Nig was the original leader, and from what I remember he founded ve as well.
Nig was a solid team leader and an overall great guy. He was the sort of level headed, no-nonsense, quiet type. I think this was mostly attributable to the fact that he was in his late 20's or early 30's at the time so he wasn't the typical pre-pubescent, shit talking, living in mother's basement nerdy teenager (though I can't say for fact that Nig
didn't live in this mother's basement
.)
Poopship, from what I recall, was Nig's friend in real life, and also was a great, funny guy. Great, great player as well. Poopship and Nig would come on to vent, or teamspeak or whatever we used back then and we'd play during late nights plastered as all hell and we'd have drunken conversations together, talking random shit and having a good time.
Tkz was also an original member. Liked to talk a lot, but backed his talking with skill. Again, funny guy but his personality could get a bit abrasive at times. I think he eventually took over as the leader of ve, but I was already transitioning out of the game when that was happening. My best memory of tkz is playing these ridiculous pub sessions on Anzio where both of us would just kar **** and our scores would literally be like 82-6 and 79-3 respectively, without exaggeration. This was in the day when the kar was so beastly, and of course it was some random pub, but I remember thinking, "we aren't too bad at this game are we? "
Bsoul was probably my best mate on the team. We used to call him Halfrican for being, well, half African. I think he was our first MG player, and a hell of player too. I don't think he stuck around too long but a great guy.
Dune was a young Canadian kid who was a good, technical player. On his day he could carry the team with the light rifle.
Escher was part of the team for a bit and also a great guy. To speak completely objectively, his dod skills probably fell short of ve's standard, however he was such an instrumental member of the dod community, particularly with the creation of 1911, and I could argue that he had as much to do with ve's rise in popularity in the community as ve's overall skill level did.
Some of the teams we respected at the time were |101st|, Nt-, |NUDE|. For whatever reason I don't recall hb- being that dominant at the time, maybe they became more dominant after I left the game. And apparently there have been great teams since like x6, but obviously I cannot speak for them.
I'm glad to see that the dod community is still alive and well. Since quitting the game I've gone on to college, and am now attending law school. However I try to sneak dod sessions in here and there.
Good times.
