Over the up-coming months, I will be attempting to examine the whole of our glorious scene through a series of articles. I will be wading through the dark and murky waters of the lower levels of our scene to the angelic clouds of pre-invite. I will be sharing experiences and perspectives of anybody who was kind enough to speak to me, alongside this I will be interviewing some iconic members of our community with some unknown pillars that support the structure above. To kick us off I will be talking to one of the clan leaders, and founding members, of Deadly Forces. This organization, originally founded to play MOH:AA, moved to COD2 after a successful stint in their original game looking for fresher pastures. They then followed the tide of players moving onto COD4, where they quickly established themselves as a dedicated and passionate clan, committed to competition, community and most of all, fun.
Speaking to us now, in the form of an interview, is Mike “Ebola” Doran.
Hey Mike, firstly can you tell us a little about yourself and your role within the community?Hi, I'm Ebola, one of the founding members of Deadly Forces. In the real world I'm 36 years young, I work as an IT Engineer and basically just play CoD4 for fun. I also basically setup all our servers, including the very popular dF| Sniper Only Server. On top of all this, look after our website along with Cuppa, plus I try to persuade all the dF members to attend lans and be an over all credit to dF and the CoD4 community.
What motivated you and your clan mates to start playing the COD series, after a successful stint in the MOH:AA scene?Well as you said, we came from MoH:AA. It was the first game I played online, on a 56k Dial up :) When we started to play MoH:AA as dF it was on its way out. For some reason we never took to CoD1, don't know why to be honest with you, but as soon as we saw the clips for CoD2, we knew we that was the way forward. When we did move into CoD2, it was totally different to MoH:AA, I'd say the skill level was higher, less camp and clip which MoH:AA was famous for.
What would you say your main highlight has been so far, after all your numerous online hours and lan events?Having players at lan know who and what dF are. Our best lan was when we took 3 teams to the iSeries, not because we did well (we NEVER do well! lol ) but just by the turn out. Also on a personal point, I'd say watching you go onto bigger and better teams. For me seeing you try and get better and never forgetting your roots says a lot about a person.
If you could change one thing about the scene, what would it be, and why?The attitude of a lot of players. When we played MoH:AA, you'd always get NS (nice shot or NN (nice nade). On CoD4 you get: Your low, your a downie, lucky, get reg or basically the player 'cba'. Its this attitude that stops CoD4 getting big prize funds, I mean which company wants to be associated with some foul mouthed kids?
Some may find it funny, but how many would swear and abuse others in front of kids? Remember, you have no idea what the other person is like at the other end of the keyboard.
Since the start of your journey into COD4, your clan has flourished then slowly diminished, sharing the trend of the games activity levels. Is there anything the community can do, in your opinion, to try and attract fresh blood into the game?See above! Basically its to welcome in new players, not insult them for being of a lesser skill. Also a bit of the blame as it were has to go to Infinity Ward for what they did to the competitive CoD community with MW2. This hit a lot of clans hard as most were gearing up for that. All clans rely on players joining their clan through using their server. With MW2 that was a total no go from day one, and with CoD4 being nearly 3 years old, its lost its appeal to the general public.
We are seeing now with CoD4 what dF saw with MoH:AA. We are hoping, not just for dF but for the CoD community as a whole that Black Ops will give the scene a much needed boost.
It’s been very rare that members of your community have left to peruse another organization or team, why do you feel this is, especially considering the UK’s famous instability record?Honestly? Because we recruit by attitude and not ability, so when someone applies, the whole clan gets a vote as to wether that person joins or not. When we are on vent we talk about real life issues, we don't take the game too seriously. We try to enjoy the game, yes we want to win, but the main point is to have fun. Most of our members are 20+, so we all have jobs. We use CoD4 and gaming in general as a chance to wind down.
The big question here is, when you started playing the game you were undoubtably enjoying yourself, are you and your clan still having a good time?Yes, totally. The people we met at lans and online on the whole are a great bunch. My rants above concern the few, not the many. But overall I still enjoy playing as much now as I did the first time I connected to a server via dial up :p
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. Finally, have you got anything to add?Don't forget to visit our current COD4 servers, all of which can be found on our
website. We will also be launching two new Black Ops servers which should be up on the games release, so be sure to check them out!
Shout outs to all the amazing people we've met at lan, to name a few FIFTH, rush gamers, and so many many more, hope to see you in the future!
lold
I agree on mIRC, i use it for my team and i would label us med
problem is that when we search med we either get mixes,lows (no offence) and skillfakers
So this is what makes it hard for us as a team to see if we can hold ourselves against other med skilled teams
I might search teams only next time but that might take longer..
Anyway, enough dribble from me!
Looking out for the next article
playing with lows makes us lazy and stupid.
Best article ever published on TEK9, well done Peter! =)
<3
Nice read pete :D
So much of that is too true of today's community
(dead when he see's this) :P
im sure you cant forget:)
OT: nice article pter , Ebola spoke complete sense with the attitude of players tbf, agreed with majority of the things he said.
edited 2010-10-16 01:34:29
The attitude of a lot of players. When we played MoH:AA, you'd always get NS (nice shot or NN (nice nade). On CoD4 you get: Your low, your a downie, lucky, get reg or basically the player 'cba'.
There's always the banter going on every now and then ingame, but nothing too bad really.
Nice read but, the way you put that you make it sound like being low skilled at CoD4 is bad. I know being in Pre-Invite is a massive achievement but I'm sure that I enjoyed being in a massive 20+ man team because it was a good laugh. Now it's just too many people insulting each other and taking the game too seriously.
Described half of this forum...
I would disagree with that, seeing as cod4 doesn't need a boost atm, its still very active competatively and should be for quite a while yet.
Anyways, good read.:)
Some may find it funny, but how many would swear and abuse others in front of kids? Remember, you have no idea what the other person is like at the other end of the keyboard.
this bit was SO true! i've been saying things of a similar nature for ages. "ur crap" or "crap" binds being spammed springs to mind, and we all know who's to blame for starting those trends!!
O.T: Nice read Peter, glad too see someone is taking the time to examine and find the faults in this commmunity.
Well done, Peter.
edited 2010-10-16 17:38:17
I mistook your youthful enthusiasim as overconfidence and arrogance. I suppose I was acting my age :( and thought of it as a divide in the clan, the competative versus the fun.
I've only ever played for fun and have enjoyed clan life since CoD2.
The clan environment should be both a fun place to meet with like minded friends and a place to learn how to improve your gameplay in a competative arena.
There is plenty of room for both.
You I suppose are testament to that. You started with us got interested and continued onwards, fulfilling an ambition you had.
Fair play to you with remembering your roots and the peeps who helped on your way up.
I can't believe you let Mr Bean near your Mum ;)
Will say a proper hello at i42
Nice article, hopefully we’ll see many articles like these soon.
You've summed basically everything up. Attitude is probably the most common problem in my eyes, basically everything that will be done to help the lower scene will get negative comments from the community. I'm aiming at my thread but not my thread only. Vita Nova gets a lot of negative comments as well.
I made a thread to help the lower scene out a bit (which got mentioned within this article), but the only thing I get back is a lot of ingratitude. I know I've done some things wrong within and around the thread as well, but these things can be fixed, can't they?
I stopped with keeping my thread up-to-date because of the thousand of negative comments and X-fire messages I did get all the time, but it was probably a bad idea because I made the thread and not someone else. I was the one with a ''troll'' and immature attitude towards other people and with me making such a thread would obviously mean that I want to get a good role within the CoD4 scene.
The thing that has been said a thousand of times is that the younger people are the future for the game. The problem is (where the thread is basically about) that the ''newcomers'' (those who have been playing for a few years but didn't break through skill wise.) don't really get a chance to break through. I usually blame the higher skilled players for it (the usual LAN-players) but it's not only them. I'd just put myself in the newcomers category whether I belong in it or not, but we're playing a lot of mixes through the day and holidays. Our problem is (I know it has been said in the article) is that we just ''can't bother about''. I can never figure out if someone is trying or not - which makes it hard to say our real skills now-a-days. We're just messing around and having a good laugh, result: Negative comments on your Recruitment thread, like: ''You are shit because your score has been 3-9 in the last mix.''
I think we need to play with the fun we are playing with right now, but we have to play with the try faces we used to play with as well.
Attending a LAN and stand out of the others is the way to break through. The teams attending LAN’s are the teams who are always attending them, if you count it all out this year I think the average of teams attending LAN’s is around 15-20 while we rather prefer LAN’s such as Antwerp Esports Festival (A South-African team attending a Belgium LAN, what? O.O). I think the amount of teams attending LAN’s is because of the dates (No shit, Sherlock!). I just mean everything gets either announced too late or it’s just an unreasonable date. The most newcomers haven’t taste the taste of LAN’s yet and they won’t come to a LAN being held in a normal school weekend because they might need to skip a few lessons. (We do not really care about skipping lessons ourselves, but our parents do!) And the other main problem is just because our parents won’t let us travel too far. The method Peter used will work for the most of us, we just feel awkward with our parents around – which makes us not attend any LAN.
The academy channel is a good and a bad thing (in my eyes). Of course the good thing is that the teams within the channel are finally able to compete versus teams from their level or even higher. The gap gets filled. The bad thing is that people who are academy worthy can’t get in because they haven’t got a team. Almost every new team lacks loyalty or the activity to stay together for a long time. And if it’s not the loyalty or activity, it’s the distance. I’m sure a lot of online-teams can stay together, but they’ll never really reach the top because they can’t LAN together – team falls apart.
Many teams just get created with the idea that they will get to the top, but I suggest reading ‘’The Perfect Team’’ written by Tom Newman, ‘’Guide to Esports Team Management’’ and ‘’How to: Team Sponsorships’’ both written by Steven Leunens.
The problem with cups are either bad administrators or not many sign-ups because the first comment you’ll get in any prize cup. ‘’$100 first prize / 5 = $20 á man. $20 - $15 for codehook = $5 profit. Shit cup!’’
Night cups are the same as Clanbase, no one tries or it’s either a shit cup because the are Russian/Polish/Hungarian hackers in it and they can just pass to round two without checking the demo’s.
My comment might be a bit messy. I’ve written is yesterday and did go on today, so might said a few things again or forgot a few things.
If you disagree at some points, just discuss about it instead of instant flaming. (Reply or send a message through TEK-9, I haven’t been online on X-fire for a while as well).
Don’t reply at all if you ‘’too long don’t read’’
why u all say about polish hackers? there is the same number of hackers in .nl like in .pl, you saw one well known hacking team MEGATIVE in clanbase and now you say pl= hacker
The behaviour of some preinv teams is not good too.. i had this situations 3 or 4 times.. a preinv team was looking for a war, they were doing it for 2 hours while we pm them they said: No sorry you are academy" and were still looking for the next 1 hour, nonsense. Or the situation that you are playing with preinv team and they left serv cuz got war with another preinv.
The problem of small countries or with poor esports scene (like Poland) that we can't go for .eu lan cuz of money, we can't get invite because we weren't on eu lan. Then we are called onliners or hackers. It's really sad cuz we are not obvious but we are hackers cuz we are Polaks. And if we won pl lan u said 'its only pl lan'
Soz for english.
edited 2010-10-17 16:33:11
Could be argued that if we won i-series people just say 'its only i-series'. Local lans tend not to be taken to seriously, as least from my point of view, although they do give moderate credit to your team if you win.
I will agree upon the statement that certain countries do get stereotyped very easily and this will be very hard to fight. I personally do feel myself being prejudiced against certain countries through no fault of my own apart from my upbringing and experiences. I know for a fact the UK has just as many cheaters as most of these countries, if not more yet I struggle to fight these inbuilt thought processes.
Just for the record though, I hardly ever judge a team by it's cover nowadays, although I will openly admit that I once did. These sort of prejudices are outdated and wrong but they still exist, and it's something we'll just have to live with because I can't see people changing overnight.
edited 2010-10-17 16:53:06
If you want to break through that badly then just find a sponsor who covers anything and not everything. And just don't attend one or two Polish local lan's and come to one in The Netherlands or Belgium. (You don't have to come by plane, it's an 8-hour drive or so).
And you're not the only ones who've got the Local LAN problem, the only profit we have got is that we can easily attend LAN's such as Antwerp Esports Festival/Outpost on Fire. We've got plenty of Local LAN's as well. ''It's just The Reality'', ''It's just FatLAN'', ''It's just The Party'', ''It's just BeneluxgamingLAN''. Etcetera.