<Doddering ol' Bullethead wakes from his doze, wipes the drool from his chin, blinks a few times, and decides the whippersnappers need settin' straight.>
Listen up, sonny. I dunno about this "good ol' days of love and sharing" crap. T'weren't no such thing. It was really like this:
I started flyin' DOS AW way back in '94, when even WB (then called CK) was still an itch in ol' HT's pants. AW at that time was about 7 years old an' had deep traditions of Hate an' the ol' Dark Side. In them Ancient Days of Gods an' Heroes, ch 1 in the RT arena (now called FR) was filled with bile. A lot of it was about HOs (which were possible in AW back then) and doing cheat moves like spin turns, too. So nothin's new there. Only thing that changed along the way was AW finally caved-in to the whiners an' did away with HOs, but they still had the spin moves and porked planes to spew about on ch 1.
An' it t'weren't just in the arena where the Hate flowed neither, it was everywhere pilots got together. The G*sux message board, for example. An' the vitriolic spew on alt.games.air-warrior was weapons-grade. An' o'course the raw HATE poured out on the mailing lists during DoK's scenarios was beyon' belief. Where d'ye think his "Hate Page" came from? Hell, the Hate was even an advertised feature cuz back then, pilots could take it. Not like the momma's boys of today. <spit>
Now all the Old Gods of DOS AW, guys who been flyin' an' Hatin' online 10 or 15 years, are building and flying AH. So what the Hell d'ye expect, roses on your birthday?
I'll tell you what the difference is 'tween then an' now. It's that back then, the Hate was an accepted nacher'l part o' the game. Ye'd try an' get under the bastid's skin, so he'd go berserk an' be easier to kill again, so he'd get more berserk, an' so on, until you made him log off in ego meltdown an' throw his joystick agin' the wall! Jus' another weapon ye had. T'weren't none of this whinin' 'bout verbal "personal attacks" like y'see all the dam' time in these sorry latter days, no sirree, cuz the whole point o' the friggin' game was to personally attack an' KILL the bastid. So ye learned ACM an' ye learned how to Hate. All part o' the game. Iffen some whinin' dweeb'd suggested havin' moderators, he'd a'been tarred an' feathered by the community, with the Kesmoids leadin' the pack, I don't doubt.
That's not to say it t'weren't a tight community back then. Pilots'd get together for a few drinks now an' agin withou' killin' each other for real, mostly. Sorta like a temporary truce, but Gawd help anybody flyin' durin' the Con. An' iffen some pilot had a personal disaster, everybody'd chip in, even his Most Hated Enemas. Cuz the Hate was part of the GAME, an' most o'us, we knew it was only a game, mostly. But the game was WAR, an' we was for dam' sho' gonna win it even if we couldn't capture but 3 outta 10 or 20 fields on the whole map, so we always wore our warpaint an' bloody scalps on the battlefield, which was pretty much anywhere we might meet the enemas.
I'll tell ye somethin' else 'bout them High an' Far Off Days, too. T'weren't none o' this BS salutin' ev'ry friggin' kill an' killer--that don' mean nothin' 'ceptin' you can't tell a good pilot from a dweeb. Back then, to get a salute, ye had to EARN it by puttin' up a decent fight. Iffen ye didn't, all ye heard on ch 1 was how ye died like a dweeb, an' ye were 'spected to respon' with "BITE ME!"
Iffen ye want politeness 'tween opponents, or the payin' o' false respect ye don' really mean nor deserve ev'ry time somebody scores, then don' play a game where the object is killin' an' bombin' the enemas off the face o' the earth. Genocide ain't meant to be pretty.
That's all I got to say. Now where'd I put my dentures? Snorkzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zz
-Bullethead <CAF>
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In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria