GCW17 Article 3



{| width=900 align=center

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

Hello Ghoul, tell us who you are. I live in Chandler Arizona (suburb of Phoenix) I own a Music Store (guitars, drums etc) and still love everything about computers.

'''how did GC form up? where your part fits in that?''' This is a cut and paste from a thread I posted a few months ago in the senate private chambers.

I can't pinpoint exactly when GC formed. I have some screen shots when we were playing our first campaign as WGO (war games online) in March of 2003 (Battlefield 1942 came out in September 2002). As I recall a bunch of us left BFE (Battle for Europe) tourney because we didn't care for the way they were running it (10 year old kids being officers, playing the same map for 12 straight hours, etc) to join the new WGO (War Games Online), but we didn't like the guy taking our money telling us (12 governors) that we were going decide how the tourney was going to play battlefield as a community. Then trashing our rules and implementing his own telling us he wasn't going to abide by our rules if he didn't like them. Splooge I think his name was. So Tubesteak, Brummie and Myself in April or May 2003 tossed out a bunch of idea's for naming a new Tournament and settled on the name Global-Conflict. I already owned the domain Global-Conflict.net as a portal for My brother and my map making endevors. Almost everyone from the single campaign WGO ever had followed us over as we had made many friends there, and WGO players essentially became Global-Conflict community. Kind of a hostile take over with everyone leaving there and coming to play with us.

I put the creation date in April or May because my brother (Anthead) and I finished our map Operation Barbarossa on June 22nd 2003 to correspond with the anniversary of the actual battle in 1943, and we were already in our second campaign by then. I might add that our map was the second from the ground up player created custom map ever released to the world, with only "Battle of Bilston" being released first. The guy that made that map created several custom programs to facilitate making maps for BF1942. All this being 8 to 12 months before Dice released any kind of map editor for the game. So we are a good 10 months away from the 10 year anniversary of GC still. I'm sure Tubesteak and Brummie would enjoy taking this trip down memory lane and contribute to this topic.

Whois records show Global-Conflict.org was registered May 18th 2003 so there you have it, our official foundation date. My memory has not failed me

what games did GC go through? Only Battlefield series games have been played here at GC as part of our campaign system. Battlefield 1942 with the Road to Rome Expansion and several Mods. Battlefield Vietnam for a bit. I think we may have even used Battlefield 2142 for a second. Battlefield 2 and then mods, and finally Battlefield 3. Tubesteak and I thought when BF2 was loosing interest that Front lines: Fuel of War would be a good fit for GC (made by the same team that created Desert Combat for 1942 and was hired by Dice to make BF2) but it didn't get support from the community.

'''How did battle days look at first? how did they change?''' We have always had 6 hour battle days on Saturday. Back in the 1942 days we also had a 6 hour Tuesday battle day as well. I wrote the risk system in its original form as a means to play a wide range of maps instead of always playing the favorites. I based it loosely upon the board game risk and axis and allies. Brummie did a lot of editing of the original rules being the wordsmith he is and Tubesteak tried to punch holes in it until we came up with a working campaign system. a lot of the wording is still exactly the same 10 years later.

'''When did Black Ops started? why?''' I can't say exactly, as I was not active when it was implemented. The 6 hour Tuesday battle was probably too much and the Black Ops battles give the risk system an added layer of strategy.

'''Was there a time where GC was about to close? (due to lack of money/players/attendance..) how did you overcome the crisis if so? ''' Certainly we have had times of hibernation, where there is little to no forum activity going on because we are all waiting for the next great game to come out and we've grown bored of the last one we've been playing. When that happens, we let the game servers go as they are the most expensive. The website is relatively inexpensive to keep going so its a non-issue.

Any memorable campaigns? Too many memories over 10 years to even begin.

'''How did the rules form up? were there rules that were set due to a specific event?''' After the risk system was in place, then we had the gentleman agreement. (not camping enemy uncaps and allowing them to get out of their base before firing upon them). The Plus 4 rule in which you couldn't have more that 4 more players than the enemy team. No ramming of enemy equipment with planes because that was just not fun. We formed a 3rd group of players known as "neutrals" that would play for either side that needed people and agreed to play to the best of their ability.

'''What do you think of BF3? does it favors GC game style better or worse?''' I think BF3 is a perfect match for what we wanted to achieve here at GC. Coordinated team play in a friendly environment that anyone can join for free.

What do you think about the current shape of GC? I think it has evolved better than I could have hoped. Its fantastic to see people step up into managerial roles to make everything work.

'''What do you think about the current campaign? who will win? take a guess''' Its anyone's game still. I've seen armies come back from the brink of defeat too many times to guess.

'''What do you think is the future of GC? what would you like it to be?''' I'm very happy with the way things are now. I don't really like the idea of getting too big because then we loose the community feel which is why GC is so fun and easy to make friends and rivals at.

What do you think is the best part of being part of this community? Getting to play our favorite game the way it was meant to be played with like minded people.

What things do you think the community still has to work on? Something I've always dreamed of would be a Flash based campaign map that can be manipulated on screen by our officers. They could move armies around, change colors of territories and have those changes reflected on the front page in real time as battles progress.

Would you like to add anything else of your own, anything? Just that I am kind of in awe that things are still going so well. I burned out on being one of four or five people that did everything at the end of 1942's GC days. I thought for a while there GC would die because it didn't seem anyone wanted to step up into a managerial role. It was my sincere hope that people would and they did. Hats off to Brummie, Sushi, Cheesy, for holding things together when things were slow.

'''Which one was the best campaign in your opinion? what was your role in this campaign?''' Until BF3 C3 I've always played as a Neutral player not being able to make most battle days I would just play when I could. I've never actually held a officer rank in any army, I really just want to play, and have little time between my family and running a business to try and take a leadership roll in an army. Plus I am not a particularly good player with a 50/50 kill death ratio. I think I'm a corporal this campaign playing infantry. I actually squad lead last Saturday for the first time ever I think and really enjoyed it.

Do you want to say anything to the new recruits? Stick with it, make friends don't take things to seriously and have fun. If you have idea's for GC don't be afraid to post them. Stick around long enough and you may find yourself leading the next campaign. Stick around a little longer and you could be helping to run GC

'''Last one, looking back at the road you took from start to current days, whould you change anything, in your actions? or GC past?''' Not a thing, its been great.

Would you like to add anything? Here is a quote of a question posted a couple months ago that gives some light to the mysterious position of Exec and Senator and a little history for GC

And Here

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

GC History Interview With Ghoul Back to main
 * }