Thanks to all of you who have read this story up to this point, and to all of the cool people I’ve met playing this game, and to all the guys and gals that I’ve only chatted with. I love all of you from the bottom of my heart.
So, the year was 2003, and in a fit of rage I decided to hang up my mousepad and retire from Jedi Knight. I was getting sick and tired of all of the cheaters, which was extremely easy to do. All you had to do was download a few small .cog files and put them into a folder named cog in your JK directory and viola, you could have a Godmode toggle, autoaim, extra health/shields, stronger force powers, and the list goes on ad infinitum. Many players were exposed by nighthawks ra3 mod (an .exe Trojan file that he used to cleverly see who was cheating). And the list of cheaters was jaw dropping. Many players who I had easily beaten were guilty. And even a few of the top players. But I don’t feel the need to mention them here. Anyway, a lot of people started to get fed up and move on to other things. I used to stay up really late and play JK with people from across the world, from England, Asia, Australia, Europe, etc. A lot of the guys I became friends with were from subby’s clan SyKoTiC. And I decided to leave WD to join _SyK for their newly formed west coast American q3 team. We joined the rocket arena 3 ladders on the east and west coast, so along with orion, smacK (who played on the east coast), a really good q3 player and former JKer named Teflon Z, and a bunch of other cool ass dudes we made a 4v4 ra3 team and started to climb the ladder. It was a lot of fun. Id estimate at the time i was probably somewhwere in the top 2,000 to 5,000 players in the world. I don’t know how to verify or check these stats, but just based on my score as and kill death ratios on the servers and shit that’s where id place myself. And my ego says its so. I was also pretty sick at quakeworld dm3. But I was complete trash at q2. I digress.
2004 rolled around, and I was banned from q3 for having a bad registry key. And I’m incredibly cheap, so thus ended my q3 career. I decided to return to Jedi knight in 2004 to find a new clan on the scene that was the talk of the town. dP. I represented SyK for a little while, but had lost popularity in that clan somewhat. Subby had quit the clan to join VDS, and a lot of the guys were the sophisticated type, and a mouthy pot smoking trash talker like me just didn’t quite fit in anymore, so I joined a clan called JE as sort of a joke… there were two decent players named Lowbacca and Gogeta that were pretty dece. They both eventually beat me in games (who hasnt?) but eventually got a little too lippy for my liking, and didn’t seem to appreciate having a guy like me on the roster, so I eventually decided to wear my WD tag again, and try to reform the Wielders of the Darkside to preserve an important piece of gistory, and to regain respectability and return us to our former glory. Most of our members had jumped ship to DSbr when Rage quit the clan, and a few people left to join other clans… But the majority of our players went to DSbr. Reiko and AssKicker joined JaG. And this one good player Phoenix_MDS had her own little following of nf gunners… But dP was the new clan to beat. Spanner had claimed the title of best ffer in my absence, and nightmarez, xisko (now rain), and a few other nf gunners converted to ffers were on their roster. I convinced a few people to wear the WD tag so that we could beat them… And although spanker was the new champ at 1v1, for some reason he wasn’t that great at 2v2, and I was able to beat him and everyone else in his clan with nf players that I would have use protection while I was a regular lighty, and we would crush them. This strategy was first used by AssKicker and BudMan (a nf gunner) in a CWT a year or so before that, and it was surprisingly annoying to deal with. That, and the fact that hardly anyone showed up to that tournament let Kicker and Budman walk away with an easy gold medal for JaG. Reiko and AssKicker may have been the best team at the time, but they were both inactive. So, along with WD_Nato, a rather strange fellow from Turkey as my darkie I was able to achieve world domination. We made a troll website challenging the world to come up with a team to beat us, and nobody could come close. Me and him were electric together… I was dialed in as a lighty, and he was aggressive in the surge tunnels and good enough with his dark force powers that for some reason it just worked. I was able to beat every dP team I faced using various by players with the Kicker/Budman strategy. Genetix was the best at this, but this formation even worked with Wodz, a nf saberist that played with the keyboard only (and JK historian). Me and wodz only lost once, when spanker and rain decided to copy our strategy (which was a copy of kicker and budman lol). Aside from that one loss… WD was undefeated all year with me as their de facto leader.
Again in 2006 I lost a couple games on shitty pcs, got a girlfriend, and retired from online gaming for good. I didn’t even have a computer, or the internet for 6 years… And I just found other stuff to do. I became more active and learned how to be a regular human hehe.
In 2012 I decided to come back. And to my delight my old friend ZW_Aoshi was the reigning champ of of Jedi Knight. He had also joined VDS, and as VDS_Interloper rose to #2 on the nf saber ladder. Eventually like many others he joined DSbr, and had surpassed every one in nearly every setting. Which was cool, because one of my very first friends, and some one that I trained how to play full force was now the champ. When I came back, me and him trained dbz style, and took ff oasis to new heights… The likes of which had never been seen before. Eventually I surpassed him, and myself became the reigning champion of Jedi knight. Now, I use a low sensitivity and have great aim. I move a little slower, but make less mistakes.
And, its lonely at the top. People quit wanting to play me, unless I was blackout drunk. And even then it was hard to find a challenge… besides loper.
As I write this now I have temporarily fallen down a couple of spots in the power rankings, and look forward to reclaiming my #1 ranking. My house was burglarized a year and a half ago, and I have only played one game since that tragedy happened (both of my laptops were stolen). But now I have new life, and a new desire to achieve greatness again. And I hope to reclaim my title and hold on to it until the day I die. Unless YOU have something to say about that 😉 I’m 34 years old now and have spent over 50% of my life on this old computer game that’s fallen into obscurity. It was once PC Gamer’s #1 computer game of all time, until Half Life came out, but its still the fastest and most mentally challenging game with the highest learning curve put of any First Person Shooter in the history of of gaming. Its like a fast paced game of mental chess that requires crazy precision, pinpoint accuracy, finesse, with more nuance than any game ever created, and I love it.
-WD_Shinji