I'm sure some did not anticipate it anymore, but finally here is my story.
I started playing GTA with San Andreas in 2008, first in single player. It did not take long after i've completed the sp missions until i got into heavily modding the game to all extends to discover many more opportunities to enjoy playing it even more.
Somewhen around the beginning of 2009 i learned about the existence of a multiplayer modification called GTA:T, Grand Theft Auto Tournament. I downloaded it, but never got around to install and use it, because i had no private internet connection at my own PC at that time.
When my parents threw out their old PC to upgrade to Win XP i decided to take that old Win ME shit and rebuild it in my room. It was connected with a modem dial-up connection, for use as seperate internet computer. It was at this time, when i waited fifteen minutes for a youtube video to load, when i learned about SA-MP, from said youtube video.
I finally overcame my fear of hacking and identity theft, and decided to connect my personal PC to the fast internet. You could call SA-MP my motivation to finally go online on my own.
The time when i first connected my personal computer via a provisional DSL cable spanning across half the house was also the time i first connected to a SA-MP server. It was littlewhitey's.
LW's was already the first server i ever joined in SA-MP before i learned that it was SA-MP's first server.
Back then i did not have much fun on LW's, and were already about to drop it and look around the official's list for other awesome servers, until i took part in a race.
I'd grown up playing nothing but racing games: Mario Kart, Destruction Derby II, Driver. Even in San Andreas i liked the racing more than any other feature of the game. And the races on LW - never had i felt such an intense thrill in racing. I was literally near a heart attack already before the race even started. This unique experience made me stay, and made me try to go my way as a racer through all these DMers gangbanging around all over the place.
Then, in march 2009, i came around to register my first nickname with LWs: RonDones.
RonDones played for two months. In that time, i made many friends aswell as enemies. I became decent in racing. I met Seytan, my mentor, in a random race, with which i made my first experiences in ground fighting and team work on LWs. Another good friend i met was Hyp3r, the master of gambling at that time. Hyp3r was very silent, and took almost never part in Seytan's and my gang fights, yet his gambling skills were off the charts and if he got into a fight he revealed a great ground fight power.
Hyp3r 5 - 1 [TxC]DmCrieZ, Hyp3r 5:0 [M]Forgive, Hyp3r 5:0 [SAE][a]Scott, Hyp3r 5:0 [TxC]Demolition, Hyp3r 5 - 0 Cheetos, Hyp3r 5 - 0 [JOKER]Freak
As i kept practicing i eventually got good enough that some of the major clans that were online back then became interested.
In the case of JOKER, it was an interest to get rid of me. They spawned some great chases, which i love to remember today. It was them who unwillingly led me to learn how to escape 8vs1 situations.
It was in May 2009, when (i believe) Drugz asked me to join [187].
burnz duel? :|
I had never been in a clan before, and i hoped that this would bring benefits for both my practice and my bank aswell, so i accepted. From then on, i was known as [187]RonDones. Unfortunately, not for very long.
I was young, wild and impatient. Although i had a team, a reputation and a bit of money, i was still many weeks of hard work away from filling my bank account to the limit of eight million dollars. So, against all good knowledge, i tried to shorten the process.
Not going into more details, i used a program that i used before on Need For Speed: Underground 2 to gain more money for tuning. I cheated $500k and deposited these into my bank account. In the second i left the building, Rizla banned me, from IRC. It was the 27th of May 2009, when RonDones left the server forever.
adios cheater
Not really. After staying offline for some months, in August 2009 i decided out of boredom to evade my ban for some fun. LilTimmyHardwell was born.
When i rejoined, the server was far emptier then it was in May. In these three months i weren't there the official tab was removed, and many players left for other servers and a lot of major clans died, including 187. Hyp3r had been banned.
Maybe I 2 shotted once or twice but it was just by mistake
LilTimmyHardwell was designed as a pure racer. I did not do any fights in this time. But eventually i did the same mistakes any evader does somewhen. I tried to establish contact to my old friends, and to find out what mark i had left in the server.
It was the first of January 2010, 4 hours after the new year had started, when Rizla banned me again for my evasion.
This was the day when LilTimmyHardwell died.
I decided to leave it be, and moved on. I did not play any of sa-mp for almost a year, instead became interested in FPS-games and soon started a multiplayer career in COD4. I completely forgot about sa-mp. In my mind. But my heart did not.
It was October 2010, when my MSN messenger flashed a message from an old friend into my view. It was Seytan, today known as [KOD]Seytan. I still had him on MSN from the old days. He told me that all old bans on LWs had been removed.
Kiss Of Death Clan By Carpediem And Alarm
I was unsure of what to do. I had just started my studies, and i didn't have much free time. But there was this LW-feeling, the old flame was lit again, and i decided to return. But this time, it should be a return for once and for all.
I burried my past identities and created EnzoMortelli. With it, RonDones and my past gaming self died and became history. I was reborn. And so did i play. Like a bloody newbie. In these ten months i lost all my previous skills, and had to learn almost everything from the ground up.
In this time, a clan with a very bad reputation of ruining the whole game for the newbs picked me up to train me. Meet the R-Team, which i later joined in March 2011. Of course in the beginning they had no idea i wasn't actually new. I chose to not destroy that idea, because i was practically a skill noob, and the server had changed so much. Also, i wasn't going to let my past catch up on me, and decided instead to really emerge to a new player.
I also made new friends outside of the clan, including Cheetos, Rockhardy, Miczi, Bikerr, SKY and many more.
Cya LW !
Also at this time, the server was pretty down. The community was tearing about the missing updates and the low playercount, and it looked like LWs was about to die out. The old flame burning that brought me back here seemed to be extinct in anyone other's hearts, as if in the ten months i weren't there i missed miserable things that let people loose their faith. Naturally, i tried to sort stuff and find a way to resolve problems. To this day i cannot say if had succeeded with this, but i can't really either say what i had planned back then, i suppose i just didn't like what i saw and wanted to change it to something else.
And as most of you can imagine, my idea of keeping things up until the needed fixes were done involved a lot of events.
Thx Enzo..that was very religious of you.
From now on all went pretty fast. I was made a full member of [R] in August 2011. One month later, in September, i built my first great project of which i was sure it would help the server get more active: Littlewhitey's Weeks. It was thought as a two week long event, consisting of small daily events, for which administrators could stand sponsor to hold them. It did not spawn big resonance in the staff team, so i thought.
But what was going on under the covers, i would never have imagined.
Two days after i had announced the LW's Weeks event, on the 10th of September 2011, Simon started the process to promote me to a SA-MP Moderator in the admin section. To this day i have no idea whether i was made mod so that i could host the LWs Weeks or for the reasons actually posted in my poll. Even after i basically hosted the two weeks almost entirely on my own, i chose to decide that the second part was the case, and to live up to it.
After a 15/15 result on my poll, on the late evening of the 16th of September, i received a forum message from Sers to come ingame. So i did.
I had no idea what was going to happen, needless to say i was shocked when i was asked to be mod. I accepted nevertheless, because i saw a chance to help building up the server from within.
Isn't he like 60 years old or is that something I just imagined?
The LWs Weeks were a full success. I decided to make them a yearly event, since then i've done three of them, and they already became a fix part of LW's routine.
I was made admin with 15/16 votes on the 12 of November 2011. Until today i have no idea if Simon knew about my past when he decided to suggest me as moderator.
From then on, i had many things to learn about being an admin, about responsibility and about friendship. I made new friends, and also lost many friends in the following years. I took difficult decisions, and had fun resolving new challenges every day. I worked on improving LWs, got upset when Simon ended development and excited when Faraday and PawnFox restarted it. Bikerr, Quickplay and i founded the Guardians to make the clans more active. In both 2012 and 2013 you guys voted me as admin of the year, which honored me in a way that made my soul cry in joy. I was made Co-leader of the R-Team. Currently my work for an updated carset, new events and the LWs Weeks 2014 has started and takes up most of my time. In the last three years, i spent more time on Littlewhitey's than my real life could handle. I practically sacrificed one year of my studies completely. I didn't know how to feel about it.
I decided to take some time off and sort out my life. I was gone for seven weeks. In this time, a lot of things changed, including some unforeseen incidents, which now have me facing a lot of personal problems within the family.
Regardless, i have returned to LW's, because this server is my second family, the family that both gives me the strength and robs me the time i need to deal with my problems.
In these past 5 years, LW became a part of my life. It made me a different human. And i've sacrificed quite a lot of time of my real life to it. I thought about leaving littlewhitey's behind more than a dozen times but it seems that the old flame, which survived all my past digital alter ego's and all of LW's downtimes until today is still burning somewhere deep inside myself. This server, on which i lived through so many adventures, cannot let me go yet.
Thank you all for your support over the years. This server became something like a second home for me, and i'm glad to know i can always return to it and take a rest from the frantic matters of the real world. This isn't the end of my story.