EdgeCrusher
11-27-2001, 04:21 PM
I found this over at the cats. Its amazing how true it is in a way.
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VK Has Spoken!!
WARNING- VK ON HIS RICKETY SOAPBOX AHEAD...
The winds of change seem to be blowing colder through the TFC community, or are those just the winds of November, wafting the aroma of roasting turkey to our o'er-abused olfactorys? I have, in the past, personally railed against the off-key bleat of the "OMG TFC IS DYEING!!" fanfares that sound from time to time in these parts. TFC, like any other online game, is virtually frozen in time, limited as it is by the software and hardware that drives it, and naturally the times will eventually pass it by. But as long as there is a solid, hardcore base of love for this pursuit, it will sojourn on. The erosion is inevitable; just this week several clans, well known and otherwise, have hung up the flags, and to them we say the ubiquitous 'GG'.
But for the first time in over 2 and a half years I have given serious consideration to retirement. For the first time in 31 months I looked at my distorted reflection in the darkened monitor and asked myself if I could justify the time I was dedicating to a GAME any longer. In real life I know more than a few people who consider my passion for the game a huge and inexplicable waste of time. And suddenly, I was seeing clearly through their eyes. Why do we do this? What is the point?
I guess in fairness, I should describe the moments leading up to this epiphany. My clan has recently lost its server- we'd been using a loaner from FOoM for quite a long time, with the understanding that it could go away at any time. Well it finally did, and we had no immediate contingency (Sid, if you get to read this, Thanks for the Hostable, it was a great and generous gesture on your part to provide it to us for as long as you did, and we'll never forget it! We owe you BIG-TIME...). We had not had an organized practice for several weeks, and took a BYE in the IGL for this last weekend. On Monday we played a PFL match in the B Division, a Division which we owned and were undefeated in. We got raped.
Now losing is as much a part of TFC as winning is, and my clan has been a solid .500 team since forever. I'm no stranger to losing, believe you me. But in the second round of this nightmare, a round which ran well over 30 min due to an innocent mistake, I finished with 3 frags. 3. And me a D soldier. 3. Now realistically I know I SK'd and TK'd easily 20+ times, the round was utter chaos, but c'mon. Haven't I just totally lost my game? Granted, I've never been more than a journeyman soldier, I'm certainly not OD or VD or XD material and probably never will be. I can't mulch a garden gnome. I know everyone is entitled to a bad performance once in a while. But 3?
I shut off RW, and watched my team in the inevitable post toasting meltdown on IRC, and just wanted to do nothing more than part from the clan channels, part from IRC, part from the game entirely. It wasn't funny, it wasn't fun. And so I did.
I took my dogs for a long walk, and composed my farewell post in my head.
But don't bother to look for it, here or anywhere else. Because in the time it took me to walk around the block I realized that there's about as much chance of me giving up TFC as there is I will sell my child on Ebay. TFC isn't just a game. It isn't just wins and losses, GG's and 'Fuck you!'s on the forums. This is a real community, populated by real people who share a common interest, but much more than that. We share ourselves, our other interests, we share our time and our knowledge. Hell sometimes we even share our ignorance. And it is in this distributed exposition of ourselves that we transcend the exhilaration of a mere game; sure, we certainly enjoy the competition, but we are so much more than that. We are a circle of friends. Sure, we do not all get along each with the other, but the thing that draws all of us here is the Community itself that we create and define, just by taking part in it.
It's like this for me. I play this game, and enjoy it immensely. My clan is like an online family to me. The clans are like the houses or apartment buildings in a neighborhood. That neighborhood itself is the community; the leagues are the bars and the playgrounds, and sites like the Catacombs are the town squares where we gather to exchange news and stories, GG's and 'Fuck you!'s, and all of that extra errata that makes this virtual world what it is. Hell, we've even got our own heroes and villians, scandals and stories of human interest. It's a hell of a lot more than caps and frags, or kicking yourself over one nightmarishly poor performance..
Yes, we come and go, clans come and go, life goes on, and eventually this too shall pass. But don't for a second let anyone tell you that you're wasting your time here on a mere game. We're all a part of something bigger than that, a whole greater than it's individual parts. As long as it's still interesting and vital (which it is, and should be for a while yet), then I cannot give it up. And I cannot give any credence to anyone else who bothers to write "OMG TFC IS DYEINGz0RS!!" I'll tell YOU when TFC is dead. I'll still be hanging around, probably waiting for a miracle...
GG, and thanks for reading
Now i know this is editorial material, and i know its rather long for news, but i feel and some others as well this was definitely worth reading. GG VK im glad u are on our side :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VK Has Spoken!!
WARNING- VK ON HIS RICKETY SOAPBOX AHEAD...
The winds of change seem to be blowing colder through the TFC community, or are those just the winds of November, wafting the aroma of roasting turkey to our o'er-abused olfactorys? I have, in the past, personally railed against the off-key bleat of the "OMG TFC IS DYEING!!" fanfares that sound from time to time in these parts. TFC, like any other online game, is virtually frozen in time, limited as it is by the software and hardware that drives it, and naturally the times will eventually pass it by. But as long as there is a solid, hardcore base of love for this pursuit, it will sojourn on. The erosion is inevitable; just this week several clans, well known and otherwise, have hung up the flags, and to them we say the ubiquitous 'GG'.
But for the first time in over 2 and a half years I have given serious consideration to retirement. For the first time in 31 months I looked at my distorted reflection in the darkened monitor and asked myself if I could justify the time I was dedicating to a GAME any longer. In real life I know more than a few people who consider my passion for the game a huge and inexplicable waste of time. And suddenly, I was seeing clearly through their eyes. Why do we do this? What is the point?
I guess in fairness, I should describe the moments leading up to this epiphany. My clan has recently lost its server- we'd been using a loaner from FOoM for quite a long time, with the understanding that it could go away at any time. Well it finally did, and we had no immediate contingency (Sid, if you get to read this, Thanks for the Hostable, it was a great and generous gesture on your part to provide it to us for as long as you did, and we'll never forget it! We owe you BIG-TIME...). We had not had an organized practice for several weeks, and took a BYE in the IGL for this last weekend. On Monday we played a PFL match in the B Division, a Division which we owned and were undefeated in. We got raped.
Now losing is as much a part of TFC as winning is, and my clan has been a solid .500 team since forever. I'm no stranger to losing, believe you me. But in the second round of this nightmare, a round which ran well over 30 min due to an innocent mistake, I finished with 3 frags. 3. And me a D soldier. 3. Now realistically I know I SK'd and TK'd easily 20+ times, the round was utter chaos, but c'mon. Haven't I just totally lost my game? Granted, I've never been more than a journeyman soldier, I'm certainly not OD or VD or XD material and probably never will be. I can't mulch a garden gnome. I know everyone is entitled to a bad performance once in a while. But 3?
I shut off RW, and watched my team in the inevitable post toasting meltdown on IRC, and just wanted to do nothing more than part from the clan channels, part from IRC, part from the game entirely. It wasn't funny, it wasn't fun. And so I did.
I took my dogs for a long walk, and composed my farewell post in my head.
But don't bother to look for it, here or anywhere else. Because in the time it took me to walk around the block I realized that there's about as much chance of me giving up TFC as there is I will sell my child on Ebay. TFC isn't just a game. It isn't just wins and losses, GG's and 'Fuck you!'s on the forums. This is a real community, populated by real people who share a common interest, but much more than that. We share ourselves, our other interests, we share our time and our knowledge. Hell sometimes we even share our ignorance. And it is in this distributed exposition of ourselves that we transcend the exhilaration of a mere game; sure, we certainly enjoy the competition, but we are so much more than that. We are a circle of friends. Sure, we do not all get along each with the other, but the thing that draws all of us here is the Community itself that we create and define, just by taking part in it.
It's like this for me. I play this game, and enjoy it immensely. My clan is like an online family to me. The clans are like the houses or apartment buildings in a neighborhood. That neighborhood itself is the community; the leagues are the bars and the playgrounds, and sites like the Catacombs are the town squares where we gather to exchange news and stories, GG's and 'Fuck you!'s, and all of that extra errata that makes this virtual world what it is. Hell, we've even got our own heroes and villians, scandals and stories of human interest. It's a hell of a lot more than caps and frags, or kicking yourself over one nightmarishly poor performance..
Yes, we come and go, clans come and go, life goes on, and eventually this too shall pass. But don't for a second let anyone tell you that you're wasting your time here on a mere game. We're all a part of something bigger than that, a whole greater than it's individual parts. As long as it's still interesting and vital (which it is, and should be for a while yet), then I cannot give it up. And I cannot give any credence to anyone else who bothers to write "OMG TFC IS DYEINGz0RS!!" I'll tell YOU when TFC is dead. I'll still be hanging around, probably waiting for a miracle...
GG, and thanks for reading
Now i know this is editorial material, and i know its rather long for news, but i feel and some others as well this was definitely worth reading. GG VK im glad u are on our side :)