Australian Social Gamers began its first year when its forums were opened on the 1st of Jan 2010. AsG’s founder Gun_shot_victim was joined by D0u813V1510N (known then as shocknaw21) on the admin team and the memberlist started to fill up not too long after. With some help from GraphicX of Final Vertex, Dubs took charge of building the site plus running the future comp team. The first theme used for AsG’s forum boards was a unmodified AeroBlue skin that perhaps only the oldest of AsG members would remember.
Over the weeks AsG steadily built up members whist playing in parties on Modern Warfare 2 and decided it was time to put their team work to the test. AsG formed up for its first friendly with SYCO, the clan war was set for February the 7th and saw AsG work well together winning a few rounds. Then in March xxFrillxx and G_SE7EN7 were appointed AsG’s first moderators.
Not much progress was made on the forums, a few skins were tried out but nothing seemed to fit right as AsG hit its first speed bump. During a public match in April one of the admin team was disrespected by a member, which consequently led to that member leaving the clan. This was followed by a short fallout period as other members left also but AsG was none the less determined to continue. Later that month AsG entered its first competition at sixaxisgaming the Xmod tournament. Not surprisingly with mostly green players on the roster AsG had a hard time getting a win and definitely learnt a lot about where they were as a team.
Enduring loss after loss in the Xmod tourney left AsG in bad shape. In June the forum boards were resembling the cyber analog of a ghost town and it was looking to be the end of AsG as many members seemed to become inactive. GsV decided it was time to take action and revive his dear baby, inviting G_SE7EN7 to the admin team. G_SE7EN7 reluctantly took the job feeling a bit out of place but didn’t take long implementing some fresh change to the site. Knowing that a chat box was on the cards since the get go, AsG finally received its first chat box on the site. A rather ugly and crude chat box was added but stirred immediate excitement back onto the site, as for the first time members were able to chat together outside of parties. After becoming confident with the technical side of the site, G_SE7EN7 successfully installed his first modification to the forums, the AJAX chat box, which was a much more pleasant looking and easy to use chat box.
Not long after a fresh skin was given to the site, the XSilver theme brought a new lease of life to the forums and spirits were high enough to consider entering into another competition. Two tournaments were about to be kicked off at sixaxisgaming and AsG decided to have a crack at both of them. A SnD based tournament, Magicmod, saw AsG up against very formable opponents which easily pointed out that AsG’s relaxed training schedule, a mere 1 hour warm up before each game, was not going to be enough to bring home any wins here. In the COD4 Classic tournament the story was much the same, but due to an interesting set of circumstances AsG was awarded a disqualified win which subsequently lifted AsG off the bottom of the ladder for the first time in 2010.
July saw AsG enter another turbulent time with a disagreement between admin members resulting in Dubs stepping down as part of the Admin team and when the issue could not be resolved he left AsG. GsV and G_SE7EN7 decided the site needed a face lift and with help from GraphicX , Joomla was installed to the front of the site transforming a forum page into an actual website, complete with game reviews, trailers, membership details and clan history content. The TwilightBB theme was modified and became the new face of the AsG forums page and a Cometchat chat bar gave the new look site an extra touch of professionalism.
With the site rebuilt by the start of August it was time for AsG to really move forward. Two new competition leaders were appointed. After being with the clan from the early days, Risky was given responsibility for the MW2 team and new to the clan, Hero_of_honor , would take charge of a COD4 team.
Risky started running regular training on Saturday nights just in time for the next MW2 tourney starting at sixaxisgaming. A new ruleset created to bring MW2 to the skill level of COD4 called Barebones was due to kick off and AsG was determined to start earning some wins. Despite training together much more frequently barebones was probably AsG’s worst result to date, out of 7 matches not one round was picked up by AsG. This led to the more experienced players of AsG to become disgruntled at the lack of wins and one by one walked out on the clan which turned out to be the biggest walk outs in AsG history seeing the clan lose over a dozen members. On top of that the formation of the clans COD4 team was failing faster than a Chinese bearing causing Hero_of_Honor to question his worth to AsG before deciding to leave in search for a more COD4 focused clan. The Admin team had also played around with a few trial period ideas before settling for the 30 day probation period that has given new members enough time to find out if they fit in with the existing members of the clan.
An emerging member of AsG, Pugsy5, decided he wanted a taste of leadership and requested permission to lead a team of snipers into battle at MLG GameBattles. Though only one match was played, Pugsy5 had shown that he had the determination to run a team and was appointed AsG’s next competition leader in October. Immediately the training schedule was changed to Friday and Saturday nights which definitely was the time when most AsG members were available to party up. Being ‘modless’ since June AsG was well overdue for a new moderator. After a brief discussion in Admin Hezbollah_Heavys was offered the position and without hesitation accepted the job giving the forum boards an immediate clean up. AsG also entered into a friendship with the good people at All Age Gaming, a news and review site for consol gamers, offering each other mutual benefit such as further promotion of both sites.
With the release of Black Ops during November AsG played numerous friendly’s searching for a combination of members and tactics that would give us the edge we needed. Pugsy5 settled into his role as comp leader and new members joined and emerged as candidates for the new competition team.
AsG entered into the Black Ops pre season tournament that kicked off on the 12th of December at sixaxisgaming, playing two of the most battle hardened clans in the competition straight of the bat. Needless to say AsG’s weakness in strategies were exposed immediately but a break in the competition due to the festive season winding up gave the team time to refine its tactics for the remainder of the tournament in January. Ozetron, an online electronics store, came onboard as AsG’s first sponsor offering a prosperous future partnership and was a great milestone in AsG’s history.
AsG celebrated its 1st birthday inviting all members to party up on Black Ops for some fun online shenanigans. It was a pretty good turn out and signified that AsG had well and truly made it through its first year. With a member base larger then anytime in the previous 12 months AsG is set to propel into the new year and emerge as a competitive clan in future competitions.
About AsG ||