As I'm sure some of you have noticed, our Hall of E-Fame now features several new names and our Counter-Strike roster has mysteriously vanished. Of course this happened almost a month ago, but I was so... depressed (:P) by our demise that I haven't been able to write anything about it until now. Anyway, before I talk about the present, let's take a walk down memory lane.
After folding our NS team in May 2007, we started playing Counter-Strike. Not as a team really, but a seriously-fudged-up-mix of lots of cool NS dudes who didn't have anything better to do during summer. It was pretty disorganized, we weren't even sure what game to play as we debated 1.6 vs. Source for several months! Eventually we settled on 1.6 and throughout the summer months we gradually improved our individual skills, although our teamplay was non-existant. We had heaps and heaps of fun, although by any standard we were really, really bad.
With summer ending, most of the dudes left for other, more productive stuff, while the remaining players all agreed that it was time to get serious. aA, esJ, Fana, germ, oskari (tjosan), pantsu and sherpa formed the core of the team and eventually we managed to talk iwb (Kira), by far the most experienced CS player of us, to join up and teach us how to not suck. While we hadn't really decided how serious we wanted things to be yet, we played lots of PCWs with this roster during August and September and eventually got decent enough to take on "high" teams in practice matches. Of course most of these "high" teams were actually terrible, but there was no doubt we'd improved a lot both individually and as a team.
After narrowing the team down a bit to esJ, Fana, germ, iwb, oskari and pantsu, we joined the ClanBase Fall 2007 CS Opencup, hoping to make an impact. A month later we'd further improved to the point where we were half decent, but we still got destroyed by most of the teams we came up against in the Opencup. No doubt we got unlucky with the group we got placed in, which was by far the toughest group in Division 2, but there was a general consensus in the team that things had to change.
Remarkably, pantsu managed to get Rare interested in joining up and we decided to go Scandinavian. Narrowing the roster down to the Swedes (Kira, pantsu, Rare and oskari) and the Norwegian (aww yeah baby), we could communicate in our native languages and play without the ping problems we had experienced in the past. We quickly discovered that Rare was a tactical genious and after taking over the position as IGL he quickly gave us the tactics to match, or even surpass, our individual skill. During October and November we improved more than we had during the previous 4 months combined and I learned skills and tactics I didn't even realize existed before. By December we had actually become a very solid team, although certainly not anywhere near the professionals or semi-professionals, but good enough to tackle most of the other amateurs on our level.
But of course, that's when it started raining poo-poo. The combined forces of exams, iwb's computer breaking down, my trip to Rome, and Christmas basically destroyed our activity during December and gave everyone a little too much time to think things through. When we finally got together again in early January, oskari had decided to quit CS and Rare had joined a different team. Realizing that rebuilding the team would take a lot of effort, we decided to disband. Kira and pantsu are still playing CS, although their last team just self-destructed as far as I know, while I've decided to take a break from competitive gaming and focus on movie making for the moment. While no-one's going to remember us for our accomplishments, I'm certainly going to remember all the fun I had playing with these dudes for half a year. From sherpa's lack of gamebrain to esJ being convinced that all players with 8 digits in their Steam IDs are hackers and pantsu's constant troubles with life, the hilarious moments are too many to mention.
...aaand that's pretty much it. Another door closed, as we put an end to our rather short Counter-Strike adventure. Fortunately it doesn't take much effort to open a new door!
I've got several updates planned for the next couple of weeks, so check back for more information on the future of nineLegends and our current projects.
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