An old player

[MrHamsTR]

Hello dudes, I like all of you doesnt matter if I know you or not.
My name is Ozgur from Turkey, Trabzon. I was born in another city but I grow up in Trabzon.
I've been playing Soldat since 2005. Soldat is like the city that I grow up. Never belong it but never without it.
I remember the day lobby had over 200 servers with hundreds of players.
These days I had 8 servers too, were good days.
Now, I'm 21 and nothing is like old days.
After years over years with tons of fun we are a few now.
Hope that Soldat will keep itself alive.
Best regards.
Saint. Mr Hamstr

[jrgp]

I feel the same way. We had some damn good times.

[Akinaro]

In 2005 I first time went to Spain because of work, and every damn day exactly at 18:00 I was going to local Internet caf?(yes back then it was a thing when you didnt had your own internet) and after checking mail I was spending hour or two playing soldat, especially INF, when all other people around me where playing Counter-Strike...
It had to look hilarious when all people where playing CS like it was only thing they could do, and there was one guy in the middle playing some weird 2d game, that had maps looking like triangular vomitings of computer virus...

[jrgp]

In 2005 I first time went to Spain because of work, and every damn day exactly at 18:00 I was going to local Internet caf?(yes back then it was a thing when you didnt had your own internet) and after checking mail I was spending hour or two playing soldat, especially INF, when all other people around me where playing Counter-Strike...
It had to look hilarious when all people where playing CS like it was only thing they could do, and there was one guy in the middle playing some weird 2d game, that had maps looking like triangular vomitings of computer virus...

I did the same thing at a few lan parties. Everyone playing CS and I whipped out Soldat when I got sick of it.

But honestly, most of my nostalgia is about how active these forums were around that time. You'd make a thread, refresh every few seconds, and there would be a few new replies from different people. There was so much discussion going on. My family said several times "you're always on that blue site." I still am, but it's dead in comparison.

[machina]

My family said several times "you're always on that blue site."

That's hilarious

I visit these forums several times a day despite of fact I know there's most probably nothing new to read. I think the problem is also that we don't have a shit to talk about. I mean it's quite frequent that some stuff was already discussed here and there's not much to add. Soldat's development is slow so new features don't appear frequently enough to keep this place alive enough.

[jrgp]

Soldat's development is slow so new features don't appear frequently enough to keep this place alive enough.

That isn't new, especially during the time when EnEsCe was running the show.

I think a big difference is many of the "oldies" who were keeping this place active grew up.

We were all around the same age back then (11 to 20) and ten years later, we have full time jobs, relationships, and other responsibilities so the amount of free time which can be spent towards online video game communities is almost 0.

[MrHamsTR]

I think the problem is also that we don't have a shit to talk about.

No, it is not problem actually. It is about the age we was born.
We had to gather up and play together because these days we were child, there were not tablets, smartphones, superjet computers.
Even we had first computer in the location we used to live. There were many discussion to talk eachother, street ball and something like that.

The age we were born and lived is over. Now age is personally age. Everyone has their dreamland in their *ucking smartphone, not in streets..

And we, childs of the REAL days, grow up and now all of us have to do something to live because while we were playing, there were our family that look after us. And now, we are preparing to look after something or someone. Unfortunately, we can't go back to old candygardens where we lived.

Today, Soldat is unfamous 2d game, only the people who lived with this can come for its magical family. Some of them can't cause of life's reality. There is no more game.

Some of them are here as we talk now, just trying to keep this ghost dream alive and never going to give up. But I'm sure life will take us one by one from here as how it happens.

The only screen I barely remember from the day I met Soldat was Arena. I was trying to kill Boogieman.
And now Boogieman is my favorite game character and will be forever with his Chainsaw!

[Akinaro]

No, it is not problem actually. It is about the age we was born.
We had to gather up and play together because these days we were child, there were not tablets, smartphones, superjet computers.
Even we had first computer in the location we used to live. There were many discussion to talk eachother, street ball and something like that.

When I told one of my nephew that when I was his age(6-8) I was playing with my friends in woods pretending to be Aliens and Predators(it was few years after first AvP comic was released and Alien hype was still there), We where spend days in dad workshop creating those awesome weapons that predator had, and it was time when I first time get caught by Police because they though we where "poaching" -_-
And when I told him that, he was stunned that I was running around wet forest and spend days "pretending" to be some comic character...
And then he started texting with his girlfriend... F### 7 years old boy that spend his free time texting to his 6 years old girlfriend... And no one care, and when someone say go outside, its going to friend and playing CSGO or sitting in silence and texting to each other.



Overall my point is our generations had IMAGINATION, we didnt need realistic graphic and super equipment, all we need was bunch of friends, few sticks, and place to run around and have fun.

And even when I had my first own PC back in 90' All i had, was windows 95 and paint program, it took me few weeks before I got from friend literally 20-30 Floppy disks with some crappy games and apps. And when Internet came up... I still preferred to spend time with friends.

Soldat and other games(especially first DeltaForce... I still love that game...) was just a platform to meet those friends when I could not meet them in real life. It was perfect chat platform with something to do between talking.


So sadly, if you really care about Soldat(as most of people say) without evolution, new fancier graphic, bunch of addons like live/local statistics to fit new players, you can just leave Soldat alone as it is, and go somewhere else.

Without fresh blood, Soldat will be nothing more than old lady that once per month wear her old fancy dress and cry to mirror "how cool I was when I was younger..." and every week she will talk with old friends via phone,  about those old days.

[MrHamsTR]

Imagination and we need a few friends to have fun..
That is that the truth indeed.

[machina]

when I was his age(6-8) I was playing with my friends in woods pretending to be Aliens and Predators

Hah, I've been there! Not necessarily AvP but some other stuff like Jedi or plenty of universes we had created by ourselves.

Without fresh blood, Soldat will be nothing more than old lady that once per month wear her old fancy dress and cry to mirror "how cool I was when I was younger..." and every week she will talk with old friends via phone,  about those old days.

Ah, you talk as if Soldat had 15 years! But if this was true we would have 2017 right now which is... Wait... What year it is?

[Foln]

Hello dudes, I like all of you doesnt matter if I know you or not.
My name is Ozgur from Turkey, Trabzon. I was born in another city but I grow up in Trabzon.
I've been playing Soldat since 2005. Soldat is like the city that I grow up. Never belong it but never without it.
I remember the day lobby had over 200 servers with hundreds of players.
These days I had 8 servers too, were good days.
Now, I'm 21 and nothing is like old days.
After years over years with tons of fun we are a few now.
Hope that Soldat will keep itself alive.
Best regards.
Saint. Mr Hamstr

I'm 24 now and started Soldat at around 2004 or 2005. Meaning i was around 12 years old.
If you are 21 now that'd mean you've been like 8-9 years old.

I mean, 12 is really young too, but 8 or 9. Damn you really started your career early.

Ah, you talk as if Soldat had 15 years! But if this was true we would have 2017 right now which is... Wait... What year it is?

Oh dear god please don't remind me it's been that long.
It still feels like it was yesterday when this community was more than alive and at its peak with all the leagues, modding and mapping.


Anyone remembers how back in the day this forum and the entire soldat.pl site would crash every time a new version was about to be released? MM used to give exact times when he'd upload the updated client. And well... He was never on time with that. Thus people did F5 the site and the forums so crazy it used to crash all the time. This forums had hundreds of users on it at these moments and the changelog threads were spammed so hard. How depressing it is to see it in its current dead status. :/


Not to mention that Soldat just had the perfect community size. It wasn't as enormous and anonymous as Counter Strike or something like that back in the days. But it also wasn't too small to find tons of populated public servers at any given time. It was just perfect. Everyone knew tons of people among the community because it was really personal and not too big. To this day I have not ever found another games community that was as awesome as Soldats community at its peak.

[DMASFNDNB]

I feel the same way. We had some damn good times.