pretending to be women. But white[choc] soon came up with a crafty solution for this problem. I was to join IRC in the most outrageous way known to date: my mission was to infiltrate the community as a man, win their hearts and trust... and then once the time was ripe (if ever) I was to reveal I was a woman. I'm not sure why I went along with this sexist ploy or how long it took before the cat was out the bag; but I was rebranded to Chica as soon as it was out in the open. But being young and naieve, I played a few #mlig pugs and decided it was not for me... For I was a spraynoob and could not get used to this whole one shot one kill business. I gave up on UT99, but continued to drift in and out of IRC.

It wasn't until 2012, somewhere in the GU era, that I eventually stuck around. With a . I gave UT99 another try. And another. It was more fun than I remembered. I befriended some amazing people. It was then that I finally realised what a unique and amazingly tight-knit community this is, something I've never managed to find in any other type of game. Never thought I'd even end up sipping beers with some of them in the sunshine two years later!

I don't know what I would be doing now without you guys. Probably something slightly more productive than turning . But it's been GGs.

[rain]

[KNOCKOUTDAD]

i was in a bullshit computer class where we basically transferred data to word and xcel and after we could do whatever, after adventuring on well known arcade sites like candystand.com or coffeebreak.com and other free arcade sites. i saw a link on download.com in 1999 for a UTDEMO and everyone in the class ended up playing it via lan since the school had a fire wall every class turned into a UT fest with rocket arena. as soon as i get internet at my house i ended up downloading the game and jumping into demo servers playing weapons initially then moving to a really buggy mod called "real weapons" afterwards i found REG.IG with 300+ ping i was hooked i loved the skill of anticipating shots and soon played zp after it was ported into demo while playing reg.ig in what we called "fv" aka the full version or the version we all play today. however my need for competition grew and i played cod4 and americas army competitively for invite leagues in CAL.(no longer around.)

[clankiller]

i remember getting a blindwrite image of the disc from my friend across the hall from me when i was 29. i went out and bought a tnt2 gcard the next day to run on my intel p2 350mhz OCed to 450mhz and heading into the world of online play.. lms was my first stop and got to know some clans UR1 and SPARTAN etc.. and got pretty good at lms arena against the COLLECTORS and such. decided to go with CLANKILLER after that as my name. remember going into a ctf game and a person called [MACK]Rage really opened my eyes to how good someone can be at this game back then... lots happened after that too but thats the basics of me getting into this game...


CK..

[csnafk]

Many of you don't know him because you're new, but a guy named 'christian' was my best friend when we were kids. He played UT99 (idk how he found it) but he told me multiple times to get involved. He would talk about it in German class all the time and I watched him play a bunch and finally DL'd it in 2003. He got me into {e}ternity with all the cool kids and they really helped me get integrated into the community and such with forums, OGL, TWL, pugs and pubs. I was absolutely awful for the first like 3 years and really didn't get much better for a long time and only played iCTF.

Fun fact: community debated having a 1v1 between me and Thor to see who was worst in community for about a year.

Fun fact 2: I didn't know there was more than 1 gun until about 2006 (3 years after playing).

[Skoll]

I first found UT community playing with a group of friends, so not competitive as such is online, and we played LAN's or set up an IPX to play together, at a friends computer shop (rightfully called Unreal ),and we play UT99, Quake1 (keyboard only), etc.. in 1999-2000. But as i did not have a PC that could handle UT99, and internet was crap and expensive here in Portugal back in '99, i didn't get to know UT players online, but got to know a couple in RL . Watched GitzZz final win back in '01 via one of those friends
So i never got around to either play UT99 with the intensity i wanted and soon passed on to other things/games. Recently, i mean around 2009, i was able to get my hands on this old laptop form my dad and now i had the internet i always asked for to play online and since then i have been having fun with NW deck16 and some popular maps servers, some sniper TDM servers, just cruising not really interested in being good or anything, got to know some cool ppl during these times (some i lost track of because i didn't play for 6-7months at a time) and watched YT for UT99 clips almost every week.
All this changed some months back when i read the news UT4 was on the making. OMFG! i said to myself countless times before i went on a frenzy to check what spec PC i would need to assemble to play test it, got slammed to the ground, they were too great for this crap laptop and to assemble one i needed to cough up money i don't have. So i dove into just watching UT4 clips and sometimes giving a opinion on YT clips from Zaccubus, Unreal and G.U. and by now i watched some several hundred of UT99 competitive clips as well (many casts by U M3ss ) and all this lead me here to OwnedWell, and back to IRC gaming channels since some 12 or 14 years. Now i'm still just playing UT99, more iGib then other mod's, and i'm still no good a aim heheheehe ^_^ . Got a job to try and assemble a good PC to play test some UT4 but that has cut down on online hours during the week days to 1h or 2h, so i'm only working on my aim on weekends.
Still haven't got to know, or play, much of the OwnedWell community but i know i played and messed with some in Public servers ;p Been good to experience the level of aim/skill some have here, watching clips doesn't come close to the excitement of play this with a purpose, Be among the best.

[Hermione]

Ok my story is short, I had the UT disc since like 2002 it was a copy, ran it on my pc and beat online mode then never touched it again. Fast forward to 2006-2008-2010 and i was playing on and off each of those years for a few months, mostly bunny track and ctf-face. Fast forward to 2012 and I started playing on combogib servers because Face was dead. In 2013 June came to global unreal and began my first pugs there, now still here. I don't really play any other games, except for CSGO.
Had an xbox360 in 2010 and played cod series everyday of the week until mid 2011. Have to be honest COD on xbox was amazing and best gaming experiences by far in my lifetime.
That is my story.

[bug]

got at first invited into ut by my brother in 2000 and started playing also in offline sessions.
in 2001 i formed up my ig-ictf clan hell demons and we started to play in the german ut league ECL. in the years 2006-2008 i joined gkc (ictf), sond (ictf), dj (idom, itdm, tdm) and played on a higher level on clanbase till 2012. i then got invited by uenz/flowx to the global unreal king of the ring in 2012 and stayed on this community.

[Rum]

Used to play on my cousins PC when i was 9. In 03, parents gave me a computer to use for school(lol they were so wrong). Installed UT, SunnY and me used to take turns playing(fuck sunny, always hogged playing). Introduced into sniper competitive scene. Joined over 37+ clans in 3 year time playing in snipers. I think around 2005-2006 I joined <rAp> and met some people(k0n, KOdad, n0b, white). From there on, I slowly rose further and further until I became one of the prominent offense players. I think I took a hiatus from 2008-2009 cause of school and then returned when MLIG had crumbled. :O

[snky]

When i was a little boy my papa said "Son, UT runs in our family. Your mama had the power, your brothers had the power, your sister had the power.. It is now your turn to have that power too." I was forced to practice until my fingers bled. I was the true definition of blood, sweat, and tears. But did i stop? No. Because real UT players take no days off. Fast forward to today i thank my papa for showing my hard work through UT. I will never forget where i came from.

[kevinsan1ty]

[riven]

In 2004 someone of our family gave my father a burned CD where UT99 was installed on.
He shared it with me and we started playing offline for like a month.
After that we started playing UT online on the sundays only cause the internet was free back then on sundays with ISDN.
My nick was yugi and his was yuta`. You could see him always on top of the scoreboard on snipermania and ={TR}= Servers he barely lost.
I could hear my dad playing UT at 2am Sundays in the morning ^^ we were addicted to this game quickly.
We played sniperarena only publicly on Snipermania,[BIG]-Servers,Fraggalonia and so on.
2006 my father joined the [BSC] clan which is today known as [B$C] and was very active with me, I joined 2 years later.
At young age my aim improved day by day I could feel it in every shot. I was playing sniperarena public for 5 years (sometimes wars with some clans for example with $cW|,-$!T-,kingz. (2nd or 3rd div clans).
I still enjoyed playing public the most, in 2007 I defeated mdgn the first time in saTDM-1on1-Smallmountain, we didnt play 1on1 but it was like 18 people on the server he was red and I was blue. I had 8 more frags than him or so I had like 80 frags in 5 minutes (was a huge achievement for me^^cause he was like the best sa player back then)

At this time (2007) I found my friend }ElitE{Raiden aka ={TR}=J=Volkan (same age as me) we were in the summer holidays back then everyday in TS and spent like 500 hours in the summer holidays playing UT he was also very skilled which made it funnier.

In 2009 I found the #ugn.pug euro sniperarena 5v5ctf pugchannel and started playing there ...
A handful of players knew me there and the other guys thought I was cheating since I was beating the crap out of them every pug^^
So 2009 I joined the competitive scene in UT and I loved it, since there were way more skilled people than in the public servers.
2012 I found globalunreal (known as ownedwell today) as sniperarena was dying, I swapped over to the instagib scene and continued my way there.
So since 3 years I'm playing instagib and I like it alot ^^

The last nationscup clanbase ever hosted before the site went down, I joined the team Germany and brought the victory over us in the finals against the PT's
Which was one of the nicest achievements for me in UT. We played with flowx,uenz,bug&me against vitz,madteta,morpheus&apokalips in a 4on4iTDM zp Deck16 game in 2013

Thats basically everything I gotta say about my UT history