GCW18 Article 2



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GC History Interview With Ghoul by Necromancer
Part #1: Interview with Shrapnel Part #2: Interview with Ghoul

Hello Cheesy, how did GC form up? I joined GC in 2004, when I saw a post on planetbattlefield.com talking about it. I was still in high school, I would have been 15, and I had lots of free time so I got really into it. Back then it was C6 of Battlefield 1942, the first game they played at GC. I don't even know how it all formed up, that's before my time You have to ask Brummie and Ghoul about that.

We played a couple more campaigns of BF42. We had amazing battles back then. Every campaign was Axis vs. Allies and a lot of guys would stay on the same side every time. The Axis squads had German names and German ranks and people took the realism way more seriously. The campaign map was unbelievably detailed, and we had like 50 different custom maps. Each army had a special squad that just ran the destroyers and submarines. One of my first battledays was over Egypt and the map we played had a pyramid on it

Then Battlefield Vietnam came out. I really liked it but most people hated it. We tried to have a BFV campaign but we could never get very good numbers because none of the BF42 veterans liked the game. I think I ended up as a general or something, not because I was any good at it but because nobody else would...some things never change here

After that GC sort of went into hibernation mode. Nobody played BFV, we didn't have any BF42 campaigns left, so the community got really quiet and empty. Actually, for a while there the most active part of GC was our WoW guild! Yea, that happened.

Then in 2005 (im cheating and using wikipedia here) Battlefield 2 came out. Suddenly the whole community came back to life. We got a bunch of new people, a bunch of vets came back, and we had a bunch of big campaigns. A lot of people you see around now, joined at this time. We couldn't figure out what the story of BF2 was supposed to be so we kept making it up: we had some US and Russians and Chinese armies, we had squads named after Egyptian gods, we had a Star Wars campaign, we even had one army that was themed around monkeys. One squad was called the Crapflingers.

We played BF2 for 2 years at least. In campaign 8 I was general. It was a really fun campaign, probably the closest one I ever played in. By that time we had so many good custom maps to fight over, we'd gotten really good at the tactics, we had lots of experienced players, and we'd figured out the right set of rules to make the game fun. We played multiple different mods on the campaign map, so Russia was Point of Existence and Africa was Desert Combat, etc. Every map matched the geography it was supposed to be on really well. That campaign ended up lasting 4 months! My team lost

After that I went to college with my crappy laptop and went totally awol. Suddenly I had no free time and my computer couldn't even play the intro movie to Battlefield. But people kept on playing BF2 with more mods, they played Bad Company, and a bunch of other stuff.

How many different flags can you count?

For 4 years I was pretty checked out, then last year I graduated and moved to Seattle (I only live in places with high pings ) and started a job working for the man as a software project manager. Suddenly I lived in a city where I didn't know anybody (= lots of free time), a computer that sort of worked, and BF3 came out! So a few months after it came out, I checked back at GC and saw all these familiar names had organized a new campaign. Eventually I decided to buy the game and try it out (I only bought BF3 to play here, and I've barely done any pubbing outside a battleday since ).

The last part of the story I'll tell is when most of you guys came in. I was pretty late to C1 and played as a neutral with no clue how to play the game. Then before C2 started I got a PM from Shrapnel asking to join his officer corps. (Funny side note: about 8 years earlier, in BF42, I was a captain of an infantry squad and Shrap was the 1st leiutenant ). I don't think he knew how bad I was at the game, but I said yes.

So we played two or three battledays of C2, and they were pretty fun. But the numbers weren't great: we could only get 20-25 people on each side for a Saturday battleday. Hitman had started up some recruiting again, so I decided I would spend a Sunday morning posting up messages on some sites. First I wrote up a "What is GC" post that I would link people to, since before that there was no place that really explained what we do. Then I posted on like 10 random Battlefield sites getting people to visit. Then just for the lulz, I thought I would post on Reddit too to see if anybody would notice.

Then I went to grab a sandwich, and when I came back I saw we had like 20 people signed up saying they came from Reddit. And I thought, "omg, if they all stay maybe we can fill the server!" Then in like 5 minutes, 20 more signed up. Then 50 more. All of a sudden people were showing up so fast we started freaking out. We were like, "what are we gonna do with 100 new signups?" The GC veterans started going on Teamspeak, just so we could deal with the random people jumping on there to see what was up.

Then it just got bigger and bigger. For a while, a few of us were just sitting in a TS channel watching the Google Analytics thing pop a little circle up whenever a new visit came. It was like watching popcorn from inside the bag. We got like 200 signups, TS went crazy, and the forums broke! Madcow and Goggles and I had this frantic conversations on TS trying to fix the database, but not really knowing what we were doing. Duke meanwhile was up in a channel with like 60 people trying to be a one man welcoming committee. It was a pretty insane Sunday afternoon.

When did Black Ops started? We used to have two 6-hour battledays everyweek. One army's attack would be 6 hours Saturday, then the other army's attack would be 6 hours Tuesday. There was no such thing as black ops in 1942. Tuesday was just a normal battleday.

In BF2 we had lower numbers on Tuesdays, and it was hard to find a time when both NA/EU could play. The game had also introduced small versions of every map that just had 3 flags. So we decided to play those as the "city" versions of the big "territory" maps. That was the original black ops.

Was there hard times for GC? It always gets very dead here in between games. Our first crisis was after BF42 had been out for a while, but BF2 wasn't out yet. BF Vietnam and BF 2142 were out, but at the time our player base only really liked WW2 games and didn't want to play either of those games. So we could never get good campaigns going with those other campaigns, but at the same time people were getting tired of BF42. Nobody could agree on which mods to play. Eventually things just went quiet for several months, where nobody would post on the forums for several days.

Same thing happened again after people got tired of playing BF2. Actually, at the time I went AFK too. But for a very long time, GC was very quiet, it was just a small group of guys playing random games and hanging out on TS. We didn't have an official campaign going for at least a year i think.

But in both cases, everything was solved when a a new BF game came out -- BF2 the first time, BF3 more recently. That's why even though I hate having to pay for all these half-finished DLC's, I like how EA is pumping out so many Battlefield games and expansions now. It means our community always has something new to play every few months. By the time we get tired of BF3, BF4 will be out and we won't have to wait very long.

Any memorable campaigns? My favorite campaigns are the very long ones, like this one. You get a real sense of army identity, and level of coordination really goes up. You also get to know everyone on your army from playing with them in battledays over and over.

But we definitely have some memorable short campaigns from the BF2 days. There were a lot of general ragequits then, I can't even remember why. I just remember one general calling us all a word that sounds like "maggot" and then disconnecting forever.

How did the rules form up? All of our rules are really old, and some of them don't make any sense They all come from specific incidents. For example, we have a lot of rules about air camping air that came from how easy it was for jets to camp each other in all the BF games. But we also have rules that allow you to go in the uncap when the army has other flags, which dates back to BF42/BF2 when you could actually go into the enemy base and steal vehicles. Now that's impossible.

'''What do you think of BF3? does it favors GC game style better or worse?''' I hated it at first, but now that I have a good enough computer to play it I like it a lot more Some things are really good, like all the toys: mortars, MAVs, javelins, etc. I like anything in the game that encourages teamwork and coordination.

But a lot of things also suck. The 4-player squad limit is terrible -- BF2 had 6-man squads and that was the sweet spot. It meant you usually had 5 squads to coordinate instead of 8, and each one was labeled on the minimap with a letter so you knew who was where. Now we spend all our time on channel commander screaming "who's on A???". Also, commander mode in BF2 was way better. The MAV seems like an intentionally shitty way to FC, because it's so easy to get shot down and there are no colors.

What do you think about the current shape of GC? We are in excellent shape. GC is usually always in some kind of crisis. Usually there are always people fighting and threatening to quit, or we don't have enough people, or the campaign is totally imbalanced, or people are causing trouble in the forums. But right now things just seem so stable. I hope it lasts forever!

'''What do you think about the current campaign? who will win?''' I love this campaign. It's always a miracle when we have a close campaign. Usually one side just gets dominant, and they win most of the battles and nobody has much fun. This time around, every single battleday each side will win several rounds. That means both sides always have to fight their best, and as soon as anybody gets lazy their butt gets kicked!

And of course, Starfisher's Coffee Initiative will win in the end!

'''What do you think is the future of GC? what would you like it to be?''' I want it to stay just like this. Full servers, but not too full. Competitive battles, but not too competitive.

What do you think is the best part of being part of this community? I like turning on the flags in Teamspeak, and seeing how many different countries we have in our battledays. I am a boring American, so it's really fun to meet all these people from around the world.

I also like how I can hop on TS any time I want and find people there.

What things do you think the community still has to work on? Chilling out. Everybody is still so paranoid. The other side isn't cheating, I promise.

What is the longest campaign you remember? BF2, Campaign 8. I was the general, and we played 16 weeks (not counting BFI, scrims, etc.). That thing took forever. My army lost :<

And shortest one? Haha, I don't remember which one it was but there were a lot that only lasted for a month before somebody ragequit.

Which one was the best campaign in your opinion? My first one! I think it was BF 1942, Campaign 7. Maybe 6? Anyway, I started out as a grunt on the Axis side. I think Rickey (FuzzyCat) was the general, and I still think of him as the model FC. Because he wouldn't take anybody's crap

Partway through that campaign, I got invited to join the special ops squad. This was a group of 4 guys (Brenil, ColonelHogan, FalconX, and me) who would show up to every single battleday, so we got really good at working together. Our job was always to sneak around the map stealing stuff and blowing up the enemy main base.

Do you want to say anything to the new recruits? Listen to your squad leader!

'''Last one, looking back at the road you took from start to current days, whould you change anything, in your actions? or GC past?''' Sushi wants me to say, "I would have deleted my post on Reddit." But actually I will say, "I would have posted on Reddit sooner".

Would you like to add anything? GG! You guys are very impressive soldiers on both sides. I'm pretty sure either of these armies would totally stomp DARK, PRIDe, KI, or HIT -- just because they've been through so much more.

Thank you very much Cheesy, And thanks to Digz who helped with this article.

GC History Interview With Cheesy Back to main
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