| This
recollection of events that has happened over the course of uFo's life has
been compiled by AndyAtlas. All efforts have been made to ensure
the history is as accurate as alienly (not humanly) possible. |
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Act
1 : A Clan Is Born
Act
1 : A Clan Is Born
Because uFo is such a cool handle, we got kidded a lot about it. All kinds of jokes at our expense. But we took it well, which was noticed. Hence our good reputation was born. Handle Design: *uFo*Alien* The Reign
of MoonSocket: Gutted and myself were co-leaders under Moon. I have always wanted a co-leader that worked as hard as I did when I held that slot. And I have gotten that wish time and again. I should have wished to win the lottery. Clan uFo
gets a Website: [
Top ] Act
2 : Clan uFo Almost Disbands
Unfortunately, in his quest for that perfect team, Moon neglected to hand over the reins of uFo. Gutted, with my backing, assumed power. Well, to add insult to injury, a few days after Moon left uFo, he announces Acolyte as the new Clan Leader. A little too late, Gutted and I thought. But, the clan took sides and Acolyte ended up leaving along with numerous other aliens. Hell on Earth:
During the 61-day hiatus, Clan uFo expanded into other gaming divisions including BattleNet, StarCraft, and Diablo II. We wanted to hedge our bets that our clan would still be together if and when ARC came back. Handle Design:
uFo_Alien The Gutted
Empire: Gutted was a good Clan Leader except for one problem, he didn’t want to recruit anyone. All candidates I presented he shot down. This goes on and on. Looking back later, Gutted said he didn’t want Clan uFo to change or something like that. The first APL season starts and uFo makes the cut. But, we were down to five aliens and we forfeited our first APL match. In fact, I was the only alien to show up. I was told that if we forfeited one more game, we would be out of the APL. Clan uFo’s darkest hours… [
Top ] Act
3 : Andy-in-Charge
Gutted returns after two weeks to a new Clan uFo. Lots of new faces. And he wants the reins back. Well, I figured I deserved to keep them, seeing how I kept the clan from disbanding, and Gutted relented. But I think he felt dissed. Which may explain Gutted’s actions to come, including wanting to turn over the web site to another alien. Website Wars:
After I had had enough, I drafted our Policies and Procedures, focusing on the Code of Conduct first. I wanted to have in writing what was acceptable behavior for aliens. I told Gutted where the line was drawn and he decided to step over it. Booting Gutted was the hardest decision I have ever made as a Clan Leader. Da Gut and I were good online friends (which is probably why he thought he could get away with bad behavior). Before I booted Gutted, I was worried that he might take his website away. So I decided uFo doing without a website was better than half the clan leaving because that’s what they were threatening. Gutted tried to get me to change my mind, talking till 5:30 am on a work night. I did, he wore me out…lol. But realized, when I was falling asleep at work, that Gutted had to go. Clan uFo lost one of it’s finest members, not to mention it’s website. [
Top ] Act
4 : Orphaned Aliens, Part I
Time Period:
1998-1999 One of our new recruits, Validir, offered to do up a site for us and asked me what I wanted. I was happy to get a news page and forums, but Val gave a lot more. (And no more of those gay jokes back there! I see you.) The new site rocked! I came up with a new clan logo (the old one was Gutted’s). It had the words "CLAN UFO" looking like the con trail of an aircraft coming at you, with the "O" in UFO a little "O" shaped UFO. Val pasted it on a pic of a real UFO picture that had a scenic desert landscape at sundown. It kicked ass – the only drawback was that was only a thumbnail, no larger. But it still looked cool. And the large logo looked good too. Unfortunately, both Val and I have since lost the logo. All Hail
The Webmaster: Who would step up to the task? Who wanted to endure the endless hours of website maintenance. The day-to-day thankless toil of the damned? The complaints? Who was that much of a gluten for punishment? [ Top ] Act
5 : Orphaned Aliens, Part II
Mav’s site kicked alien ass! I can’t remember much about it. Maybe Mav could refresh my memory. Maverick: 'During my webmaster times I can't really take credit for the website. Basically what happened was this: Validir was a busy man and well, I was a computer nerd. If you put two and two together you get Mav the webmaster. What I did was maintain the site that Val had already completed, aside from the UCC and Links pages, I made those from scratch. I was especially proud of the UCC page though, hehe. I made a flow-chart for each of the 1v1 and 2v2 tournies and then I would post it on the site with a summary next to it. Then, using my negative skills in webdesign, I added my own little touches here and there to the page. Basically it was just a bunch of pages using basic html forms and stuff. The awesome part though is that I did it all through notepad, the kewlest program of them all :-P...' Tourney Aliens:
The aliens have never won a tourney, although we have made the playoffs many times. There are several reasons why, but dangit if I can remember any of them. I’m sure our focus on sportsmanship and attitude and not on talent has something to do with it. In more than one tourney we have side-lined our best starter because of attitude. And when a good player gets side-lined, he sometimes figures he should play for a team he can start for. And we say good riddance. We look at how a given action affects the clan as a whole. And what’s best for the clan is usually what we end up doing. We have worked hard to earn our reputation. And we aren’t letting any prima-donnas piss on it. Death of
TEN: [ Top ] Act
6 : The WONder Years
uCC ala-TEN:
Time Period:
2000 or so Unlike TEN, only WON servers could host maps, which really sucked. Plus the WON servers had nowhere near the bandwidth that TEN had. But, better a crappy server than no ARC at all. Unidentified
WONbe Aliens: Since WON didn’t have the ten-character name limit like TEN, we decided to change the tag to *uFo* Alien. This was very close to our tag on Hfront: *uFo*Alien*. The smurfs eventually got creative and were using asci spaces instead of the usual space bar in their *uFo* Alien smurf names, but their names would appear out of order with the rest of the clan (they would appear a the bottom of the list of aliens). Xander got smurfed once in a tourney match. Since he had been inactive, I told him to wait in the lobby. When he didn’t leave, I told him to sub. But he just wouldn’t move off the starting lineup. I let it slide since I thought it was Xander. But come to find out, it wasn’t. And of course we lost that game. Erm27 got smurfed an entire season. We found out when I was thanking him for making so many games and he was like "I only played 1 maybe 2 games." I verified it was the correct erm I was talking to though ICQ. The smurf Erm27 was our best starter…lol. But alas, this was also the season when we didn’t win one single match. To avoid a lot of embarrassment, the uFo Leaders decided to keep that smurfing incident a clan secret. That is, up until now. [ Top ] Act
7 : Introducing The ARC Division President
Introducing our third Co-Leader, Kavon. I watched Kavon for a long time, with him being a potential Co-Leader in mind. Kavon did have those darned temper flare-ups every now and then, but at least you know where you stood with him. And he had those rugged Austr-alien good looks to boot. Kav was our Leader in-charge-of tourneys. Kavon did a damned good job of relieving the workload, but I still had to devote lot of time to running the clan. DP Considerations:
Election
Selection: I liked the idea of voting for the president. I didn’t like the idea of two aliens competing for the same slot and possibly taking it personal. (I’m happy to report that we have never had that problem.) Even with closely contested and heated elections, it’s always fun to get the aliens together and have a good voting session. And aliens like to know they have a say in important matters. The only thing left was to announce the ARC DP slot and accept applications. And hope that ARC would still be around. We find out WON will no longer be hosting ARC. [ Top ] Act
8 : Sierra Servers
[ Top ] During our last episode, Clan uFo saves ARC by abducting and mind-melding a human, causing the Vid-something Corporation (glorious owners of ARC) to let ARC live. Name registration was back up and a new era of ARC was born. There were many voices that wanted this time period to be called “The Osiris Era.” Osiris had many, many close friends within the ARC community. He was one of the best-known aliens. But not because he was in uFo. He was best known for being the lead ARC admin, besides the fact that he was a super nice guy. In real life he was married with a child and was a disk jockey -- but I’m not sure if it was a hobby or profession. I wish I had gotten to know him better. But you always figure there would be time… Although Osiris wasn't too active playing ARC (too busy being lead admin), meetings, or forums and hardly ever played in tourneys, he kept us from forfeiting many games by showing up at the last minute. And he was always there for us when we needed "admin" support. It reflected well on us that the lead admin was an alien. And when he did show up at a meeting, it seemed like a special occasion that he was there. Osiris had a high profile in the ARC community and dedicated a lot of time to ARC. But suddenly, he was gone without a trace. His sudden inactivity was noticed AND questioned. There have been many, many ARCers that have “vanished” over the years. We wondered what happened to them. But, if they didn’t have any friends in real life that played ARC, we had no way to find out. Some words from Error posted on ARC HQ: “There's recently been a claim that Osiris has died. I, and the rest of the ARC staff, hope that this isn't true of course. In the case that it is, this is a sad day for us all and I'll say this: Jesse (Osiris) was a great person, a great friend.” ”He took over the job of lead admin from Ghent and I believe he did a better job then any previous Lead Admin. He was always ready to help anyone out. His loss is all of our loss, and in these times of sadness we should feel especially sorry for his wife and child, whom not only lost a friend, but also a husband and a father.” Say it ain’t so: Error was responding to a post on ARC HQ made by a “friend” of Osiris that he had died. We posted on our website that we could neither confirm or deny the rumors. No one had a contact that knew Osiris in real life. A few weeks later, the same “friend” again posted that the news was indeed true. I’m guessing that one of his friends in real life knew about his ARC gaming, didn’t actually play ARC, and just wanted to let us know out of respect for him. Osiris was one of the main reasons we started up the Honorary Alien roster -- for those aliens that weren’t too active, but earned the right to wear the uFo tag permanently. It's a fitting tribute to Osiris that as long as there is a Clan uFo, he will be remembered. I talked to Osiris about a week before he passed. He gave me two *uFo* handles he had. (These were very valuable since name reg was down.) I wish I could remember which they were. I think one was *uFo* Death. It was almost like he knew he was going away and wanted us to have them. Man, if I had only known it was the last time I would ever talk to him... May Osiris forever remind us of what an alien represents: integrity, loyalty, sportsmanship, trust, team spirit, and family – not necessarily in that order. (R.I.P. bro, we’ll miss you) [ Top ] Act 10 : A History of ARC DPs, Pt 1 In our last episode, we paid respects to one of the all-time greatest ARCers and alien brother, Osiris. In this episode, we’ll revisit the reigns of our ARC Division Presidents. We held our first ARC DP election in the fall of 1999. The following is a listing of our ARC DPs and a few words on their presidencies. Dates and order are approximations. It’s not like I wrote any of this shit down or anything…lol Lord Locnar: 1999 - 2000 Ahhh, our first Clan uFo ARC Division President. In a land-slide vote, Lord Locnar won the election. Locnar was a friend in real life, and in fact, he rented a room in my house. He was a natural leader with tons of charisma. He came up with the Assault Fleet -- those aliens on our tourney roster that had their own code of conduct. Reminded me of the samurai. If you wanted to play in leagues, you had to be in the Assault Fleet. They had scheduled practices and their own meetings immediately following our clan meetings. Best strategy we’ve had so far for leagues. Ghost: 2000 How he became DP would be a funny story if it didn’t happen to your clan. Locnar steps down unexpectedly while I was at the National Training Center in California. I was supporting a field exercise for the U.S. Army. I was gone for a month and working 14-hour days. It didn’t leave time for much else. Our other leaders weren’t active and I was way too busy. I needed someone to help run the clan. I wasn’t too picky and wasn’t active enough to get to know him. So we put Ghost up for vote. He won. We lost. He’s gone. Good riddance…lol (btw Ghost, no hard feelings) Kondor: 2000 Ghost was asked to resign as an alien; we again needed to find a DP in a hurry. I’ve never had an alien say “no” when I asked them. Krondor did a good job, but just didn’t have the time needed to devote to the DP slot. He did manage to secure an HA spot. Jubi: 2000 One of our founding fathers and great all around alien. I can’t remember if/when he was DP, so I stuck his write-up here. He was laid back as DP (or was that a Co-Leader spot I had him in?) He would take care of tasks I needed done and even recruited an alien or two. But Jubi had all these women IRL, so he didn’t have a lot of time to devote to the DP/Co-Leader slot. You know… Kavon: 2000-2001 Kavon is the only Co-Leader that has held the office of ARC Division President. He was an excellent DP. His only drawback was that he couldn’t make the league games on weekends, since his Aussie time was off by a half a day. But he had solid strategies, kept up with the leagues and good had support from his DVP, who ever that was. Kav as DP was a good test for his being a Co-Leader. He is a natural leader and commands instant respect. Mr Kill: 2001-2002 It was a tight race between Mr. Kill and Decy for ARC DP. He won, but it was close. MK and I discussed what I wanted out of him. I wanted to try something new, a DP that was a stronger, more demanding leader, kinda the way MoonSocket, our first Clan Leader, was. Unfortunately, it didn’t mesh well with our laid-back alien ways. I still wonder if it was just him, or did our pre-presidency talk cause him to come off as being overbearing. But, MK proved his leadership skills when he formed the clan MK – Mullet Kings. They went on to win their first league. I’m not sure how long they lasted, but they kicked ass in tourneys. Our best league DP ever. Die: 2002 With MK leaving so soon, we again needed to elect a DP in a hurry. Die won by a landslide and it was down hill from there. A true leader, Die upheld the highest standards of uFology. He led by example and exhibited God-like leadership qualities. If you looked up the word “leader” in a dictionary, there would be a pic of Die next to it. Actually, I really, really can’t remember anything, except that Die was DP at some time, but I figured I’d say something nice. Tekno: 2002 (See Die: 2002, replace the “MK” with “Die” and other four “Die” with “Tekno.”) Stay tuned for Part 2 of this episode. [ Top ] Act 11 : A History of ARC DPs, Pt 2 When we last left off, we had reviewed the terms of our first eight ARC Division Presidents. I didn't realize how many we've gone through till I counted them. Damn… all those poor, burned out young aliens. [ Top ]
ARC-HQ, the center for the majority of the ARC community is rarely active these days. It's mostly filled with posts of nostalgic remembrances of past years and people. The ones whom we befriended for years and the ones whom had lost their lives in tragic accidents. There are still remnants of their vestige in the community which can both soothe ones heart, or cause it great anguish. And it was that this was more than just a game people came to play when they were bored, but a gathering of people world wide to discuss ideas, befriend one another, and live alternately to reality.
The end of an era.. we here at Clan uFo will miss it dearly, and miss those who take their leave with it aswell. I can safely speak for everyone when I say this: Good game, ARC.. good game.
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So it was not shortly after ARC has died that a band of people lead by Remote created a clone in it's very image, and dubd it "Spark". With a good portion of the previous community backing the game it has come to be a second home to friend and strangers alike. Still in beta status there is much work to be done, but with people chipping in for new graphics, new sound bits, hosting servers.. this is one of the greatest undergoing that this community has ever taken part of.
In late 2007 Spark opened it's doors to a homeless community and has since played a major roll in it's evolution.
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