WOW!
Sorry for the long e-mail. But you need to know my story.
Imagine my surprise to get your e-mail this morning, from an old SOCOM Clan player!! I didn't think any of my old SOCOM acquaintances were still out there on the net. My Clan had many Allied Clans we were friends with back in my old Clan, [CTU] Counter Terrorist Unit. Just about all of my old friends in the SOCOM/BF3 Clan world are dead and gone now. Looks like your BEER CLAN kept it going! Well Done! I think CTU and the Beer Clan were Allies back then. We may have played SOCOM with each other. I think [CTU] still has a website... but the CTU Clan is pretty much shut down now. The last time I visited CTU... there were only 2 or 3 Clan members that use the site from time to time to chat.
Back in SOCOM3 and SOCOM Confrontation... I join CTU just after the Clan went through a break up. It wasn't pretty for CTU and I learn the details several weeks later why there was a breakup. Only 2 original CTU members were left. The CTU Captain and the Commander. They were about to give up and close the doors to end CTU and the CTU website. At that time... we then only had 3 members in CTU including myself. I had never been in a Clan up to that point... but I convinced the 2 remaining CTU Officers to not give up on CTU, but to start over. SOCOM Confrontation was the new game at that time. CTU had a long and grand history in SOCOM for many years starting with the PS2. CTU was one of the original online Clans in SOCOM.
CTU in it's hay days... had hundreds of members, of mainly Current and Retired Military Vets. They really knew military tactics and strategy and taught them to us. By the time I rebuilt CTU... we had about 60 active members and about 40 Casual members coming in and out of the Clan. I took over the CTU Website and rebuilt the website twice over for our needs as the Clan grew, since I had knowledge with website publishing and computers. We rebuilt as an International online SOCOM War Clan with members from all over the world. We were all great friends that met every night in SOCOM. We were active in Clan Wars with many friendly Clans... also private and public Competitions and many Tournaments organized by Urgent Fury... if you remember the Urgent Fury Competition Website folks. Urgent Fury Link: Lots of great memories and Clan battles from back then.
Our CTU Captain and Clan Leader was tired of the day to day CTU leadership... and as I worked my way up the Command Officer structure, he handed the reins of CTU over to me to run as the CTU Commander and Co-Leader.
Then came the debacle of SOCOM4. If you remember... SOCOM4 was a complete mess of a rewrite of the old SOCOM games. SOCOM4 had almost NO Clan Support. We struggled with SOCOM4, as long as we could. About 75% of CTU were "SOCOM ONLY" online multiplayers. And there wasn't any good modern warfare games with Clan Support at that time. We tried Zipper's MAG for awhile... but it was the same poor Clan Support in MAG as was in SOCOM4. The majority of my "SOCOM ONLY" player membership gave up gaming totally. That left CTU with a small core membership. And SOCOM4 ended it's developer Zipper, when SONY realized the old SOCOM players just rejected it.
We heard about Battlefield 3 right about then... but BF3 was still way off in the future. CTU went inactive for awhile, until the Red Dead Redemption game on the PS3 was released and CTU played that and enjoyed the hell out of it. RDR had some Clan Support we could make due with. About a year or so later... Battlefield 3 was released. As you remember... BF3 was a mess when released. BF3 was broken, glitchy, bad netcode, lots of LAG and no Private Servers for Clans. But we held in with BF3 for months until DICE got BF3 mostly fixed and stable for our use and brought in the Private Servers. CTU was back with a modern war Clan game again. We had BF3 CTU Field Commanders with dedicated Squad Leaders with Squads in Armor, Aircraft and Infantry units with weekly practice nights. I was a BF3 pilot, mainly in Helicopters but also in jets. And as an Infantry soldier when no aircraft were available.
We played BF3 every night and I rebuilt CTU as it's Commander/Recruiter with my team of recruiters, back to a full membership of over 160 members. CTU switched from a SOCOM NAVY Command structure to a BF3 MARINE Command structure and Officers. Captains became Generals and the Commander (me), became the Colonel. The rest fell in place. I was still the Leader of our CTU Clan at that point.
CTU was very innovative and we developed some great member activities in BF3 the members loved. CTU continued as an International Clan with members in every country you can think of. After BF3 became mostly fixed and stable... any LAG from all the different member time zones, was not a problem for game play. Somehow, it just worked. We just had members playing BF3 at all times of the day as you can imagine. Our Asian members playing at 6 AM, EU members playing at Noon and U.S. members playing in the evenings and members in Hawaii playing a 2 and 3 PM. It was a hoot getting us all together!
Our Private Clan Wars started back up. Urgent Fury tried to use BF3 as a competition game... and I worked with them to try to make BF3 work for real competition. After months of discussions, and trial and error with BF3 matches... Urgent Fury gave up on BF3. CTU played BF3 until Battlefield 4 was released. We had high hopes for BF4! After BF3's flop of a release... we believed that DICE would finally do it right with BF4!!!! Damn were we wrong!
BF4's release was even more broken than BF3 was on it's release. It took DICE even longer to fix BF4 and make BF4 somewhat stable to play. And BF4 came with none of the Clan Support that BF3 had. CTU just couldn't use BF4 for tactical game play using Team Strategy with complete Squad mic communications as we had in BF3. If you remember... BF3 had "Squad and Team" mic chat communications. And you could use both chats together for tactical Squad Teamwork. That ended in BF4. To this day... I believe BF3 is still the best BF and is still a superior game when compared to BF4.
Again... my membership started giving up on BF4 and moved on. There just wasn't any modern war games to build a Clan on. In time... all of us stopped playing BF4, including me. CTU went dormant again for awhile.
I tried to play BF4 for weeks on my own after CTU gave up on BF4... but it wasn't the same. Run & Gun, Shoot Everything that Moves, Lone Wolf kids, Whiny little brats, players with no headsets... and NO Teamwork at all became the norm. Then I quit BF4.
Soon after CTU became dormant again, because of BF4... those of us left, waited for BF5. In that time... 2 of our Old CTU Socom members returned after being away for over 10+ years. They worked behind my back with my Captain to take over CTU from my leadership and go back into BF4. The rest of my loyal CTU members quit when my old CTU Captain turned against me with these 2 past members. They basically killed CTU and I then resigned from CTU. Not a good time for me. I lost many of my loyal friends from around the world. CTU went downhill and is now dead from what I've seen.
A few months later... several of my old CTU loyal Military members, asked me to form a new Clan. I accepted the challenge and started up [SoF] Soldiers of Fortune. We rebuilt SoF up to about 50+ members. Link to my [SoF] Website:
Our new [SoF] Soldiers of Fortune Clan, looked at several games for our new Clan. None of us were ever "Call of Duty" fans. We looked at UbiSoft's "Rainbow6 Siege" and their "The Division" and maybe Ubi's "Ghost Recon Wildlands" for the future. But none of these new UbiSoft games included the complete Clan Support we required. We also looked at some other online games. We already knew BF4 wouldn't work, but some of us played BF4 with each other from time to time. So we all went back to Battlefield 3 for awhile, as we waited for a better modern war, Clan Supported game to be released. Nothing for the PS3 and now the PS4, has come out that we could use. So... BF5 became our new target and we hoped DICE would include Clan Support and Private Servers.
Then, BF5 became Battlefield 1, a WW1 game?? Why? Not what we were looking for at all. From BF1's first announcement... several of us begged and pleaded with EA/DICE to include at least the same Clan Support and Private Servers that BF3 had. EA/DICE avoided and ignored our Forum posts on the BF1 EA forum and Reddit. We did what we could. We followed BF1 as it was being developed, up unto the recent Beta. BF1 looks to follow the BF4/Hardline mold, with NO Clan Support and no information on Private Servers for Clan use. The BF1 beta is now losing BF players interest. TWITCH player reviews and comments are running about 50% against BF1. For me... I don't see online War Clans, using BF1 as their base game. I can explain why later. But that's a long story for another post. I see BF1's servers going empty within months. Then, I expect BF Bad Company3 or a real BF5 will be released in 2017 or 2018, for EA/DICE to recover from BF1.
So... that brings me to your recent e-mail: "Who wants to start gaming as a Clan again?"
I'm interested in discussing this possibility. In the past few years since BF4... I've spent a lot more family time with kids and grandkids. I'm sure they don't want my nightly Clan evenings coming back anytime soon! LMAO! But I miss the old Clan days with friends and would be willing to talk about this project. Also... I've put months and hundreds of hours into my new SoF website and would hate to lose it. We could discuss this later. I also have some friends in a sister Clan that might want to move.
PAUL-AWOL.... Is it possible to link up with you on a private video SKYPE chat some night, instead of doing this all by forum posts? SKYPE can handle up to 9 video users at a time as I remember.... maybe more now. We had our CTU and SoF Officer meetings on SKYPE and recorded the meetings for Clan History use and posted our meetings as podcasts on the web. I live in the Eastern Time Zone. Ohio.
Let me know your decision on how to meet up and talk about the future.
I apologize for the long history post and my résumé.
Red
RedKnightsoh5
Soldiers Of Fortune[SoF]
http://www.sof-bf4.net/
E-mail: jrwhorse@aol.com
Sorry for the long e-mail. But you need to know my story.
Imagine my surprise to get your e-mail this morning, from an old SOCOM Clan player!! I didn't think any of my old SOCOM acquaintances were still out there on the net. My Clan had many Allied Clans we were friends with back in my old Clan, [CTU] Counter Terrorist Unit. Just about all of my old friends in the SOCOM/BF3 Clan world are dead and gone now. Looks like your BEER CLAN kept it going! Well Done! I think CTU and the Beer Clan were Allies back then. We may have played SOCOM with each other. I think [CTU] still has a website... but the CTU Clan is pretty much shut down now. The last time I visited CTU... there were only 2 or 3 Clan members that use the site from time to time to chat.
Back in SOCOM3 and SOCOM Confrontation... I join CTU just after the Clan went through a break up. It wasn't pretty for CTU and I learn the details several weeks later why there was a breakup. Only 2 original CTU members were left. The CTU Captain and the Commander. They were about to give up and close the doors to end CTU and the CTU website. At that time... we then only had 3 members in CTU including myself. I had never been in a Clan up to that point... but I convinced the 2 remaining CTU Officers to not give up on CTU, but to start over. SOCOM Confrontation was the new game at that time. CTU had a long and grand history in SOCOM for many years starting with the PS2. CTU was one of the original online Clans in SOCOM.
CTU in it's hay days... had hundreds of members, of mainly Current and Retired Military Vets. They really knew military tactics and strategy and taught them to us. By the time I rebuilt CTU... we had about 60 active members and about 40 Casual members coming in and out of the Clan. I took over the CTU Website and rebuilt the website twice over for our needs as the Clan grew, since I had knowledge with website publishing and computers. We rebuilt as an International online SOCOM War Clan with members from all over the world. We were all great friends that met every night in SOCOM. We were active in Clan Wars with many friendly Clans... also private and public Competitions and many Tournaments organized by Urgent Fury... if you remember the Urgent Fury Competition Website folks. Urgent Fury Link: Lots of great memories and Clan battles from back then.
Our CTU Captain and Clan Leader was tired of the day to day CTU leadership... and as I worked my way up the Command Officer structure, he handed the reins of CTU over to me to run as the CTU Commander and Co-Leader.
Then came the debacle of SOCOM4. If you remember... SOCOM4 was a complete mess of a rewrite of the old SOCOM games. SOCOM4 had almost NO Clan Support. We struggled with SOCOM4, as long as we could. About 75% of CTU were "SOCOM ONLY" online multiplayers. And there wasn't any good modern warfare games with Clan Support at that time. We tried Zipper's MAG for awhile... but it was the same poor Clan Support in MAG as was in SOCOM4. The majority of my "SOCOM ONLY" player membership gave up gaming totally. That left CTU with a small core membership. And SOCOM4 ended it's developer Zipper, when SONY realized the old SOCOM players just rejected it.
We heard about Battlefield 3 right about then... but BF3 was still way off in the future. CTU went inactive for awhile, until the Red Dead Redemption game on the PS3 was released and CTU played that and enjoyed the hell out of it. RDR had some Clan Support we could make due with. About a year or so later... Battlefield 3 was released. As you remember... BF3 was a mess when released. BF3 was broken, glitchy, bad netcode, lots of LAG and no Private Servers for Clans. But we held in with BF3 for months until DICE got BF3 mostly fixed and stable for our use and brought in the Private Servers. CTU was back with a modern war Clan game again. We had BF3 CTU Field Commanders with dedicated Squad Leaders with Squads in Armor, Aircraft and Infantry units with weekly practice nights. I was a BF3 pilot, mainly in Helicopters but also in jets. And as an Infantry soldier when no aircraft were available.
We played BF3 every night and I rebuilt CTU as it's Commander/Recruiter with my team of recruiters, back to a full membership of over 160 members. CTU switched from a SOCOM NAVY Command structure to a BF3 MARINE Command structure and Officers. Captains became Generals and the Commander (me), became the Colonel. The rest fell in place. I was still the Leader of our CTU Clan at that point.
CTU was very innovative and we developed some great member activities in BF3 the members loved. CTU continued as an International Clan with members in every country you can think of. After BF3 became mostly fixed and stable... any LAG from all the different member time zones, was not a problem for game play. Somehow, it just worked. We just had members playing BF3 at all times of the day as you can imagine. Our Asian members playing at 6 AM, EU members playing at Noon and U.S. members playing in the evenings and members in Hawaii playing a 2 and 3 PM. It was a hoot getting us all together!
Our Private Clan Wars started back up. Urgent Fury tried to use BF3 as a competition game... and I worked with them to try to make BF3 work for real competition. After months of discussions, and trial and error with BF3 matches... Urgent Fury gave up on BF3. CTU played BF3 until Battlefield 4 was released. We had high hopes for BF4! After BF3's flop of a release... we believed that DICE would finally do it right with BF4!!!! Damn were we wrong!
BF4's release was even more broken than BF3 was on it's release. It took DICE even longer to fix BF4 and make BF4 somewhat stable to play. And BF4 came with none of the Clan Support that BF3 had. CTU just couldn't use BF4 for tactical game play using Team Strategy with complete Squad mic communications as we had in BF3. If you remember... BF3 had "Squad and Team" mic chat communications. And you could use both chats together for tactical Squad Teamwork. That ended in BF4. To this day... I believe BF3 is still the best BF and is still a superior game when compared to BF4.
Again... my membership started giving up on BF4 and moved on. There just wasn't any modern war games to build a Clan on. In time... all of us stopped playing BF4, including me. CTU went dormant again for awhile.
I tried to play BF4 for weeks on my own after CTU gave up on BF4... but it wasn't the same. Run & Gun, Shoot Everything that Moves, Lone Wolf kids, Whiny little brats, players with no headsets... and NO Teamwork at all became the norm. Then I quit BF4.
Soon after CTU became dormant again, because of BF4... those of us left, waited for BF5. In that time... 2 of our Old CTU Socom members returned after being away for over 10+ years. They worked behind my back with my Captain to take over CTU from my leadership and go back into BF4. The rest of my loyal CTU members quit when my old CTU Captain turned against me with these 2 past members. They basically killed CTU and I then resigned from CTU. Not a good time for me. I lost many of my loyal friends from around the world. CTU went downhill and is now dead from what I've seen.
A few months later... several of my old CTU loyal Military members, asked me to form a new Clan. I accepted the challenge and started up [SoF] Soldiers of Fortune. We rebuilt SoF up to about 50+ members. Link to my [SoF] Website:
Our new [SoF] Soldiers of Fortune Clan, looked at several games for our new Clan. None of us were ever "Call of Duty" fans. We looked at UbiSoft's "Rainbow6 Siege" and their "The Division" and maybe Ubi's "Ghost Recon Wildlands" for the future. But none of these new UbiSoft games included the complete Clan Support we required. We also looked at some other online games. We already knew BF4 wouldn't work, but some of us played BF4 with each other from time to time. So we all went back to Battlefield 3 for awhile, as we waited for a better modern war, Clan Supported game to be released. Nothing for the PS3 and now the PS4, has come out that we could use. So... BF5 became our new target and we hoped DICE would include Clan Support and Private Servers.
Then, BF5 became Battlefield 1, a WW1 game?? Why? Not what we were looking for at all. From BF1's first announcement... several of us begged and pleaded with EA/DICE to include at least the same Clan Support and Private Servers that BF3 had. EA/DICE avoided and ignored our Forum posts on the BF1 EA forum and Reddit. We did what we could. We followed BF1 as it was being developed, up unto the recent Beta. BF1 looks to follow the BF4/Hardline mold, with NO Clan Support and no information on Private Servers for Clan use. The BF1 beta is now losing BF players interest. TWITCH player reviews and comments are running about 50% against BF1. For me... I don't see online War Clans, using BF1 as their base game. I can explain why later. But that's a long story for another post. I see BF1's servers going empty within months. Then, I expect BF Bad Company3 or a real BF5 will be released in 2017 or 2018, for EA/DICE to recover from BF1.
So... that brings me to your recent e-mail: "Who wants to start gaming as a Clan again?"
I'm interested in discussing this possibility. In the past few years since BF4... I've spent a lot more family time with kids and grandkids. I'm sure they don't want my nightly Clan evenings coming back anytime soon! LMAO! But I miss the old Clan days with friends and would be willing to talk about this project. Also... I've put months and hundreds of hours into my new SoF website and would hate to lose it. We could discuss this later. I also have some friends in a sister Clan that might want to move.
PAUL-AWOL.... Is it possible to link up with you on a private video SKYPE chat some night, instead of doing this all by forum posts? SKYPE can handle up to 9 video users at a time as I remember.... maybe more now. We had our CTU and SoF Officer meetings on SKYPE and recorded the meetings for Clan History use and posted our meetings as podcasts on the web. I live in the Eastern Time Zone. Ohio.
Let me know your decision on how to meet up and talk about the future.
I apologize for the long history post and my résumé.
Red
RedKnightsoh5
Soldiers Of Fortune[SoF]
http://www.sof-bf4.net/
E-mail: jrwhorse@aol.com