[GrimGriz]

A couple of guys (me and Lovemonk) met in a game called Crimson Skies (the real one, not the x-box version) and were in a gaming guild called [HEL]. I read about Jumpgate in some gamespy feature and applied for the beta. They let me in during what they called open beta. I guess they were testing the game to see if it could hold a bunch of non-paying people. At one point, I was on teamspeak with Lovemonk and was flying a transport mission in my shuttle from Wake to Cornea. I remember ranting about how awesome the game was, and they asked me what I was doing at the time. I believe I said something along the lines of 'flying in a straight line between gates, but this is sooooo cool'.

Eventually, Lovemonk got his invite and it wasn't long before [HEL] was officially in Jumpgate, and mantas were creaming us right and left. "We can take it, it's only a c6" was a precursor to many a podride. The evil Rollio was Quantar at the time, and thoroughly enjoyed harassing Solrain space. It was right after this happened and he was demanding people stop and be checked for bombs and such. Ofcourse, this was before scanners actually did anything....

[Algore]

Was TS about during beta times?

[Jump]

Probably BattleCom.

[Icefox]

Roger Wilco FTW!

[GrimGriz]

As it is with many gaming guilds, the idea was for us to establish a presence for the guild in Jumpgate, and to recruit new members. Since Jumpgate was free and handing out a lot of invitations at the time there was no shortage of people to recruit. We kept the squad sol only, and our f5 was generally tuned to :sol at the time. It's a real shame that the factional f5s went away. We grew to a decent size and tried our hand at the factional defender thing for awhile.

It was pretty easy at the time between Rollio and crew and the Octs constantly assaulting Wake. I'm pretty sure -=MACK=- hadn't split from MA at that point, but there was always gear to be had. Either folks hadn't figured out MC farming yet, or they were keeping it a secret, so people were running commods and gear around.

Sometimes, we found ourselves without anyone to shoot. Since we were more pro-factionalist than anti-oct or anti-quant, our natural enemy was those squads that were multifactional and stealing Solrain recruits that should have been joining Solrain squads. Since we'd often patrol solrain space looking for hostile HGs, the primary offender was =PHEONIX= (if i remember the tags right). They were a "peaceful" multifactional squad, but their non-sol members were always flying through sol space HG....

[Icefox]

Ooo, flying outside your factional space HG is just looking for trouble. Tell us more, Uncle GrimGriz!

[QrazyKermi]

Pheonix became somewhat anti-Sol by the time I joined Jumpgate. That was in late '01, shortly after it went retail. They let me join, but continued to taunt me about my Sol heritage.

Also, I believe it was Jan or Feb of '02 when MA split up into MACK and a few other squads. I can't remember whether Sol Guard was formed from that split, or if they just picked up a bunch of the newly homeless ex-MA's.

And did IHS split up right after the MA split?

PS: I would have spell-checked this post, but apparently I don't have permission to access that feature... @ Jump

[SingleShot]

Phoenix certainly wasn't an entirely peaceful squad come retail. They were the first 100 man squad, right?

[Ambrosius]

Phoenix had plenty of PvPers. But they were a multi-functional squad. CohenTB (I think that was it) was the uber FM broker. He would broker sometimes for 12+ hours straight.

[Nohbody]

Originally Posted by QrazyKermi

Also, I believe it was Jan or Feb of '02 when MA split up into MACK and a few other squads. I can't remember whether Sol Guard was formed from that split, or if they just picked up a bunch of the newly homeless ex-MA's.

Solrain Guard was in existence long before 2002. I don't know how early they go, but they were around when I joined the beta on Nov 1, 2000, as ^Death_ (who later joined SG, for the record, before leaving to reform The Drakhai with the "stress test" wipe in Apr 2001, when I went Quant).

[Jump]

Originally Posted by QrazyKermi

Also, I believe it was Jan or Feb of '02 when MA split up into MACK and a few other squads.

It was 101.11 actually.

Originally Posted by QrazyKermi

PS: I would have spell-checked this post, but apparently I don't have permission to access that feature... @ Jump

Heh, I had to reinstall it after I borked a few things. I probably forgot to reset the permisions again.

[Icefox]

Solrain Guard dates back to mid or early Beta, not sure which. If I recall correctly, we were the first and oftentimes only Solrain factionalist squadron. Sol factionalism wasn't particularly popular in my era of beta, so SG pretty much held the banner alone for awhile. However, as time went on some other pro-sol groups got running and things started to look less grim. Upon release, from what I hear at least since I quit Jumpgate before release, Solrain then became very uhm... powerful and such, in numbers and our ships.. something quite foreign to me since, in beta, we really weren't all that hot.. in numbers of PvPers or in our ships (I often referred to the Intensity as a flying banana, with similar firepower and defensive capability).

But anyhow, Solrain Guard is a very old squad, and over the years it has been restarted or reformed a number of times. In beta we had a strong presence, then we disbanded Solrain Guard to become Stellar Guard for part of beta, multifactional defense squad... basically a TRI defense squad that was anti-pirate, etc. Then Stellar Guard became Solrain Guard again (and this resulted in people like Ambrosius splitting off and later forming groups like Brotherhood). Then I believe SG died away as many of its remaining members merged into Sol Navy with a bunch of other folks, and still other SGs went into New Dawn and other groups.

Then I tried to restart SG a little over a year ago, but got fed up with pvp and many of the attitudes within it - what Gossip ranted about years ago (you can find it in the FAQ here) pretty much summed up much of my frustration with PvPers and Jumpgate in general. I went ND for awhile, then quit Jumpgate in frustration and boredom, and now here I am back again.. quit ND a few weeks after my return to restart SG for one last attempt at a go.

Still, SG's heyday was back in Beta, regardless.. for me, at least. Ah, those were the days.

But anyway, I won't bore anyone any longer.