Wikipedia:Introduction (historical)

Zero Tolerance Killers

Although there are many Clubs, Guilds and Clans on the internet and this is another one. Its rich history, structure and impact on the gaming community has justified a topic.

Clan History from one of the founding members

The dates may be off on this so don’t hold me to that. I may even get some of the names or times wrong on this so don’t hold me to that either. What I will do is try to publish a list of all the members I can remember along with this little brief story on the clan. Again the entire history is told from my point of view. That means any opinions are mine and mine only. It also means no one else has had a chance to speak on there behalf. Their opinion could be completely different and could be correct.

2000-2001

According to some it was late 2001 when the clan was formed. I tried to remember if it was before or after 9/11 and my thought pattern was it was before. I can remember playing counter strike the morning of 9/11 and hearing someone in the server announce the first plane hitting the trade center. The problem is I can’t remember who it was that said it. Regardless my guess was mid 2000 was the year. I think counter-strike was in 1.1c or 1.3 at the time. According to the records 1.3 was released on 9-19-2001 So 1.1c would be correct.

I had been playing counter strike for about a year or more. I remembered the patch putting the Aug into the game so that dates my play back a year from the above paragraph. At the time I was splitting my time between Counter Strike and another game called Ultima Online. UO being one of the very first MMORPGS it took up the majority of my time. When I finally sat down to cancel my account in UO I decided to dedicate more of my time to CS.

I was always a clan/guild guy; I enjoyed playing with the same group of players no matter what game I played. Most of the time I was the one creating the clans/guilds and running them so this was my first venture online to join up with a group and not try to form one. I had seen some clan servers but this was during the birth of the CS community and very few clans ran their own server.

At the time the old Won system was in place and when you opened up Counter Strike it gave you the option to go to a chat room for CS. You could either create your own chat room or go to one of the chat rooms in place. Mostly they were set up by country.

I knew what I was there for and that was to find a clan so I started checking out some of the created rooms. I ran across a room that was labeled “-=[_ZTK_]=- Recruiting”. So I popped in when I jumped into the room there were two guys in it. -=[_ZTK_]=- SYLIC and -=[_ZTK_]=- Razieal It was pretty obvious whose idea the tag was. After a quick discussion of who I was how long I was playing we were ready to try out for the clan. During my discussion period with these two another person had popped into the room. This was someone who ended up being a long standing member of ztk. Plero had popped in and pretty much got the same 3rd degree interview that I did. We gathered up the server ip address and headed into the server to do our tryout. After about 5 rounds of play we were both given the giant clan tag in front of our names. I was told I had to change my name. I couldn’t be -=[_ZTK_]=- BeardedClam or -=[_ZTK_]=- ClamRancher. I can’t remember what one I was playing under. But it was one of those two. So I had been playing a character in UO named Motter and told them that was what I would use. The name Motter just kinda hit me one day as it was my real name spelled backwards with “ter” added to the end of it. Since playing CS I have only ever changed my name once and it didn’t last long. It was changed to Mother for a very short period of time when I felt like I was constantly babysitting the server.

SYLIC didn’t waste much time in a matter of about 2 weeks he had recruited about 15 members. Most of these were regulars on the server we played on. These guys started to fill up the server quickly we had nightly games against the clan that owned the server. Some of these were a lot of fun and some where very tense. SYLIC had made his home on a server ran by Chris “Raptor” or Raptorslair.com He had tried to the best of my knowledge to start more then one clan on the server before having some success with zTk. Raptors lair was a somewhat poorly ran server but with a very solid member base at the time. The server would stay empty all day and at about 7pm would fill up with members and regulars. When I say poorly ran I don’t mean it in a negative way. I think Raptor ran the server from a personal box so the ping was 70% of the time pretty crappy. Otherwise the server was ran excellent with a large list of custom maps and a great defuse rotation for the time. Very few custom maps were out there and fy maps had yet to ever come into play. So we would most of the time run the basic rotation with some custom dust maps. I remember playing customs like de_dustforever, de_dust3 de_dust4 etc etc.

We set up camp on raptorslair.com for our forums as well. Raptor gave us our own set of forums including all of 3 topics. Open forum, Members forum and Leaders forum. As the membership grew we picked up a lot of the current older clan members including Slapper, Martin, Danp, Crot, this was all in a matter of months of getting the clan off the ground. We had a great starting year and the clan was very popular.

2002

We had been playing so often on Raptorslair server that the membership had swelled to over 23 guys. Raptors server was a 16 man if I remember correctly it didn’t really support the size of our clan anymore. But that’s not why we left. Raptor was a hell of a nice guy his support for zTk in the early days really helped to get us off the ground. It wasn’t till years later that we were able to return the favor he gave us early on. RR had a member that was very good at CS and at the time my skills were top notch. I regularly came in and ran the server. My scores were at my peak during this time period. I played so often that my fingers hurt. Anytime you do anything on a constant basis you are bound to get good at it. CS was what I did and I did it often. I was laid off for long periods of time with the job I had and my free time went to playing CS. Wolf was RR’s main badass player and for some reason the two of us just didn’t always get along. Not a single member of zTk was ever given any admin on the server we were playing on and it got to the point that Wolf was constantly bitching about my play. It wasn’t long before SYLIC came up with the idea of me taunting him even further. Having me play under the name “Wolfkiller”. This pretty much lead me to being banned from Raptors lair and reinstated to the server. Each time we came back Wolf would do something else. It might be slapping or slaying me but after a few days of this I contacted Raptor and let him know I had had enough of it.

I spoke to SYLIC over aim not long after this issue and told him it was time for us to get our own server. We together started scouting out server companies to see who we could rent from. SYLIC didn’t have a credit card and couldn’t put the server in his name. Because of the issue with Wolf I told him I would be happy to do it as long as the members each chipped in 5 bucks a month to help out. He said this wouldn’t be a problem and that he would collect the dues from each member each month and send me up some cash. Our first server was rented through I-lan for 80 bucks a month. And this is when the real problems started.

The server was utterly and completely a success our server was so busy that you had to literally wait in line to get a spot. It was busy from 6am till 6am day and night. The players coming and going were incredible. The regulars on the server were so common it was amazing. We still had our forums based at www.raptorslair.com and the amount of traffic was unbelievable. Raptor was amazed at the amount of posts we had every day. Sure we had our problem players and lots of them. We had our hackers forums server and other. But the traffic was undeniable. This was at the height of CS success. More players were playing Counter Strike everyday then any other game on the internet. Every night I got to enjoy playing on our server with members so dedicated to the clan it was crazy. We had regulars like Plero, Yodie, Slapper, Rookie, Myself, Oxy, Dragon, Martin, Crot, Danp, Matador, Fluffy, Cooleye, Chicken and More. On any given night you could find a server full of ztk players and people iming me because they couldn’t get in and needed someone kicked. This was a 20 man server and it was booming.

Then the recruiting started, SYLIC began a recruiting spree off the server of people who were good at the game. Some extremely good, some just assholes. None of them paying anything to the server. It got to the point where I was after just a few months forking over the bill for the entire server. I remember my first thought of leaving the clan at this point came with one of SYLIC’s good friends who were recruited to the clan without ever consulting anyone. “Mr. Flatus” was the name this asshole played under and this guy was the classic internet dickhead. After telling him to quit complaining in the server once he pretty much told me he was Sylic’s good buddy and that he would have me kicked out of the clan. If I didn’t shut the hell up. He also mentioned that he was in charge of working on zTk’s own personal website and what was I doing for the clan.

Little did Mr. Flatus know that if I left the clan so did the server with me. It was pretty obvious at this point that SYLIC was making it out that he owned the server and the clan. Yet somehow more often then not did not fork out a dime on the clans behalf. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t that SYLIC never sent me money. He did, it just was not every month and most of the time I was getting money during this period from maybe 4 members. This was Slapper, Martin, Crot, and Danp. Each of these members sent me there dues often. Other members sent me cash as well they were all the older guys Oxy, Matador, Rook, Cooleye, Fluffy and Scummy. Some of these members came a bit later then the time we are discussing. But were around during the change over. SYLIC did collect dues. They just didn’t always show up at my door after they were collected. It was during this period of time that the Elder system was intuited. What that was, was a group of members that were considered leaders of the clan. I can’t remember who the first 5 Elders were but I know I was one of them. Sylic, Raz and I were there for sure.

On a positive note the very first ztk custom map came during this period of time. Ztk_hideout made by Cooleye and Yodie got heavy rotation on the server.

We also entered some of our first leagues at this point. Signing up for Proving Grounds was a blast and playing the matches there were a ton of fun. I still look at some of these early matches as some of the most fun I ever had playing Counter-Strike.

Raz parted ways with the clan not long after this system was put in place. He left not to be heard from again for about a year or so. He reason for leaving I think was the same I was frustrated for. SYLIC’s version of recruiting was short with no real input from existing clan members. It was very difficult to trace who was in the clan and who wasn’t.

Then one day SYLIC basically disappeared over night. He was away on work or something. At least that was what everyone thought had happened.. This period of time might have lasted about 4 months or so. No emails no forum posts nothing. The current leadership was basically left up to me. It was about this time that Slapper really stepped up to the plate. Slapper and I got to talking a lot about what was going on and who was in the clan. The server dues, server issues, and the overall management of zTk as a whole. We began a series of kicking people out of the clan. Not just kicking but kicking and banning. We cleared out the assholes and disruptive players. We also had some players leave. I am still sorry to have seen Yodie go on a small argument between himself and I. It was during a period of time that I really wanted to clean house and Yodie was a kickass ztk member that just didn’t want too many changes made to the clan. Looking back on it now I should have approached it differently.

Slapper helped set up the dues system and any player that didn’t follow it was kicked in the first quarter. This also helped us establish a better amount to charge each player. We got rid of offering ban with admin. This helped resolve a lot of issues between members. We also messed around with a lot of really kickass amx mods on the server. It was possibly the first time the server was ran correctly.

The after almost a full year of handling the server rental solo. I got a few months off of paying for it. We switched server rental companies moving over to Recon gaming servers. We were able to up the server count to a 32 man at this point for almost the same price we paid for a 20 man. We still had a full house most nights but Recon wasn’t quite the company that I-LAN was and we would get a bit laggy after 24 guys

2003

SYLIC’s return happened one night when we were all playing on the server this was maybe early 2003 but it could have been late 2002. Believe it or not we were all very excited to see him. He was after all a founding member of the clan and it was good to have him back. Not a single member disliked the guy. As a matter of fact he is still a very likeable person in my mind.

But it didn’t take very long at all for him to start up with his old tricks again. Within a matter of a couple weeks he began to recruit members to the clan without anyone’s permission. He had guys playing under zTk’s tag very quickly. It was a matter of weeks that I had had enough of it. I was fully planning on leaving the clan and I began to weigh my options. My first thought pattern was to take the very best members with me. I had contacted Matador, Plero, Martin, Scummy, Fluffy, Slapper, Crot, Danp and a few others and told them of my intention. We had considered moving ourselves over to RR but had decided that we would just start a new clan. Slapper and I discussed this and he was planning on leaving as well. But then we both decided why? Why the hell should we leave the clan when we have been running it and had the majority of support anyway. We both decided that to call a meeting with SYLIC and tell him how we felt. If he got hostile with us about it we would kick him out. Not the other way around. If he understood that he was no longer in control then he could stick and become an elder member. Either way we were planning on letting him know we needed to talk to him. So that’s just what we did. We got him in a 3 way chat with us via MSN. I have to say that Slapper did all the talking. Within minutes of the conversation that I thought would take all night to discuss with SYLIC. His response was quick and simple “fine I am out of here you two run the clan then” and he left the conversation.

The big coupe was over with in a matter of seconds. As it turned out not a single member left the clan with the change over in power. The clan very shortly turned to bigger and better things. The server was ran great and the clan flourished for the next year or more. Members came and went some leaving for other clans some just tired of the game. But over all they all seemed to come back. I even personally left the clan a few times but looking back on it more for breaks then anything else. During that period of time I wished I had just said guys ill be back in a few months I need a break.

I did get the chance to meet Plero, Fluffy, Matador and Slapper in Windsor Ont for a night of bar hopping and Drunken fun. It was a blast putting faces to names. We had a great night and wish it would have lasted even longer.

It was shortly after one of these breaks that I decided to get the clan going again it needed its own custom map. I headed over to some mapping forums to check out what was going on. I found a guy who had done some pretty sweet customs and looked like he was regarded pretty highly in the mapping community and contacted him about doing a custom map for ztk. Lorentz was his name and he charged me a pretty penny to build us a fy map. Fy_ztk was the map name and although it was based after my design it was to damn big to be any good. It did do something for me though it perked my interest in an entirely different look at Counter Strike. The mapping community

We also spent a lot of time trying to expand Counter Strike into other areas including Day of Defeat, Warcraft 3, and a few others. We tried our hand at a dod sponsored clan called zTk house of beers. A few members entered leagues on Proving Grounds for Warcraft.

2004

The idea for ztkservers sprung up around this time. Slapper had gotten his hands on a server. He could tell you how but I think it was from a company that went out of business. If I remember correctly and we were beginning to consider trying our hand at the rental end of things.

The first tag change came into place about this time due to the issue discussed below. We wanted to tone the tag down due to the fact that the tag was longer then a lot of people’s names. So -=[_ZTK_]=- was changed to -ztk- We also had an old member we knew that was running a Cal-M team. Cal had really come into its own as the premier league for counter strike and other shooter type games. The older ztk member named R4z was running an awesome team that was doing quite well in Cal so we came up with this idea to sponsor his team for the league. These guys just had to change there name to ztk and we would give them a home for a main server. In turn we got some exposure with our name being out there in the elite player community. It seemed like a perfect match at the time. Honestly for awhile it was. But a few things happened that didn’t make it work. One the skill level of these players was so beyond that of members of ztk public that gaming became more of a stress imposer then a stress reliever. I seriously hated playing with some of these guys because they were so damn good. I know that my sentiments were felt by other players. We were a clan based off of friendship not skill level and that idea for the clan was decided on years ago when players that SYLIC had recruited had turned out to be really good CS players with really giant egos. Now don’t get me wrong most of R4z’s guys were not assholes. But they still didn’t even give you a chance to get into your gun sites before you were dead. Needless to say the sponsorship for ztk cal-m lasted about 8 months. I had the chance to party with a few of the guys when Slapper and myself met them in Pennsylvania we all rented a house up there and had a blast partying the weekend with them. I still think J3t is a class act. He is an excellent guy who I get the chance to chat with every so often via msn.

This relationship got a few of our members hot on the cal idea and they have since ran quite a few successful teams for Cal-o and cal-im. Gorillaz has been apart of the cal community ever since the main team came over. He game has changed a lot and by playing with those guys he did nothing but get better at the game.

The map contest idea

This is about the time I had this idea to run a map contest. I figured I had forked over I think 80 bucks to contract a guy for one map. Why not fork over 300 and get 20 maps. I spammed this contest on every mapping forum I could think of. Some of them I got a really positive response from and others a negative. Needless to say it got our name out there. We made the front page of every major counter strike website including cs nations the traffic to our website was awesome. The contact with the map community was excellent. The level of map design we received was incredible and the map that won I still feel is such an unbelievable map. I wish it was played more on the server. Sadly we have people with very short attention spans for downloading new content that it hardly gets played.

What it did do besides bring in lots of traffic for a short period of time is it brought us a few really solid members who knew how to map. It also brought us our relationship with pixelgames.com an excellent mapping website that we still have contact with to this day.

I really found a new love for the game spurred on by what I saw these mappers doing. It’s about this time that I started working on some drawings and basic sketches for map ideas. The first few I did never really came into play. But then I hooked up with –ztk- Raptor who knew some limited stuff about mapping and had created fy_watertank for the clan on his own. It was about this time that we came up with the idea to do fy_dinoztk this was basically a reskining job. We took a highly successful map and made it our own. This was really my first work making textures for a map so there was a lot of trial and error involved in it. But we were both happy with the results. Even if the map has a really high poly count, it has been a lot of fun to play. If you look at the member list on that map it shows that the cal-m team was apart of the clan during that process. The names of those members are on the wall in the map.

It’s listed as April 2004 roster http://www.magiccirclegames.com/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=26&g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=367 You can find the texture here.

I want to do an updated map similar to this because it basically took a picture in the history of the clan.

This to me more then anything the clan had done in the past was a step in the right direction. More maps followed by members and non-members that added flair to the clan. Other maps released in 2004 that had ztk’s stamp on them were Fy_shotty And Fy_usedcarlot We had a very successful year as a clan getting our name out there and attracting new memberships. Our servers became very busy again and we enjoyed a new spurt in the growth of the clan.

2005

Being apart of ztk now for 5 years has been a blessing to my stress relief. It has had its ups and downs but over all I have completely enjoyed myself. I have made some excellent friends on the internet and off. Slapper and I have become close friends with my family enjoying time even on our vacation with his. Even staying at his home and visiting a theme park together. With more trips planned in the summer of 2006. As a clan we have come even farther posting up our most successful custom map to date with the release of fy_iceworld3d. A map that draws 200+ users a day on a 24/7 server and a new map that looks to be ready to do about the same in fy_ztk_boneyard.

zTk’s tag did change again this year to go back to a bit more of a retro feel we integrated the old tag with the new one moving to -=zTk=- something I feel lets everyone know where we have been and where we are heading. I foresee 2006 moving us on ward and upward as we maybe start to integrate ourselves into source.

The membership we have now is starting to remind me of the old days. I have become old enough now to have two of my kids starting up a new version of ztk called -=zTk=- -nG or Next Generation. This is comprised mostly of people under the age of 18, something we never considered after the SYLIC days. But something that is necessary in order to have growth. The old dinosaur players such as myself just are not out there anymore.

I am glad I finally took the time to write this history down and if I ever have the chance to find the old member list I will try to post that up as well. I had a few years back tracked as many of the old members and there recruit dates as I could. I would like to post that up here sometime. I will be adding a hall of fame list as well for members who contributed something important to the growth of the clan.

2006

Year of change In 2006 the clan has grown completely different then we thought. If you had told me a year ago that we would still all be in counter strike 1.6 I honestly would have thought differently. We have stuck it out, tried to upgrade and come full circle back to the game that birthed this clan. Personally I am happy with that. I think in order to move on you really need to do it whole heartedly or not at all. We are now 8 months into 2006 when I write this and a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. But first things first, I wanted to take a moment to recognize a few of our members that have gone come back or are in the process of serving our country in around or near Iraq. To start with I would like to mention M@D M@XX one member that sometimes still floats around and I think was the first over in Iraq. We are glad he made it home safe and sound. But our oldest member is Basty/Bastard, during his tour of duty we would hear from him on and off on the forums. Sometimes a month or two would go by before he would post again. During that period of time he was often on my mind and I know on other members minds as well. I think I forgot to mention him in the early years of the clan. To be honest this is pretty much unforgivable as he was very much an intrical part in the growth. During his time period with ztk I think he may have left us once. Even during a situation between myself and a good friend of his he stayed neutral and I know it was not easy for him. Basty has always shown loyalty to ztk and I have always admired him for it.

I would also like to mention two members that joined up this year and I wish them both the best of luck Who And Plero We wish you both well and hope you’re staying out of trouble. Good luck guys.

As the year has progressed so has the clan. When ztkservers.com shut down this year I decided it was time to make the clan dues free. It was also a time period where after 5 years of running this clan I could justify the bill to my wife ;). So the cost of running the server does not affect us as much as it used to. This has done two things to the clan. One it has allowed ztk to become younger. The –ng tag pretty much disappeared at this point moving the clan together young and old. It was something that ztk needed to do in order to preserve its life span. As we picked up some new members we ended up having a few really great guys that took the bull by the horns. Numnutz became something we never really had before a clan historian. Keep track of memberships and recruits.

We took on a new recruiting process that has really worked well. Members are pretty much required to police and sponsor their own recruits. For every person that posts on the board’s maybe 1 in 5 get into the clan. Not that we want to be selective but members are more apt to wait and see if a recruit is going to stick around before they let them in then not.

I am still churning out maps but members let me know by the play time they get if those maps are good or not so good. One the members seem to like and myself as well is fy_ztkzone. Its always a proud moment when a lot of folks are on the server playing your map.

As slapper has been on hiatus for a good portion of 2006, Dianoga and myself have ran the server side stuff along with the website and members activities. Slapper’s skills have been missed. We hope he gets his family settled in their new home they are building and gets himself a good connection to the net. I look forward to seeing him play more in the winter.

We are just about to hit a nice change in the clan and I hope to be adding some more interesting history to it shortly.

2006-2007

During late 2006 and early 2007 the clan had great success with many new members joining up. We had some wonderful additions to the clan as some of our older members seemed to trail off. One of the main factors that affected the clan was the launch of World of Warcraft. This game stole more zTk members then any other game in the history of the clan. We lost Martin, Who, Iron Warrior, Danp, Crot, Myself and more. At first a clan started up that was directly related to zTk but as the WoW players began to play and play and play the move just didn’t relate to coming to the forums or making matches. The vent channel was full 100% of the time but more often then not 10-15 players would stay in the WoW channel and 7-10 players would stay in the CS channel. What finally happened to split these two groups was I moved. At this point I was still making some CS maps and dropping in the server. I wouldn’t play very often but I enjoyed my map time. I pushed out a few maps during this period but nothing to memerable. I moved from my home to a much larger one so a break had to happen. Taking a break in WoW is very difficult because once you break the other players surpass you in level by a large amount. When I came back I seldom played WoW and needless to say the players (all but the old zTk guys) defected to another server. Quitting the zTk version of the clan. I personally cant blame then as the game became quite boring to me quickly after getting myself set up in my new house.

At the same time this was happening we had picked up a couple of very excellent members on the counter-strike side of the clan. I was still very active on the forums as always. At this point running the clan was myself and Dianoga both of us had our play time trail off quite a bit. But some new members had picked up the pace. Mad Turki was one of these members that was picked up during this part of the clans history. He automatically seemed like a leader to me and it didn’t feel like it was to long before we were asking him to take a more prominent role in the clan.

This is about the time period where the follow video was made for the clan.

http://www.spike.com/video/2755140

As we pushed through 2006 into 2007 I found it more and more difficult for home reasons to keep up to date with the clans comings and goings. I started to realize I was leaning on Mad Turki to tell me about the new members and how they acted on the server. Was this guy or that guy a decent fit for zTk or were they just putting on a front when they spoke on the forums. Needless to say it was at this point between my company at home taking off and keeping me busy. The fact I was trying to learn some programs like 3dsmax and Zmod. I just was not giving zTk the leadership it needed anymore. I spoke to the current Elders about a replacement for me and there really was only one guy I was interested in taking my spot. Mad Turki he showed he had the level headedness (maybe even more then myself). The kindness, and a fair and balanced judgment that it takes to run a successful clan. If I was going to leave zTk it had to be to someone with a passion for running a group like this. Needless to say I will pat myself on the back for being a good judge of character. I am proud of the fact that in the year and a half I was not in charge of this clan that I was ran and managed very well.

This is the point where I leave the clans history to another keyboard. I am back now but my voice is no longer the voice of zTk I am here now to advise the man in the CEO chair. I am glad that my chair as an Elder was not given up. So here’s the hand off to the History of zTk.

References

Clan page [www.ztkclan.com]

CSnations ztk [Mapping Contest http://www.csnation.net/content/search.php?scope=newsmonth&type=month&find=24050]

ztk Steam community [1]

Server Rules [2]

List of Clans [3]

Further reading

Computer Games and the Military: Two Views[4] Harvesting the Hive:How online games drive innovation [5]