On January 23rd, 2002 MOHAA is officially released to the world. I invite my neighbor named Matt Coberley over to play on my other computer. We start playing MOHAA for hours upon hours. During this time I go by the name of []V[]aX][[]V[]u$ and he goes by the name of The }2apto}2. After about 4 hours of gaming we see that other people are playing MOHAA, but in clans. We think the whole clan thing seems kinda cool, but don't know what to call ourselves so I tell Matt that we will call ourselves The Murderers and our tags will be written in Quake 3 language as:
[]V[]u|2|)e|2
At the time I never thought our clan would really take off so I didn't give much thought about a more serious name. I just thought it would sound hardcore to kill some dudes with a name like that. Also, I was a fan of the rap group "The Murderers" so I selected the name.
Raptor and I start sporting our full gamer name along with our clan tag which looked like this at the time:
[]V[]aX][[]V[]u$ []V[]u|2|)e|2
}2apto}2 []V[]u|2|)e|2
After gaming it up on multiple EA pub servers we came across some people who seemed pretty cool who wanted to join our clan. I would tell them over and over how to correctly wear our tags, but it was a mess for the most part. I think we had only a couple of people who figured out how to display our tags correctly. It was so un-uniformed that it really didn't even look like we were a clan at all. There was so much confusion that people in our clan would call us Team Murder instead of "The Murderers". So instead of having one clan name we all of the sudden had two.
For the next few days Raptor would get home from school and since he was no longer playing sports because his right hand was broke and in a cast he had nothing better to do then come over to my house to play video games. After a few days his status of "neighbor" turned into an actual friendship and we then continued to play nothing but Medal of Honor: Allied Assault when I was home from work and when he was home from school.
Early February, 2002 - Our Clan Name Is Changed - by Maximus
In early February of 2002 I inform Raptor that it seems like nobody can get our clan tag right at all. He agrees with me and as a result I end up changing our clan name from The Murderers []V[]u|2|)e|2 to a much more simple |DPG|. I named our clan after one of my favorite West Coast hip hop groups which is DPG who are Tha Dogg Pound Gangstas. Again, not thinking much of it and having no idea that it would be the beginning of many more things to come.
Late February, 2002 - Lost Members & 1st |DPG| Recruit - by Maximus
Shortly after the name change it becomes more and more obvious that we are losing members because we have no way of keeping track of them. Sure its great to have people join our clan, but what good is it if we cannot get ahold of our members again to game it up?! I then decide that some sort of instant messaging program is going to be an absolute must and whoever we recruit from here on out must have AOL Instant Messanger (AIM) if they want to join |DPG|. Raptor and I then host a free for all server on my 3rd computer called |DPG| Clan Tryouts. Nobody really shows up for a while so me and Matt just shoot the crap out of eachother. Finally after about 20 minutes some guy named KillerSoundz shows up and seems interested in joining DPG. However, he has got to be the worst player who to this day has ever played an FPS game, but Raptor and I think "Oh what the heck" and we recruit him despite him being the world's worst player. KillerSoundz then informs us that he does indeed use AIM and will add us to his friend's list. The first |DPG| AIM list is created along with its 1st official recruit!
Early March, 2002 - 1st ever Co-Leader
March roles around and I really need somebody to help me run our small clan of about 15 members. I post a Help Wanted ad on modtheater.com letting people know that |DPG| is recruiting and that I am also looking for somebody who I can trust to help me run DPG. Somebody who has had leadership experience. After about 2 days I get a response from a guy by the name of Dachande informing me that he has ran some clans before. I contemplate having other current members such as Raptor help me with running things, but at the time he appears to just want to play and seems a little more interested in dating my next door neighbor at the time in which I notice he isn't over playing MOHAA as much. I then PM Dachande back informing him that I have selected him to be the co-leader of DPG. He then informs me that that we should have ranks and that our ranking structure should be based off of the Army. I then agree with him and become |DPG|(4*Gen.)[]V[]ax][[]V[]u$.
Mid March, 2002 - God's Foot Soldier, Vlad, & Crabbit
During this time I am hosting a dedicated server off of my 2nd computer. My internet is only 512kbps up, but for some reason I can host 10 players without lag. Raptor starts coming over a little more often again and we notice that random pubs start playing on our server that for the most part is TDM on Remegan. Then after switching it to a custom map called "Sherman Hunt" on the Objective gametype we come across a couple of players who would later on play a huge role in DPG. God's Foot Soldier, Vlad, and Crabbit. All 3 guys seem very cool and are always playing on my little home dedicated server as the hours go by. Later that night I recruit them. From here days would go by and they would always be on AIM wanting to play. Along with Raptor they become the most active in DPG.
Late March, 2002 - God's Foot Soldier Becomes a 3*General
God's Foot Soldier (or Foot as we would call him) informs me that he would like to help out with recruiting. At the time I see that besides me he is the most active in DPG and shows the most interest in helping out with stuff. I then promote him to 3*General.
April 15th 2002 - The Recruitment of Omaha!
I am informed by Foot that Dachande was on a 24/7 Omaha Beach server and that he had recruited a person who goes by the name of Omaha Bin Ladin. "Omaha Bin Ladin?!", I said to Foot. Foot then informed me that its just a wierd joke, but the guy is really cool. Foot ended up being right! Omaha did indeed end up being cool as hell and is still in DPG to this day! He may be a forum rat now-a-days, but none the less he has supported DPG over many years. Omaha would end up being Dachande's first and only recruit.
April 20th 2002 - The Recruitment of Meister!
Meister, pictured here:
comes onto a server that I started called: |DPG| Sniper Valley 24/7. I then end up recruiting him and his good friend LeCkMyDeCk. Later on we would just refer to him as Leck for short. Meister would then go on to be the most active person in DPG for most of 2002 and part of 2003. Now-a-days he can be found on our forums, but only once in a while. Come back Meister! We miss you buddy! Here is a screenshot of the day he was recruited:
Sometime in May 2002 - The Recruitment of Will Fix
Foot calls me up on the phone while im on my lunch break at work to inform me that he has recruited a guy by the name of Will Fix. He states that like himself Will Fix is a Godly man and he thinks it would be great if he joined DPG and promises that I will like the guy. I later on talk to Will Fix on Roger Wilco and we end up clicking it right off the bat.
Early June, 2002 - Too many recruits. Not a big enough server
|DPG| has grown very large. So large that we all of the sudden have at least 20 people on. The problem ends up being that my little server that I host from home can only host up to 10 players. If I put it at 11 the pings shoot up to 999 and everyone lags out. A few days go by and the problem remains... too many active people and not enough bandwith to host them all. I then see if anyone else in DPG has a better internet connection and I find out that they all have crappy DSL or have cable, but not as good as mine. After about 4 hours of searching I find a 32 slot server in Chino, CA called, The Dead Pool. It happens to be a dedicated server hosted at somebody's place of business on an OC-48 connection. The reason why I chose this server is because it has callvoting enabled and the overall public at the time didn't seem to know how to use console commands for call votes. I soon find out that it has call vote commands for kicking, map changes, g_gametype changes; etc. I tell all of DPG to start making this server their home and we then quickly adopt it as our own official server. Before we came I saw based off of stats that hardly anyone played on it. Not even the admin himself was ever on. We end up making it an Objective/Round based server. We end up making this server one of the most popular servers in MOHAA from June of 2002 - September 2002. It becomes so popular that people identify it as our own official server. We end up getting massive amount of recruits from it during this time. So much that people even think that |DPG| stands for The Dead Pool Gangstas. We let people think w/e they want. It didn't bother us one single bit.
Mid June, 2002 - God's Foot Soldier leaves |DPG| and creates his own clan called #SeX
God's Foot Soldier contacts me on the phone to inform me that he thinks that |DPG| has gotten wayyyy too big (100+ members at this time) and that he has decided to create his own clan called #SeX. He then informs me that he has even recruited about 6 |DPG| to come join him. This upseted me, but I wished him a nice fairwell. However, I was indeed upset that he took a few of our guys along with him. #SeX would only last 2 months and then the others who quit would end up wanting to rejoin |DPG|. I then denied them all.
Late June, 2002 - Dachande has been AWOL. Will Fix seeks new plans for |DPG|
Dachande is nowhere to be reached and even when I try calling him nobody answers or his line is completely busy due to him being on dial up. On top of this he is not answering his emails. He has literally been AWOL or MIA since he recruited Omaha. With Foot being gone Will Fix sees that I need some help running |DPG|. He then applies to the position of 1*General realizing that he has big shoes to fill with Foot's depature. I then promote Will Fix to 1*General. Soon after he is promoted he mentions to me that too many people seem to be cussing up a storm in our server and too many |DPG| seem to drop F bombs left and right. We then have at talk on our Roger Wilco server and he informs me that he really thinks I should completely steer |DPG| into a much more family friendly type of clan. I then informed him that if I went ahead and did this that it may indeed upset a lot of members. He then informed me that out of the 100+ members it seemed as though over half of them seemed to be complete *******s. I agree with him and inform him that I will go ahead and send out the new |DPG| Newsletter to everyone informing them of this.
Early July, 2002 - MUTINY!
I end up not receiving any negative replies from the |DPG| Newsletter that I emailed to the clan informing them of the new changes and new rules brought forward by Will Fix. To be honest I was shocked at the time, but thought that maybe everyone else read it as a nice change to |DPG|. A week had gone by and people in game and on AIM seemed to be cool with this. Then, out of nowhere after the 4th of July Independence Day Weekend Dachande all of the sudden shows up with a massive reply to EVERYONE in |DPG|. He informs everyone that he was in a motorcycle accident that left him without the ability to use his hands and arms and that his phone and internet were shut off during this time. He becomes so outraged of what he has heard in the |DPG| News that he ends up completely flipping the DPG logo on our website that he hosted upside down signifying that everything got turned upside down because of Will Fix. His email even informs everyone of his feelings towards Will Fix and that Will Fix ruined |DPG| because of the new rules of no cussing. Dachande then informs everyone that he has made a new clan called the [CC] The Canyon Crowes and that his new co-leader is Vlad and that they are officially the Anti |DPG| clan of the world! Within 24-48 hours later I receive over 60 emails from all sorts of active, and inactive |DPG| informing me that they have decided to leave |DPG|. I then even receive a really nasty one that was sent to everyone from Crabbit informing everyone that he thinks Will Fix is basically a total idiot and a complete ******* for what he did to |DPG|. Crabbit then informs everyone that he will not join [CC], but urges everyone to quit |DPG|. At this time |DPG| had over 120 members. After all of this happened we had about 50 with about 25 active. It was now time for a new era of |DPG|. One in which everyone knew before they were recruited what the rules were and why we had them in tact. It was now the era of Will Fix. [CC] lasted one month with only Dachande and Vlad as its sole members.
I then promote Raptor to 3*General and Will Fix to 2*General. Will Fix then promotes a kid by the name of Slash to 1*General.
Mid July, 2002 - |DPG| joins Clanbase and wins its first match!
Shortly after the events of Dachande, Vlad, and Crabbit. I remembered that Vlad wanted me to join Clanbase a while back. With our pub server still doing very well I got a lot of requests from the guys to have us join Clanbase. We then had our first match against a clan called |Wolfpack| which later on we would end up being allies with for a short period of time. Here is a screenshot of the score:
It was a 10v10 TDM match. The screenshot above doesn't show everyone though. Later on we would focus on doing Obj/Round Based Matches.
Early September 2002 - The Dead Pool is no longer ours...
Out of nowhere the owner/main admin of The Dead Pool MOHAA server comes back. He calls himself Chino (who lives in Chino, CA ironically) and is clanless. I then invite him to join |DPG|. I inform him that over the many months he was gone that we |DPG| helped make his server one of the top ranked MOHAA servers and kept it populated for him. This means jack squat to him and he thanks us all by removing the voting feature from his server stating that its not our server and is his. Even our regulars try to convince him to leave at least the call vote option on since he didn't want to give us rcon. Chino then tells all |DPG| as well as all of our regulars that if we dont like it to play elsewhere. As a result we all choose to do exactly that. The problem then becomes very clear... with no place to call home |DPG| faces dying. Within a few days I already lose 30+ members. I now only have about 25. Out of the 25 I have they stick with DPG, but are also frustrated that all I can provide to them at the time is my other computer on a dedicated connection at 10 slots. This means over half of the clan has to play elsewhere to play. Will Fix then urges me to find a GSP (Game Server Provider), but I inform him that they are very expensive and I really cannot afford it. After 2 more days of searching for a good deal I find one. Its a 20 slot server for $60 a month. Nobody offers to help donate, not even Will Fix, but I knew if I did not get us a server |DPG| would die and I loved |DPG| alot during this time and wanted to make something much more out of it.
I then inform our current members of the new server informing them that a 32 slot would be completely out of my budget, but a 20 slot I could afford. They completely understand and as a result we have no problem at all keeping our server packed with |DPG| members. We ended up keeping this server until the beginning of 2003. We even kept it at 20 slots even after new recruits and current members started donating. People liked the idea that at all times at least 15 |DPG| were on. It made it a lot more easier to recruit because it made us look even more active then we were to the average Joe. Here is a screenshot of when we had 15 people on during those days:
As you can see we had a total of 19 on there. 15 were |DPG| and 4 pubs out of the 20 total slots. Great times! Always had |DPG| on! This server was located in Houston Texas.
Late September, 2002 - The Recruitment of Reglar
Will Fix recruits a guy who goes by the name of Reglar. Will Fix informs me that Reglar is a guy in his 40s like himself who he thinks will bring a lot to the table for |DPG| competively for MOHAA. I later on end up speaking with Reglar on Roger Wilco and he seems to be a very fun, mature guy to play with.
November 22nd, 2002 - Reglar becomes a Gen.
In my last news article of our old site www.dpgclan.50megs.com I inform everyone that I am looking for a new leader of D-3 (Division 3 of DPG. Back then we had divisions). I end up promoting Will Fix to 4*General of |DPG|. He ends up being the new co-leader. I also promote Slash to 2*General and shortly after end up getting an application from Reglar to become the new leader of D-3. I then approve his application and he becomes a 1*General in |DPG|. Reglar would then rule as D-3 General for the next 6 - 8 months before resigning his position due to work and personals reasons.