After playing Diablo for about a year I finally got introduced to TF in November of 1997. My previous Quake experience was single player with keyboard only. All the other FPS games I played didn't support mouse and I never realized Quake did. After downloading QuakeWorld I hit the servers right away finding I had to download crap for about an hour. Nobody told me to get the TF zip. :) Like I said, being a keyboarder, I couldn't hit anything. Then with the lack of grens and other bindings I was really sucking. The whole concept of playing Quake online was new to me, not to mention binding stuff. Back then people were a lot friendlier. When I asked how do I throw a gren, they would say "+gren1" not "gamma 9999" :) I took the name "Genius" because just that day, I got 100% on test. :) During the first month of playing I tried all the classes and I got raped because I just couldn't hit anyone. Sometimes I did get lucky but not often. I saw the sentry guns and I thought that would be perfect for me. That's when I found my class, the Engineer.

After getting set up I played like crazy. Come home from school, hit the servers for hours. I played on clan DK's server (Dragon Knights) all the time. I played on there for about 3 to 4 months and during that time I got invited to quite a few clans but I didn't join because of my philosophy which was, don't join some newbie clan, get good and join a good clan. Then a lot of my friends started playing StarCraft and of course I followed them not wanting to be left alone in the TF world. In a month I played over 100 games. First ones were against the comp but then I made a new character and played people. I had a damn good record too 76-2-4. :) Just like Diablo, SC got hacked too and I played less and less of it.

I came back to TF as Master Of Puppets. After hearing the song Master Of Puppets by Metallica at a friends house, I thought "WOW! This is awesome, I'm gonna call myself this". :) I went to play on DK's server again. By now I was an above average engineer because I had gren timing down, good sentry placement and I used the dispenser as a weapon. I learned all this on pubs... amazing! :) Since I played tons of games with DK, I was going to join them but a split happened and AoD was formed. I didn't know who to join so I didn't join either. The server went to AoD and I still played on it for quite a while until it went down. A few weeks before that a real life friend (DoBeR) got a faster PC and he started playing. He played on clan NS's server (Navy Seals). Of course I went there with him and I played there for hours as well. By this time I was 8 months into TF and still haven't been in a clan. NS looked very impressive and so did I. I asked to join but they only accepted LPBs. Even though I was discouraged, I still played there and owned the server. :) It didn't happen every time I played, but pretty often I would come in first or second as a defensive, keyboarding, 10 FPS, 300 pinging engineer. :)

Soon the real life friend (c0oljOe) that got me into TF, got me into his clan. The clan was PoW - Post Office Workers. It was all good for about a month until one Saturday night the leader called a mandatory meeting. If you didn't come, you were gone. I stayed at home waiting for this meeting. I ended up waiting for 4 hours until I blew up on everyone in IRC and told them I quit. I deleted all of them from ICQ and went to sleep :) In 2 weeks, c0oljOe gets invited into clan NuK. He was very happy with the clan and of course I wanted in too but NuK was invite only.

One or two weeks later, I'm playing in a server and I get invited to clan MoFo. I didn't like the name but we had lots of talent. At this time c0oljOe quit NuK because they lied to him or something and he was starting a clan with DoBeR and a few people. This was my opportunity to have some sort of power in a clan and I joined [IK] - Insane Killers. The 2 leaders, were not very good. They didn't have leading skills. A week into this clan one of them had a seizure and the other one wasn't online much. I wasn't the leader, but I was leading and making/updating the website as well. :) It was really awesome, a few [IK]ers and I would go onto a server and come in 1st, 2nd, etc. and then ask people which we though were good to join. :) I arranged a scrimmage against another clan which I then found out was made up of experienced players. I think they were called UD. I decided to cancel it 3 days before it was supposed to happen so they would have time to get another scrim but their leader (JeHu) shitted all over me and told me how [IK] will have a bad name and be hated by everyone. Three days later when the scrim was supposed to happen I had all these UD guys sitting in [IK]'s channel saying "come on". Seeing as how these guys didn't take the cancellation, I said that we forfeit but now not only JeHu but the whole clan started talking shit. This, plus some clan issues made me quit and as I went, 5 other people did. [IK] no more. During this same time I was cross clanning with [IK] and MoFo. Two days after I left [IK], MoFo was gone too.

Clanless again and still a keyboarder at 10 FPS.

I started hanging in NuK's channel again. They really impressed me as a clan with their organization and skill. DoBeR who started hanging in their channel as soon as c0oljOe got in, was a recruit by now. I thought the same would happen for me. One week passed when again, tragedy happened. NuK merged with eXiles to make it "better" but that didn't work out too well so all the members went their ways. After 2 or 3 weeks for the 4th time I follow c0oljOe to another clan. ]K3[. It stood for Klan Killahs Klan. I knew they had a bad reputation as soon as I joined. Their ban list was huge, they badmouthed everyone... just a bad rep. Then I was a recruit for 2 weeks and never got to play which gave me even more reasons to quit. A few members quit, the leader quit... it all went to hell. One of the members (Trekker) went to Clan [ONE]. He was very pleased with them and of course, I wanted in. :)

Clan [ONE] was great from the second I joined. Everyone I met there was really cool, I liked everyone and everyone liked me... I think :) Finally after a year of owning everyone with a keyboard, I started using the mouse because I reached the top of my engineer skills. Never got invited to -E- though... I had at least equal or maybe even better skill than [ONE]'s -E- engineer. I had to play another class or drop TF. I took the name "N0 $k!llZ" which went just fine with my 2 frags in 30 minutes games as a soldier :) I still did play engineer for [ONE] but on pubs I played all the classes except engineer. Clan [ONE] was getting better and better and I thought we were going to the top until the two leaders started arguing. In a few days we had lost over 10 members. I stayed for another week hoping a miracle would happen and we would get back on out feet but nothing happened, just more people left. I was one of them. I learned A LOT in Clan [ONE] and I am thankful to everyone that helped me. It was a really great experience there.

Clan NuK had reformed recently and I was determined on getting in but I only made recruit status. And I think it was for the best that I didn't make it. After playing engineer for nearly a year and a half, I got sick of it and knowing that no veteran clan would take me as anything else than an engineer I decided not to look for another clan, but play TF whenever I had some free time on pubs.

Oh, by the way... there is another Master Of Puppets. Last time I checked he was in CAO. Don't mistake me for him. :)