Players communities are a major part of the success and stories of online games. With Jumpgate living its third decade, in my mind there hasn’t been nearly enough coverage of the life of its pilots. I want to give a big thank you to Algore for agreeing to an interview, covering his career joining and eventually leading Octavian Vanguard.
Peng: Can you tell me a bit about how OV started? Where did the idea come from?
Algore: OV was formed by Fellblade and Jam back in beta. I only joined on 2nd day of EU retail. Pretty much what it says on the tin. Agressively furthering Octavian interests throughout space.
P: So they recruited you and mentored you? Did you play the beta or know them from before?
A: I first played beta I'm thinking around October 99 but can't honest say 100%. There were only 3 stations: Oct, Quant an Sol Core. I played through the beta, then stress test primarily as a trader. I met a Portuguese pilot called Sinupe during the beta. He had joined OV and in retail recruited me. I stayed with him in Lisbon maybe 12 month later for a few weeks. That's when I first spent real time at PvP.
P: So when the game launched in EU in 2001, you were one of the first OV recruits then. What was life like for OV pilots?
A: Pretty much everything we did was to prepare to fight. Stocking Oct, mainly Outpost Station. When there was a raid in our space or we had some pilots in difficulty, everything was dropped for battle stations. We flew in the early days mainly Scout wings. Nix were missile magnets until after the closure of the EU server. But it was possible to get 6 reasonable pilots in Scouts and dominate 6 good enemy pilots. Nix on Phoon/Tensy would have been a slaughter unless all the Nix pilots were very good. Later, it was Rangers until the introduction of POS when those tactics were nearly destroyed over night.
P: Hmm, ties up with my memory of the Nix being a drag to fly, rather heavy and not very fun... I liked the Peregrine a lot better back then! Can you tell me a bit what was peak OV like?
A: Peak pilots-wise, way over 20, possibly on nights more like 40 when things were nuts.
P: Did you have some notable rival squads/nemesis ?
A: The usual factional Sol and Quant squads. Quantars Sword on EU, Brotherhood on US a bit later. So many. Early on The Black Hand, TDP, SDLC. Nazgul during the arty years. Too many to think of or mention. Nemesis to me were the POD'ing pirates. Couldn’t stand ‘em. I'm not a fan of bullies. I only started PvP as I got fed up being abused/civ ripped/harassed by them.
P: Haha, I think maybe one reason I quit JG the first time was because I wanted to mission in Aman space, but there were always people camping at Stith or Diluted Reaches and there was no way to get a trading ship past them. Only scouts or really fast ships. They'd scout you from Dark Gateway and have someone waiting at a gate.
A: Yup. To be fair, I used to sit in the hollow roid in Stith and wait for victims to try and get through unreg… I spent many Saturday afternoons in that roid.
P: So OV organized some pirate hunting under your lead?
A: We used to in general go on patrol round space with 2 wings of Nix and a couple of scouts. We agressively furthered Octavian interest all over space 😉 If that happened to be Pirates who were being a pain in Oct, then so be it. Most of the time we had an understanding with some of the pirate squads: do not target Octs. A lot of the time we had the numbers to effectively shut them down for evenings.
P: We talked about enemies... Did you partner up with other squads, had any faithful allies outside OV itself?
A: Octa Armada, Octa Dragons would have been our main allies. We had Non-Aggression Pacts with a lot of squads that would help us with equipment if we encouraged other squads to leave them alone. In US server it followed the same trend.
P: So what happened with the founders and how did the OV lead fall on you?
A: I have always ran OV since Fellblade left. Fellblade was the guy we all looked to and got excited when he logged on, as “shit is about to get better” was the feeling. A couple of years into retail, Fellblade sadly retired. Worst night in any online game I have played when he told us on comms he wasn't going to play anymore. Over the next couple of months, the "Old OV" slowly stopped playing. By this stage I was a wing leader and was leading OV in battle for a couple of months before they left. OV got very quiet for about 8-12 months with only a few logging in. I would mainly tag along with other Octs. I spent 1000's of hours in the sim and playing in the US server with various squads.
An old OV called Jimac started appearing more then. We just started picking pilots we liked the look of in the sim and who spoke well on F5:chat. We basically went from 3 daily active to about 20+. But now I had dedicated traders and not all PvP'ed.
P: So that was after the Ep2 release, some time mid 2003 or a bit later maybe - not sure when Ep2 hit EU. OV made a move to US at some point, was it before EU closed down?
A: Yes. I played on both servers for years since shortly after Fell stopped. I continued to do so when OV got busy again, but more so when it was very late and I wasn't needed on EU. When Mighty Games closed, they tranferred all our account data to US and my US Algore account was wiped and replaced with original EU Algore. We in my opinion immediately became the dominant squad on US server, as I had a fully trained battle-ready squad good to go.
P: Did you work that transfer out with the GMs?
A: Mighty Games arranged it all with NetDevil for us. It was very smooth. I had reset my US account a few times to different factions so I was more concerned about my EU stats. They did it for all players, not just OV 🙂
P: I wonder, as perhaps THE major squad in the game, what was your relation with GMs? Any noteworthy interactions there?
A: OV had a few GM's through the years and quite a few OP's (Game Operative, like a GM with less powers, someone who flies a sent). I always resisted as I felt it would take away from me running the squad. I wanted to dedicate my time to my guys. Eventually I succumbed and joined the US test server. If I recall correctly, Istvan [Ed: NetDevil developer Steve Hartmeyer] was recoding how missiles worked and an unexpected by-product was the Nix hit box being fixed finally. I never got get to fly a TRI Enforcer though 😦 For the most part with regards to role-playing, that was up to other guys. I would be contacted with ideas to see if OV would support whichever cause. OV were the muscle.
P: Right, so OV took up a role, and the community managers were keen to work with you to play that role in the story stuff they were coming up with 🙂
A: They had to work with everyone or nothing would work, hehe.
P: My next question would be about the OV community outside Jumpgate. Did you guys try to branch out and explore other games? What was the community like in real life, did you have organized meetups?
A: We had loads of meetups over the years. The first one was in Amsterdam around 2003ish. Pilots from all squads went from various countries. About 30 of us. I went to Fellblade's wedding, to Wyx’, and to Chutes’ also, another Old OV. I stayed at Morats’ house for a couple of weeks, and as mentioned before in Lisbon with Sinupe. My VW engine blew up and I had to get a new one shipped from Madrid.
P: Wouldn't have happened with an OPL engine, that's for sure! 😄
A: It was over 30 years old even then 😛 We were a very tight group. They played pretty much every game that came out after they stopped playing JG. I played some with them also. Mainly Modern Warfare-type games as that was my thing in the 2000's. I was too busy with OV in JG to play many other games. It took up a lot of my time with the constant flow of F4's when i logged in. People complaining to me about what someone did when I was offline, like they were my kids or something.
P: Gotta have some drama 😄Any memorable characters, people who we haven't mentioned yet, perhaps, but there were fun stories with?
A: In my opinion, I had the best group of Nix pilots the game has ever seen. We could all lead a wing, so if one went down another could call targets. I always thought the oddest tactic the enemy had was trying to take me out first, like we would crumble. I was, again, in my opinion, one of the best evasive Nix pilots. All the enemy would do was use up resources trying to get me and weaken themselves.
We had a funny group of individuals. -Gimli- flew a craptor and was mad as a hatter. We would just send him into battle first to ff-whore and go nuts; Nicator (EU)/Zaltys (US) was the best player I have seen play the game, an expert in all factions; my trusted lieutenant, Magnus-ex, would be doing what I was doing in PvP without us even talking on comms. We spent hundreds of hours training in the sim, but he is the closest any of my guys got to flying the way I did. Our collective styles made us gel, ultimately.
P: How did you change, personally, through running OV?
A: I didn't get it until some years after Fell left. He made things "better" when he logged on. If we were getting our asses handed to us, he brought hope and optimism. Things were about to get better when his name popped up on F5:eng or whatever. I inherited OV, then reshaped it. I ended up being that guy that logged on and made things "better". I'm immensley proud of what we achieved. I've made so many friends and know together we have all given each other an incredible amout of fun and happiness. In some ways I think I am still here years later as I didn't want anyone else to experience the sadness of their leader leaving.
P: I've asked you all the questions I'd written down and then some, but if there are questions I didn't ask but you wish I had, you can tell me 🙂
A: I used to play online games with a friend from years back. He told me about a game in early testing called JG. He said it was like Elite - check. He said you fly your own ship yourself - check. He said you can trade with stations, same as Elite, and upgrade equipment/ships - check. There is both AI AND real players flying the ships, so you interact with both - check. You can fight with both and trade with both - check. Eventually you will be able to own your own station and do all the above from there - check. Jumpgate is one of the few things in my life that was never mis-sold to me. I find that ironic. It delivered in all aspects.
The Octavian Vanguard traces its beginnings to the very start of Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative, in 2001. As stalwart defenders of the Octavian Empire, we struck fear into our enemies, and inspired admiration in our allies. Those who struggled in vain against the obvious superiority of the red empire did not always like us, but they respected us. For years we have fought with honour, bravery, discipline, and skill; above all though we enjoyed the fight. Most of our founding members remain with us to this day, and we continue to uphold the ideals of the Empire.
source: octavianvanguard.net