This post is probably pretty pointless but as a last hoorah I thought I would give a history of my time in SM/SMR for a variety of reasons: the first being it's something I don't get to recount that often and I'm scared I'll lose these fond memories forever one day if I don't write them down somewhere, the second being that I'm very proud of the path I've taken through SM/SMR in that I think I can honestly say I've been apart of things and had opportunities that others in the community didn't get, and lastly I've made some amazing friends in my time here and I want to recognize them in case any of them ever wander back through here like me and read this.
My story begins with me as a 10 year old child in the summer of 1998, I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada and never had a computer. I always wanted one but could never convince my old fashion parents to get on board with the idea, my parents were 45 and 50 when they had me and had grown up in very traditional farm houses and without even television. Being the youngest child by 13 years though I was quite spoiled, and finally got my way when I convinced my parents to buy a Pentium 166Mx from Superstore (Canadians will realize how funny this is). I've never been so excited in my life, and honestly nothing has probably had more of an impact on me. I wanted to play a ton of games and I wanted to do it online with my friends, the trouble was I only had access to dialup so things like Command and Conquer were out of the question for online play. I would always visit my friends in town and my friend Jon lived right next to a college library which had a large computer lab with broadband internet. We would go there and play games and goof around when we were bored and one day when I was there I was sitting beside a guy who was on some page called SPACE MERCHANT, although the interface was even at the time nothing attractive (black and ugly yellow plain Times New Roman text with an odd pink glowing bar) I was intrigued by the name. At this time I was just playing online flash games like Tetris, etc. so I asked him about it and he just wrote the URL on a small piece of paper and got up and left, probably finished trading for the day and annoyed with a 10 year old kid pestering him. But I now had a small piece of paper that, little did I know, would impact my life for years to come. "Merchant.Shareplay.Com"
When I got home that weekend I started to play, I had no idea what to do and was definitely not interested in trading. I would make tons of accounts and feed all the resources I could gather to one account and buy whatever ship I could, I got a bunch of friends into the game and we all just kinda messed around, I remember thinking I was a big shot for getting a 10/7 Proto Carrier and then being so devastated when I lost it parking in the open I just started a new account (probably my 30th). The game at the time I believe was Big Newbie 4, and I did everything I could to get money BESIDES actually trade. I would lie to people, kill alliance mates, etc. And basically did anything I could to get into the 'Vet' games. Finally I did, and I did basically the same thing there (with a little more understanding to the game by this time, not just parking in the open) until 2 games that happened at around the same time that really took hold of me.
Up until this point my SM experience was pretty casual, just playing when I wanted and when my parents would let me on he computer, but in mid-late 1999 this all changed with 2 vet games: Phase 5 Beta (a 1.0 speed vet game) and Greased Lightening (I believe 2.0 speed? vet game). In Greased Lightening I found an alliance called The Federation, lead by Barracuda2001 (later known as Cuda) and danger_angel and they bought me whatever ships I wanted whenever I wanted them. I was going to just rob them and betray them like every other alliance but I actually liked Cuda for some reason, I thought he was so good at the game. The Federation was a newb alliance, a small fish in a big sea. At the time in GL there were quite a few good alliances (for those that didn't play SM the game was much more active and the alliance landscape much more diverse), the ones I can remember offhand were The Royal Guard (lead by Freebird and Terrence), Doom Guard, and finally Horsemen of the Apocalypse which in case you didn't know was and is to this very day the greatest alliance of all time, and I will have words with anyone who is foolish enough to say otherwise (Death Control ain't :D). HoA was revered like no other, players stopped trading when Montana Mike was online, and anyone who was anyone at the game was in HoA. Trigek, Montana Mike, FateMerchant, Ardbeg, Elvis Fett, Catronia. These were the names to be feared! Everyone hated them, literally with a 30 man alliance they would fight coalitions of 4-5 alliances and win! And even though everyone hated them, if given the opportunity to fly under MM you would take it in a heartbeat.
While this was going on in Greased Lightening, a similar thing was happening in Phase 5 Beta, with HoA taken on every alliance in that game as well. In P5 I can only remember 2 key alliances outside of HoA, Yellow Moon and Revolution Team. I thought Revolution Team was a bad ass name (I was 11 at the time) so I messaged the leader Numb to ask if I could join, for some reason he let me in and there I met the first actually good people I would ever play in an alliance with in SM (Cuda was and to this day still is trash at this game). I met people like StarScream, HeadHunter, Deke Fentle and Horas Trumble. I was basically the only non Euro on the team but I didn't care, I would sneak out of bed at 5 Am to play with them before school and they taught me so much, despite me dying constantly and not even using mIRC. I finally knew what it was like to actually play the game and I wanted to learn, I wanted to be the best, I wanted to kill HoA!
Phase 5 Beta and GL ended and with them my vet career, my account was finally flagged as a multi (even though I had quit using multi's) and though I pled with Dirt (former admin) to allow me to continue on it he said I couldn't and if I wanted to play SM again I should start a new account and never ever ever multi again, so I did, which meant I had to earn veteran status again. I started in Newbie Game 1 (I think they ran 2 months and by the end of SM there had been almost 30) and thought I was a big shot, I had just been in the 'vets' with the big boys, why was I playing with these lowlife scum anyway? I found an alliance called The Juice, lead by Eggburt, and we tore it up. We formed an NAP with a small alliance of 10-12 people called ...The Forsaken (arguably the 2nd best alliance of all time after HoA) lead by Warlock and had members like Miguel, and TheFlyingNosh (later known as Radagast and Xar, most underrated player of all time). We joined together to do PB's on Armageddon (lead by Jester I believe? Or maybe Anakin and Jester was just a member?) which would later move on to the vet games and be known as Ragnarok (and a series of more mediocre at best alliances lead by Jester). NG1 was also the first game I would be known as Siege, as before that I constantly changed my name. I decided that since I was going to try and become one of the best I needed a singular identity, it was also the first game I used IRC and I was as innocent and naiive a 11 year old kid as you could find, and definitely annoyed some people. Warlock for instance hated me, and after a while refused to op with me (which we'll come back to later). As soon as I got enough kills to play in the vet games I basically became inactive in NG1, and joined what was called The Big Bang.
The Big Bang is to this day one of my favorite games ever, and one of the only SM games that HoA didn't exist in (in name anyways) as most of the HoA players were in one of 2 alliances: The Unforgiven (lead by Elvis Fett) or The Sneezy Syndicate (I actually don't remember who lead it) and they had an NAP. All the other alliances in the game (Yellow Moon, DarkShade I believe?, S.P.A.M. and atleast 2-3 more) formed a treaty to fight what was dubbed The Evil Empire. Soon as I got into the game I found Numb and pestered him to let me join his new alliance with all of the members of Revolution Team, S.P.A.M. (Several Podded Angry Merchants) which was named as such because of all the useless spam that was always sent in alliance messages (before alliance message boards existed). I really came into my own this game and actually started to do pretty well, I think I only died once or twice throughout the whole game and racked up a decent amount of kills and was active in ops, people were impressed as I was still only 11 (turned 12 halfway through the game I think). We did have one member though who died constantly, took money from our account constantly, never came to chat, etc. and I started a succesful movement to get him removed from the alliance, I argued that he was a ''Financial Burden'' and ''terrible at the game'' I think I even said he ''shows no promise'', the player was named Chris and years later would become Sterling (a far better player than me when looking at our careers in retrospect although a much :D human being).
The Big Bang ended while I was visiting my brother with my parents for Christmas in '99, and I was so upset that I couldn't get online to play the new games that were starting. SM was growing rapidly at this point so the dev team though it would be best to have 3 major vet games running at the same time in conjunction with the revolving 2 month newbie games. The games started at 12:01 New Years Day and were given the names Millenium:Year 1, a year long 2500 sector single galaxy game with a max alliance size of 60 and coded treaties. Middle Ground, a 6 month game following a similar format but with a slightly smaller universe, and Proving Grounds a 3 month game. Proving Grounds was basically inactive and a joke, but MG and MY1 were some of the best SM games of all time. In MY1 I followed most of the SPAM (Revolution Team) members to an alliance called Anla'Shok lead by Musealot. Although I had heard the name Anla'Shok as being one of the most respected vet alliances from games before my time, I didn't know much else about it or most of the members. This is where I would meet a ton of people, EstoyLoco, Odin, Kermit, Babaloo, Blum, Inferno Death and more..It even turned out that Cuda was in A'S as well though he would go inactive around 2 months in. Anla'Shok was amazing and MY1 was maybe my best game, and definitely where I kind of made a name for myself. A'S had no full on treaties but an NAP with HoA, eventually this would break down over some dispute and A'S would go somewhat inactive (still 30+ really active members, but in MY1 this wasn't enough) so we would merge with another historic SM alliance called DarkShade (lead by Myst). The alliance cap was 60 but there was coded treaties so you could make sister alliances with dif names and basically be on alliance. We were trying to think of a suitable name for the merger and I suggested P.O.D. as it was a great acronym for an SM alliance (and I was 12) and when Lapis (milf) asked what it would stand for I said ''Payable on Death'' which I stole from the terrible band (that only a 12 year old would like) P.O.D. Everyone liked it and we went with it. The alliance grew with deserters from Imperial Dreams ( like a 300 person WQ Human only alliance) to 180 people and I was the op leader at the age of 12. We had some very succesful ops and were leading the fight against HoA and honestly making some ground but when a bunch of people found out I was 12 years old they took issue with it, it caused a fight and Lapis/Babaloo (sweethearts that were leading POD) told me it might be best if I was just a member. I was angry at this and left, receiving an invite from Rasputin to join the HoA second alliance called Pale Riders. I hopped on the opportunity to fight POD and joined, Inferno Death and ElvenLord (Ric02002) as well as a couple others I can't remember came with me. MY1 had planets in Fed and specifically one in Sector 2500, which was the IK'Thorne HQ. Somehow this planet got to level 70 and was an absolute podfest the final weeks of the game, people constantly fought there and I think I dropped from over 200k xp to 0 in the last week of the game just reshipping in ITMS's and fighting there. The planet was down to level 2 or 3 by the end of the game.
I'll share Some of my fond memories/stories from MY1 .The first was the race to get Speefy first (500k xp) as it had never been done. Routes weren't good in single galaxy games (probably the best you're finding is a 6x or something) and nobody had even thought of a program like SMC or MGU yet (I think these programs kinda ruined the game, but that's just me) so people didn't make much xp in a day, it was way easier to die trading as there was always a ton of hunters on, game speeds were slower, and lastly games had never been long enough. Odin (named Big O that game) was going to be the first to do it, He had 350k xp and was trading in a PSF, ranked 1st in the game by quite a bit he was saving turns so much that he wasn't even banking, carrying around over 350 million on his PSF at the time. He was getting threats from HoA members. I specifically remember one he got from I believe Deke Fentle saying he calculated how much xp he was making daily and that it was 200 more than Odin, and that even though Odin had a lead Deke should be able to hit Speefy 2 days before him, hence why Odin wasn't banking. Eventually he died to Tigh and Location Found of Ragnarok (One of the sickest hunting duo's, Tigh in his FU and LF in his 5 weapon slot 200 mine HBC) and I believe Deke Fentle was the first Speefy in SM. Odin was devastated and A'S was embarassed to lose 350 mil in such a stupid way ''WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST USE A THIEF ODIN?!'' but anyone who knows Odin knows he's a gambler through and through.
My 2nd favorite memory from MY1 is also one of my personal proudest moments SM/SMR. I had just joined HoA/PR and we were landed on a lvl 70 with about 18-20 ships getting opped by Ragnarok who had about as many. In SM at this time when your rock defenses were destroyed the ships stayed on the planet and shot back just like turrets/drones but only 10 at a time no matter how many you had, but there was a technicality that if you were on a rock that wasn't your alliances when the defenses were destroyed you were flung off into the sector. We had only 5-6 people on despite having a lot of landers and sitting on the rock Ragnarok could just UNO and kill us with no casualties. I had the idea to boot the owner of the rock from the alliance so that we were all flung into space, and thus with 5-6 triggers and 18+ landers we could actually kill a bunch of them, maybe even catch them off guard and win the battle. This was the first time ever and possibly the last where Ardbeg ever gave me a compliment saying ''that's actually pretty genius'', it worked, we barely lost a ship and were able to defend the sector long enough for everyone to get online and land again as Rag was too short on turns to reship(400 turn max and busting a 70 doesn't leave you with much). By the end of MY1 I was top 25 on the Veteran HoF for kills (Which was actually an achievement with over 1000 active vets or more) and had cemented a spot on the HoA roster despite still using a dial up connection, I was flying high.
The next couple of games are a blur, galaxies got huge (20,000 sectors) and HoA still dominated everyone so it's hard to tell what happened where over that 2 or so year period (find me another alliance that dominated like that basically without any treaties, against every other alliance for that long of time) I spent every game with HoA with the exception of one where I joined a small alliance called Door To Door Merchants which is where I met who I would call one of my best SM/SMR friends and easily top 3 hunter all time, Mar (if Mar played the whole duration that Orca did nobody would argue that Orca is better, Mar too gosu) as well as Sergei and Antoxa. We were a 20 man alliance in a game of 60 man alliances, but we owned a perf 18x route or something ridiculous with a port over our level 70 rock. We hunted the :D out of that game with 90% of our alliance in the red, I think Mar hit like -1500 allign that game or something stupid. Radagast was the leader and all he cared about was racking up kills and making bank, which is what we did. One of the funnest games ever. Throughout this time a bunch of alliances popped up like KAOS (most overrated alliance of all time with 12002012 members), but the important thing to remember is HoA never lost a game.
Fast forward and Shareplay has made a deal with Gameloft, I think only 1 game was on gameloft, maybe more. But you had to goto the gameloft site to login, etc. and it was supposed to be the deal that grew SM even more. This is where I joined The Forsaken, although since Warlock hated me and said I was insanely annoying I had to do it undercover with Estoy vouching for me as his '' really good old vet friend'', about a month into the game Warlock told me how much he liked me in the alliance and how impressed he was with my overall game understanding and decision making, which is when I revealed that I was infact Siege and he laughed, we were great friends ever since ( I miss that guy ). Eventually deals with John Manton and Gameloft went south which caused Shareplay to die, SM was dead forever or so we thought. Obviously you know where this goes, Spock made SMR which at the time was just a 1 galaxy free for all with everyone in TAC's and Dark Mirages killing eachother, but it was better than nothing to say the least.
SMR finally started going but there was no HoA or Forsaken at that point.. No Anla'Shok or even DTDM. I didn't know where to play so I decided to join a group of newbs and see how that went, unfortunately I wasn't that active at this point as I had really lost my desire to play without having any of my old alliances around. I always took a large amount of pride in playing in HoA and TF even if I was just doing something like stocking planets, it made you want to be active. I took some time away from the game (which would become a reoccuring trend) and came back after that summer (I believe this would be late 2002 early 2003?) to form Cereal Killers with Mar. Now you say ''themed alliances are gay'' but I actually think we were one of if not the first major alliance to do something like this, we were all the names of Cereal's and all we wanted todo was hunt ( a true Mar alliance ) that game the entire top 10 killboard was CK members, and we had over 1000 kills with the next closest being like 400. But what else do you expect with Mar, Sergei, Antoxa, Radagast, DeathWing, Frost, etc. We wanted to have fun and we did, it was true DTDM style with a lot of the same people. To say me and Mar lead that alliance would be an overstatement, everyone just did what they wanted and we happened to have 99% of good hunters in the game at that point.
At this point it kinda goes to a blur again, I was in high school, playing a lot of sports, got into skateboarding,etc. and didn't play SMR much though I still hung out in chat,etc. I always found my way into the alliance that was dubbed 'The Evil Empire' of that round (Armada, The Edge, I was even in the first Death Control) Playing wasn't enough for me anymore, I started to want to lead something, but didn't know if I could. I made a multi (with permission) and started a newbie training alliance called StarBound Convicts (would later rename to Convict Labor Union) where I met a young Russian newb named ElvoN. I taught ElvoN the basics of the game and hunting and he took off from there, quickly surpassing me in basically every area and I got him a spot in the veteran alliance I was co-leading at the time with EstoyLoco called 'The Edge' (which, not to brag, was another powerhouse alliance basically dominating the game, but would only last 1 or 2 games) where he would further hone his skills with Sergei and Antoxa. ElvoN would become the first SMR player to achieve the ranking of Master and still one of the only ones to do so, and I've heard him credit me a couple of times for teaching him to play the game which is really awesome for me to hear but also a bit of a lie as I'm sure he learned far far more from his Russian counterparts, nonetheless it's a source of pride or I wouldn't be bragging about it in this message
. This actually sets a tone for me as I quickly realize that my strength as an SMR player is not my own skill as it might have been in my earlier SM days (it didn't help that I was basically the only person still on dialup), but my ability to recognize untapped potential and help a player develop it. After more inactivity I come back to the game in 2004 to see that the game has devolved into basically 2 big alliances slugging it out, Crusaders and Death Control. This seems lame to me and I see a challenge so I decide to form an alliance to act as a 3rd top tier alliance. Recruiting is tough and our name is terrible (E.P.I.C.) but we do ok, we lead a couple of ops against both Crusaders and DC (now renamed to Reincarnation) throughout the game, some succesful some not. But the next game we reform under the name Adult Swim. Notable members are xDeMoNx, Cuda (who I brought back to the game through MSN messenger), Ghengis (most underrated hunter of all time, who cares if he's an asshat he can flatout play), OmegaRenegade, and the portuguese who were not known yet (Telekinesis, Voltar, ZeDread) who would become known as some of the best hunters, utility players, and all round players respectively at that time. That game we traded blows with Crusaders and pounded Jesters alliance System Failure so badly they went totally inactive (I think the kill count between us was like 150 to 30 or something stupidly one sided), I would say the game was a success and was even debatable that we won it despite not having any of the biggest/baddest names at the time (though after that many of the AS players would become some of the most sought after in the game). After this game I went to Thailand for a year and didn't begin playing again until I came back..I did play one game solo and only traded from PC cafe's, I believe it was Triad and I went under the name Stupid Emo Skater Punk (Izza gave it to me) and was #1 all game by a mile and parking offline in open in a DC with no way to decloak me as I was solo.. UNTIL Orca cheated and got Frost to let him kill him some 7-8 odd times in a row in the same sector and passed me by a level and killed me. To this day I think Orca is a cheater and this is not the only way I suspect he cheated and that's why I don't consider him the best like many others do, I would say as much to his face as well. Although the case was brought up with admins Orca got a warning or a 1 day ban or something stupid and I was not refunded my xp, thus finished the game 3rd.
I played with Crusaders a bit after coming back from Thailand and didn't find the game that interesting, basically didn't play anymore until I moved up north for 6 months to work with nothing todo but a laptop that could handle SMR. The game starting at that time was Old Boundaries and I formed Quiet Riot with xDx and crushed the game so hard we got accused of ruining SMR.. Same old same old. This was my first game on SMR ever having broadband connection and I finished 3rd for kills..not bad. Next game formed Asylum with just me, SOuL, and Drake as a 3 man hunting alliance. I went inactive 2 weeks in with #1 XP in game and #2 in kills with a cloaked HHG DC (sick)..would have loved to play but I was moving at the time and too busy. Nonetheless SOuL and Drake tore it up and finished 2nd in the game for alliance kills despite having 3 members.
I went inactive again until my last kick at the can which was an alliance I formed called Asylum, I wish I could find the game data but it's not there, I finished 4th in kills and 2nd in player score to Ghengis (again one of my only games with broadband internet). Asylum was the clear winner of the game and I met some new friends like Mal, etc.
Throughout my time in the game I've met some amazing people that I will be friends with forever (Estoy, Izza, Mar, Odin....maybe JJ and the other Poker guys I haven't decided yet) and been blessed by many of them (Odn bought me an iPod for my Grade 12 grad). This community was amazing at it's peak and still is in some ways, but to me the game has died, and while it's fun to reminisce about what was it just isn't that to me anymore. I know this post was long, rambly, pointless, riddled with bad grammar and run on sentences, and probably sounds vain at times but I wanted to write it down somewhere and I figured there wasn't a better place than here. I guess all there is to say now is thanks for the memories SM/SMR, I will see you around.
Thanks : JJ, Puri, Trigek, Estoy, Odin, Mar, Radagast, Sergei, Toxa, Shady, ElvoN, Cuda, xDx, Gheng, Loty, Hugh, Kinky, Numb, StarScream, Warlock, Inferno, AC, Lapis, MM/Cat, Rasputin, Chocolate Bunny, Cowboy, Conn, jungle, Mal, seldum, Cnh-, Ace-, Freya, DeathWing...anyone else I might be forgetting! For all the good times and memories incase you happen to stumble across this post!
