- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Hello Bungie and the rest of the community,
My story is about friendship, love, unity amongst people. Unfortunately is it also a story about deceit and betrayal. This is going to be a long read, so.. Here’s my story of Halo PC, from beginning to end.
It all started on the 13th of September 2004 , when I got my copy of Halo for the PC. For at least two weeks I played the campaign mode, I didn’t even think about the multiplayer mode because I never thought it would be fun, I have to admit, I was a bit scared at first to try it out. I was scared because I knew there were people out there that would simply kick my butt and, back in the day, I couldn’t stand losing. Ultimately I got bored of the campaign mode, so I thought I’d give it a shot..
My first game was awesome, I remembered it being on capture the flag, Blood Gulch on a 12 man server. I loved it so much, I decided to continue playing the multiplayer mode and just forget about campaign. I found it really awesome how people that you’ve never met before in your entire life could work together as a team. Of course there were matches that weren’t that fun to play because of some ignorant players that decided to be morons and prevent the team from working as one.
As time passed, I became better and better at Halo, I met some really cool people that I usually hung out with, online of course.. When one day I joined somewhere in March 2005, I joined this server that was being hosted by some guy called Mel. It was a 10 man server, constantly running Blood Gulch with a custom Slayer game type (Max of 50 kills, Generic weapons on startup, etc..). The games never lasted that long, as this Mel would rack up 50 kills in just 6 to 10 minutes. I was completely astound, how could someone do that with just the use of a sniper rifle? –I had to know.
Seeing I always ended 2nd, in every game that was hosted by Mel, I always felt like the first loser. But because of my regular appearance on that server, Mel and I started talking.. In the end I ended up adding Mel to my friends list on MSN Messenger. I asked him, “Mel please teach me how to be as good as you, I need to know.” (Just thinking back about this makes me think how much of a n00bie I must have sounded like, oh well, it’s always worth a shot.) Mel agreed on teaching me how to use a sniper rifle effectively. We trained for 2 weeks non-stop, and yes, Mel might have had the host advantage, I still learned a great deal of tips and tricks on how to defeat multiple opponents.
By the end of March, I became significantly better at Halo. Just when I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about Halo, there was one thing I had always overlooked. –Clans!
Mel later told me that HE was in fact a SHE, a girl. Yet another thing I had rarely ever seen, a gamegirl.
By the beginning of May, Mel and I were inseperatable , we would go and kick butt in every server that we wanted to. There were always people better then the both of us, but that only encouraged us to get even better. But Mel had a plan, a plan that.. Well.. That would ultimately changed the way I think and feel about certain things. Mel wanted to start a clan.
I know, starting a clan.. not such a big deal right? –Just get a website (freewebs at the time), a forum (..Invisionfree) , server (Yes, you’re right host ‘em yourself) and.. of course, people. Back in 2005 it was pretty simple to get some people to join a newly made clan, you could either advertise on various Halo tournament ladder forums (Clanbase, Klanwars, Halostats) or you could just set up a server with “<Clan tag name here> RECRUITING…”, so on and so on. So we did, and we exactly got 2 members the first day, which was.. OK considering we had never done this before.. I guess?
Also, if you want to know, Mel was in charge of the clan (Leader), I was in charge of the whole website-forum-advertise thing, making me a co-leader. –Better than nothing.
In the summer of 2005, at the beginning of June, Mel and I had officially recruited 2 members who had left 2 weeks after their recruitment. They said that there wasn’t any action in the clan they were in.. I can’t blame them, it was rather inactive, probably because Mel couldn’t care less and I was too busy doing other things. Mel was leaving on a holiday in the 2nd week of June and that I would be in charge of the clan until she returned.
At the beginning of July I went on a holiday for 2 weeks, unfortunately Mel would come back when I would leave (I thought that was rather mysterious..) . When I came back Mel wasn’t back yet, something told me she wouldn’t be back, ever. –I was right.
I kept my promise to Mel, I would make our clan a perfect clan, housing the best of the best. Soon, I recruited 2 people. A guy (Andrew) and a girl (Lacy), that I met through a friend of mine. I decided, since they were kind people, I’d make them co-leaders, to help me out.
Both of them were.. fairly new to Halo for the PC, so I thought it was my job to teach them everything I learned throughout the many months of experience. In 1 week I had trained these guys non-stop with a sniper rifle. I told them the exact same thing as someone told me “If you can fire the sniper rifle like a pro, you can fire any weapon you want.”. Within a week these guys had a Kill/Death ratio of 20 to 1. While mine was 35 to 1 at the time.
“We’re looking for players that can adapt to all sorts of situations.” Was one of the our advertisements on many websites and servers. By the end of September we had 15 people in our clan, 4 girls and 11 guys. –If I can remember correctly. These people were scattered all over the world, to be exact they were in: Belgium, The Netherlands, United States of America, United Kingdom and France. We also then acquired our own web- and gameserver, oh and our very own domain name to! For most people this isn’t such a big achievement, but for us it was as we started from virtually nothing! At first sight all of these people sounded like nice and honest people.. But as time passes, you get to know these people better and better. But this isn’t always a good thing.
In October, I was spending a day at home, playing Halo as usual when someone asked my email address, I gave it out to this person in-game and quickly shutting down my pc, as I had to go to a meeting. When I came back I noticed two people had added me on MSN, it was as I thought it would be, someone else from during that game also added me. This would be the person that changed my vision on a lot of things, dramatically. –This person would change my life completely.
For her privacy, I won’t give out her name, I’ll address her using the letter T.
When T and I had our very first talk, we talked about Halo, how much we enjoyed it. I gave her tips on how she could stay alive a lot longer, seeing I killed her every time she faced me. She generally just blocked me after that, whoops.
A week later I see her again, in that exact same server I was in the last time, it appeared to be one of the servers that the clan she was in owned. I asked her if she had switched email addresses, as I hadn’t seen her sign-in in a week. She replied “You know my name right? Just at @hotmail.com to it and we can have another chat!”. Truth is, I forget her name completely, luckily I still had the conversation saved. –I added her.
We had a second conversation, this time round I decided not to talk about Halo, but to just ask some questions.. You know just to get to know her a bit, nothing more.. Seriously, nothing more. After about 2 hours of non-stop chatting I learned that we were much alike, we had a similar past. Both of us were different. We both got bullied at school for it.. I can say that.. compared to what she must have been through, I could call myself lucky. But I know what she must have felt like. The bad thing about it is, it did permanent mental damage to her.
She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror, as she was constantly think she was ugly, while in fact she wasn’t. Because of her past, the bad people sort of drilled it into her head. She couldn’t stop wondering why she was still here, she felt without a purpose. –This alarmed me, could she actually be a bit.. suicidal?
As the days past, we kept on talking and I learned more about T every day. I did my very best trying to support here, I didn’t even know for sure if she actually still needed support.. But still, I did support here in every way possible. Later that day she told me she was already seeing a psychiatrist for the last couple of months.
On the 15th of October I convinced here in joining my clan and so she did. I already told my crew that this girl was a bit delicate and that they should take extra care in what they say about certain subjects. Already I felt this was something I wouldn’t actually do myself, but she changed that somehow.
It’s safe to say that 6 weeks later, T and me were best friends, there was nothing that she didn’t tell me. I learned a lot during those weeks, I started to have a look at things differently, in a way I thought I never would. Mainly because I thought that the little things in life didn’t matter a thing, only the larger things did. But she changed my entire opinion on that.. Like she said “It’s those little things in life that make it worth living”. –She was right.
And so, we both fell in love, the next 8 months we would have our ups and downs, but we’d pull through even with her condition getting worse every day. In my clan everything was going fantastic, we had al o’ these little side projects that we were working on: making maps, a machinima, etc..
Also, the announcement of the port of Halo 2 to the PC on February 9th 2006 motivated us even more to work even harder on our skills, so we would “survive” the port, if you get my point.
Part 2 bellow
[Edited on 01.03.2008 7:47 PM PST]