The org's TEN YEAR anniversary...

Hey Mods, Ex-Mods, and Ex-Admins, Tosa, and most importantly org patrons; I was just wondering if anyone realized that totalwar.org is on the verge of it's 10 Year anniversary! Is there anything pending to celebrate this milestone; maybe a mainpage announcement or something?

It's ancient history now, but Dan, myself, and few other melon ranchers started the site in earily April 1999. We got rollin about a year or so before the S:TW demo was released, and I'll be darned, it came to me the other day that it's just a few weeks shy of 10 years ago that it all came together.

I think The Scourge, nokhor, Nelson, and myself are the last holdouts from the 90's, but there are so many great folks hereabouts now. -It's good to see that even after all this time das org is still going, stronger than ever!

Very interesting, thanks for the info! :2thumbsup:

You could invite everybody to your userpage and offer some cookies(the virtual ones) if you want to celebrate. ~;)

I guess ten years on the internet is quite some time, to think I myself have been here for more than 6 years. :sweatdrop:

Holy crap! I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. ~:eek:

Hard to believe this place has been around for nearly a decade already. Seems like yesterday when I was just a lurker (and later on a newbie poster) who didn't know anything of Japanese history prior to the late 19th century. How times have changed!


By the way, good to see you, Kurando. Despite having heard quite a bit about you these past few years, I wasn't sure if you were truly real or just a legendary/mythical figure. ~;p Welcome back! :bow:

10 years? That is worthy of note alright!

Something like that ought to be celebrated in some way - but how? :help:

So you can send the money to me and I'll take a vacation for the lot of us.

Definitely a cause for celebration, I'm sure someone's got a bright idea about how to celebrate this even properly. :yes:

Kudos to Kurando, Dan and all the other fine fellows who started this site. :bow:

Maybe we can put together some special badge for this occsion :clown:?

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Originally Posted by ||GoTW||Warman8|cpl||-II-||

Maybe we can put together some special badge for this occsion :clown:?

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A temporary bagde for this festive moment is possible, but I suppose a permanent one is out of the question. :shrug:

Ten more years!
Ten more years!

Seems like just the other day i signed up as a angry 15 year old who knew everything. Since then the .org has taught me alot and helped turn into cycnical 22 year old who realises his limitations. I think i should end this as i begun it.

Ten more years!
Ten more years!

Who's darkman9?

I had an account here about a year or so before my present persona. No idea what the user name was, never mind the password. :laugh4:

I think I did, maybe two posts in all and then just lurked. I seem to remember Kurando as an admin. I might be wrong, it was a long time ago.

Anyroad, here's a cheers to Dan, who set the ball rolling along and for all those who took it upon themselves to take on the baton of one of, if not, the best discussion board on the t'interwebs.

Take a bow from a grateful friend. :bow:

IA.

The Org is a wonderful place and the founders should be very proud of it :bow:

The K-man himself!

Respect. :bow:

I had no idea we were getting so close to the 10 year mark. In internet years that officially makes us the old man yelling at people to get off the lawn. I'm actually pretty content with that. :laugh4:

Ten years is hard to believe. All hail the Great Makers. Thank you for planting that seed all those years ago. It has blossomed into a beautiful thing. :bow:

Wow, that's brilliant! The Org has maintained a constant level of high-level conversation and has avoided severe controversy during almost the entirety of that time. The maturity levels for such an old site are astounding!

Bravo Org! Bravo Orgahs!

:cake::birthday2::happybirthday3:

I see 10 more in your future:fortune:

10 years? Wow! Huge thanks to the founders for making the one of the finest forums in the world:2thumbsup:

We should make a happy birthday Org thread and all post a happy birthday Org song simultaneously. That will be rather interesting

I would be impressed if we all managed to post anything simultaneously... and even more impressed if they all went through and posted at the same time without problems...

Something should be done though!!

Im just really not sure what...

Nice to see one of the founding fathers.

It is kur-rater! :grin2:

:bow::bow::bow::bow:

I lurked at the site for quite awhile before joining. I have to say that Kurando and Co. definitly made the site worthwhile.

Khan7 is one of the older hands that I miss... wonder what happened to him?

Blimey, 10 years. I remember visiting the site well before I even visited the forums, let alone join up. It was always the site I went to first for anything regarding STW, it was superb. Patches, advice, multiplayer news - whatever you needed to know, it was all there. It is also great that it is still going strong.

If I ever go to the org now it tends to be in the backroom, but still - this place rocks and is still so good. :2thumbsup:

Lets hope it continues and there should definitely be some celebration - somehow - of the start of the site. :balloon2:

I think we should celebrate by flooding some random site and having a spam party...

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

I think we should celebrate by flooding some random site and having a spam party...

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It's funny you should say that because that's exactly the opposite of what I want to happen. :beam:

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

:cake::birthday2::happybirthday3:

I see 10 more in your future:fortune:

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Only 10 years more for such a nice place! :no: :tongue:

I've been granted the title of SM, yet I do not know why, because those guys did a lot of things for the org that we know today. Some kind of "Medal of Valour" they got the right to deserve one.

For the newbies we welcome,
The mafia games we play,
the Kingdom of Love and Peace,
its counterpart, the Kingdom of Hatred and War,
The Mead Hall where we write to show that we can write, and what can we are capable of,
The Aphotecary, where there were psichiatrists (sp?) of computers
the Tech forum where we share our geekness,
The Entrance Hall for having a Holy War against Camels.

Lets remember the generation of orgahs who made the site, the generation that followed the founders and those SM that made members want to change. Lets remember George Orwell and 1984, for it's great book, and founder of the 1984-ish jokes (repleace nonperson Drisos with Chocolate raise 0.5 gr. Doubleplusgood in one of the threads). Lets remember those mods who had to leave. Lets congrat Tosa and his group of moderators. Lets remember all.

Long live the org. It will.

We definetely need somekind of 10 years birthday event.:yes: I wonder what the exact day of birth might have been?

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

I wonder what the exact day of birth might have been?

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Good question... According to my desktop records the site DNS mainpage officially opened Friday April 2nd, 1999. And the message board that we all know and love, The Sword Dojo, (now known as The Guild), officially opened April 14th 1999.

I retro-fitted a few of the membership join dates when we switched the board to vBulletin 1.0 in summer of 2000. We did this to facilitate the memebership explosion we experienced pending the release of Shogun Totalwar in June of 2000. For the first year we had a different ezboard message board that was red, green, and black in colour, and the original vBulletin 1.0 board was babyblue; the current board colours were adopted somewhere around 2003, but the old blue colour scheme was carefully preserved and still exists in the Guild's current Sword Dojo.

I remember for the first year before the demo was released we tried to stay focused on History and Strategy, the Art of War and whatnot; if fact, believe it or not, there was no off-topic content allowed on the board (not even frontroom-type stuff). ;) Surprisingly members were okay with this and we didn't have many problems moderating, but there were probably only a few dozen active posters before the demo came out so it was much easier than you might think to keep things on track.

totalwar.org got a big break earily spring of 2000 when some patrons from the UK somehow talked the Creative Assembly Team into giving .org a hands-on look at the demo. Richie and the rest of the CA Team were really good to the us, and our guys who got to see the S:TW Beta kept us inspired and on-track during the game's pre-demo days.

Interestingly in the earily days we had an arch-rival site "www.plannettotalwar.com" -There were some cool guys over there, but we managed to stay ahead of them and eventually .org became established as the place to be. At the time I think planettotalwar.com had a reputation as a "players site" and .org had more a reputation as an "info site", but we had good info that's for sure. Guys like PUZZ3D understood the mechanics of the game very intimately and helped a lot of people out. Also we had some serious historians, great modders, and apt story writers here at .org and they pulled together to keep forum content interesting.

So that's how it all started, but that's only the smallest fraction of how it got to where it is now. We owe the real thanks to Tosa and company. And most especially to the patrons; without whom this whole endevour would have amounted to nothing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the old gal. ;)

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Originally Posted by Monk

It's funny you should say that because that's exactly the opposite of what I want to happen. :beam:

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You want people from another site to flood the org and spam it? ~D

Thinking about how the Org could celebrate ... what about a creative project of some sort, that might add value and dimension? There are so many diverse and talented people here, and it seems, some who would like a "tangible" way to celebrate. What better way than to make, to improve, to share in a "labor of love?"

Just an idea that came to mind.

I think also some form of competition could be launched. Im quite sure that CA/ Sega could be willing to give some prizes for such event, if not maybe few of us Orgahs could chip in.:yes:

That be a good idea Kage. Any ideas?

Just to put the cat amongst the pigeons; a battle on Totomi would be apt. Perhaps we could vote on who fights.

*I can't do it, I've got a bad back :)*

Each section of the forum can host special events. For example we can have MP competition for each games (Shogun, MTW, RTW, M2TW, ETW), we can have history quiz, we can have a 48 hours mafia game, Simultaneous Posting happy birthday on Front page etc.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Good stuff Kurando! Keep it coming!

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Well, other than a pile of old stuff there's not much of interest, but I thought this was really hillarious (see attachment). This is defintley the oldest piece of .org memorabilia in existance. For the first six months before the S:TW single player demo was released all we had to go on was a couple of screen shots of the beta, so in order to pass the time we used to try and discuss strategy. Members of the forum use to make bmp's of scenarios and then have epic discussions on plans of attack and how to solve the scenarios.

Kinda lame, but it's all we had... -The one thing that we did get out of this though was the org's solid foundation of discussing ancient history and it's also where the org's tradition of written stories and writing competitions started as well.

..

Just quick a note on Guild membership join dates, (not that it really matters)... ;)

The ezboard message board in the old days had no registration or IP Addresses + I think the very first board we tried that had registration was UBB Ultimate Bullitin Board This happened on 10-29-2000.

So any currently active members with join-date's in Oct/Nov/Dec 2000, Ii Naomasa, Gregoshi, Catiline, Magraev, The Black Ship, Puzz3D, Ronin, Strategy, Tomisama, Idaho, Slyspy, FearofFucy, barocca, Nsan, Hosakawa Tito, etc. are patrons who were probably at some point originally on the old board and made their way to the new board when the registration opened. However because there was originally no registration I had no way of telling when they actually joined, so the date that is listed is when they migrated to the new board and first registered themselves as members (some time around Oct/Nov 2000).

Active patrons who have a join dates in the 90's or eariler The Scorge, Nelson, nokor, The Shogun were patrons who's registration I retro-fitted because I knew for certain they'd been around the whole time, but they are not necessarily the only ones.

.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Kinda lame, but it's all we had... -The one thing that we did get out of this though was the org's solid foundation of discussing ancient history and it's also where the org's tradition of written stories and writing competitions started as well.

..

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Bless you, sir. :bow:

It is amazing that you still have some of that stuff around Kurando. Thank you for preserving some history. :bow: In that re-registration, I only lost about four months though. I think I joined around July 2000 when STW hit the streets.

You know, a lot of sports teams here in the US that have celebrated 50 or 75 year anniversaries recently have done so by wearing throw-back uniforms from days long gone. I wonder if it would be relatively easy to change the Org skin for all forums to the original STW for a day or week in recognition of the anniversary. Time is rather short for the actual anniversary, so whatever is done for THE day has to be relatively easy. Other thing like contests (an official 10 year logo?) could be organized for the remainder of the year. Thought?

I think you should get 10 000 posts Gregoshi!

You can represent the .org, a thousand posts a year! ~:cheers:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

You know, a lot of sports teams here in the US that have celebrated 50 or 75 year anniversaries recently have done so by wearing throw-back uniforms from days long gone. I wonder if it would be relatively easy to change the Org skin for all forums to the original STW for a day or week in recognition of the anniversary. Time is rather short for the actual anniversary, so whatever is done for THE day has to be relatively easy. Other thing like contests (an official 10 year logo?) could be organized for the remainder of the year. Thought?

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I think that's a cool idea. Me likey. :2thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

You know, a lot of sports teams here in the US that have celebrated 50 or 75 year anniversaries recently have done so by wearing throw-back uniforms from days long gone. I wonder if it would be relatively easy to change the Org skin for all forums to the original STW for a day or week in recognition of the anniversary. Time is rather short for the actual anniversary, so whatever is done for THE day has to be relatively easy. Other thing like contests (an official 10 year logo?) could be organized for the remainder of the year. Thought?

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A growing trend among sports teams here in Oz as well....

And an excellent idea it is too! "Org Heritage Week", where the skins revert to the original...AND maybe a little trivia section in the relevant issue of the Gah-zette? "Did you know?" with some facts from the Org's 10 years of history?

The org had a single line mention in the UK PC Gamer magazine in the same issue which came with the STW demo. That's how I found this place; I lurked off and on for years. I wonder how many others who followed that magazine tip are still here? It was a long, hard wait between demo and game release.

I always thought of the org as 'that' site where people had the funny wannabe-samurai names, and behaved in an exquisitely polite fashion. Many posts contained Japanese words which I didn't understand until years later when I read Shogun by James Clavell. Hehe, the look that must have been on my face when I learned konnichiwa means hello! It had a very distinctive atmosphere, mature and helpful. There was no other site like it.

I wonder if it might be worth making a little collection of people's memories of the org? We've got some here to start with, and I'm sure there must be others who would like to add a few words.

That's it!

It's been staring us all in the face, the reason that we behaved ourselves was because of the nature of the game. The original game I mean. There was a lot of expectation that you behaved honourably and curtiously, especially after a win, it was considered the thing to do.

Obviously the STW game attracted a certain kind of person.

May it's predessesors continue to do so.

:bow:

And successors, too. :)

To have a gander at how things looked in the olden times see here, courtesy of archive.org.

I was going to join when I was 8 at the time in 2000, but I was a stupid young boy and I didn't know how (however, I did sign up on .Com and have contact with MagyarKhan's Charm!)! I know now what good times I miss, since I didn't join .Org until Februaby 2006. I been here 3 years, not a long time compare to Kudano!

Perhaps each mod can write the "history of org" for their section.
That will be a interesting read:yes:

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

And successors, too. :)

To have a gander at how things looked in the olden times see here, courtesy of archive.org.

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That is brilliant. :2thumbsup:

Quote:

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And successors, too. :)

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Ouch! :)

The link provided by Kukri made me remember when I joined... good times, but better are the ones I live now here!

Konnichiwa, Kurando-sama!

So many people are glad that you planted that first acorn 10 years ago.

It seems like yesterday.

Back then Shogun:TW sounded too good to be true but it lived up to expectations. No one could have guessed where we’d be now.

Oh me, oh my, ten years is quite some time
My thanks go to those that helped this site start
Such a wondrous place, and for not one dime
May it be years more before we depart.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by seireikhaan

Oh me, oh my, ten years is quite some time
My thanks go to those that helped this site start
Such a wondrous place, and for not one dime
May it be years more before we depart.

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You got lost on the way to Reenk's mafia game perhaps? :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by CountArach

You got lost on the way to Reenk's mafia game perhaps? :laugh4:

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:laugh4:

Naw, its taking over me like a disease,
You must excuse me as my sanity flees...

Wooow, and i'm gonna turn 4 years old on this forum. :)
I remember when I joined, RTW era, it was a really interesting place. I hung around and met some great people.

So what's the plan for 14th of April?

I think I'll get drunk. :balloon2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Good question... According to my desktop records the site DNS mainpage officially opened Friday April 2nd, 1999. And the message board that we all know and love, The Sword Dojo, (now known as The Guild), officially opened April 14th 1999.

I retro-fitted a few of the membership join dates when we switched the board to vBulletin 1.0 in summer of 2000. We did this to facilitate the memebership explosion we experienced pending the release of Shogun Totalwar in June of 2000. For the first year we had a different ezboard message board that was red, green, and black in colour, and the original vBulletin 1.0 board was babyblue; the current board colours were adopted somewhere around 2003, but the old blue colour scheme was carefully preserved and still exists in the Guild's current Sword Dojo.

I remember for the first year before the demo was released we tried to stay focused on History and Strategy, the Art of War and whatnot; if fact, believe it or not, there was no off-topic content allowed on the board (not even frontroom-type stuff). ;) Surprisingly members were okay with this and we didn't have many problems moderating, but there were probably only a few dozen active posters before the demo came out so it was much easier than you might think to keep things on track.

totalwar.org got a big break earily spring of 2000 when some patrons from the UK somehow talked the Creative Assembly Team into giving .org a hands-on look at the demo. Richie and the rest of the CA Team were really good to the us, and our guys who got to see the S:TW Beta kept us inspired and on-track during the game's pre-demo days.

Interestingly in the earily days we had an arch-rival site "www.plannettotalwar.com" -There were some cool guys over there, but we managed to stay ahead of them and eventually .org became established as the place to be. At the time I think planettotalwar.com had a reputation as a "players site" and .org had more a reputation as an "info site", but we had good info that's for sure. Guys like PUZZ3D understood the mechanics of the game very intimately and helped a lot of people out. Also we had some serious historians, great modders, and apt story writers here at .org and they pulled together to keep forum content interesting.

So that's how it all started, but that's only the smallest fraction of how it got to where it is now. We owe the real thanks to Tosa and company. And most especially to the patrons; without whom this whole endevour would have amounted to nothing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the old gal. ;)

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Interesting. Is there a full history of the ORG from 1999-2009?

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Originally Posted by InsaneApache

I think I'll get drunk. :balloon2:

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Simple and efficient. :beam:

Ten years... ten? TEN? Just the tech support over the five early years I was active in felt like 15 or so. You sure you counting right?

Erado San!? I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw your name in this thread. It is an honour and pleasure to see you return to these ancient halls. :bow:

I can imagine :)

Something drew me back. Must be my ability to smell a party from 30 miles with the wind coming from behind!

This thread starts feeling like an Ents Council :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Erado San!? I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw your name in this thread. It is an honour and pleasure to see you return to these ancient halls. :bow:

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Indeed. :bow:

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Originally Posted by Erado San

I can imagine :)

Something drew me back. Must be my ability to smell a party from 30 miles with the wind coming from behind!

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It's a honour to meet you, Dayimo Erado San! :crown:


:bow:

Konnichiwa, Erado San!

Good to see you again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Erado San

Ten years... ten? TEN? Just the tech support over the five early years I was active in felt like 15 or so. You sure you counting right?

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Another true Senior Member. :bow:

You do us an honour sir.

I finally feel young in a thread (in .org years that is).

Erado! :D Kurando! :D

10 years!

https://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3826/10ytw.jpg

Dit...

...to

:bow:

Since there are so many Old Timers in this thread I figured I'd better post and reminisce about the Org was much better back then, the sun was always shining, and England were always 320 for 3.

Seriously, the Org in the Shogun days was a great place - there was a maturity and sense of honour about patrons back then that has slowly been lost with each successive TW release.

That's an awesome image Mith! :bow:

14th of April!? I have the same birthday as the old gal. I'll have a drink to her! Hehe, where's Whacker! ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by gollum

This thread starts feeling like an Ents Council :laugh4:

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Yeh, this thread is daunting. I feel like a child playing next to a dinner party of adults.

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Originally posted by Psychonaut
Yeh, this thread is daunting. I feel like a child playing next to a dinner party of adults.

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Me on the other hand not really. Its definitely however a heartwarming thread.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

The org had a single line mention in the UK PC Gamer magazine in the same issue which came with the STW demo. That's how I found this place; I lurked off and on for years. I wonder how many others who followed that magazine tip are still here? It was a long, hard wait between demo and game release.

I always thought of the org as 'that' site where people had the funny wannabe-samurai names, and behaved in an exquisitely polite fashion. Many posts contained Japanese words which I didn't understand until years later when I read Shogun by James Clavell. Hehe, the look that must have been on my face when I learned konnichiwa means hello! It had a very distinctive atmosphere, mature and helpful. There was no other site like it.

I wonder if it might be worth making a little collection of people's memories of the org? We've got some here to start with, and I'm sure there must be others who would like to add a few words.

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I used to hear everyone on the official forums talking about "The Org" all the time - eventually I figured I'd better go and check it out for myself. And I never went back to the official forums.

The fact that all the games post-STW list The Org in the credits section speaks tremendously for this community, as does the complaints a few years ago that CA staff would post on the Org and not the official forums.... :2thumbsup:


I remember when I bought my very first PC - musta been '99, and I went and bought an issue of PC Gamer, and the first thing which just happened to feature in that months issue was a preview of Shogun: Total War, although IIRC it wasn't called that then. I was hooked to TW from that point on.

HOLY HANA! Erado San I just about crapped an egg the size of a volleyball when I saw your post! can't believe it!!

If it's a party you're after, we'll do it the Dutch way: Heineken's all around and no tip for the barmaid!

Great to see you Ed! ...who's gonna show up next, JPF?

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Originally Posted by Kurando

If it's a party you're after, we'll do it the Dutch way: Heineken's all around and no tip for the barmaid!

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Don't let Andres hear that. :laugh4:

So this is where all the oldies are gathering huh :D

Realy awesome to see what the site has come to and the dedication put into it to keep it such a vital part of the total war community. Still occasionaly lurk here but was locked out of my account, tho kurando's msg just forced me to make it work.

Hello to all, old and new!

Another golden oldie...

Satake welcome back to the .org!

Did you play mutliplayer stw mi and maybe mtw... your name rings several bells... werent a kenchi by any chance were you ?

Hey grizz,

Yep played from stw up to medieval & VI pretty fanatical. May indeed know me as a kenchi as i used to lead that clan for a few years. Later branched off with some friends to form Tenjo which faded out during Rome as it couldnt suck us in the way TW had up to medieval. Been picking up the TW games since then, but not been online with them too much.

Am i the only one who hopes they'll go back to the good old settings of stw someday? I spent waaaay too much time on multi on that.. bring back the good days :P

Am i the only one who hopes they'll go back to the good old settings of stw someday? I spent waaaay too much time on multi on that.. bring back the good days :P

Amen to that, the multiplayer in that game was by far the most fun i have had online gaming!

Hope to meet you on the battlefield soon!

You going online with ETW ?

Ya gotta love old Satake! It is great to see you again man!

For those who don't know him; he was a seriously wicked online player back in the day!

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Originally Posted by LittleGrizzly

[B]

You going online with ETW ?

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Guess that depends on a m8 of mine :P (another oldie - Jaeger)

Well, Kurando found me.

I am happy to see that the ORG is doing so well, and that it has continued to have a meaningful impact.

Here's a story...

So, way back in the year 2000, June something or other... I was a sophomore in college, and I had a final that day... BUT, it was also the release date for a game called Shogun: Total War. Naturally, I went to my final and passed the class, but before doing so I player a couple of multiplayer battles of Shogun: Total War.

That being said, I have... probably... two fondest memories.

1. Being able to tell people I was the 19th best solo player at STW... Granted, that was because I was the 19th person to go online, register, and fight in a single battle, but that's not the point.
***Actually, I was looking to see if the rankings were still up anywhere, but I could not find them.

2. The gigantic mega tournament that we hosted.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=4248

I don't remember who won... but I remember that it was quite frantic.


Anyways, I'll check back to see if anyone else from the old folks home makes it out here.
Oh, and hello to all the people I have not chatted with in some time. Tosa, Kurando, Erado (praise the gods), many many other, the Fear clan (great bunch of people from STW), Tenki folks, etc...

-Zen Blade
(titles below)

:egypt:

This is great. Welcome back Satake, Zen_Blade. :bow: What other ghosts from the past might find their way home?

Welcome all those who founded the place. It is nice to know those who I did not have the chance of meet, but who I rmemeber is Mount Suribachi (One of the first PbEM's I heard, I think it was WotS, but may be wrong). Welcome back, real SM.