Intro from Rawrplus:Hello guys and girls.
History is something Ambrosia has always been proud of, we have worked hard to become what we are and use the name of Ambrosia with pride. But have you ever wondered how did we become what we are today? Well, you can find out here
In this topic we will go over the entire history of Ambrosia Community. We hope you will enjoy this article, we have went really in-depth with it and I'm sure even those, who think they knew everything about Ambrosia will find a lot of new stuff here, I can say for sure. Just to state, I found myself shocked with all the information found in here after reading them altogether.
Before we'll begin I'd like to give a huge shout-out to *PL* for gathering all sorts of information and writing the original concept of this topic. It took more time than you can imagine for him to gather it and write the structure and for me to re-write it into shape it is right now, word by word following his template. We hope you will enjoy reading these chronicles least as much, as we've enjoyed writing them.
Have fun reading!
Rising from Ashes
Many years ago a mod for Half-Life, Counter-strike has become a widely played phenomenon in a blink of an eye. Many gamers have picked up on it fast, many friendships were born and numerous friendships evolving into first clans - group of friends playing together. The clans have quickly began to grow, evolving into communities.
The same faith met a small community named "Ambrosia Realm". It only had two servers at that time, still it was a huge success being one of the early successful communities in Counterstrike history. This project was created by Rimbo and Jizo. But being formed really quickly with very little organisation it meant trouble. Jizo came into conflict with Rimbo, refusing to pay the bill for servers and the community has closed.
For a little while Ambrosia was dead, but it's worth noting that many players stayed around in two clans - AK (Leaders: Moskito, Nemesis) and CK (Leaders: byob, Matrixakos), with these two clans supporting each other. These relationship although healthy and functional didn't last too long with CK departing. AK was dying, in sheer need of sponsor, they decided to join organisation called Uniclans (lead by huge clan named WAV). Uniclans was basically a comnmunity, where many small clans could play on their servers and make it their home. The entire project sounded weird, as basically small clans were on the same server as the clan providing it. Basically it was a cheap alternative for smaller clans to have "their server" without paying for it. This has however caused a lot of disappointment and protests, with inner AK clan structures but also Uniclans community issues. Both Uniclans and AK closed after this.
The baby was born
Even though the events in the past were definitely important elements for the history of our community, they often aren't considered to be the beginning of Ambrosia. If you asked anybody on the forums, how did Ambrosia start, they would say - from S*N.
The past gave us something to build on, but the following times are considered to be the true beginning of Ambrosia.
Shortly after fall of Uniclans and AK, Rimbo the former leader of Ambrosia Realm has decided to try to make his own community once again. This time around, he has chosen his partner a lot more wisely, good friend of his - Medo. They formed a new community-clan named [S*N]. They took advantage of Uniclans shut-down, inviting all members into S*N. They however learned from mistakes of Uniclans and settled a strong hierarchy, even though other clans were welcome, in order if you wanted to mean something, you had to be part of the S*N clan. This somewhat of a compromise has had a huge success and attracted numerous players by time. It was a very successful community but in early years of 2010 it had closed. Nobody knew why, rumors claim some arguments between high staff and servers not being paid but nobody knows if it's true or a hoax. Either way, it meant end for S*N
Servers were down for 2 weeks, everybody thought Ambrosia is dead. But then out of nowhere, three friends - Shark, Piranchas and Alfred have decided to buy the sinking ship and to revive it's glory. They have decided, that even though the system S*N ran was good, it still had it's flaws. Therefore they have decided to run it like a community. After the server revival a new guy has joined the "Owner team" - Raven. He has worked on getting the community forums (with success)
Many people from S*N have decided to give Ambrosia a shot. Some well known players were - Shark, Piranchas, Alfred, Raven, ST. George, Ezza, Johnnie Rambo (RAMBATEN), Rawrplus, Arne, ST.George, Burzum, Ralphy, Megachicken, Killerftw, Meso(ResoBuilders one) Redshift, Sergio, Duffman just to name a few.
It wasn't a surprise that with many people from S*N and other communities joining and Counterstrike being in it's prime days, the community has began to grow. After month of it's existence the first-time ever Highstaff roster team has been formed, before there were just known players managing the servers, everything was run by volunteers. Well, the staff team with newly introduced positions looked like this -
Emperors - Shark, Piranchas, Alfred, Raven (inactive)
CS Leader - Ezza
UC - Arne, JohNnie Rambo
Forum Moderator - Rawrplus
HA - Ralphy (JB), Megachicken (BB), ST. George (DD2)
At that time Raven was relatively unknown because he unfortunately suffered some major injuries in a car crash, leaving him unable to play for quite a while. The fact what really happened to him was kept away from public for almost a year, untill he came back.
Even though Ambrosia was undergoing some changes they were rather small. Some people joined (Popay, Shane, Ren0k, smit, Sight(Deniz)), some people left (megachicken, Ralphy). They however didn't influence Ambrosia all that much. Probably only notable one was Alfred leaving to his own created community - wTB. He has left in friendly terms so there wasn't too much drama involved with exception with a bit of friendly and healthy competition.
Ambrosia was going smooth for 2 years. 2 amazing years without any complications, just people having fun on servers.
The high-staff roster looked like this:
Emperors - Shark, Piranchas, Ezza, Raven (inactive)
CS Leader - Arne, EkO
UC - Shane, ST. George, JohNnie Rambo
Forum Moderator - Rawrplus
HA - Mcain (JB), Altamos (DD2), Rawrplus & Daniel (BB), RedSnake (DM), Taz (Public)
Nothing comes easy
After 2 years of almost perfect going it came to a point where things got incredibly frustrating. This is what few long-time members had to say about it:
Yeah, these were probably the toughest times in our history so far. So much unnecessary drama, hacker attacks and what many people don't realise is the fact the financial crysis made it a lot more tough to run a community
The hardest times for ambrosian member for sure
I guess that speaks for itself, these times really weren't good. There was a lot of drama in Ambrosia.
First of all, argument between Arne and EkO has lead into EkO leaving the community. Whilst this change hasn't affected the community too much, it putted morale down a little. Shortly afterwards JohNnie Rambo has quit because of personal issues.
New staff members were picked in chaos to cover missing position, leading new staff team to be extremely unstable and not in best relationship. Shane was picked as a new UC, He was known for his strict manners and no-apologies policy. Even though the decision taken were 100% fair wthout any arguments about it, he got a bad reputation in the community for being who he is. Shortly, Oliver (Resnake) following him as next UC addition. Then it all started to fall apart. There was a fight between Oliver and Shane, with Shane stripping away UC rights Oliver had. Ambrosia community has basically divided into two camps. One saying he's alright and second one "wanting his head" - wanting him to be demoted as UC. With the Shane hate-train growing larger and larger, Shane has decided to step down as UC. This has however meant a huge hole in Ambrosia staff team again, proving rushing staff position assignments was and never will be a good idea.
There were some minor changes as well, as new Head Admins being assigned, some even being swapped for not being capable of managing the server, but after-all they weren't so important, that it influenced Ambrosia in too big way. The official staff team has been stabilized with finally after a long while friendly atmosphere and everybody willing to work and improve the community once again. It has looked like this:
Emperors - Shark, Piranchas, Ezza, Arne, Raven (will become active in near future)
CS Leader - The rank has been closed, so it wasn't existent anymore.
UC - Rawrplus, ST. George
Forum Moderator - Stevko
HA - Same as last time, with these exceptions - Smit (DR), Kellys eye (DD2)
Talking about staff team issues, there was one more problem.Sadly enough, the staff team was in perfect balance, yet we had to get new staff members whether we really wanted or not due to financial crysis As you may know, Greece was hit the hardest - where were our only "investors" living. That meant Shark and Piranchas were unable to pay the community bills. New rank was created - Ambrosia Partner.
This rank was given out to members who were loving the community and were willing to help it out. First it was Hotman. He has invested in Ambrosia, with Shark and Piranchas being friends of his. Sadly this has turned out to be one of worst functional staff additions in Ambrosia History. This has caused a lot of drama. Hotman has done some immature decisions leading into the staff team actually rioting and protesting against having him in staff team. After some tough time, Piranchas and Shark have decided to let their friend go and find a new partner, who turned out to be AliNorway. AliNorway hasn't sticked around for too long though, as he found himself in the same situation as Shane did - he was strict and community not sympathizing with him lead him to leave. Though Ambrosia has some sort of income with advertisements and from our loving members donating, keeping us alive <3
The biggest issue were the hackers attacks. We have never faced them before and it completely shocked us. We were nr.1 in the UK for solid 2 years and then some ddos attacks and bam we have dropped in rankings. Also there were numerous forum security leaks which has caused a lot of issues, probobly the most famous one was the "ambrosia black week" where entire servers and forums were down and hacked, because Piranchases FTP has been entered through phishing deleting everything we had in database and removing rights of all the staff members.
This was a terrible issue, in rough times the caring founding father came. Alfred came to help us out and with co-work with ambrosia members, we managed to sort these issues out for now. Even though many members were wishing him to stay, he has decided to carry on with his own community - wTB.
Armoured Ambrosia Fortress
Luckily for us, series of fortunate coincidences has happened. Raven has fully recovered from the accident, joining the forces of Ambrosia, revitalizing our staff team after we've been demoralized of all the hard-work that was ruined by hacker attacks.
These times are considered to be the security-preparation phase of Ambrosia. We have acquired two new staff members that had huge experience in computer tech (Renan and Sigh(Deniz)). Even though a nice lad - ST. George has departed due to lack of interest, we were doing great and rising in numbers again with newly secured forums and servers.
The staff team was following
Emperors - Raven, Shark, Piranchas, Ezza, Arne
UC - Rawrplus, Renan
Server Manager - Sight (Deniz)
Forum Moderator - Stevko
HA - same
Basically we were stacking up all sorts of protection from hacker attacks we could get and believe it or not, they actually were effective. Even though atmosphere wasn't too good, but that was mainly because each high-staff was expecting an virtual attack every moment so it was really hard to feel calm and have friendly chats with your mates.
These are times, which I like to consider the age of Ambrosia growing up. It's no longer a hobby, we have matured up and realise we need to run this like a serious business if we want to succeed
But despite all the obscurity, it actually felt relieving that least for a moment we were secured and able to play and chill. It's better to be scared than to be solving already happened hacker attack - This was the mentality of many staff members that have taken part on securing Ambrosia
Ambrosia Laboratory
In the late months of 2012 there were a lot of experiments going on. The drama, crysis and hacker attacks have returned. But now, we were a lot better prepared. Apart from botnet ddos which caused server to lag or rarely crash they weren't capable of touching Ambrosia. The drama was mainly due to the fact, that Ambrosia has grown a lot by the years and we needed more staff members in a hurry again to cover the needs of quickly rising numbers of community members. This has lead into many experiments and temporary staff positions with some of them being successful and some rather not.
But there was one thing that nobody could expect. Ambrosia's existence was in a question once again. Financial crysis has returned even in stronger fashion, leaving Piranchas in debts. He was forced to leave Ambrosia. Shocking news, Ambrosia was about to close and nobody could do anything about it... And then out of nowhere, relatively unknown member - Casper has decided to help us out and buy Ambrosia. He has basically bought the project that would have closed without his help. In these times everybody was working as hard as they could and the collective spirit was back at the full effect. Everybody in staff team who knew each other for a long time were backing each other up.
Huge role of this phase played the community merging. Ambrosia Community has bought the long-time rival servers - wTB after Alfred lost interest in his project. First what was intended to be a stand-alone community was quickly re-designed to be part of Ambrosia, which was a reasonable decision because splitting members of communities would just cause chaos and no organisation. So wTB was postponed and merged into Ambrosia. Another merge was with community named CSA but it wasn't as influential, because it was already dying so only small portion of members was transported to Ambrosia Community
As the chapter title suggests, we were experiencing a lot with new staff positions. There was a lot of mess in them and there are many names missing, just because there were so many changes nobody was able to memorize them, but this is what if somewhat looked like after all the changes :
Emperor - Casper, Shark, Ezza, Arne, Raven
UC - Rawrplus, sMiT, Stevko, Kellys Eye, spekbinder,, Daniel
Forum Moderator - Sami (Edgars), Replica (*PL*)
HA - Roni (JB), Cersei (DD2), Vegeta (DM), damage-.-(Public), Ren0k (ZM), Monster (JB), Pim (Surf), Wheezy (BB)
The times have carried on. Few changes have happened, such as Replica and Deniz leaving and some HA changes but after all, it was once again the great collective everybody loved to work in. The times were good again and we have managed to keep the community running solidly for some months again.
But in early months of 2013 things started to complicate.
Servers were starting to drop on popularity because they weren't maintained enough and many staff members got into somewhat of a lazy standard. Not to mention a lot of members were leaving to a newly formed community by Roni, Header and the mysterious-man Piranchas, who got himself some money again as crysis has finally ended. The newly formed rivals were called Demolition.
With servers yawning empty and players leaving there had to be some actions taken.
Restart Button
The project which was biggest collective-work of highstaff team has been ever presented to public.
Many staff members were demoted, many servers closed. What Ambrosia did, was basically a fresh community restart. Whilst many members stayed the same they entire thinking behind the community has changed. Some new additions to staff team were as well necessary.
Arne has left the emperor team, Stevko has some IRL issues and has been marked as inactive and temporary suspended untill he comes back, new rank create - Community Leader that basically does everything an Emperor does with only one difference - Emperor has ability to postpone decision of Community Leader, rest is same. New UCs being announced - eg. Daniel, Ren0k and another new rank introduced - Ast. Headadmin that helps the HA to keep the server top-notch
The staff team has looked like this
Emperors - Casper, Shark, Ezza, Raven
Community Leader - Rawrplus, Kellys Eye, spekbinder
UC - Ren0k, Daniel, Smit
Forum Moderators - Sami, theEnd, Alberto
HA - Burzum (Public), Nip(DD2), Konvict(DM)
Ast. HA - Redshift (Public), DrDrake (BB), Grmbl (DD2), Yuva(DM)
The New Era of Ambrosia has been a huge success, quikcly picking up new visitors and getting old ones back.
Ambrosia has focused rather on their "original servers" than expanding to newer games. Quality of quantity is the way to go, once done with servers being stable, we can expand. This way Ambrosia is guaranteed to have strong ground to stand on whilst focusing on other games.
With Ambrosia being once again the strong reliable great community it once was, it was no surprise it quickly started to grow. By some time, Demolition due to many members leaving to Ambrosia and few internal issues have decided to close the gates and let Ambrosia take over.
The newly formed staff team looks like this:
Emperors - Casper, Shark, Ezza, Raven
Community Leader - Rawrplus, Kellys Eye, spekbinder
UCs - Daniel, Ren0k, Header
Forum Moderators - Sami (Edgars), theEnd, Firroth, Card Clasher
HA - same
Ast. HA - Rubix (Surf), Ray (JB)
Well and that's who we are. We are Ambrosia. What lies ahead of us? Who knows, maybe the times will be great, maybe it will be rough, but there's one thing I can say for sure, we will do our best to make us write least 10 more chapters of our history page, let's have some couple more years of fun, shall we? Long live Ambrosia!
Topic: AMBROSIA HISTORY - From the start until 2013 (Read 1446 times)