I played a little bit back on the beta, almost exclusively Indy TL. Then, the game came out and I spent some time on the campaigns before moving back to multiplayer and playing Indy TL again.
Prior to the first patch, ranged infantry had an amazing build time, so pretty much all team games were just no settle rushing. Infact, everyone had it down to a science. Games didn't last very long until the patch came out and nerfed gren build times. This was also when people played on "Fast" game speed. I also played Indy DM on occasion and sometimes ventured into WW2 SH Small Islands games. I was a very active member of the Empire Earth Heaven community.
At that time I ended up dropping EE and going back to play AoE2 multiplayer scenarios, and Xbox Live had just come out -- the first real broadband online multiplayer for the console. I got addicted.
One day I decided to return to EE, sometime after the release of the 2.0 patch. On the American server, Indy SH was the most popular setting with the most players, while only as little as 30 players were on the European server playing mostly Liga and on occasion Indy TL. Naturally because I quit and returned after an extended duration, most of the players didn't know me and I only got into a handful of Indy TL games. Indy SH games were easier to get into, and actually took me awhile to pick up on. I ended up playing a lot of Indy SH diplo games to get my feet wet since they were a bit slower paced and not everyone rushed.
So, from here on out you're going to get the point of view of an Indy player. Keep in mind there was plenty of other shit going on in the background, with the exception of the closed Liga crowd.
From there, I started catching the attention of some very experienced Indy SH players. I had the desire to join a clan Atomix, which was the elite Indy SH clan at the time, rivaling ADR and AoW. It ended up dieing off rather quick due to inactivity of the founders and leaders. But anyway, I received some basic training for a 1v1 Imp/Gren mix start, and from there things kinda took off. I was quickly mastering the setting and rose through the ranks of Atomix. After dominating Indy SH for awhile (AoW likes to think they were better), and learning to play P2N F11 60 Islands with some fellow members, we finally decided to dissolve the clan when our numbers fell low. I actually joined ADR for a week or two since I was good friends with InVINCEable, one of its founders, but I simply wasn't treated as an equal, dispite being far more skilled in Indy SH than a majority of the clan's members.
I wasn't a solo player for long until I was finally convinced to join SF clan, which was headed by some guys who eventually started "Gren Wars" ([-Ts-] Death was one of them). They had some really goofy ass ranking system and I ended up being the "Top General" which was like "hey you're awesome and you can do whatever the fuck you want, but you can't have founder rank since you're not technically a founder" and I wasn't under the leadership of any one specific founder like others.
After spending some time doing some leet pwnage of all who dared face me in Indy SH, Liga and Indy TL players were starting to migrate to the American server. Like any other clan at the time, SF had started to die off and so I went solo. I had the desire to get back into Indy TL, including Wes (True_Soldier, EpIc), along with some other expert Indy SH players looking for a change.
In the time to come, I had actually spent at least a good 6 months being a solo player. I started to tackle Indy TL, which had apparently become based on the single-settlement build order and the use of cit cost reduction. Wes founded the RoK clan (fancy symbols in tag, with clan name spelled all the way out!
) which was eventually to become a Liga clan. Their first goal was to conquer Indy SH and Indy TL. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't conquer me in the first few weeks or so, so they had to recruit me. From there, Wes started to round of some experienced Liga players he was friends with and we moved to playing Liga. It was actually a quick transition, and one I didn't like (still don't really like it).
From then on I spent who-knows-how-the-fuck-long in RoK. I was in the clan longer than Wes was and that clan was his baby. I still spent a lot of time playing Indy TL (back to the first sett I liked, who would've known..) while also trying to master Liga. Indy SH games became a rarity because everyone had moved to their oh-so-precious Gren Wars (which I despise to this day, fuck you Death and Guardian for inventing that shit). RoK was down to just me as the sole daily active member on EE. I making a little effort to join ZoS (Symbols) since I was learning a little from them and was getting to be good friends with the members. But, RoK had just started to surge back as I formally applied to join ZoS. Funny story, I was let into the clan, wore the tag for an hour, then quit and went back to RoK, just so I could say I did it. From here on out, RoK was trying to establish itself not as a Liga clan but as an all-setts clan.
This is when I started to play more and more Liga since Indy TL was actually losing popularity. Still never being fond of Liga, I liked to venture off into unknown territory like P2N, and Mid was wayyyyy too easy to learn. I think I "mastered" (by the standards of the noob Mid players at the time) it in a week. I also started to play DM and jump on AoC. These are types of things other RoK members had done in the past, and it was our overall goal, so we would do this together. Over the course of a few months I had gained tons of experience playing anything you could imagine, and there was a lot since then that I've learned.
And from there, I was still continuing my RoK days. Some of you may know that it evolved into a multi-gaming clan that had a large basis on America's Army since a lot of us played it as well, and we expanded to several other games that I didn't play, but I continued to be the top leader of the clan, advising all aspects of it. I still played EE and when I did, there wasn't a game that was off-limits. I played Grens the least, and usually when I did I made imps or did forward halb rushes or stupid shit like that (sorry SKULLS for owning you once on wing with halbs).
This is actually a bit blurry despite being more recent, but I think we just stopped funding the RoK website, and Wes left for an indefinite amount of time, and that started the death of RoK. I continued to wear the tag and my EE playing time really dropped down a lot. I really didn't have much time for video games since my work and social life expanded a lot during my last two years of high school. I probably could've been anti-social and saved RoK, but that would hardly be worth it. I actually wore the tag long enough for Wes and his followers to re-found RoK, something which I chose not to be part of as a re-founder or a member. Naturally, RoK's rebirth didn't last long. I still continued to wear that tag past its SECOND death.
So after high school graduation and through the first part of my freshman year of college I continued to play just for fun, all setts, as a hobby, like I do now. Sometime during my second semester I was given an open invitation to join Ts by SKULLS. I didn't accept it right away, however I ended up playing a lot with its members and once again Death was there to beg me to join the clan like he did with SF. Probably begged me for two weeks until I just showed up in the lobby on the tag. That threw them for a loop.
From here, I'm pretty sure most of you know the history of EE with the shutting down of the lobby to where we are now. Just realized how long this post is.
