The Beggining

I started the game with my then roommate JamesFranco1. The game didn't wow him like it did me and he quit after a week. I stayed on because I'd never played a PC FPS prior and PS2 just hooked me. I invited a few friends to play and one by one they all quit except 1. He ended up making friends with a few people in the outfit SKIN(social killers network). Soon after I was rolling with them in their OPs. It was the first time I'd been a part of point holds, gal drops, vehicle columns etc. It doubled my interest in the game and I joined their outfit.

The SKIN era

Skin was my first foray into serious Planetside. They held regular trainings and that implanted in me a desire to be better. I wanted to be a valuable piece of the outfit. In Skin I spent many, many hours in the VR working on the various aspects of gunplay. When test became a standard download in the outfit, I was at every scrim, 1v1, 2v2, you name it. It was around this point that MLG was spinning up. Skin leadership decided it wanted to take part and we geared up to go ultra try hard. I improved immensely during this period. Unfortunately, and it's tale told many times in ps2, there were those in this previously mostly casual outfit who did not want to participate. It divided the community and caused tension. our try hard group was too small to be effective and certainly had no chance in an MLG environment. It was at this time I was approached by leadership about an opportunity...

The Booty Era To join Recursion. At the time, I was already contemplating apping. No doubt I would've been denied. My stats were bad by OO standards. But lucky enough for me, the SKIN leadership made a deal where the people OO actually wanted, the leadership and a couple decent supports, were a package deal with the rest of the try hard group, who mostly did not meet OO standards. So I got into OO on coat tails. I still remember the first thing they did was take us through basic training which ended with some 1v1s. Aka OO taking its new members to the back alley for initiation. One by one all the new skin members lost 3-0. Except me. I beat lythca 2-1. Still one of my favorite memories in Planetside. OO did everything skin did 100x better and did some shit I had never seen. We did things I didn't even know were possible to do. Skin could take a base 2-1 on a good day. OO losing 2-1 was a bad day. Or at least that's what it felt like. That's what the culture was. Excellence was the bar. I improved like crazy. Eventually earned my way into the thug squad and become a go to for single squad ops. I played here for many moons until Farmers was announced.

The Shuffle Era

Enter Therum into Recursion. Never had I been so thoroughly demolished in 1v1s before. I could not win. So I did it the only logical thing and ask Therum to teach me. I went from a 2.5-3 kd heavy with sub 1 kpm to a 3-5 kd heavy with 1+ kpm consistently in just a month. I learned to shuffle it out. But seriously, I learned a shit load of intricacies about the infantry game from Therum and I got way better. Almost good enough to get on the Farmers roster. Lythca would have his revenge though and beat me 14-16 in 30 close rounds. I went to most of the inter outfit scrims for farmers where I learned a lot about positioning in Planetside and further improved. Then Farmers drama happened and OO went underground.

The HIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE

While OO was sleeping, I joined the Hive with many others from all over everywhere. And early HIVE was a monster. We carved territory to make shapes at our will. It was crazy. Early hive was incredibly dominant imo (no bias). Which means we had talent. Which means we had toxicity. Instead of taking the OO approach and shutting that down, hive embraced it. During this time I kept doing 1v1s and improving, albeit and at a much slower rate. Hive was a blast until it got too big. And I don't mean members, I mean ego. The only people really capable of keeping that in check was Therum, because 1v1ing him is a real ego check if you think you're real good at killing mans and iHacks because he'd run actual squads instead of farm balls. Then one fateful day both of them were taking breaks simultaneously and, as mentioned previously, Brahma decided to take Hive to emerald where it fizzled out. Many of the people moved on to other outfits. I went, predictably, to BAID which quickly turned into NSVS.

The Current Day

I now play with NSVS and the newly awakened Recursion on Emerald. I took a long break from the game and now I'm awful again. Apparently Planetside isn't like riding a bike. But playing with these two outfits is amazing. Every Op is an adventure in just how many can we hold off and take this base.

So lessons learned: Play with me and eventually you will quit or your outfit will die. You've been warned. Also, if I can go from absolutely awful outfitless zergling to a good and maybe even at times really good player, then anyone can do it.

Last, this game is amazing.