I turned my attention to other clans.  I noticed a couple guys wearing an -=SDD=- tag giving out the website address to their clan page.  I took a look at their website and was pretty impressed with the way things were run there.  Now let me tell you, the standards for websites back then cannot even be compared to the standards of today.  They were so inferior it wasn’t even funny.  However, -=SDD=- had one of the best websites of all the clans back then, and the website alone got me interested in joining the clan.  It was a page with a black background and the design made it look medieval with a sci-fi flavor.  Everything on the website was on one long page, including the long list of SDD members.  I estimated a roster size of about 34.  What I really found interesting was next to each name there was a title, such as a Knight, Baron, etc.  They had some sort of ranking system going on, and instructions on how to earn points to achieve a better ranking.  The thought of participating in a clan with its own inner ladder system appealed to me so I asked to join.  I was immediately accepted.  I guess that’s why the clan has a roster size of 34.

So -=SDD=-Firestarter (which was me) entered the scene.  While my cousin, ReXorD =COF=, was busy being in a farm clan, I began playing as a member of SDD and frequently checked their website to see if I was added to their roster.  I wasn’t.  I wasn’t added the next day either, so I stopped wearing the tag.  So of course I found out I was added to their webpage roster when I took off the tag, so back on the tag we go.  

Around this time, my cousin and I started browsing clan pages and noticed that each clan page has top players lists.  All the lists seemed pretty different.  One list had Graves as number one, another had Guess as the top player, another had Access Denied, and a couple had Astrok.  I believe CO members graced the top players lists more frequently than any other clan’s members, although I wasn’t aware of any CO rated number one.  CO probably had the most depth out of any clan back then.  There were other good clans of course, but they didn’t have as many quality members as CO did in my opinion.  Bunny was a good clan, but I’d only usually see Halcyon around.  I saw Eternity *TBWA* several times, noticing her more for her tag than her skill.  A four letter caps locked clan tag just stood out.  =Gundam= was another clan that was good, with an ARCer called Sazabi, and Access Denied was the representative for =EYoD=.  Other ARCers that stood out back then were Magical Hack!, Dalyrus, and Ego Thumper.  With Ego Thumper being the most skilled of the three, and Magical Hack! probably the least.  My cousin claimed he tied Dalyrus in a duel back then. 

Then came the day I dueled Astrok *TBWA*.  I wanted to see what all the hype about this guy was about, and I found out that day.  I thought dueling Dartanion was hard, this guy just made me look silly.  He killed me one time after another, using heat-seeking bouncies that hit me wherever I went on the map.  I never was really good at bouncies, and the way he used it was shocking.  I asked him how the hell does he figure out where to shoot his bouncies to hit me.  He told me it wasn’t really that hard, but I didn’t believe him.  When the dust settled, the final score of the duel was 8-0.  Yea, he was worthy of the hype.   I told my cousin what happened, and he couldn’t resist teasing me about it. 

Putting the total dismantling by the hands of Astrok behind me, I tried to earn some points to rise up the ranks of SDD.  The Firestarter name just doesn’t belong dead last on the roster page with the lowest rank.  They had some weird thing going on where you can earn points by telling about your victories on the battlefield.  They had other ways to earn points such as webpage helping and other activities unrelated to ARCing.  I wasn’t interested in those so I concentrated on rising up by what I did ARC-wise.  They suggested on the webpage to tell about your exploits and who you killed on the battlefield etc.  I had no idea what they really wanted because writing down everyone I killed on the battlefield doesn’t really hold any meaning in my mind.  I just wrote down the names of some CO members and other good ARCers that I killed on the battlefield that day, and submitted it.  It felt really stupid, but I did it anyway.  I’m not entirely sure what I submitted actually went through that day, because it was still in the submitting process when I went downstairs to eat dinner.  When I came up after I finished eating, it had an error message. 

I began thinking of leaving SDD because I hardly see anybody on from that clan anymore.  My cousin ReXorD was busy chatting with some ARCers in the lobby, something I didn’t do back then because I wasn’t really interested in getting to know anybody, I just played the game for the most part.  My cousin started developing a growing list of people on his ICQ, including Astrok.  This was around the time where there was a big controversy over the gender of Astrok.  People started saying that Astrok was a girl.  My cousin was one of the people that believed he was a guy though.  There were stories out there saying he wasn’t a girl and that he just let someone’s wife play for him for a while.  In any case, my cousin was bashing my SDD clan in ARC chat and saying I was the only decent ARCer in the clan.  Astrok made a comment that he liked me.  I was surprised he actually remembered me.  

My cousin then started talking to various other ARCers while I was lying on his bed wondering aloud whether we should start up another clan.  We brainstormed some clan names and he came up with Mercenaries Guild, =MG=.  I agreed to it, and it was done.  We started the design for the webpage of the clan and its still there to this day.  The link is: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Fortress/6354/REX.htm 
(Trust me, when we made the webpage it was considered ok by the standards of 1997. CO’s webpage consisted nothing but the names and email addresses of the members on a white background).  This time we were actually going to have members besides the two of us because supposedly, he had already got done with a conversation with Talking Goat to start up a clan.  Talking Goat was one of those people that stood out with his activeness, skill, and of course, his screen name.  We were glad to have him.  We began picking up other decent ARCers like Marquette~SoC~ and Puppy666, formerly of TBWA, CO, EYoD.  In any case, it’s all on the website. 

We had a lot of fun with =MG= and I had some fun trying to recruit people.  Unfortunately, my cousin and I didn’t have any way to play at the same time.  I really wanted to compete with him as a clanmate and against him to see who really was the better ARC player between us. 

ARC hit an update where the graphics were altered.  Instead of the gray circles with a smaller colored circle inside, we actually had the ship models that are still being used today.  Missiles don’t seem to hit for 100% damage everytime they hit you anymore.  A missile that grazes you seems to take off partial health.  The game seemed pretty different.  New maps were introduced and I played them late into the night with decent ARCers like Adam98. 

Now this upcoming incident was totally unrelated to ARC at the time but I felt it belongs here.  While I was driving my cousin and I home from school, we were listening to Pearl Jam’s Better Man on the radio.   The lead singer was singing “can’t find a better man.”  My cousin asked me what he was singing, was it something about “can’t find the pyramids?”  “No, it’s can’t find the parrotman,” I joked.  That cracked him up.  There was just something funny about a parrotman, and we’d laugh about it everytime the song came up.  It was like an inside joke between us, kind of corny actually.  Who would of thought that Pearl Jam song was going to influence my screen name selection in the future years to come? 

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