Hey guys,
Long time no see.
This is a long read so if you're feeling tired, I suggest you skip it and do something less requiring of your attention span. 
Recommended sound track to listen to while reading:
For those of you who don't know me, because I'm sure there are some new faces who are part of the core of the community now, I'm an older played called Bjord, or back then Bjordhinn.
I started playing M&B Warband a few weeks after it released on Steam, vanilla-fresh-out-of-the-oven-M&B Warband without any mods. Or at least mods I was aware of, because there was a closed beta version of the game with even older oldmy old friends than me, I call them "sages" -
*cough* okiN, Mylet, cmpx8hcabsdasd, chadz, fasader, vargas or espu and some mythical irc:// sages from some anonymous depth of the webs of an internet gaming community
*cough*.
I'm shortly put just one of those oldmy old friend veterans that you hear the occasional anecdote about how douchy they were, how skilled they were (yeah right...) etc. etc.
Anyway!
On to the topic:
In March 2010, I bought the game through Steam and practically begged my father to buy it for me, he did. Spoiled little shithead I was.
My enthusiasm in the game was very high as I was a little kid (16-17?), so I completely no-lifed I have to admit. I spent a lot of my free time trying to improve my skills in the game.
It was like a competition with the other players, and earning recognition and respect for accomplishing things that people look up to was very rewarding.
My journey was quite speedy and I improved at a very fast rate - or at least a fast rate compared to what one may feel is fast today, now that you have some life experience and perspective.
I played on my own for a while under the dumbest pseudonyms you can have, namely BillyJoeBob - because I thought rednecks were hilarious and something I would want to form my image around. Complete retardation I think, looking back. Anyhow...
I bitched around a lot and usually had a pretty big mouth, but I wasn't as loudmouthed as most of the oldmy old friends here remember me as (and probably still think I am loudmouthed, I know who you are :wink:). I was a pretty quiet guy, it was a new experience. The setting was amazing - swords, real-time combat, wits versus wits, medieval and competitive.
Thinking about some legends from that time, you will have names like M pop up, who has made numerous "look-at-my-fucking-skill-montage" with fucking badass effects and truly impressive skills, so he has all the bragging rights to be fair. I applied together with him for a clan called IG, another sage clan that still lives on today, so that's another veteran, whom I admittedly know very little about otherwise.
I didn't really make the cut there when I tried to apply because they required a certain degree of maturity, which I at the time severely lacked, so I went looking elsewhere.
That was when I found another clan, a Scandinavian based clan called Einherjar, which had been founded during the closed beta stage of Warband - they really seemed like a cool group and I loved vikings, which was their "theme". I thought they were kickass and I'm raised in Sweden so it was only natural that my at-the-time-naïve-and-nationalistic pride would eventually lead me to such a clan.
Again, I applied and failed on the first try because of immaturity issues, of trying too hard to be liked and generally being very unsympathetic. The founder, Nagelfar was a chill guy, so he let me try again and praising me for my skills in the game, saying I was one heck of a "warrior" and it was too bad that some members didn't approve my application. That really set my ass on fire for the game and nerd-mode went into a whole new level. Everyday I played a lot on a duel server called Nditions, which by the way was the name of the guy who was paying for the server (think he was called Alexander or some shit, anyway he left the game and Bulldog from Caravan Guards, really awesome guy took over the server and founded the Nditions community which has roots in cRPG).
The second attempt succeeded, I was a skilled and recognised player within the clan and most of the members had accepted me. I managed to stay in my skin for a while in that clan, learning about how to fucking behave yourself with other people for the most part and focusing on the fun part.
Ultimately, after about 2-3 months of playing with the same guys every day and the same maps everyday, the game started becoming stagnant and I was craving for something new.
Then the Einherjar guys introduced me to a mod called cRPG, like 2-3 days after alpha beta alpha cRPG had launched with chadz and gang. You could see chadz very regularly, running around on the first cRPG server which was sponsored by Vincenzo, one of the core members of the Warband Native clan called the 22nd (dumb name if you ask me...), which is a persona non grata legend of whom I shall only hint at his character by the name of Legolas.
The mod was unique. It had everything I had craved. The platform which I fell in love with; sword combat, skill against skill and strategy - and the model that I always liked, RPG-elements with clear goals, rewards and excitement. Leveling up, buying your own gear, investing in skill points, trying to get an advantage on other players in every stage.
Shit man, for a kid my age at the time, to be interested in such a game, you have to be a bit socially awkward, so I won't say other people may have spent the same time as me on such a mod. It's a mod for nerds, let's all admit it. We're nerds. :lol:
Moving on, again I progressed fast in the game. I was more quiet and less loudmouthed as I would eventually become, I was focusing hard on improving my skills, so people probably don't remember me but I went under the name "Cultist". I'd be fucking surprised if anyone but my old Einherjar clanmates like Angantyr, or even him, would remember that name.
I'm not gonna bore you with what my first build was and shit like that, but the general atmosphere and the community was really fresh. It was completely new, everyone was curious and interested in how to better beat other people and get more gold and experience than the other guy, getting cooler armours, cooler weapons and more badass characters so you can rape the shit out of the other team even harder. One particular name comes to mind, Jesus (an actual player, not the biblical one). Among his vast array of weapon choices, he often wielded an awlpike, the short version one.
Looking back at the past and now, Jesus was the first min-maxer. Why do I say this? Well if you remember him, you would know how he raped the living crap out of the average player, wearing a Vaegir War Mask (typical min-maxer helmet) and being generally bad ass. Didn't type much, just killed the shit out of us and inspired many of us to be more competitive. He also had a clear advantage level & item wise as well as skill points and build structure wise.
Moving on twice, I had a short hiatus and eventually when I came back, Native Warband did not interest me. The people there had become full of themselves, and some still are elitistic douchebags in Native just like they were back then. I only wanted to play cRPG. The Einherjar guys kinda lost interest during the time I was away, as the mod was still new and full of nuisances like server resets every 30 minutes so that your progress could be saved in the database (incredibly crude but brilliant nonetheless, considering the limitations of modding the game without WSE). They also liked to wipe your progress, as it was still in a testing stage and in the process of improvement.
Also when I came back, the most frequent character wipe periods had all but faded and the progress would be more long-term and arduous, but even more rewarding and persistent.
That's when nerd level super-saiyajin-over-9000-mode started. First I was in Guards, fairly liked and respected within the clan for the most part, especially by Bulldog who had a Hungarian girlfriend and found out I was also Hungarian. He then switched clans to Shogunate, which was, as seen by its name, a medieval Japan themed clan with samurai and ronin, and I followed with him.
I also pretty much got told off by the Einherjar, as I was kinda going down in activity there and the leader wasn't happy about me "multi-clanning", you know the tedious wannabe clan spirit bullshit.
Anyway, I decided to focus my skill points on two-handed combat, which was a very daring class at the time as it involved having to know how to manual block, swing effectively and generally survive the monster archers like Vargas and some other Merc oldmy old friends.
Everyone pretty much had a ranged weapon on the side, for some reason. Nobody really gave a shit about the balance, people just picked what they wanted to play and played. There were complaints every now and then about how something was unfair, but mostly everyone were so new that they didn't care. I played with Shogunate for a while and started being noticed more by the rest of the community for my prowess in the horse and sword game with persistent character development. There is even a post dating back to the start of this forum after it migrated from the sub-forums of Taleworlds about how I all of a sudden became a good player. Just shows how focused people were on improving their own skills and not giving a shit about everything around you lol.
cRPG for me was like a sanctuary, so of course I probably spent more of my energy in it than the average person and it's not strange to create gaps with this in mind.
I eventually became a tool, full of myself after being acknowledged all of a sudden for my skills and I kinda became a defensive douchebag with a penchant for trash talking, so don't get me wrong I was really obnoxious. :lol:
Not too long after my hiatus and joining Shogunate, I fell out with them due to my idea of amusement by getting into conflicts with JackieChan from the-now-Byzantium and general shit that wouldn't surprise you. So a second time in my cRPG career, I went looking elsewhere for something more exciting and interesting and came across a well-known clan with players who had individual skill many gaps above that of the average player. They still exist today, and I think(?) I am still a member of it today, and they're called the Mercenaries or more commonly Mercs.
It was after joining them when I really started to make a name for myself, as I was the newest collection of their assortment of skilled players. The clan was rowdy, very loud and friendly. We all shared something in common in the beginning, which was the passion for skill in the game, and the ability to win. We were very competitive. It was founded by Olwen, Gnjus, Oberyn and Noctivagant (citation needed). Oberyn and Olwen were two Frenchies who were very successful on the battlefield, one excelling in cavalry combat like a true French my old friend and one favouring foot combat with skills in riding looking like a Norman knight, who later turned persona non grata a year ago and then came back but disappeared.
The other two, Gnjus who was more of a crafty fox with years of experience than a young guy with raw talent for the game and Noctivagant, a fairly notable horse archer. Both a bit more mature guys who didn't still live with their parents like some of us used to.
After joining Mercs, there weren't that many changes in my cRPG career. I become more of an asshat, had a few breaks, lost some skill, became washed out, had another break, came back and got barely beat by DieleR in a duel tournament and kinda just thought "Fuck it, why am I even trying to be the best."
In light of the history of the community, and my journey within it, I realized something today.
I realized how fucking long we have played this game, and how little I actually know about your backgrounds. If you think about it, we have spent more time typing smack to each other and killing each other with swords, arrows, lances, fists, knives, poleaxes, pikes, spears, katanas, crossbow bolts, donkeys and ponies than we have spent with some people
people in our lives. Then bear in mind that we judge each other by very superficial and black and white ideals.
We've actually grown up together, no matter how corny that sounds.
Now we have our own game in development, which is looking bad ass and I wish I had a computer that could run it, and most of us are considerably older.
To tie the knot on the sack; Time changes, man. Everything is so different today.
TL;DR Some oldmy old friend was high and wrote about his nostalgia of playing cRPG with this community.
'Sup
EDIT: See the stricken out part
EDIT 2: Corrected known discrepancies.
