The Unwritten history of GTFO

[GTFO. al]

(work in progress)

Been in a "reminiscing" sort of mood this evening. I even updated the About Us section for a change. In this thread i'll post facts, random bits of knowledge and memories that I've had over the years in GTFO. Would be cool if others can post about their memories or experiences over the months (or years) while playing on GTFO or wasting hours on these forums. Really old members who can remember stuff would be appreciated.

I'll start with the beginning until about mid 2006

As is probably quite obvious, G and myself founded GTFO sometime in November 2005. The exact day escapes me but this forum has been operating since 28th November 2005 so it was either that day or a few days before that. Since then we've been the only "constant" members.

Where did it start? A somewhat scruffy but nonetheless pretty cool flat in the Morningside area of Edinburgh where G, myself, the mysterious N4N01D (who never posted on this forum and never really played much either) and Headhunter were attending university. We were all friends from college in Northern Ireland (even though G is South African) and all went to Edinburgh to do degrees at Napier University. We all managed to pass our studies despite the long hours of gaming.

Why did we start GTFO? Well, back in 2005 when Day of Defeat Source was a new game we played on servers ran by a company called KryptonServers. It was a pretty cool server and had plenty of regulars...I'm sure there were a few people who played there who ended up playing with us here at GTFO but whether or not any still visit, i'm not sure. I'm sure any uber old schoolers from that period still knocking about will correct me. At any rate, the server had a small community of regular players that used it most days but in the end it was rented out to a clan/group of losers who ruined it and then promptly went about banning some of the regulars including me. So, we thought...cool new game, a server setup and formula that we could see was popular...we could recreate it and make it even better. We rented our first server (I believe from a company called GameRock (?)) and started up.

Why GTFO? Simply...we'd run about on Donner and anytime we saw some camper or noob we'd shoot them and shout GET THE FUCK OUT at them in text or voice comms. After a brief discussion at the start, and not being particularly inventive with names, we chose that and have kept it ever since.

What about the site? The inquisitive amongst you will have noticed that the GTFOGaming domain didn't become active until January 2006. How did we run a forum from November the previous year? Well, once upon a time we were actually pretty poor and didn't get hundreds of pounds of donations from generous people all over the world and we couldn't really afford it. At the time some company was offering Belgian .be domains for free and free is hard to beat. For the first few months we had a belgian domain name. I believe it was getthefuckout.be or something similarly offensive. In the end we ditched it because it got filtered for "fuck" everytime we posted it online and being based in the UK meant the .be domain was confusing in the early days. The really really really old school members will remember the first website design we ever had which you can see by clicking here. I designed it and therefore it's cool. OK?

First server. As mentioned it was a simple rental job, not even a dedicated server (shocking i know). By the time the new year 2006 had arrived, along with the new domain name, we'd sorted that out and got our first dedicated box. It was Pentium 4 based and at the time we had about 6 or so members who managed to scrape together enough funds to pay for it. That server was powerful enough to run one DODS server and that was about it. Around that time we had "stats" provided by some sort of text file based database extension of the mani admin plugin (corrections if i'm wrong please) that was popular back then. We even had a webpage that read the data out. It seemed cool then anyway.

Names from that period at the beginning of 2006 that some people may remember are Nullsys, Sharpshooter/Ammo 533/Smudge, Michaelkan and Quantomic. People like Cancer who became Gash, Jamie, Kyub, Martini and OneManAndHisGun were floating around back then (but not all became members that early) and they still remain which is cool.

I'll add to this post and work through the years/events as I get to them or can remember the details. Help appreciated.

[Echelon]

I think CIH and I were donors with limited admin rights this period (beginning of 2006), and became members in Nov 2006.

[GTFO. vito]

great article Al

[GTFO. Avenger]

Yh al interesting stuff here. We gonna see 2007+ sometime soon? ;]

[GTFO. Jamie]

good read so far...

will throw over more information if i remember anything from those years ago. Cant believe its been so long

[GTFO. SiR-ROUND]

Nice to read a little back ground info.

Cheers Al.