DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Sheep Tag Community
HTML https://sheeptag.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Community Discussion
*****************************************************
#Post#: 6071--------------------------------------------------
Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 12:17 am
---------------------------------------------------------
This is my attempt at a detailed history of Sheep Tag from the
perspective of east server (obviously) but occasionally touching
on other servers. I will try to mention key players whose names
have been lost to time. While I will try to make the information
as accurate as possible, a lot of this is digging up old
memories, and some information will inherently be inaccurate,
and more will be missing altogether. This is for NMCDO so he may
share the story of our game after I have departed this world.
Chapter 1 -- In the Beginning
Most of sheep tag's pre-history, before clans existed is
speculation, but some facts can be derived from the maps that
existed back then. Early on the map was 9v3. When I say map, I
should really say maps. They were changed and updated quite
frequently. The mainline pro map took place in a square smaller
than the entire map. It's clear at this stage map developing was
so new that the makers didn't even have a firm grasp of how to
easily change the map's size and did so with terrain
impediments. However, this map could actually be jumped of with
a 7x7 farm block and the sheep could be unreachable by the
shepherds. Needless to say, this was not very stable, although
it was likely not known/abused at the time. Many of the farms we
know of today were still on that map, but a few like magic,
frost, "stun" weren't present or were in different forms. Wolf
damage was quite low, somewhere in the 8-14 hits to kill a farm
range depending on the version. Dolly, the legendary floating
sheep was actually present way back then on these maps, before
being subsequently removed soon after. Still the fact that Dolly
is still famous yet was only present in maps no modern players
played is quite astonishing.
This was importantly not the only map. The two main competitors
were 10.1 and Perfect Sheep Tag. It's clear ST split into "noob"
maps quite early on by these all sharing the same 9v3 team
structure. 10.1 involved a lot of tree hiding and unit building.
Perfect had less tree hiding but still was a unit building, noob
base map. Wolves could buy ghouls, sheep could save wisps with
"meat wagons". Indeed these maps more resembled tree tag than
what we think of sheep tag, and is perhaps where the inspiration
for tree tag came.
Chapter 2 -- Clan SGOD
The first ST clan on East was made on the first day that clans
were enabled. The chieftain was Open(Alex). Some notable members
include shamans Raptos and Brown1430; and grunts Pure,
Frappachino, Ydoc, Piggerpiglet and 2nd_a-k-a_sheep.
- Alex in his role as first clan chieftain was essentially the
primogeniture of East ST. He was the best sheep player at the
time, and was widely respected for keeping a cool temperament
and pushing the then boundaries of the game. He would go on to
pioneer run tag (although it had no name at that point). He
would use trees to manipulate wolves losing their locks. In this
time period this was revolutionary and truly devastating as very
few players knew about A-walk.
- Raptos was considered the best wolf player in east and a
senior leader (shaman) in clan XROC. While there were other
shamans known to me, I have since forgotten their names and
didn't interact with any but Raptos personally.
- Brown1430 Brown was initially arrogant but mellowed out and
was overall a good friend by the time I met him. He was known
for being the fastest grid masser on East, and (contested)
fastest in the world for a while.
It should be noted that the East pro community was in communion
with West pros, who had also made 1-2 clans the first day they
were enabled as well. The west pro community at this time
dwarfed the East pro community anywhere from 2-4 times as many
players. However, they did play the same maps and both supported
the rise of the MD Team and the leader Star who developed 7.1
during this time period. That map served as the basis for the
terrain that still exists in today's main sheep tag map, a truly
remarkable feat. The most noticeable difference back then was a
lot of trees and areas where the sheep could "jump" into the
trees and be untouchable. Such play was obviously BM, but could
be somewhat countered by orb splash damage a wolf could use
attacking an image. The wolf damage was still extremely weak,
8-10 hit farm kills. As people got better, due to the nature of
the game sheep became more OP than in previous maps and the
teams were 8v4.
People were also starting to experiment with weirder maps. There
was one map that SGOD made, mostly as a joke, where you could
build "ancient SGOD warriors" (footmen) if you knew the code.
What was interesting about that map though was that the pen was
on a giant mostly unbuildable mountain and that wisps had pretty
OP spells like slow and maybe even cyclone. It showed that the
question of how the pen and wisps should be balanced was still
completely up in the air.
Chapter 3 -- The Fall
SGOD did not last long unfortunately. Many of the core players
got bored with sheep tag and had begun to dabble in roc Dota.
After 3-6 months the clan disbanded. There were a couple remakes
with most of the original crew but these died even quicker. Thus
after a slow start compared to West, East then suffered a
massive die-off.
Chapter 4 -- HCS or "The Golden Age of Sheep Tag"
This is the beginning of the 1-2 years that some Westies (and I
concur) refer to as the Golden Age of ST, where ST had more
players in the 'pro' community than at any other time.
Clan hcs or hardcore sheeptaggers was created by the grunts of
SGOD who were not ready to give up and move onto dota.
- Frappachino: (usually called frappa) was the honored
chieftain. He was one of the best of the grunts, but more
importantly the nicest and the only one people would follow. He
was a big pioneer of the frost farm and while not the fastest
masser, was perhaps the most difficult to kill. This earned him
a lot of respect.
- Piggerpiglet: was frappa's right-hand man. A tool of the nth
order Pigger was widely despised but was perhaps the most
influential person on East besides frappa. Though he was perhaps
arrogant to think he should be chief, he on some level knew
people would not follow a tool of his magnitude, and he much
preferred being a jerk than trying to lead others.
- 2nd_a-k-a_sheep: If Pigger was the right hand, 2nd most
certainly was the left hand, virtually equal in rank to Pigger.
He was also, a giant tool. He was more condescending while
Pigger would just outright hurl childish insults. I'm unsure if
2nd was his account name in SGOD to be honest. He changed
accounts quite frequently, and I suspect he settled on 2nd
during this time period to subconsciously put out the notion
that he was 2nd in command and the 2nd best STer, not Pigger.
They did have somewhat of a rivalry, but mostly united on being
superior to the rest of the clan.
- Mitnek: Another shaman of hcs, Mitnek was a relative newcomer
and not part of the SGOD crew. This was in some ways held over
him by Pigger and 2nd. However, Mitnek would continue to improve
and eventually became the clan's best player. He was relatively
humble, and eventually his skill and hard work made him beyond
reproach.
- Akraea: Another shaman of hcs Akraea was the first female ST
player on East. However, that fact is very contested, as Pigger
HATED her and did not believe for a second that she was a girl.
Due to this many had doubts, and Akraea herself (or himself) did
not dwell on gender and didn't do much to assuage these rumors,
and only claimed to be a girl a couple of times. I'm still
unsure to this day, but I believe she was in fact a she. Akraea
was also my first friend in the community. Number one on my
friendlist, a spot that she holds to this day, as I'm very
sentimental. She wasn't exactly the person to find me in pub ST
and bring me to hcs, but she was the one to convince me to join
and keep me there despite Pigger/2nd's asshole streaks. In many
ways she was the least respected of the original Shamans, but
frappa had made the decision that she was shaman and that was
final, so it wasn't questioned.
- drewisfat: Yes, this is where I come into the picture. I was a
grunt in the early stages of the clan.
The main map played at this time was 7.5, a map very similar to
7.1 item and balance wise, but with much more open and somewhat
geometric looking terrain. Wolf damage had settled to 7 hit farm
kills, which it would stay at for a long time. Frost farms, aura
farms, and upgrade farms were pretty much standardized and were
the same then as they were today (although frosts looked a lot
bigger). Sentry farms were also big, gave high sight and were
actually the strongest farm. There was also a big stun farm that
was mostly useless and a clear sign of "noobness". Cyclone farms
were also a thing but were very taboo as they caused people to
randomly drop from the game. They were also obviously OP and not
allowed in serious games. They were notably though, the first
'stack farm' in that they could be built anywhere, enabling the
same sorts of tricks stacks could, but at a cost of a whopping
75 gold.
This is also the time period where diamonding became absolutely
the dominant form of massing. Some of this was due to the fact
that it was harder and thus a sign of being a good player.
However, it did make sense at the time as a strategy. For
starters, with the high delay everyone had compared to today,
you could diamond nearly as fast as you could essentially grid.
Also back then wolves were obviously much weaker but had INSANE
range. It was very, very common to die inside a row of farms
from the wolves. The fence in the middle was not safe to be near
as a sheep as the wolf could easily swipe you through it. It was
even possible to die one farm away from the wolf without ever
having slipped out of the mass and back in. And if you were
entering the mass the combination of range and high delay at
this period of time meant it was quite possible for a wolf to
seemingly kill you 2 farms away. This was called an "extendo(e)"
and was a common thing to complain about. Due to this the best
tactic as a sheep was to just gain as much ground as possible
(diamonding) and stay the hell away from the wolves. Fittingly
the best wolf tactic was to try to snipe the sheep. Team massing
was not really done at the start. Most players had sections of
the map they were known to build in that would often associate
with their sheep color (hence people became known for being
certain colors of sheep). Sheep were good enough at massing, and
with the newly developed skill of diamonding to mass enough of
the map to combine with allies and to potentially mass the whole
map.
Akraea and I would usually mass the bottom left 'square' in a
double diamond formation. 2nd preferred the right side of the
map, Mitnek preferred top or right, frappa and pigger preferred
the left or top. This was actually a thing.
It should be noted that there was an idea on East of the great
import of clan SGOD. It was an issue of legitimacy. The
leadership of SGOD had the right to make a clan and lead the
gateway, but while Alex, Raptos and Brown would occasionally
play, ST was no longer their main game. So after a few months of
unstable or no clans, frappa, 2nd and pigger claimed the
legitimate right to make the main clan as the remaining active
members of SGOD. This was challenged by Pure, who was still an
active player, but did not believe "the peons" were legitimate
heirs and refused to join hcs. This was perhaps mostly prompted
by Pure despised 2nd and pigger. The argument was that he, as
the most senior grunt, was superior to them and would never join
their clan. SGOD clearly had some sort of grunt/peon
differentiation, but it is unclear what it was or how strict it
was. So I know I listed them all as grunts earlier, but it was
perhaps the truth that frappa was a grunt while pigger and 2nd
were peons, but I cannot say for sure. The main point is that
while kind of hilarious, this was a real thing they fought
about. This was a real doctrinal hierarchy that many easties
believed, and due to the relatively small size of SGOD and small
player base at that time, it was up for much debate and
historical revision.
#Post#: 6072--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 1:05 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 5 - Hcs Challenged!
Hcs grew and grew. Ironically Pigger was in charge of
"recruitment" despite being godawful at that, and frappa along
with others did most of the recruiting in reality. Pigger mostly
just told pubs look how fucking good I am, come be my bitch.
Eventually there were pros who were not in hcs (besides Pure).
Hcs doctrine usually referred to them as semi-pros or sometimes
just plain noobs. One of the first alternate clans (name
forgotten) was lead by MonsterGarage, a very, very chill dude.
The best way to characterize Monsta is Ed if he smoked a lot of
weed. One of his notable shamans was BBGS-Cutie, my first wc3
love. I truly miss her. Would totally date irl. It was a much
smaller clan, but there were in fact clan wars on east for the
first time. Hcs was dominant and never lost to them.
A later, more serious challenge grew from Ydoc. He had been
playing on west, where the competition was much fiercer. He was
part of clan 13a5 in west and eventually he moved back to East
and made a 13a5 branch there. Ydoc was SGOD blood, and thus had
legitimacy in making a pro ST clan, which bothered the hcs
leadership to no end. They were very, very hostile to Cody (yes
his name is ydoc spelled backwards, so cute). Ydoc also brought
along a westy 13a5_MassDeath formatted with some weird symbols
like 13a5_Massl)3ath, idr. He played a considerable amount on
east and was quite good, meaning this clan had at least 2 pros
on the same caliber as hcs shamans. While they perhaps never had
a superior shaman crew overall, these two players made them more
than just noob posers, and frappa, Pigger, 2nd HATED them.
What's worse is Ydoc was perhaps the best host on East in these
days, and being host gave a tremendous advantage. This made him
games popular among hcs grunts, which made the leadership very
upset, as Ydoc was good enough to be the best player in any game
he hosted. Pure for his part didn't like Cody, but at this point
was so fed up with hcs, that he preferred 13a5, or at least
loved the idea of hcs having competition. He would be willing to
sub in for them in clan wars, while not actually wanting to join
their clan. This naturally caused all kinds of debate about the
legality of such a move, as 3 top tier pros meant a serious
threat in any clan war. They were still the bigger clan and had
more top tier players, but there was now a clear rival, and Ydoc
looked like the best player in East during his host. Not to
mention coming from a west clan, Ydoc had more west allies than
hcs did, which clouded the picture in West of which East clan
was dominant.
The reaction from hcs leadership was censorship of 13a5 and
occasional exile of members who "played too often" with them.
This threat kept most of the members in line. They also started
routinely visiting and playing with westies to gain more
experience, especially in clan wars, vs their newfound rival.
Mitnek and 2nd played the most with westies. The result was 2nd
thought he was becoming better than frappa and pigger, while
Mitnek was actually becoming even better than that.
I was at a special crossroads at this point in time. I had
become in practice the best of the hcs grunts, on par with or
perhaps even better than Akraea. I also was friends with Pure,
and more and more started hanging out and learning from Cody.
This drove Pigger especially crazy. More than once he called for
me being kicked from the clan. Frappa and I were good buddies
though, and 2nd was concerned that if I left and joined 13a5
that would shift the balance of power from hcs superiority to
equality with 13a5. So as much as 2nd didn't like me, his
priority was always being the best and the clan being the best.
As such, I faced no consequences for associating with cody and
pure. Ydoc himself saw me as an opportunity to turn the scales
as well and repeatedly ask me to clan war for him if hcs wasn't
going to let me. Upon hearing this Frappa decided as long as I
pledged continued loyalty I would be used in some clan wars,
mostly replacing Akraea. Clan wars were usually 4v4 at this
time, so it was 4 out of 5 of Frappa, Pigger, Mitnek, 2nd and
Akraea. Akraea had been playing less and less and was overall
such a nice person and a friend that she didn't mind if I took
her spot a few times.
Due to increased competition hcs started playing 7.5 Pro, a 4v4
map more often. People would practice 2v4 vs pubs or 4v4 with
clanmates. Frost farms were also a little more expensive I
think, and cyclones removed. Most easties still diamonded.
Brown1430 when he played still gridded the normal way
exclusively though. Mitnek also tended to grid in serious games.
Pure had started to build sloppily all over the place, making it
more difficult to cut and golem jump him although he had smaller
masses.
West had grown substantially and was probably 5-8 times bigger
than East, truly dwarfing it in size. A westy could much better
elaborate on the big names and the big clans. Towards the end of
this period clan Jedi emerged as the strongest ST clan in the
world. They were seemingly unbeatable on the battlefield, and
hcs got demolished in several clan wars, to the point where even
Pigger admitted they were better. He actually tried out for and
was very proud to have made it in clan Jedi, as they had
instituted very strict tryouts to join their clan and it took
him several attempts. It wasn't just mass speed but you had to
1v3 (IIRC) their shams and be impressive.
I've obviously omitted Europe. Obviously as clan behh was made
the first day clans were allowed as well, there was a European
community. They had virtually no contact with West-East
(although Sidey had moved gateways and was playing in west at
this time). The maps the Europeans played would not have been
considered competitive or serious. I am not familiar with old
Euro maps, but they would have likely been considered on par
with other pub maps of the day.
However, a new map had emerged on the pub game landscape,
"Ultimate Sheep Tag". This was based off 7.5 terrain, however it
was more closed off. Instead of the one noob box 7.5 had, this
one had 3, as well as a spiral. This was more conducive to pub
play as most people couldn't mass well but could build a base in
a corner, build savings farms and then mass stuns. Stuns were
smaller, and with enough gold to support many of them, could
stop an approaching shepherd cold in their tracks, even kill
them. To the chagrin of the pro community, the mapmaker
TheWinner didn't care about any of their input and wanted to do
his own thing. Prior to ultimate coming out, the pro maps 7.5
and 7.1 were also the plurality of maps hosted publicly.
Ultimate with its newb focus would eventually come to occupy a
bigger and bigger share of these games. Most pros just saw
ultimate as replacing 10.1 and perfect, and it was preferable to
those, so they viewed this as a good thing. Eventually though
ultimate would have a negative impact on recruiting new pros.
#Post#: 6073--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: Nmcdo
Date: July 15, 2017, 8:32 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Consider your torch passed, but there is more history to be
unveiled!
#Post#: 6074--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: XXXandBEER
Date: July 15, 2017, 10:09 am
---------------------------------------------------------
You actually wrote this up ;*D great read! I've heard some of
these stories through the grape vine, but it's great to actually
see it all. It's crazy how even back in the first days of ST
there was drama, betrayal, and backstabbing, I guess history
always repeats itself.
Would love to see some more name drops of players who kept
playing, like My-World, who was able to confirm for me that what
you wrote is all true lol.
Also, add some exact years if you know them! I can speculate
this was all between 02-04 before TFT. I guess up next was StH,
the great divide of TFT (LSS, FSW, A2ST), Garena/GGC, STWC's,
PLC/DR, the great MERGE of TFT, host bots, Shift to ROC/European
Union, dark ages, last bit of light, and then the void
(present).
It has been a wild ride! And share screenshots if you have
them!!!
#Post#: 6075--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: Nmcdo
Date: July 15, 2017, 11:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I'd like to share a few east night party memories:
HTML http://imgur.com/a/EHe2V
HTML http://imgur.com/a/0XEaO
HTML http://imgur.com/a/WDJBQ
HTML http://imgur.com/a/VRbSh
Bonus images!
HTML http://prntscr.com/fw2ahy
HTML http://prntscr.com/fw2as1
#Post#: 6076--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 4:20 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I know screenshots / dates / name drops would be really helpful.
Unfortunately I have no screenshots. Dates are also difficult.
It was a LONG time ago, and what's worse is that what feels like
3 months back then may have been only 1 month. I try to be
conscious of that fact when I write "several months later" but I
wouldn't be surprised at all that if you try to add up my
timeline it doesn't work out. There are, however, a couple of
solid dates I can point to. I don't know what the date is, but
it's probably Googleable when clans were enabled on WC3, and
that would give you a timeline for when SGOD and Behh were
created. I'm not sure of the first westy clan. The two oldies
that come to my mind right now are fr0z and wudi, but I'm unsure
if those were just super old or were created on the very first
day. If Rival comes back I'm sure he could share A LOT of
history on West.
Everything I've written to this point was before TFT came out.
I'm going to attempt to drop TFT coming into play, but that's
actually difficult for me to do because it had virtually 0
effect on East for a long time.
Name dropping is also inherently hard. Not only was it a very
long time ago, but everyone starts out an unimportant noob who
wouldn't be on my radar. By the time they were on my radar, it
would be difficult to say if they started 3 months ago or 2
years ago. People also tend to have a big bias towards making
themselves out to be more oldschool than they actually are. It
was almost laughable how many people in 2010 talked about the
game in 2004, when there was 0 chance they played before 2006.
We might be able to get a date on when a couple maps came out
which would be helpful. And of course, I have a solid date for
when StH was created, but silly you thinking that's the next
clan to get mentioned here ^_^
Some revisions (I'll clean all it up when I'm finished, but for
those who already read the first posts): A notable person I
forgot was LordBlueBalls. LBB was an SGODer and shaman of hcs.
He was by far the most inactive of the shams, and basically quit
for a while soon after I started. He did come back though, but
even though he was rusty, Pigger/2nd wouldn't dare diss him due
to SGOD status. I got along with LBB, but that might have been
because by the time he knew me I was already decent. He's
definitely of the same cloth as Pigger and 2nd are.
Also I got SGOD mixed up with XROC (the OG ladder clan) at some
point. And it censored out hcs, which stood for h@rdc0re sheep.
#Post#: 6077--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 5:02 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 5 - Continued (playstyle)
Backbuilding wasn't really possible. If the wolf was close
enough to you that you had to backbuild in 7.5, he'd more than
likely swing through that farm and kill you anyway. In other
words virtually nothing you see in run tag today would work back
then. Instead when sheep were taking it easy or goofing around
they would have to either manipulate trees and hard farms (like
Alex popularized) or...
- "Line tagging". Basically prebuilding a bunch of lines and
utilizing terrain to avoid shepherds. Line tagging was actually
not totally joking around and was a quite legitimate strategy up
to this point. While it was known that golems could jump farms
(even known that they could jump 2 farms, though not well
understood), most players were not fluent with this, and the
sheep in general always played far away from the shepherds. So
instead they'd have to spend a whole 7 hits to kill a farm.
-Hard Farm Massing. Also a thing. A very powerful thing. Hard
farms back then were a little bigger visually than they are now,
and a lot stronger. Nowadays if we see a sheep nearby build a
hard farm, we just attack it quickly and kill it midbuild. This
was not possible then. Instead the farm would take a little
damage but finish building. Thus it was quite a popular strategy
for rich sheep to mass hard farms all over the map late game.
Frappachino was very, very fond of this. He would often actually
hide the sheep under the top of the hard farm. They were bigger
back then, and most modern methods of locating sheep were either
not in the game or not well understood. Thus it would be
hilarious to see wolves running around literally not knowing
where he was.
It also should be noted that Open(Alex) stopped playing at this
point. The Godfather of sheep tag had left for good. Brown1430
actually was still on wc3, but only played ST very, very rarely.
It was still impressive how quickly he built though. Raptos
would also play wolf occasionally still, but he was pretty much
a loner and rarely hung out or talked to people.
Chapter 6 -- Sheep Tag 7.1 Revised III
The most famous and played map in sheep tag history was created
by a team of Arxon_Havencroft (lead designer) [JEDI shaman],
Gagazet (theorycrafter) [JEDI Chief] and Mitnek (terrain) [Hcs
shaman].
This was a very big point of pride for hcs, as despite being an
easty clan, one of their members helped make the new map. Mitnek
was in short, a very humble hero. In reality he mostly got rid
of trees, cheap spots, and smoothed out some of the bumps. But
still here he was being chosen to help JEDI make their new map.
This map revolutionized the game. It greatly reduced the range
of wolves from 7.5, and increased slightly sheep and wolf speed.
Short of a giant lag spike, sheep no longer died 2 farms in
their mass. It was even possible to diamond aggressively next to
wolves, something that was far too risky in prior maps. It was
also practical to backbuild. This revolutionized the game. This
threw a lot of wolves off and took major adjustments. "Angling"
meaning clicking ahead of the sheep to gain ground faster became
very mainstream. It was known before, but not really necessary.
A new sword that gave +30 damage and cost 300g (?) called Anti's
saber was added. (I thought this was named after Anti-Drug a
legendary westy wolf, but Rival says it was named for the whole
ANTI clan). This allowed wolves to start dealing serious damage
to farms, and for the first time you saw wolves 3 hitting farms
towards the end of a round. This map also would really allow run
tag to be a thing. Or as Sheepgod would take some weird pleasure
in pointing out, it was called "Run st" at that time.
Supposedly.
Something else was added that I'm sure most of you will take
pleasure in. The stack farm!!!!! A 10g farm that could be built
anywhere (model looked a bit bigger than today). This farm was
added in the words of Arxon "As a form of anticamp". Of course
that same day I asked him why he hated Ultimate and he said
"anticamp is noob". Irony not lost on him. Anywhos, stacks on
this map were used primarily to force saves in the middle.
Gradually they would be used outside of that, but keep in mind
wolf range was still high enough in this map where if you could
only backbuild a stack farm and not a normal farm, you'd almost
certainly get killed through the farm.
This map, while widely praised was not without controversy. Some
westies still clung to 7.5. And on East 7.5 was still king.
Despite their differences, Frappa, Ydoc, Pure and most of the
playerbase still preferred to play 7.5. Thus for a while both
maps were accepted as the main pro maps, and despite the
differences in gameplay, active pros would have played both to
some extent.
Back to clans. I think I can name drop deadass here as having
started playing. Although I do get him mixed up with
deadoralive, so I'm hesitant. But he was an old player who had
played a lot longer than most people realize. Hcs activity had
peaked. Both hcs and 13a5 got pretentious and picked up
influences from westy clans, particularly Jedi. Instead of
recruiting whoever wanted to join, they started having tryouts,
consisting of usually a combination of 1v2 or 1v3 play, a
diamond 2 minute massing speed and a grid 2 minute massing
speed. These were naturally made somewhat out of proportion to
what the clans actually accepted. If 13a5 said they accepted a
120 2 min speed, you know hcs would say their limit was 125. So
these numbers got inflated pretty quickly. Then the question is
what happened if someone couldn't make your speed? The answer
was training clans. Clans in west and then east all pretty
quickly started having these training clans, ostensibly because
their own clan was exclusive, or in some cases it was claimed
that the clan was full. In practice even though some clans had
reached the 100 member limit, this was due to a lot of
akas/inactives and was more of an excuse to be exclusive than
anything else.
All good things must come to an end though. Eventually east
entered a period of decline. The senior leaders in both hcs and
13a5 started trying out other games, mostly dota, and despite
having reasonably large bases, they ended up disbanding.
In an effort to keep everyone from abandoning the game I made my
first clan. I actually don't remember its name right now.
Fortunately I know somewhere on Alt the name is camouflaged with
grass texture. This was mostly a channel. I don't believe I even
made any shamans. It was more of just a stopgap, hoping that
some of the former SGODers would return.
#Post#: 6078--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 5:42 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 7 -- The Phoenix Rises! HCST
Good news! They did come back! Frappa, pigger, 2nd, Ydoc all
came back. Upon their return I immediately instructed my
clanmates to rejoin hcst, now branded with a "t", b.c we decided
sheep taggers was two words I guess. After all I was never in
SGOD and therefore didn't have the legitimacy to lead a pro clan
anyways :D
For my efforts and continue loyalty I was immediately made
Shaman. Pigger pulled a dramatic 180, treated me with insane
respect, considered me part of 'the core' of hcs. Feels good
bruh. I had also improved dramatically. At this time period the
best players were likely me/2nd/frappa/ydoc followed a bit by
pure and pigger.
Ydoc came back a little bit later and then settled on making
clan tac0 along with Pure. Clan tac0 also had some notable
grunts:
- Miss: Real name Beth, was just an awesome, fun person to hang
around. She was never known as being a great player, but was a
solid player and good at a variety of games.
- Smot: Smot emerges on the scene. Similar to Beth, he was not a
terrific player, but a very chill dude. He mostly joined tac0
because they were 'nicer' than hcs.
- Bansaw: Another average player who played for a quite a while.
He's most notable to me as being a super 7.5 fan. Later he would
learn how to host games, and he was perhaps the last player
hosting public 7.5 games.
Also in hcst:
- My-World. I'll start by saying this is contested by My-World,
and I'd be pretty arrogant to say I know better when he started
than he does, read my addendum earlier on name dropping. But in
my mind this when I associate him having started playing,
essentially in the "3rd generation" let's call it. And some
people actually did try to label things by generation, with SGOD
being gen 1, and old hcsers being gen 2.
tac0 and hcst players were still rivals, but were a lot less
hostile than they were the prior year. Maybe we just matured, or
maybe it was just the influx of super friendly players that lead
to a detente as it were. But there was lots of fun to be had.
Unfortunately 7.5, the map I respect the most, had lost its
plurality lead in pub games being hosted. If I had to estimate
the breakdown of pub games hosted on east it would be:
30% 7.1 Rev III,
30% Ultimate
25% 7.5
10% Perfect
5% 10.1
The gameplay had become slightly more team oriented. At least in
the sense that it was understood to be likely if everyone on
your team was good their bases would eventually merged, so at
least good wolves would try to focus fire on one sheep more
often to try to prevent that. Sniping was still a very big deal,
but now on 7.1 at least that was much more difficult to achieve.
It was still possible to tree hide in the bottom right corner of
7.1 Rev. III, something that was used as a big excuse among
easty pros to avoid that map. Still the divide was growing as
7.5 was now clearly an outdated map compared to Rev III, and
west played Rev III almost exclusively now. 2nd was a big
proponent of playing 7.1 to stay in communion with west, but the
avg easty was torn.
Unfortunately Mitnek did not return, or perhaps did but not for
long, I don't recall. Sadly he did not play much after getting
his name on the map that would make him a legend. He crafted
nearly the exact terrain that we used in modern times and for
that he gets a 3 gun salute.
#Post#: 6079--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: drewisfat
Date: July 15, 2017, 6:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 8 -- The Dark Ages
:o :o :o :o :o :o
The Date: December, 2004 +/- 3 months.
This is not for the faint at heart or the emotionally unstable
to read. Please send your children off to bed. It all happened
so fast. One day the world was normal, the next there were riots
in the streets, abandoned buildings burning to the ground.
Frappa, Pigger and 2nd quit and disbanded hcst. tac0 didn't die
immediately, but Ydoc was largely inactive. Pure was picking up
ladder. Like 90% of the pro ST community quit within a month.
People quitting accelerated more people quitting. Some of the
remnants fled to west. Up until this point, it was common to see
5-10 sheep tag games in the custom games list during prime
hours. Overnight this dropped to 2-5. That breakdown was more
like:
70% Ultimate
20% Rev III
5% 7.5
5% Perfect/10.1
Barely recognizable from just a month or two earlier. There were
no clans or clan channels left to rally to. Those of us who
remained had to just make our own public channels to organize
games. And most of the time we weren't even playing ST at that
point. I started playing mini games with Beth, Pure and Smot
instead, like Murder in the Mansion, pictionary or Uther party.
I even joined a snipers clan for a while and played that and a
little dota. East Pro ST it seemed had collapsed completely.
#Post#: 6080--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sheep Tag (East) A Complete History
DIR By: SHEePYTaGGeRNeP
Date: July 16, 2017, 3:18 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Good read Drew!
Add it to the
HTML http://sheeptag.wikia.com/wiki/Sheep_Tag_Wiki
?
*****************************************************
Page 1 of 2
DIR Next Page