I played alot of pirated Mount and Blade warband single player on easy. I didn't even know you could increase the difficulty. I thought I was good because I could defeat all those bots easily, I always told my friends how I would wreck them and any other player in multiplayer. Then one of them starts talking about a cool mod called cRPG and how we all should get it but I didn't want to because I suggested vanilla MB. I played it anyways and sucked really hard but I believed it was because I was low level. But after reaching level 26 I realized I just suck, so I quit the game and said it sucks and tried to convince everyone else to quit. This mod shrecked my dreams.
Then I dont know what happened but some time later (late 2011) we heard about Strategus and wanted to try it so we did, and we made a clan for it. Which ended up being the only reason for me to actually play the game for longer periods of time. I think the fact that we all wore the same outfits and got a clan tag and banner was the thing that hooked me. I think Bjord and _Bjorn_ are the two persons I remember from really early on. Bjord was a douche but he was so easy to piss off which I tried really hard to do, and _Bjorn_ was always friendly and leading our team to victory on EU1, always followed him with the banner on his head.