What is the best way to describe the history of the TF community? By giving you the view of an old dedicated web designer about the eventual downfall of the TF community, or at least its downfall in his world.

That web designer was me, darkstar, and the site was the now defunct quake2fortress.com a short lived but popular site dedicated to bringing people together in the TF community. It was the brainchild of a guy named phreakin who had a crazy idea of uniting TF under one house, an aspiration too early for its time, and too much for some peoples egos. You see back then, Q2F took a lot of shit because people thought that we were trying to monopolize the TF community. We were even told that our site was written to much for the newbie because they were such a large audience. To this day, one year later, I have still yet to meet a TF2 veteran. We had plans to host other sites and on a limited basis other clans. Other sites complained to us that we weren't working within the community and were probably doing some money banner scheme to make money off the site. Q2F never made money, it was never designed for that, all ads ran were part of our hosting agreement. We were very much a non-commercial site, and each staff member actually lost money from their investments into the site at the expense of doing something they thought was fun. All I can say is that the same people that criticized Phreakin, ended up adopting his ideas once he left. He was one of the pioneers of the "community website" it just didn't work out the way that he planned.

I can't remember dates well but I imagine it was february when I joined up with Phreakin and his "staff" which in fact was composed of some guys who supposedly did work on the site. I answered to a call asking for people to run the class pages, looking for my big shot to work on a large web site. I figured that I would show them how good I was compared to the other class pages and somehow work onto the big main page. Well it turned out I was one of 3 guys that actually wrote in, and the other 2 ended up folding, so there I was making some class strategy pages. When I do pages, I do them all at once and have a quick turnaround time, and Phreakin was amazed at both the graphic content of my sites, and the haste at which they could be produced. One thing led to another and soon I was on the main staff of Q2F within a week.

I soon realized that I never actually talked to the other staff members. In fact they could very well not have existed. Supposedly one of them worked as a modeller for TFS but I now laugh at that, but who knows? Phreakin always told me about stuff that TFS had told us that wasn't supposed to leek out and I thought it was cool. Phreakin was on good terms with TFS and was able to converse with them. I was still in my amazement stage and was just stupefied. I went about updating the news and working with Phreakin on adding new section to Q2F. Hits went up, and we were the largest TF site on the planet, with the exception of the TF Newswire and ETF. Life was good, and the hits kept climbing.

Stuff was on the up, and the ironic thing of it is that the best thing to ever happen to TF was a failed project. That was the recruitment and design of the [TFB] , the TF brigade, a clan that Phreakin and I wanted to put together once we realized that we never actually got to play. I put together a page which was extremely good for me, I was really learning some cool tricks with the Quake Scene Builder (QSB) and Photoshop at the time. The page was extremely nice for just a clan page. And because of it we got a large number of requests to join the clan, it was after all "the official clan of Q2F". Two of the applicants were people that you will no doubt recognize: Billings (who now runs CF TF) and Bowdown (the man responsible for the infamous TFCON, and now newsie at his own page on Planetfortress). Two more unlike characters you could never hope to find. This clan also yielded what I thought to be its best member, and a great person, a guy named Machine.

These 3 characters have their own histories which you may or may not know already. BowDown, possibly the craziest and likable kid I've ever met had a TF convention organized that would actually have some of the guys from TFS. Depending on your perspective, TFCON was either a disaster or a.... nearly averted disaster as BowDown used to describe. Mostly though it didn't hold to the hype of its crazy leader (how could it? this was BowDown after all) and it was big news back. Billings was just a newbie really when he joined up, but he was eager to learn and I liked him a lot. I'd like to think that he learned a little something from his experience at Q2F, both good and bad. He has since become a prominent member of the community and has his own page now 'CF TF' of which we all respect.

The clan actually fell apart in a matter of weeks, as most clans do, mostly due to my fault I imagine. But we kept around those three guys just because they were cool and Phreakin and I needed some help. That help came in the form of Machine, who like his handle suggests was a true workaholic. The man ate up work. He like Phreakin was an older guy compared to me, hell I was only 18 at the time, and with Bowdown's 15 years we combined to beat out Phreakin and Machine who were in their late twenties. Anyways i got Phreakin to allow Machine to join the staff, and it was the best thing that happened to Q2F. With Phreakin just having a baby in real life and me getting in a lull (as web guys often do when there is a lack of news, as was the case for the almost 5 months that I worked there) Machine filled in the gap for us.

Phreakin and I then started getting ambitious. That dream of a "community site" of Phreakin's was slowly coming around. I designed a brand spanking new design that would lure sites to be hosted under us. Soon the sites actually came, quite a few in fact. This was the prime of Q2F, granted it only lasted 2 weeks because of numerous problems both that could and couldn't control which I'll explain, and again life was really good. We had a solid staff with the new addition of Machine, we had good buds with Bowdown and Billings and we we had just hit 120,000 hits. I had developed into quite a graphic artist, and helped out other sites on the side, and we were serving the community.... all of it. Then the shit came, and when the shit comes, it comes thick.

First, in those few great weeks we moved about 6 times from server to server. Phreakin's one weakness was that he was too trusting of anyone that would feed him a line and complimented our site. Every time we moved, our hosted sites had to move. They didn't like this very much. Second, I got depressed about how much time I was spending on the computer and not in "real life". I realized that when I was not going out with my friends on friday nights so that I could update the news or play in a match that something was wrong with me. I had threatened to quit it all before but I was seriously considering it then. I slowly did less and less at Q2F, and with Phreakin having a kid and all, this didn't help Machine much. I eventually made a official notice of my resignation the day after TFS announced that they were working with valve and not designing TF2 on the quake2 engine. I was "disappointed" that I had spent almost half a year working for something that didn't exist. The domain name of Quake2Fortress was now a joke and so became the site. I decided to leave when I knew that the site was on the fall. But when I left I was given the best send off by my buddy Phreakin. I never thought that I could acquire such respect for a person as I did for Phreakin, but when I left he wrote a thank you note on the site and a little history on me and the site almost as long as this account and I can say that I was deeply touched. He was truly misunderstood by the community and I wish they hadn't acted so bitterly against him in the end.

Q2F, unfortunately went downhill from them, not because I had left, but because the walls started caving in on Phreakin's plan. We were too ambitious and took on more than we could chew. We didn't know how to deal with the hosted sites and our own server hosting, and it soon began to show in the sight. Machine recruited a whole new "2nd generation" of Q2F staff made up of people I didn't know, but I still feel guilt for leaving this staff and my friend Machine with a crumbling foundation. There was nothing he could do to save the site, and the fact that he tried as hard as he did is a testament to his good nature. With TF2 now confirmed for HL the site went to shit. Machine was in no way an artist, and had no staff that could somehow change all the quake logos to HL ones. So Q2F suddenly became a ghastly site, a place where the past was still reminiscent but shit was smeared all over it and therefore deformed it. How far the mighty had fallen, a site which at one time rivaled the TF Newswire, was now shutdown for a month and made up of edited images in what looked like MS paint. It never recovered and eventually disappeared. Maybe it wasn't the best site, but at one point it was my site, and I put a lot of love into it. It was a sad day for me when it eventually fell.

Where are they now?

Phreakin: Bought some tf themed domains, and sold them off. He did make an attempt to restart a "community TF site" which a bunch of other notables who won't be mentioned here. Rumor is they didn't get along well, one side saying they got shit on, the other succeeding at a cost. I don't know that story and I'll leave it to those involved to right that be of TF lore. He then went on to do some work for some radio stations as a web designer. I haven't heard from him in quite a while, but will always respect him and consider him a good friend.

Machine: Have no idea, its rumored he got frustrated with the whole seen and devoted more time to his work.

Billings: Successful maintainer of CF TF, a site I think that represents the best parts of the TF community, or at least that which I remember. I don't talk with him much anymore but I recently opened a dialogue with him and he is still as friendly as ever. I wish him luck.

BowDown: Pretty much still the same as far as I can tell from his posts at Brimstone. Still a bastard ( I mean that in a good way )

Darkstar: Me? well I went on to work at a bunch of different gaming sites. I learned to balance my life with concern to my internet addiction. I worked for awhile at half-life.org, but not to long. I soon had the same problems there at Q2F. I'm currently very happy running a Quake2 RA2 clan called the Borg Collective. I am still bitter about the move TFS made to Valve, and while seeing that it was a good move for them, I just wanna know why they couldn't let people know (like people who spent half a year based on the belief it would be for Q2) a little earlier. I have never received a thank from TFS for my work promoting their game, or an apology for investing my time and money in a product that they let the public live under the delusion of.

I wish all of them luck, and hope that maybe Machine and Phreakin still exist and can reminisces with me some times. Other sites beware, even the mighty can fall. Please send me an email if you got hits far and let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

dave 'darkstar' snider
[email protected]
http://www.borg-collective.com