[{DvT}JonahHex]

Clans: IMHO, the old skool clans that have survived are the ones that put their emphasis upon their people rather than the game(s). Back in the late U1/early UT, days someone at Unreality made the observation that the average lifespan of new clan was about 2 weeks. As I recall, noone argued w/ that point because it self-evident. Back then DvT had its share of clan-hoppers and we instituted a process that requires weeks, if not months, for a new member to get his tag to combat this. The result has been a group that enjoys each other's company - friends - who have a common interest in the Unreal franchise.

Servers: From 2000 to 2003 my employer, a local ISP, hosted the DvT U1/UT servers on their T3 connection to UUNet for free - yeah...sweet it was. U1 had no security built into it and retro-patching security into it was (still is) difficult and not terribly effective. UT was better, but not much...on both counts (built-in and retro-patching security). During the (about) last 6 months that we had the T3-line servers, I practically had to camp on the U1 server to keep the botters and other cheaters in check -- doing so was a pain and got really old really quickly. When I left the company we lost the servers, of course, and UT2003 was almost ready for release. We then had to rent our servers and never reinstituted the U1 server ... because of the cost, but more so because there was no way I was going to go back to spending the time as a security guard. Starting then, our servers have always been private, pw required...because they are cheaper that way and because I haven't had to even think about cheating; you cheat, I change the pw, you're never invited back, end of problem...and I've never had to change the pw. The absence of a DvT public server has had the effect of isolating us from the Unreal community to some degree but it has also avoided the constant "I wasn't cheating but was banned" threads that are ubiquitous in the Silent Assassins [SA] forum (a U1 Infiltration clan) over at Fappin (nee Unreality).

The Unreal Franchise: I was very much less than pleased when Epic introduced vehicles into UT2003. At first I tended to avoid using them, somewhat in the same way that almost everyone in the U1 community used to avoid using the amp and the invis power-ups. By the time UT2004 was released it was clear that the vehicle based maps (mainly Onslaught) were too big to avoid the vehicles altogether...walking was too slow. Further, IMHO, it also became clear that the game had NOT been transformed into a "vehicle-based game." Yes, the vehicle weapons are powerful but the vehicle vulnerabilities do not leave the on-foot player desperately looking for a vehicle. More importantly, the game-types that contain vehicles are team based games where repeatedly dying (giving the opponent who killed you points) doesn't preclude winning. ONS, like CTF, gives the individual points for killing an opponent, but those points matter not at all toward the outcome of the game: altho generally improbable, in ONS and CTF it is possible for a team to win the game w/o scoring a single kill. Bottom line: I have come to agree w/ Epic that the vehicles have enhanced the game rather than transformed it. In my experience, at any given time in most 2K4 "vehicle" maps, there are virtually always more players on the ground than in vehicles, ie, the vehicles are just another addition to the weapons mix.