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The [VOA] Time Line ProjectUpdate, VOA was established in late 2004. It was founded by me (Vinas) and co-founded by NewPants, and Funk. This is a starting point for the history of VOA. Our historian is charged with the responsibility of maintaining this area for our Clan and Community. Since I've been here the whole time, I'll start it off. It's my goal that you take from this an accurate depiction of our history. Perhaps you'll learn about what it takes to form a "clan" and supporting community. Maybe you've already formed your own or are planning to do so. We hope our story helps you. This is the story of our clan and friends that we've met along the way. Bear with me as I recall our inception as a clan and the speed bumps we hit along the way... Sincerely,
[VOA] Vinas (GEN)
General Brigade Commander and Founder, [VOA]
October 2004It all starts in the middle of a wet, and particularly cold October in 2004. During my earlier years as a Counter-Strike (original, some people call it 1.6) player, I had been a regular of a particularly well run community called [DOH]. [DOH] stands for "Defenders Of Honor" and the title is appropriate for how their clan was run. Rules like no swearing, no porn, and nothing over "G" rated material was strictly enforced on their servers. To be quite honest, it was a relief to be able to concentrate on my game without the constant trash talk. People actually used team work on their servers! TEAMWORK! What a new concept on a public server... Finally a place to call home and not be bothered by all the e-thugs. I still thought to myself, how could they keep players here with so many rules? It turns out that other people felt the same way as I did. Shortly there after, I met a young man there named Funk. Funk and I applied for [DOH] shortly there after. November 2004After about 3 months I grew impatient with waiting to join a good clan. Instead of waiting to join [DOH] I realized there could be other fellow gamers who were also real life Veterans just like me. After all we've lived this lifestyle and enjoy virtually getting shot over the real thing any day. Surely I had what it takes to start a CS-Source clan. The question was and still is, what does it take to run a gaming community ... exactly?
We needed a server to become a clan (right?). After all I knew how to run a CS server having ran them for small LANs in the past. How hard could it be anyway? I've learned a good, tried and true formula since then. People + anonymous internet = unpredictability. No truer words were ever spoken. December 2004
We borrowed space from another website called www.detpc.com. We redirected the www.voanet.com traffic to http://www.detpc.com/voa/. It was a little slow and had a confusing address, but it worked, and on the cheap! I knew Funk would probably like to join the new clan. Unaware of the commitment that would soon follow, on or about the 24-Dec-04 Funk joined up!
So [VOA] was off and rolling with three members. We didn't scrim, we just had fun testing and playing on different maps on our little pub. It was agreed to run our pub just like the [DOH] guys taught us. Clean and fun! 2004 to Jan 2005We had a tough time building up our community. People would apply for VOA or ask for a tryout. We knew we wanted people that would last and not just team hoppers, or roster riders. It was difficult to choose the best members, so we stayed a small clan for the first year of our inception. Once 2005 hit, things started to change... 2005We gained some new members. Familiar faces like Captain Jackal, Opus Dei, and Fringe decided to play on our pub almost non-stop. A little bit later we gained some more members who incidentally are now (or were) senior officer in VOA. People like Led Magnet, Loose, and CaptHowdy soon joined up. Our clan was becoming a community due to the dedication of our starting members. mid 2005VOA joins the UGL. We continue to recruit quality members like [VOA] Amanda, CRIMinal, and Mean Wiener. The UGL was a terrible league, but was a good starting point for VOA. We played one or two seasons and realized that the UGL was not and probably never would be ready for prime time due to the unprofessional way their league admin ran things. Basically it was a free for all and there was no accountability in that league. We were happy to move on! Late 2005We dabbled in TWL ladders and did OK. Our team was pretty nervous about the rules and didn't want to make any mistakes. In the end it was so easy just to play and really we over pressured ourselves about the rules. Once we became familiar with league play the VOA members knew this was something we wanted to do for fun. We weren't ready to give up our public server playtime just yet though. Traffic grew to nearly 12,000 player peak per day. We enjoyed a 7,000 player visit per day average on our Public server. VOA was quickly approaching mainstream prime time territory!!! 2006We updated our server sometime in 2006 to a dedicated machine that we ran two servers from. We hosted a 12 slot, 100Tick private and 66 Tick 30 slot Public server. We were a beta tester for Mani, and as such were hosing one of the first high volume servers with Mani Admin Plugin. Players flocked to our servers (some redirection may have helped). As our popularity grew so did our member base. Members like SatanMonkey, Wicked, Bait, and Perpetr8r started playing only to eventually become VOA members themselves. 2006 was an exciting year for VOA. This is also the year VOA started in CAL and TWL. As most people find out, you can not prepare yourself for the level of competition. Going from pwning face in a bunch of pubs to playing competitively is a night and day difference. Our reality is that you just need to join the league, get your butt kicked a little, and learn what it takes to compete with these people! We joined CAL in season 5 with an end record of 3-5-0. Our no forfeit loses rule was born that season and it was our mission to at least play each game, regardless of the outcome. 2007
We continued to focus on CAL Open with two teams. The Alpha was NewPants, Fringe, Opus, Raab, and me (Vinas). The Bravo team had members like Maddot66, Perp, Wicked, Klugsdale, and Led. The rest of our clan gladly filled in as alternates. It was during this time we created our well known mandatory practice rule. Every Sunday at 7pm we would scrim each other. All would get a chance to play. When I say we had good times I mean that this was probably the closest our clan had ever been. Besides the practice though, were still fighting pretty hard to keep an even record at 4-4. Our Bravo team struggled even more... Our clan probably had about 20 members by this time. CSS was going strong, but we focused less on our pub... 2008
This is the year that our team was most competitive. The Alpha team had some really good talent coming from the likes of Sol, T!N, and Raab. NewPants and T!N's AWPs were IMO arguably the best in the league. In season 9 we were unfortunate in almost making it to IM only to be upset by a 5-3 record. After that though we kept practicing... Right up until s10 started we were already red hot. Teams didn't expect the kind of competition we brought. Our motto became "VOA, the team that makes good teams go dead". During CAL season 10, we gained a little fame by beating out the 7th ranked team (My Fingers Hurt) in an upset victory. We went on to win well into the 3rd round playoffs when we were pretty well whooped by BodyCount. And hell, who would have thought we'd make it that far? Our end winning record was 8-3 with no forfeits. The practice and determination paid off! |