"...and he chose the dove encircling the fist as the symbol of his style, representing that peace contains strength. He believed that one who possesses genuine inner strength cannot be provoked to violence, hence will live in harmony with others. He named his style Wado-Ryu; Way of Peace."

of Hironori Otsuka
1892 - 1982

Click here for SubSpace (er, Continuum) executables, links, and other information.

I started my SubSpace career a long time ago... don't remember the exact version, but is was somewhere around .7-something, I think (first played in '94 or early '95). My first squad was one of my own making: Got Milk? It consisted of myself and several co-workers at the Computer Information Science and Engineering department at the University of Florida, where I was a Systems Administrator. This squad slowly added non-CISE members, and was disbanded when I joined *The Jihad.

For those of you too new to remember (i.e., most of you), *The Jihad was a Holy War against negkillers. We were a group of pilots committed to stamping out negkiller across zones. Initially, there was not an official squad, but as time went by, *The Jihad was formed. Bit Decay was also a member. *The Jihad entered with a bang, then died with a whimper as people slowly lost interest. The core Jihad members were excellent pilots, who played by honorable rules of conduct, and several still lurk about. During these times I was a rabid turret hunter, refused to turret, and loved to form swarms. My alias Wado Ryu is now the owner, and sole member, of this squad.

Next, I joined EpiC. I was still a member of *The Jihad, but was the only one on most of the time. Since Bit Decay and I knew each other well, I asked to join his freq (which was an all EpiC freq). Evil Illusion then informed me that I would have to change squads to EpiC to join the freq. Since *The Jihad was dead, I did so. Then I was put in EpiC RF, then back into EpiC, and then into EpiK when Evil forgot the password for EpiC (doh!). As an EpiK member I have learned to be a good turret gunner (and a poor turret pilot), although I still prefer swarming. After months of not owning our squad name due to Sierra not buying SubSpace from Virgin Interactive Entertainment (VIE), EpiK became primarily league based (United League and Pro League).

Unfortunately, our intense focus upon league performance was our downfall. Non-league pilots got isolated, non-starter pilots did not get to play, and league-centric recruiting policies eventually led to a mass exodus of quality pilots. This snowballed into poor league performance, more pilots leaving, and the fall from grace of one of the oldest SubSpace squads in existence. From 2000-2002, EpiK existed in name only, more or less, had a revival from mid-2002 through 2003, and has once again fallen to decay in 2004.

In August of 2004, I joined a brand new AML squad called 'deepblue', but that team never seemed to get organized. In the end they never won a match, and essentially dissolved partway into the season. Their biggest problem, one from which many new AML squads suffer IMO, was that they repeated what EpiK tried in the end: having 1-2 Pro "ringers" and a bunch of good pilots who never practice. This is not enough win AML, but hubris makes pilots (especially ex-Pro pilots) believe otherwise.

On March 2nd, 2005, I joined Llamasery, an established squad with a bunch of nice pilots (see Crunchy's history of the squad, below). They currently have two IML teams, and I hope to be able to put in some league time.

For a long time, SupSpace was in beta, and free. VIE maintained several servers, and times were good. Then the game went retail, which changed gameplay a great deal. When Sierra bought the gaming branch of VIE, they chose not to buy SubSpace, and as a result, the game is totally unmaintained. You can only rarely find it in stores anymore (usually in the bargain bin). Many sites have made the SubSpace CD-ROM publically available in order to keep the game alive. SubSpace has now become completely free, and is called Continuum. Feel free to download and enjoy this great game.

Wado Kai is the style of karate in which I earned a second degree brown belt. When the servers are down and not keeping scores, you will sometimes see me flying as Wado Ryu.

The Chaos Website has all kinds of nifty information, for those interested in playing in Chaos Zone.


A Brief History of EpiK:

As previously alluded to, EpiC was founded in the online game SubSpace inlate 1995 by Evil Illusion and Tioga. As the core group of EpiC solidified (early summer of 1996 or so), Tito's Burritos and Tioga became disappointed with the current state of SubSpace squads. Those squads placed personal goals ahead of camaraderie, which is the real reason behind joining a squad or team in any online game. EpiK adopted a philosophy of fun, teamwork, good sportsmanship, and skill, and became one of the premier Chaos squads. As an added benefit, the camaraderie that exists in the squad lends itself to excellent teamwork, and as a result, those goal minded squads found themselves quite surprised to have to look up to find EpiK in the standings.

Over it's early history as a Chaos East Squadron, through the turmoil of VIE's sale to Electronic Arts, and into new zones, EpiK's reputation grew as one of the best squadrons the game has ever seen. Throughout 1996 all the way through mid 1998 if EpiK did not win outright two-week resets, the squad was undoubtedly ranked in the top 5. After that time, EpiK moved into the organized league play which pitted the best squads against each other. Success followed immediately. With the inception of the World Subspace League, EpiK made a name for itself the very first season, finishing in 8th place, and qualifying for the playoffs. After that, EpiK was admitted into Amateur League where it not only won the entire league outright, it went undefeated the entire way. Then followed United League, and finally Pro League. Pro League is where the best of the best play. In it's first season in Pro, EpiK finished tied for first in their division and qualified for the playoffs, despite a 10 game schedule that pitted them against 7 playoff teams.

In the middle of 1998, when other multiplayer online games became more popular, groups of EpiK members branched out and formed EpiK Squads in these games that they also played. Today, EpiK now participates in at least 7 different games, and while Subspace will always be the flagship, other MPOGs like DAoC and Asheron's Call are going strong as well...



A (Less) Brief History of Llamasery:

How it started:

Razar and I were mostly alpha players in late 1999 early 2000. Indog, our friend, have been playing AML for a season or two and every now and then Razar and I would go shoot some people up in the AML/PRO zone. The settings for alpha is very diffferent from the PRO zone... mainly the damage in alpha is a lot more randomized and the max damage is much higher. So Razar and I have this impression that PRO is really easy since we don't die when we lame around in there, and we gave it a nickname: Tank League.

The jokes got more intense as we kept making fun of Indog for playing with such easy settings, so Razar and I (as a joke) decided to sign up for the AML waiting list. The name Llamasery came from a combination of "Llamas" (which at the time in alpha, was used to call people lamers) and "Lamasery" (which was mentioned in the short story The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke). So Llamasery is supposed to be a monastary where lamers live/study/meditate tongue.gif

By early 2000, we got a spot in AML as a filler squad and we had to come up with a roster quickly. Indog decided to leave his squad (Demonic) to help Llamasery for a few rounds. (At the time, the rules allow for this kind of movement). So there were three of us, we need a forth! So I just went to alpha, find the person I lame around with the most, Elvi$, and asked him to join.


The Beginning:

Our first game was against ESP, we only had 4 people on roster so those 4 started and we had no subs. We won the game 12-1. League is easy... or so we thought smile.gif

By game #2, Indog decided to go back to Demonic so we are back to a roster of 3. I pretty much just went to alpha and find any people I enjoyed flying with to join Llamasery for league. We never no showed, but we ended the rest of the season without any more wins. (Then again, of the 5 losses we had, 3 of them were semi-finalists I think).

So who did we pick up during that season that was worth mentioning? Suppoko and Gixer! So remember these names smile.gif They are the truly old-school llamas.


The Continuation:

I don't know what I was thinking, but even with a 1-5 record I was loving league. So instead of packing it up, I started to be a real captain and decide the goals for Llamas and start doing things to meet those goals. A few things that I noticed in my first season that had a huge impact on my decisions were:
-PRO really do have a lot of arses! Trying to get a practice going was IMPOSSIBLE because we suck and it would be a waste of time for them to prac with us. Such a catch 22... we won't prac you unless you are good... but we can't get better unless we prac.
-A lot of the good teams have bad attitudes. I didn't like that at all even tho personally I am not affected by trash talk and such.
-Secret is the lone exception. They have great skills and great attitude.
So my decision was set... I was to:
-Recruit ONLY from alpha.
-Recruit ONLY non good players. (yes you heard right)
-Recruit ONLY people with good attitudes.
-Build a Secret-like squad.
-Fun comes before wins.

That set the tone for Llamasery to this day. The recruiting rules have obviously been changed (but surprisingly it wasn't broken until 2 seasons ago when NC joined. That's 3+ years of alpha n00bs!) but the heart is still here.


One Step at a Time:

With the recruit rules I put in place, there is no choice but to build the squad slowly. Within the first three seasons we picked up a handful of faces we still see today.

Mortok is a real life friend of ours (Razar, Indog, and myself) and he was an obvious choice to join Llamas.

There was a squad in AML captained by... StormKat! Unfortunatly they couldn't continue. I felt really really bad for them because they are a bunch of great guys, so I planned to: Recruit their main starters, keep them for a few seasons and give them the opportunity to reform their squad when they're back on their feet. I was able to recruit only StormKat and Warchild (who became one of the only two llamas I ever axed). Ispi joined a few seasons later, so all in all, the plan never worked out, but I did pick up a few smile.gif

Rost joined from a recommandation from Ispi.

Nutsy (the only offical honourary llama) also joined.

So these are the second generation Llamas smile.gif

At this point the hardest school term in university started for me and I was unable to captain the squad. We ended up killing Llamasery (without a thought of bringing it back) sad.gif Everyone that season pretty much joined a new squad... I went to Secret, Razar went to Mutiny, Suppoko went to BUNNER, and the majority of others started a new squad in AML called aetherwind.


Reborn:

It was pretty late into the season already but the thought of reforming Llamas didn't really cross my mind. I just thought it was too difficult to get people to leave their squad and rejoin with us... but... I talked to people and it seems like we really could pull it off. Captain juice flowing in my brain again and I went to work. The roster for that season was pretty much a lot of aetherwind (ie: we throw out the ones that don't meet llama material) and the return of Razar and myself. Furthermore, I was scouting Nechronos and he become real close to me. He got a load of PRO squad offers, but I am just so lovable that he had to join Llamas.

We started pulling off a few good seasons in AML (winning records OMG! And our first postseason birth too wow!) It also happened that AML was really ridiculous with the stacked teams, that we decided to enter IML even though we barely made playoffs. Brave llamas we were... we marched on ahead.

Oh and Rock was in this era tongue.gif We actually decided to stop recruiting... so Rock decided to be the captain of Old Germany. WTF? No you're not... come join llamas. (I am starting to think he planned that all along)


The Dive:

We had no clue what to expect in IML. We learned some skills over the years, but IML is IML... it's rough. We actually started off really well playing close games and even winning one... but there must be some sort of curse out there because A LOT of real life problems happened to many llamas and we tanked the season really hard.

Back to AML? You bet! Especially with the luck we had the previous season. But...... I talked to a lot of llamas and things are starting to look good, so we may have an active season again... additionally we decided to buff up our roster a little bit and recruited Nocarbon (from my Secret connection), Lord Schnitzel (he really does love me but doesn't show it sad.gif, and d i g i sad.gif So with all that, we're staying in IML. Hehe, this time no excuse. We were active and we SUCKED! Go learn some skills! But..... we got lucky smile.gif An AML spot opened up and we were able to play as a shadow squad. It gave us PLENTY of experience which is just great smile.gif


The recent history:

Pretty much everyone except the new recruits know this part. After the end of the season, llamas had to decide between AML or IML or... both. We talked so much and there were just so many PROS and CONS... but eventually the decision was only IML.

Then... probably the biggest decision ever. With so many really good potential recruits, it is a big big big risk, but we just have too much to lose if we don't recruit. With some last minute work (like 2 weeks before preseason?) I was able to recruit enough people to form two separate rosters. The decision was also to give pretty much all our talent to the IML roster but of course they let us down tongue.gif hehe j/k. AML was just unbelieveable and made AML Finals.

Now:

We were stupid enough to make AML Finals so now we are forced to move up and have two IML squads. We made minor roster movements between the squads and now we picked up a couple more new faces.

For me, Llamas have been nothing but a MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR success. Even when we were having real life probs and losing lots of games, everyone's looking out for each other. I don't see it changing anytime soon (read: ever)... so to all new people, welcome to Llamasery, if you aren't an arse then you'll probably be a llama for a long time.

Hugs,

Crunchy




© 1996 Joe Granto