Part 2: The Clans and Players

Let me tell you about this game, it was personal. That's why it was so much fun!

It WAS personal. You got to decide what you looked like in the game. You could be male or female. White or black. You could choose from an incredible number of skins that could make you look anyway you wanted.

Then there was the society of it all. The Clans.

There were several popular ones like the [GFC] Which stood for The Gibb Family Clan. The little red chunks of flesh left behind after a frag are called Gibbs. The people who started the GFC took their names after the Gibbs Barry, Maurice, Robin and Andy. Their best player was this kid named Grimm. He was a bad ass. He and this guy named Dartanion hated each other big-time. I believe both Dar and Grimm claimed to be and dial up, but lived close to the server which is why they had good connections. I can't remember all the particulars, but I do remember that they hated each other. Other players included Lavish, Rich and Peacho. Lavish used to be {cm}Sniper and was WAAAYYYY into Prince. Yeah, that Prince, the midget singer in purple. Grimm ended up being good friends with Orion who hated Dartanion too. I think Orion was in the clan HTO, but I can't be sure. Either way, Orion was always defending Grimm and Grimm was always defending Orion. It's like they were "together". Know what I mean? I think Orion joined GFC too. I think so. He tried to get the Asus transparent drivers from me, but that's another story.

Then there was the Cajun Mafia {CF}. They were all in Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana. They were sometimes suspicious of me, but mostly laughed their asses off at my shenanigans. Their members included Shadow, Ice, Stinger, Odie, Warlock, Gulf, Black Bass, Sniper, Kind Peacho and others. I actually met Stinger. He is a pretty nice guy. We had a blast trading stories about the people on TOA over drinks. I tried to get in their clan, but there was no way that was going to happen. I was too much of a troublemaker.

The Frag Bastards <FB> had members like Slaphappy, Bloodfart, Metalskull, Don Mega and I think DaSavage. Man, I used to really wail on those guys. It was Metalskull that got the special attention from me. He was aptly named. Metalskull. What an imbecile. The Frag bastards used to say "Yag-Yook!@!" to each other as some sort of greeting. Ridiculous. They were definitely there to occupy the basement.

Then there was the <GoM>, Gods of Mortality and their Deathmetal loving leader DeathAngel<GoM>. I used to call them Gommers like Gommer Pyle. Death angel and I had quite a few flame wars on each other on the TOA message board, but I'll tell you more about that later. I'm pretty sure that Bloodfart joined <GoM> at some point as well as Furback and Slash There were many others in <GoM> too. Almost forgot FragSinatra.

I started my own clan at one point called the Marvel Clan ^M^. Several regulars took the name of a super hero. I was surprised by the interest. It was all anonymous. I would eventually join the GFC along with Postal. Several people quit in protest to my presence. There were several occasions where Grimm, Postal and I were all three on at the same time and cooperating against the rest. Man, that was fun.

I can't remember all the clans. The PSC, PBB and BNC come to mind.

The PSC are headed by The Big Guy. He was really nice and always helpful or encouraging. Especially to newbies. I loved newbies too! They were easy frags. The PSC included Joker, Bobafett, Dickstien and Slash and I can't remember who else.

The BNC were headed up by this really dumb kid named Neo. His spelling was on a third grade level. I wanted to read what they were saying on their clan's private message board. So I devised a plan. I would play pretending to be my daughter and ask to join his clan. One thing, I don't have a daughter. So I used a picture of my cousin and Neo bought it all. I got in and their message board was filled with crap. It was disappointing.

I do remember the players though. The number of people playing was just incredible. You could try to log on at 3 am on a Monday morning and be refused because the server was full. TheKind quickly added a second server to accommodate the HPBs called appropriately enough, The High Ping Bastard Server. I played there till I got a DSL connection from AT&T. What a happy day that was! I was playing from my house as Spiderman and Eric called himself Hulk.

Let us NOT forget, Giggling Cat. God this dude was weird. He had the strangest Ideas about politics. {CM}Stinger and I spent some time trying to figure this one out. Where in the hell was this guy from? Palestine? Cuba? Who knows. He was a strange guy. He could have easily gone to prison for crimes against the English language. I could write a chapter on him alone.