5 Years later... is this goodbye?

Spoiler: Disclaimer

Please don't move this thread as no one else will know/remember me except for the CTF community, thanks!

This will be a long post. I warned you.

This is basically my life story, through the lens of CTF. Comments and positive criticism are appreciated, as I am not a writer but felt the need to say my story now. Thanks for reading! <3

For all of you who don't know me, I'm RTKno1 and I played CTF from (if I recall right) November 2012- October 2015. It's been two years since I left the gamemode (and minecraft) but I still hung out here and there on the forums and on skype... and now discord. But lets take a step back.

November 2012: I was playing a towny server with my cousin for a long while, until he went out venturing for something new. He stumbled upon a fun game called Capture the Flag, and joined one specific one, a2.mcctf.com. We tried it out, understanding these new things to us called classes, which was the four: heavy, soldier, archer, and medic. It was fun for the 30 or so minutes we put into it, and decided to play it again another day. That, for me, was the beginning of my CTF career.

My cousin stopped after a week, but i was intrigued. Here is something that won't last more than 1 hour and is easy to stop since it isn't continuous and would let me have my daily dose of Minecraft. I went on to play this game, reminiscing over IRL CTF in elementary school; this just felt amazing. Soldier fit the best for me, I could scale walls, dodge all those pesky ninjas and assassins and whatnot, steal a flag and come up with fun strategies to wall jump without getting headshot and capture it. Once I or many other talented soldiers came back with the flag, the games would go on a standstill. Each of us were skillful enough to notice the sudden change in air when a ninja arrived, the smoke concealing an assassin coming from the lesser known paths, the whizzing of an arrow aimed at our heads. We had an arsenal of medics for anytime we engaged in "dances" - fights between two soldiers constantly scaling walls and attacking, dodging to other sides or going through buildings, a marvelous scene to see these talented swordsman have at it with their special skills - loyal medics who came to our aid at any time all the time. Finally, through a slip on a block or a completely new attack pattern, one would fall an the other capture.

Sometimes it would end in stalemate, and instead of trying immensely to reclaim our flag while keeping the enemy's, the active game members decided to run around and chat. Before the time of skype taking over the community, the game was the only way to catch up with friends, know how they were doing and what their day was like, their school load and complaints over IRL situations. It was fun, it was more than fun, it brought me my first real sense of friendship. Logging in every day to see the same people on, whether or not we are engaged in the game, we were engaged with each other, and that formed the real sense of community. On our little a2 community in the beginning, there was Puffy_Bunny, @SaviorOfHyrule, Minehero732, lfets, Mystic_Turtle, jessicagold10001, and a few others who would constantly be online. (If I forgot anyone at the time of writing I apologize). Our conversations lost to the chat logs of the server went on and on, until one day it didn't.

As my memory recalls, and others have disputed this, the a2 server went down from around December 2012 to February or so. What do I do?? My amazing friends, my fun server all gone? This is impossible! a1-a5 had been shut down, completely, without warning, for no apparent reason. Hoping to regain my friends, I hop onto a new venture... b2. I had no idea, but each server had its own community, its own vibe, and its own growth rate. Surprisingly, the b servers were the fastest and most competitive. b2 had its own niche of people, and I came on frantically asking around if anyone had seen a2 players... the answer was always no. I decided to stay... a week... a month... waiting for any sign of my friends to come back, but instead I gravitated towards new friends. The first was @XavierTyson whos name reminded me of Sav. We became extremely close friends... doing really weird things together that I still remember to this day (its cookie). Days moved on, new friends joined the fray, and then one day I decide to check back on a2.... BANZAI ITS UP! Everyone is back, happily living their life as if the shutdown never happened... but now I had a set of two homes, which do I choose? Neither of course, but I rather invite both servers to meet each other... and interact they did. Instant best friends all around, both server numbers almost doubling, it was a joy for all.

As months go by, my knowledge of mcpvp expands, and I notice some b1 players joining into our fray. It seems b1 is constantly overloaded to its max of 70/70 players, and some regulars just cant enter and are forced into the secondary b2. They seem nice... but maybe thats the environment we provided, joining b1 gave you what we now have as flame, hate, constant bickering and swearing and nagging. We, however, stayed true to our values, ignoring the influx of tough competitors, ignoring the unnecessary negative attitudes they brought, and we continued to enjoy our lives. It is, however, this moment of peak player time, where friday freeday became official and all hell broke loose, that I was approached to join a CTF team by Deblob159. I have seen blob on every now and then, though I didn't know him well enough. However, what the hell was a CTF team? I was on a team... blue. I couldn't generally switch from my assigned color... is there a secret green team out there? No no, idiot a2/b2 player... teams are professional CTFers... the regulars for real competition. So which team had reached out? The Blobz of course. To join I had to create a forums account... which meant navigating the ugly thing known as forums in the first place. Alas... a month later I decide that I know enough to join... except theres one issue... I was too slow and the spot filled already. Saddened, I joined another team, VenomXI lead by jellytots (maybe some numbers I can't remember). This didn't last very long... venom lost almost every single match they played. I left before it disbanded, and thought... I should bring this new amazing concept to a2!!

Up until now... a2 had been a niche community without any interaction to the outside CTF world besides the few b2 people i invited back. It was shielded from all the developments taking place around it and left to bite the dust... but I wouldn't stand for it. Lfets and I created The Guardians... the team tasked with defending the honor of A2. It also meant I got my first social media account besides gmail... skype. Quickly we coerced everyone else into making a skype and adding them, expanding our team drastically and getting approval from the everlasting famed mod studmuffin. We also created an a2 community chat, a place for all the fun conversations that occurred on the servers to now be saved forever on skype logs. In fact... Skype got so overwhelmed by our messages we had to create a new chat... 5 times. The Guardians lasted its run, winning some and losing some, me sticking to soldier until shifting to ninja near the end (and becoming a decently well recoverer).

Theres a lot of details here that I will skip but will provide overview here; the players coming and going, meeting Agent_Neon IRL since we went to the same high school, becoming the CTF match spreadsheet organizer and main coordinator (until my leave from CTF when @Hanatamago_San took over), laughs and cries over IRL issues with each other, insane calling, more insane calling. Forwarding to January 20th, 2014. Its my birthday, and The Guardians is disbanded. The call is made by me after losing so many active players, and its time to revert back into just a general community who have fun with one another... except that doesn't last... not for me. Two months later, what I considered a close and sacred friendship shattered. To create The Guardians meant I gave my email to my co-leader, and he gave me his... this meant we shared real names. Privacy, to this day, means an insane amount to me, and under no circumstance do I wish my name to be shared to others unless I specifically tell them. That rule of mine was broken, utterly destroyed by my own co-leader in a chat where my name was the topic of the chat, along with some expletives I won't mention. Of course, this led to isolation for me except from a few who wanted to help, and led to some depressive states (I was never diagnosed, but I had many of the symptoms, and kept it to myself). I left a2 entirely, blocked him, and tried to move on from my original home.

It was hard... everyone you know and trusted had just joined a 40+ group chat to purposely hurt you and they knew it. It was also the time I really grew up into learning how to keep myself protected from others (there were a few other instances where I was stalked but again by my own failures and I grew from those also). Anyway, b2 became my new home, but I vowed to never join another CTF team out of respect to my first led and my first server (you may be thinking... 'wow this guy is crazy' but I was like 15 and a freshmen/early sophomore in HS with no real friends this was kinda my life). But, sooner or later The Flying Walruses became my new team, with snowtucs being its leader it was a2 all over again. A friendly, non competitive, lifelong friend type of team, who had fun and respected everyone. I once again brought one or two friends from a2 over, and the team flourished. That gave me some comfort especially when a lot was going on IRL and I was overall despised my situation. There was also one person on CTF who specifically took advantage of me during this time, however I will not speak about them nor what they did, that is a story on its own.

Meanwhile, as time went on, CTF began to slowly die out. A2 died in 2014 with the split/destruction of the community, and in 2015 more and more people were going inactive. It was becoming a sad state of politics with the moderators/admins of the server as a whole, and then it was also suddenly announced that well... mcpvp had been sold off to brawl and will shut down entirely. The news sent shockwaves to the nation of CTF and probably led to the death of many of its members, but many others stuck on and hoped for new citizens to join. I, being an optimistic person, quickly formed a new team for the brawl members wanting to learn CTF, Ascension was the name. Sadly, both I and the rest of the community realized this wouldn't last... and Ascension disbanded almost as fast as it was made. Junior year was fast approaching, as was college apps, ACT, AP tests, etc. and it was finally time I said no to the now distraction of my life, skype and CTF. I "officially" (meaning what I tell myself and others) quit in October, and left Minecraft all together at the same time. Skype stayed a huge part of my life though, with friends that I had made that I could never lose, and in 2016 I finally hit my dream goal of 1000 contacts on skype.

It was then that I decided to go in reverse. To delete those who I never interacted outside of Minecraft with, and to move on. Life moves on, the world keeps spinning, no matter what our choices are the forces of nature will not stop, and so I realized it was time to say goodbye to this chapter. Many people near the end of 2016 had begun to move to discord as well, and me being slow to process change I don't wish, I lost many contacts also with the shift from skype to discord as I didn't move until much much later.

Yet, through all of this I keep close connections to some current and former CTF players. To me, they are not just others I used to play Minecraft with, they are true friends. We moved past the "lets play" and into discussions about family, friends, school, work, politics, current tech/events, anything else that you may talk to other friends. To me, this server gave me lifelong memories, and lifelong friends. Most people I talk to now I met in 2013-14, and while becoming close may have happened at a much later date, the connections kindled from long ago. Most others though, like I stated above, did not last long and were gone as quick as they came. I would estimate that maybe 1/10 of the players I met I keep some form of connection with, probably less as more and more time passes. But those connections are what I cherish, and I will never be thankful enough for their support and advice throughout all of my years, through the hardships and happiness, the highs and lows, the excitement and nervousness, achievements and failures, these were the ones who stuck with me through it all, and supported me the entire way through, and I will always hold onto them. To tag everyone would be insane, as there are too many people who have influenced me and continue to do so in different ways that I would for sure forget someone in the current moment (such is the human brain).

The two years since I left the game, I stuck with the community in various ways, the forums or some discord channels or other venues. Will I ever be able to leave the CTF group completely? Probably no, as I still talk to current players also and all of my friends and I will always remember this as the place where we met up.

This is a tribute to CTF and what it has done in my life, and taught me through my interactions. In no way does this encompass all of what I went through and how everything else also influenced me, but this gives a little perspective as to how CTF played a role. Thanks again for reading, leave a comment if you wish, see you all around

 

thats what i was saying ill never fully leave the community, but i left the server 2 yrs ago and this is my tribute to it and what its done for me.

 

@lnformative firstly its an l not an i and that confused me and haha thanks c: feel free to msg me if u wanna

@Hauntinng ya dude msg me!

@WarSkater u reminded me of another person i used to know well... :c but ya i still do ceramics xP ilyt msg me if u wanna ^^