Act 1: How Free Frag Was Won - The Rise And Fall of Forum Nations
(Credit to @African Grey for the primary writeup, @Carcajou , Roland Daemon and teslatitan for contributions, reformatted by VintagePC)
Original source here: http://www.freefrag.com/threads/how-free-frag-was-won-the-rise-and-fall-of-forum-nations.8010/)
Chapter 1: The Regicide
Come children, gather 'round. 'Tis time to hear the tale of how our mighty nation came to be.
Long before this nation there was a mighty kingdom. It rose up from a single server on the endless Convoy plains where the mighty King Fug and his followers battled for a place at the top of the server list. They waged epic battles and built a great forum abundant with servers, and for a time the people were happy, most of them anyway. For deep within the kingdom’s forums rose discontent.
You see, the King Fug and his loyal Sergeant, Snoodler, did not build the kingdom on their own as many of the people might have believed. It was their friends and allies, the elite among those who administrated servers, and who built the very walls of the grand forums of black and gold. They were the Omega Knights.
The king had promised them power, he had promised they would be his equals, and so they built him his kingdom, governed the servers, fought hordes of savage trolls, and all for the kingdom and its people. All for the promise of better world, where every voice could be heard and respected.
Disagreements were had. The king had not kept his promise. The knights were not given the promised equality and were ignored as the king assumed total control for him and his Sergeant. The knights watched as one after another the king made poor judgments and caused unrest in the land.
They had to act. On a cold wintry night they struck; taking the keys they were tasked to hold they locked the king outside the inner walls of the forum. They already governed the kingdom, they held the keys and in their number had greater control over the magical power of the Internets, there should have been no problem. They had hoped to simply remove the king from power, to take their promised places as rulers and for that to be all, the people would hardly notice the difference. The kingdom was theirs to take and take it they did.
They knew deep down that if they had not acted they would have left on their own and taken their own and the nation would be left divided and broken, and they hoped to prevent such grief. “After all,” they had said, “this is for the people. Fug has betrayed them as well as us and abused his power.” But despite their intentions they could not prevent the chaos that would ensue.
The one major flaw in their plan was in opening the public forums that day so soon after the king was tossed out. Instead they all went to their homes and jobs, wishing for anything but to think of what they had done, their betrayal against a former ally. People everywhere woke up to find their kingdom bearing a new name (a really stupid name at that) and flying different colors. Fug was no more, now there was District Gaming (see, stupid). What was this? where was their perfect land? Where was their king? Though he had distanced himself from the people long ago, some never even seeing him, his sergeant and second in command, Snoodler, was much loved by the people. The two of them entered the forum and told their tale to the people, of being betrayed by those they trusted, of losing everything. Many people sided with them and civil war broke out within the city walls.
Chapter 2: Reforming a shattered Kingdom
Lines were drawn, words were spoken (some screamed even), and flame wars broke out all over the city. Attempts were made by a number of the admins to resolve the problems, to even make peace between the Omegas (now DG) and the king Fug, but they were drowned by others, even among their own ranks, who chose to incite chaos. Whether out of frustration or even to further the cause of their side they shouted and argued, trolled and raged. There was nothing that could be done to save the kingdom. It was time to end the madness once and for all.
Acting alone NeT, the keeper of the kingdom’s keys, entered into the heart of the forum keep and shut everyone else out before unleashing his powers over the internets and single handedly destroying the entire forum (click). The city was silent, servers collapsed, the kingdom had fallen.
An effort was made to find refuge for those lost after the fall. A few of these fragment nations are worth recording. There was Erika’s refugee camp, which only lasted a short time before it was no longer needed; the already existing guild of doctors known as The Firm offered a temporary refuge during this time; Former Omega Mak lead a small number to his own property, a forum known as Rage of Fire, it was the main location for those siding with the Omegas before FFN; there was of course the new kingdom of Fug, from which was built Fug World, a new kingdom, though far less glamorous than before; next to them were the group known as the All Originals (AO), mainly supporters of Fug they were thought by many to be nothing more than another branch of the king’s army, they are still around today; last of all was the legendary Glorious People’s Republic of Convoy (GPRoC), formed in the endless canyon from which the old kingdom drew its roots, and lead by the fearless Chairman Chao, the tale of this nation is best saved for another time, though they were important for being a temporary connection for between the two main sides for those not wishing to choose a side.
It was in this time of healing that the plans were drawn for the spectacular Free Frag Network. A land where all respectful persons can game and have their voices heard.
Below is the eyewitness account of @Carcajou, the angry, wielder of the frying pan of death:
"12/9/2009, I log onto the Fug shoutbawks, like I normally did at that time to see if there was any issues on the servers. I log on to see total chaos, turmoil and finger pointing! Of course, being only a lowly level 2 admin at the time, I was totally perplexed at what was going on.....There were a few times that I had a finger pointed at me going "YOU HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS YOU ARE AN ADMIN!!!!!!!" I was totally and utterly blown away at the accusations that some of the now current Fug members put on me! The name calling, the LOLUMAD?, the sheer negativity drove me away from the shoutbawks for a while till I found the "newfug" forums which were tempie....I stupidly joined their ranks after all the smoke cleared, became a lvl 2 admin again and then next thing I know I have fingers pointed at me again this time from the head hanchos....."You are tryin to single handedly bring Fug down!!" A few of us who are amongst the FFN admins are former "NewFug" admins....I had my title stripped of me just because I was being an idealist, trying to make things easier on the admins, the staff, the mods, as a whole but they didn't see it that way...
So here I am now, a Level 2 FFN admin (yes yes I will start doing my job again) and I think by far this is the best community I have ever seen....I am actually listened to, my ideas are taken and I am not being accused of being the Harbinger of doom that NewFug accused me of being!"
Many others witnessed the same... and here is written the account of Tesla Titan, the tallest:
"Dec-3: The take over of fug from fug and snood
Dec-5: Net pulls the plug on the District Gaming
Dec-6: Rage of fire forums run by mak become the temporary home for those of us who decided to leave fug in general.
Dec-17: The Free Frag community is released to the world.
Their were 2 main factions ROF/FF and fug, with 3-5 other factions trying to hold their own too.
The republic of convoy kinda became the haven for a lot of non-aligned folks for a little while too. nubz, Dr. and I forget the rest who were hosting their own servers as well.
The prime reason about the split if I recall correctly was just getting way to much push back from fug and snood over plans to expand the servers, what games to add and probably the straw that broke the camel's back... The reversal of bans issues by other top level admins.
I remember clearly the game on granary where the shit hit the fan, A friendly pub match and one person who was wall hacking. We had a demo taken and then posted and discussed to great length in the admin forums. In the end it was decided that a ban was in order. the ban was issues, it was appealed by the then standard process and the bad was upheld until it was reversed by either fug or snood. At witch point everything blew up. A few admins made power plays and other resigned. An ugly time it was... I wish things had been more mutual, but a breakup is never mutual.
So after the dust had settled, and both sides were rebuilding, fug was rather particular that no one who was ranked within free frag would be ranked within fug and thus set it so that everyone had to also chose sides. This move probably did more harm than anything else. In the first few weeks we tried to keep the sentiment free of anything spiteful or needless greifing, But we had our less than proud moments too... "LOLUMAD?" But I know that we tried very hard to develop a thick skin as part of our attitude. (I think we did a Good job of keeping cool and calm)
So that's my recollection of events as I remember. A little patchy, but I watched the demo of that fateful game over a lot too, Trying to see how the player was wall hacking in the first place.
But we ought to keep in mind that what happened long before the split is also a large part of our history too."
And finally we conclude with the retelling by Roland Daemon:
"I don't remember the exact dates it all happened, all I remember is that it started roughly around the time of the tf2 war. Everyone was excited that there was an update happening for soldiers and demo-men at the same time and that there was a competition for a 4th item ((in which the soldier had won by about a million kills if I remember correctly))
The war aside, I was busy, or rather.. not-so busy with dealing with a war brewing closer to home. I believe a few days before the 'war' I had been getting some really weird feeling that something was about to go down. I not 100% sure who it was I talked too, but there was some words said that really made me think '.....somethings gonna happen soon...' Seeing the rest of the omega's aside from fug and snood also brought some flags... the guys spent nearly all their time in the TS channel, privately.. talking.. one night I Could of sworn they were in there for hours, but I'll never know for sure.
Anyway, the day it all hit was a day I won't completely forget ever. I read the post Eldredd ((now Makatiel)) had said that they had taken over and renamed it to District Gaming. I took the time to actually read the post ((Which I really wish everyone had done, cause it detailed WHY they did it in the first place)) and understood their objective.
A community of the people, for the people, lead by a group of many instead of just one.
It was something, in my mind, to be the right thing and something that everyone should aspire to be a part of.
I was happy to see this, I wanted this and I was quick to inform people. The first person I informed was Zidders...
That's when... for me.. shit started getting bad and stressful. Zid flipped the fuck out and I was shocked... He seemed like a reasonable guy that would want something like that...
But all he did was bitch, whine and complain.. much like everyone else.
I distanced myself just a bit and got the full picture from everyone's point of view. 99% of them were fucking retards and people with power/internet issue's. I stand by this statement and will always stand by it. I lost nearly 80% of my friends list that day, and you know what?
I don't fucking care. People started treating people like shit that didn't even deserve it... Friends or not, you don't talk that way to people.
...anyway. At the time, I did still care and was hurt by what everyone was saying. When the forums went down, I did my best to keep in contact with all the groups. GPRoC, The firm, Erika's, RoF and FuG. The five big groups that I remember, I was on all of them for awhile. Talking to all of them, trying to keep in contact. I even went so far to make a plead for all the groups to come back together and get something talked out.
Rediculed, being accused of things, I decided it wasn't worth it and I Found my home on the RoF forums ((funny, that yet again.. I have a home there again)). We got back together, and we started forming what was supposed to be district gaming. We had a group of about 20-25 of us on the forums and we got things going.
All I knew is that I just wanted to do what I had been doing, Admin'ing for the servers... I still want to do more for this community, but I need the know-how.
We started up a few of the popular servers, B2B, 2fort, payload at first, saying that we'd only have about 5 servers while we waited for BC2 to come out.
Shows how long that lasted now that we have nearly what, 15-20 servers? XD
....What a long, strange trip it has been... But would I do it again if we had to? Yeah.... I still believe that our community is the best there is out there. I would be happy to be on FFN for the next 50 years if such a thing would happen. ^_^"
One might think the story ends happily ever after... but alas, "ever" was such a long, long time... and the old unrest had never been truly vanquished.
