I originally ventured onto the internet for the sole purpose of finding Team Fortress 2 information, back when it was going to be a more realistic tactical game. However I stumbled across SWG, and became a far too active member of the forums there pre beta, asking a new question to the devs every day until release (I got to about 700, with a fair number of them answered directly). I was also part of the Newbie Welcome Wagon there, that greeted every new poster on the forums until we were overwhelmed when beta started.
Waiting for SWG I heard news of PS, which was certainly more my style of game (I had been playing CS and BF in those years of waiting for SWG) as it was an FPS. As a keen forumite I was all over the official forums, and found an abundance of hugely specialised vapour outfits, most dedicated to being pure cloakers or snipers; something I saw as being useless as an outfit with the grand battles PS promised.
With that realisation I started The Vindicators for the VS (hey, I'm a Scientist), quickly gaining members as the months leading up to beta ticked away, ending up with about 120. Most of these members are no longer with the outfit, but a few remain. During this time I turned down multiple requests from different outfits for us to join them in both mergers and alliances.
When beta started we recruited a lot of people, finding among them great leaders who have stuck with us and led chapters for the community into other games. I will always remember the first time I logged in (my download was slow) and was running to join my outfit for the first time. This was in the time before broadcast warp gates so I had to hoof it through the entire of Esamir North to South to even reach the warp gate of the target continent. However before I even reached Jarl I heard the whine of aircraft engines; my outfit had come to pick me up with an almost full Gal with escort fighters.
We ended beta high up the rankings for the VS, number 3 if I remember correctly.
With the games launch we grew and grew, both in numbers and as friends. At times over the years we had full platoons working together, with separate armour, air and infantry squads coordinating in some pretty impressive feats. In particular I remember a 5 hour defence of Tore, Cyssor and a time when we turned the tide of a battle that had been raging for three days around a base.
We were a member of the Vanu Round Table alliance of Emerald, which organised large raids which did unfortunately take far too long to
We stuck with the game until the outfit wars; we had 45 Vindicators turn up for the first fight, but within a month of them ending the outfit was all but dead; poor GM decisions during 2 of our 6 matches had ripped the morale out of the Planetside outfit, along with the lack of game updates and the newly released BF2142.
We were 7th for the VS for outfit points at the time of me quitting.
In the years since I have played most major FPS games, with my favourite of them so far being BF Bad Company 2. I also played the recent Bethesda RPGs, as well as a host of other games, but nothing has ever grabbed me like PS did.
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2011-03-18, 02:44 PM
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