[bl1tz]

Some of you may know me and some of you may not. By the end of this post you will all know me.

I started to play CS in the summer of 2003 when I was thirteen years old. I was your average pubber, I liked to play hostage maps and play counter terrorists because I like to play against the odds. I became pretty good at these sorts of maps in public games and eventually I grew bored of them. It was around the end of 2003 (right before 1.5 became 1.6) that I discovered scoutzknivez.

Do you ever remember the very first time you play a map and it seems completely foreign to you? You can play maps over time and eventually you come to know them like you know the back of your hand, you gradually forget the very first time you played it. I don't know about you but I never forgot the very first time I played scoutzknivez. I remember I was a terrorist and I was by the left door, I watched my team mates run out of it so I followed, and I was killed immediately as I stood outside of it, looking around to see what the map was like. I remember I did this a few more times and I died every time with little success. I rage quit the server. The server was none other than cause4alarm.net.

I consider myself a Neojenovian (for those of you who remember it) because that was where I played my prime scoutzknivez and become the most dominant player in the server next to skavenger. I cannot deny cause4alarm was where I first started to play scoutzknivez. It also thrived far longer than Neojenova because there was actual sense of rules. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted in Neojenova and the abusive admins made things difficult for those who weren't regulars (keino3)

I loved both communities because I had friends in both of them. Neehaw and Iluzion got me into competitive CS with i*E and there were those from Neojenova playing in that clan like c1rca. There was a rivalry between c4a and nJ` and then finally there was a scoutzknivez tournament, I made a team with skavenger and c1rca. The point of the tournament was to compete naturally, but there was an undertone to it to see who had the better players from each community. We were the best from ours at the time, and from c4a it was KN1F3 and some other people. I don't remember that.

Unfortunately the tournament never took place (Sleepy was disorganized or something) and the lack of competitiveness in scoutzknivez led me away and I started to play regular 1.6. Though I still played because it was fun.

By the time c4a hosted the first sk tournament, I didn't play due to the lack of people to play with. skavenger stopped playing and c1rca wasn't interested in scoutzknivez and a majority of the old people I played with were moving on. Though I did participate in the dust2 tournament because it was regular cs 1.6 (and won it) and also the second SK tournament I was invited to a team of people I didn't play with and got 2nd place. I didn't play in any other tournaments there was no one left to play with that I wanted to play with. CAL was more important to me at that time anyway. Once a champ, always a champ as far as I'm concerned.

I stopped playing CS seriously in 2007 and every now and then I scrimmed and pubbed scoutzknivez (it was the only thing I pubbed) A team wanted me to play in SKL and I did for two matches, top fragged, won one match and lost the other. I wasn't still completely washed up from five years of CS. It was pretty fun, I didn't take it that seriously and was mic spamming because I am a cool guy and it didn't seem to be even all that competitive coming from a CAL background.

I still play CS every now and then to scrim with some friends, I almost was going to get back in the game but just as I found people to play with, CAL died. So I scrimmed, and I pubbed in c4a and rel gaming.

It has come to my attention however that the c4a server is hardly ever full. What once was, is no longer. There was a time when people would betray their friends and tell them that the server was full, just to get that precious 15 out of 16 slot to ensure you got to play. It was really popular. In fact, it is no where near full anymore. There is NO ONE playing on it.

How could such a game ( I consider SK its own game) die? Even though the old players stopped playing, there was something about SK that made it indefinite. There were always new players asking how to get better and it seemed to just get more popular and more popular. I mean when you got someone like Cyantific who is arguably the best player on the server left, you know it's dead. 'Cause he is bad. I don't really check the other servers because I'm too lazy to find their ips, but I'm sure the situation is more or less the same.

I didn't create this thread to toot my own horn but I created it to see how many others could reminiscence about scoutzknivez and the times they had playing it. I feel the only two people who will appreciate this post are Ian and Taco Jake (if he is still around.)

Link everyone to it. I still talk to some old schoolers over AIM and such. Let them remember the greatness of SK and the fun we all had playing it.

[arCtiC]

SK used to be my favorite map, maybe other than dust 2

i remember, i got my first double kill on that map, 2 headshots 1 bullet. I miss alot of the old regulars who i used to play with on the c4a sk server when it was still popular... I can still remember alot of the arguments and challanges that were based off in there... when I played it for the first time, I got my head blown off within 10 econds of spawning. It was a fun, quick game worthy of being a game all on its own

[Cyantific]

I remember the days when the SK server was mostly full throughout the day and its unfortunate it isn't like that now. Scoutzknivez had a ton of interest about 2 years ago when the Scoutzleague was formed and we were getting 12-16 teams per season. The interest was high and the amount of highly skilled players playing in our server was pretty high for a while. Scoutzleague died after the 4th season once everyone seemed to lose interest of playing this map over and over again and moved onto other games and maps. C4A SK was affected by this so the amount of talent has dropped and this isn't just on our server.

Our SK server has a decent amount of players playing at its peak time during the day so it isn't completely dead and maybe can make a comeback if we focus a lot of energy towards it. We are talking about holding weekly pug nights in the server and hopefully we'll get that set up soon. This will hopefully attract SL players to come play in our server regularly in order to get used to 240 grav and maybe encourage Scoutzleague to start another season.

[PSC]

dude u totally missed 2 years of top skilled sk!!!

[SkiDDeM]

i hate to toot my own horn, but everyone leaves when i join the game (no, i do not stink). really the only people who stick around on the server are people on my buddylist it seems like and if there isn't at least 6 people hardly anyone sticks around. i find myself playing csgamer sk a lot now even with its shitty 200 grav! (225 4 lyfe) and the DoA bunnyhop sk server. i know a lot of the older c4a players have stated that the iceworld and sk servers were the first servs to get c4a "off the ground" sototype and don't plan on changing anything about them really but i honestly think adding more SK maps would help out a bunch (scoutzwinter, scoutzknivez3 & others) if not adding to the sk server at least add more maps to the se/dk server. SKWA usually always has people, so does iceworld & funmaps. but yeah ive already suggested something like this when we were deciding on what kind of server the new one should be (WC3) but nobody seemed to like it, meh

[FaZ-]

ScoutzLeague was the best and worst thing to ever happen to scoutzknivez. We had a lot of fun and I'd easily say the top 5 to 10 players ever to play scoutzknivez competed. The skill cap among players was never higher. What SL did, however, was put to the test all of the people who enjoyed the game because they run their mouth about how they're the best. It's pretty hard to keep talking shit when you go 3-16 in a half, and the inferior teams did this constantly. This led to the players who were actually decent merging into better teams for a chance to compete. We lost the lower-level players because they no longer had a chance, and we didn't have enough teams to really run two divisions. By Season 4, we had 4 or 5 teams who were top contenders and then 8-10 teams that I would hardly expect to take a round of the others, nevermind a match. Thus, it gets boring. The excitement is in the competition and that wasn't really there anymore, so we started losing players, dramatically. This isn't the sole reason, but I know it's the reason that I stopped playing pretty much at all and stopped caring about matches except against the top teams.

Another large part is that competitive SK players seem to be a lot older than everyone else, for some reason. I'm 21, PSC is 24, BH is 24 or so, Cy's around there, Ian's older, IJK is married with a kid, iQuizzle is 25+, Luda is 25+, and that's only really counting the team leaders and people that I know well. I'd bet nearly everyone is in college. The point is- we have things to do. We've already pretty much completely exhausted the competitive aspect because we know who the best are. It's not really fun to play public games except as a nostalgia trip because we've already played under intense competition in matches with the best SK players. The thrill from "getting your rank up" isn't there like it used to be; we know how meaningless it is, now: the totem pole is established.


Nevertheless, I am trying to organize SL style games on the C4A server for next Wednesday and hopefully every week thereafter. If this encourages people to fire up CS for a few hours, awesome. Maybe it will even lead into another season of ScoutzLeague. With a 16 man server, if we can get the people, we can hold 4v4 tournaments in an hour and a LOT of former SL players have admin here. I know I miss the thrill of competition against the best, but I don't miss all the administrative bullshit, petty arguments, and team stacking that went hand in hand with SL. If we have another season, it will probably be 2v2 with 3 man teams, or 3v3 with 5 man teams. That's our only chance at getting enough players to have a legitimate competitive season again, to me.

[bl1tz]

PSC, on 20 February 2010 - 06:34 AM, said:

dude u totally missed 2 years of top skilled sk!!!

True, I did play against your team twice though (lost both times) so I feel I had a taste. Once in the tournament where you got first, and the second in a SKL match.

[IanelarAzure]

You are right bl1tz, I do appreciate this post. I will admit SK is still the dearest to my heart, more than anything else in CS. I really havent had a chance to play CS in almost a year now, because I am never home anymore. Faz nailed it, everyone it older, growing up, and living life. We dont have time to devote entire Saturdays to CS or any game for that matter, I sure as hell wish I could but things just would never get done. Not just SK, but CS is fading away and part of me thinks no matter how many events and servers we have, the player base just wont ever be the same. We cant stop anyone from moving on to things other than CS. Its an 11 year old game, and has had a pretty damn good run. I started CS in spring of 2003 and started at CSZen/C4A/NJ later that year. Believe it or not Taco John tought me how to play SK, damn he could camp mid tower.

So many memories, everything is and will always be missed.

[OrangeJuice]

just stay away from me in SK if you don't want to get owned so bad you will quit cs.

[XGuy]

Quote

Some of you may know me and some of you may not. By the end of this post you will all know me.

I started to play CS in the summer of 2003 when I was thirteen years old. I was your average pubber, I liked to play hostage maps and play counter terrorists because I like to play against the odds. I became pretty good at these sorts of maps in public games and eventually I grew bored of them. It was around the end of 2003 (right before 1.5 became 1.6) that I discovered scoutzknivez.

Do you ever remember the very first time you play a map and it seems completely foreign to you? You can play maps over time and eventually you come to know them like you know the back of your hand, you gradually forget the very first time you played it. I don't know about you but I never forgot the very first time I played scoutzknivez. I remember I was a terrorist and I was by the left door, I watched my team mates run out of it so I followed, and I was killed immediately as I stood outside of it, looking around to see what the map was like. I remember I did this a few more times and I died every time with little success. I rage quit the server. The server was none other than cause4alarm.net.

I consider myself a Neojenovian (for those of you who remember it) because that was where I played my prime scoutzknivez and become the most dominant player in the server next to skavenger. I cannot deny cause4alarm was where I first started to play scoutzknivez. It also thrived far longer than Neojenova because there was actual sense of rules. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted in Neojenova and the abusive admins made things difficult for those who weren't regulars (keino3)

I loved both communities because I had friends in both of them. Neehaw and Iluzion got me into competitive CS with i*E and there were those from Neojenova playing in that clan like c1rca. There was a rivalry between c4a and nJ` and then finally there was a scoutzknivez tournament, I made a team with skavenger and c1rca. The point of the tournament was to compete naturally, but there was an undertone to it to see who had the better players from each community. We were the best from ours at the time, and from c4a it was KN1F3 and some other people. I don't remember that.

Unfortunately the tournament never took place (Sleepy was disorganized or something) and the lack of competitiveness in scoutzknivez led me away and I started to play regular 1.6. Though I still played because it was fun.

By the time c4a hosted the first sk tournament, I didn't play due to the lack of people to play with. skavenger stopped playing and c1rca wasn't interested in scoutzknivez and a majority of the old people I played with were moving on. Though I did participate in the dust2 tournament because it was regular cs 1.6 (and won it) and also the second SK tournament I was invited to a team of people I didn't play with and got 2nd place. I didn't play in any other tournaments there was no one left to play with that I wanted to play with. CAL was more important to me at that time anyway. Once a champ, always a champ as far as I'm concerned.

I stopped playing CS seriously in 2007 and every now and then I scrimmed and pubbed scoutzknivez (it was the only thing I pubbed) A team wanted me to play in SKL and I did for two matches, top fragged, won one match and lost the other. I wasn't still completely washed up from five years of CS. It was pretty fun, I didn't take it that seriously and was mic spamming because I am a cool guy and it didn't seem to be even all that competitive coming from a CAL background.

I still play CS every now and then to scrim with some friends, I almost was going to get back in the game but just as I found people to play with, CAL died. So I scrimmed, and I pubbed in c4a and rel gaming.

It has come to my attention however that the c4a server is hardly ever full. What once was, is no longer. There was a time when people would betray their friends and tell them that the server was full, just to get that precious 15 out of 16 slot to ensure you got to play. It was really popular. In fact, it is no where near full anymore. There is NO ONE playing on it.

How could such a game ( I consider SK its own game) die? Even though the old players stopped playing, there was something about SK that made it indefinite. There were always new players asking how to get better and it seemed to just get more popular and more popular. I mean when you got someone like Cyantific who is arguably the best player on the server left, you know it's dead. 'Cause he is bad. I don't really check the other servers because I'm too lazy to find their ips, but I'm sure the situation is more or less the same.

I didn't create this thread to toot my own horn but I created it to see how many others could reminiscence about scoutzknivez and the times they had playing it. I feel the only two people who will appreciate this post are Ian and Taco Jake (if he is still around.)

Link everyone to it. I still talk to some old schoolers over AIM and such. Let them remember the greatness of SK and the fun we all had playing it.

tl;dr

[bl1tz]

XGuy, on 21 February 2010 - 07:14 PM, said:

I'm fat

[XGuy]

I'm fat.

What? I didn't say that.

[IanelarAzure]

But you did spam this thread, thanks.

[Shadowfang]

i'd agree and say the biggest reason sk is dying is because the age the most people play cs or video games in general would be middle school and high school. this was when most of the sk players started up (i started in 9th grade) and so we are all college or older (i'm a senior in college now). i personally am too busy with school (math and econ double major) and trying to find a job takes up so much time that i rarely play cs or any type of video games anymore.

but c4a sk is where i will always belong. i started cs playing in a server called [DOH] - defenders of honor. it was just the regular cal maps, and i had a blast doing it. one day someone challenged me that he was better at scouting than i was, and so i said sure i'd play him with scouts. little did i know this meant going to a scoutzknivez server, which just happened to be the c4a sk server! once i was there, i was pretty much just amazed by ILLuZioN's knifing and strafing so i wanted to get better and do what he could do lol.

i remember the c4a vs neojenova undertones. whenever someone like bl1tz, c1rca, skav, anyone from the [tc] group, sithie, tearzofblood, or someone who reminded me of neojenova came, i tried my hardest to kill them as much as possible, just to try to prove to them that the c4a sk players were better than the neojenova sk players. haha how fun.

so many skilled players came through, with everyone claiming to be the best at some point or other. remember david hayter and ct tower? climbatize? melo when he played sk consistently? there were so many i didn't get to play against who apparently came before my time, but i wish i got a chance to play against them to see how good they actually were... crackshot (or oneshot, something like that) comes to mind... i remember so many "who is the best sk player ever" debates. i'd say SL did a great job of figuring out who the best players were in both 3v3 play and 1v1 tournaments.

last, but not least, i'd say my favorite part of sk was killing greg_haxorz every time he called me shadowfag. i really should have put more thought into this name when i was in 9th grade lol.

[jonniewalker]

not saying i was ever really skilled but i haven't been able to play since i've been trying to tweak my linux config.

[Celina]

yeah... it's always a bummer when I do find time to play and hit up the sk server to be the only one there... i wait awhile hoping people join in but it takes a damn long time until someone does...

Though i wasn't a part of the whole pro scene.. it was always fun playing against people who were beastly
I feel like sk being less populated is one of the reasons why I don't play as much as well... it's just not as fun :\

[LudaKrishna]

I think FaZ nailed it for every reason.

I mean the majority of competitive SK'ers don't play anymore because they are older and there isn't a group to pass the torch to either so it's just kind of in that void right now. For myself I'm 22 turning 23 this march (not 25 btw) but university still does take tons of my energy, plus you have to find time for your g/f, plus your family, plus your close friends. There just isn't enough hours in the day to do all those things and play sk regularly.

I remember when I first started out on cs. Some friends of mine started playing cs 1.5 we all installed the game and just played on d1 lol, after 1.6 came around I wanted to play something more fun where I wouldn't have to be concentrated so much. No joke was in the servers list on cs and just randomly chose a server, that had a map I didn't know, which turned out to be c4a sk. I started out like a total noob (I think it was 2003, not sure) and I remember seeing Wank air strafing so fast that I wanted to know how to do it. For some odd reason Wank and this guy name Endo (not ender) helped me with little things like positioning and gave me hints on how to airstrafe. I saw David Hayter's playing style when I kept dying and I told myself why don't I just do that? However ct tower was problematic for me, as I'd always fall off/strafe off, couldn't get up there in time, and there was just something about T tower that called my name (that and for some odd reason I rarely got killed going there) so that's how I developed my affection for T tower lol.

I also remember c4a vs nJ being a VERY BIG rivarly lol, sleepy for some reason hated haze (too this day I don't know why), and I remember that tournament falling through (the one bl1tz mentioned). People like Tearz,paperclip,ian,[tc] crew, therados(he was nj if I remember) and another name starting with H (for the life of me I can't remember his name). I think the first time I met Ian was back when I was in the nJ server and his name read IanelarAzure[rAped].

I only started getting good at sk when g0dz/killg0dz where are their end, but I must say I think around that time was the peak in c4a sk where the server was ALWAYS and i mean literally ALWAYS full. I had people like Wank telling noobs to press alt+f4 to strafe so I could get in LOL. That and the endless amounts of times we told people to download MagicJump from cszen so they can airstrafe and then have cspot go "wtf why is everyone asking for MagicJump on my forums" lol

It sucks that there aren't any dedicated sk players like their used to be in the past, I mean there is a few like Skiddem....but not much. I had a blast when I was playing, I started out in grade 10 of High School and I'm in University now so you can imagine the time I've spent here lol, but like faz mentioned because we're older now its harder for the old school people to get on and play. Combined with not many new people that were dedicated like we were doesn't equal out well.

btw I appreciate the post bl1tz, brings back a lot of good old memories in that server such as Melo raping everytime he joined, Taco John on Peace Tower, David Hayter vs LudaKrishna battles in the sky, Ender's FAT everywhere in that server, The dude who raped just camping CT and T spawn (omfg what was his name), c4a's first SK tournament with Melo and ShadowFang, KN1F3's regime with Paranoid (I loved his regime LOL), biLL (being cracked out as always, kinda like jonnie actually), GREG HAXORZ always getting killed LOL ( greg), Scarface's HLSS in the server (u had it on like everytime lol), the gAyz crew with Pwand, FaZ always getting bitched at whenever he came to the forums LOLOLOL (I'm sry faz but it was funny back in those days) those are just a few off the top of my head but there's plenty more....damn good old simple days i miss them lol

[OrangeJuice]

why not setup an event this weekend like a scoutzknivez party for all the members and get some better blood flow. Just beware of my sk talent.

[PSC]

to ur surprise oj i think some of those parties may be occurring in the near future


p.s. you guys need to play more cus im starting to play sk more nowadays and no one good is ever on...or at least it will be like 2 or 3 players who are decent but not enough to create a good challenge and then boredom sets in

[bl1tz]

LudaKrishna, on 23 February 2010 - 08:00 AM, said:

I think FaZ nailed it for every reason.

I mean the majority of competitive SK'ers don't play anymore because they are older and there isn't a group to pass the torch to either so it's just kind of in that void right now. For myself I'm 22 turning 23 this march (not 25 btw) but university still does take tons of my energy, plus you have to find time for your g/f, plus your family, plus your close friends. There just isn't enough hours in the day to do all those things and play sk regularly.

I remember when I first started out on cs. Some friends of mine started playing cs 1.5 we all installed the game and just played on d1 lol, after 1.6 came around I wanted to play something more fun where I wouldn't have to be concentrated so much. No joke was in the servers list on cs and just randomly chose a server, that had a map I didn't know, which turned out to be c4a sk. I started out like a total noob (I think it was 2003, not sure) and I remember seeing Wank air strafing so fast that I wanted to know how to do it. For some odd reason Wank and this guy name Endo (not ender) helped me with little things like positioning and gave me hints on how to airstrafe. I saw David Hayter's playing style when I kept dying and I told myself why don't I just do that? However ct tower was problematic for me, as I'd always fall off/strafe off, couldn't get up there in time, and there was just something about T tower that called my name (that and for some odd reason I rarely got killed going there) so that's how I developed my affection for T tower lol.

I also remember c4a vs nJ being a VERY BIG rivarly lol, sleepy for some reason hated haze (too this day I don't know why), and I remember that tournament falling through (the one bl1tz mentioned). People like Tearz,paperclip,ian,[tc] crew, therados(he was nj if I remember) and another name starting with H (for the life of me I can't remember his name). I think the first time I met Ian was back when I was in the nJ server and his name read IanelarAzure[rAped].

I only started getting good at sk when g0dz/killg0dz where are their end, but I must say I think around that time was the peak in c4a sk where the server was ALWAYS and i mean literally ALWAYS full. I had people like Wank telling noobs to press alt+f4 to strafe so I could get in LOL. That and the endless amounts of times we told people to download MagicJump from cszen so they can airstrafe and then have cspot go "wtf why is everyone asking for MagicJump on my forums" lol

It sucks that there aren't any dedicated sk players like their used to be in the past, I mean there is a few like Skiddem....but not much. I had a blast when I was playing, I started out in grade 10 of High School and I'm in University now so you can imagine the time I've spent here lol, but like faz mentioned because we're older now its harder for the old school people to get on and play. Combined with not many new people that were dedicated like we were doesn't equal out well.

btw I appreciate the post bl1tz, brings back a lot of good old memories in that server such as Melo raping everytime he joined, Taco John on Peace Tower, David Hayter vs LudaKrishna battles in the sky, Ender's FAT everywhere in that server, The dude who raped just camping CT and T spawn (omfg what was his name), c4a's first SK tournament with Melo and ShadowFang, KN1F3's regime with Paranoid (I loved his regime LOL), biLL (being cracked out as always, kinda like jonnie actually), GREG HAXORZ always getting killed LOL ( greg), Scarface's HLSS in the server (u had it on like everytime lol), the gAyz crew with Pwand, FaZ always getting bitched at whenever he came to the forums LOLOLOL (I'm sry faz but it was funny back in those days) those are just a few off the top of my head but there's plenty more....damn good old simple days i miss them lol

ha thats awesome you remember paranoid and kn1f3 together, though i always thought kn1f3 was probably the best player at one point.