John Simpson
23/m/santa barbara
ONLINE THUNDER

Tell us about yourself, how did you get started playing DoD?

Like most people, I found DoD through CS, and the whole Half-Life mod craze that was happening in the early 2000′s. I heartily prone sniped caen/caen2 pubs in the early versions, got bored, left, and eventually ended up playing again at the end of version 3. When retail hit, I derp’d my 14 year old self over to the official DoD forums and came across a clan called All Canadian Regiment, which then transformed into Canadian Club. It was a fun group of guys, and I was still learning the ropes but improving rapidly (I mean, for the love of Space Daddy, you just point and click). We played STA-Gold and CAL-O, and I remember we had particular rivalries with Victory Party (on which Airnick played), sAs (the Marko brothers, who were absolutely awful back then), and the long-lived 38thIP.

Cont… also, what are some of your more memorable moments in your DoD career?

After a while it was time for a change, and I joined 38thIP, which was in CAL-m at the time. After some roster shuffling, we assembled a pretty reasonable team, which was myself, SpIdEr, GuyLeDouche, willeh, cableguy, Jason Brittain, and intelli. Despite some fun and some minor success, it wasn’t a team that could compete with that era of upper CAL-M, which was sporting some formidable teams such as, if my memory serves, an early version of dicE, despise, Unreachable/Zero Kelvin, RBC, a very early Trademark, and Sex Inc.

Cableguy and I then broke off from 38thIP, and formed team risK with his highschool friends Patten and Wint0fresh of RBC. They had somehow associated themselves with some Swedes, in particular Antrax and APaX of zP! Gaming fame, and Patrik ‘Nuker’ Flodin, of blatantly-cheating fame. Saider, another Swede, third rifled for us. Our other two players were aliased as God knows what, but were in fact Beach and the infamous sniper Solid from CAL-i Fx, with Solid’s brother Liquid benching. It didn’t take long for a team with that much talent to start pissing people off, and we quickly became a hot topic, with a lot of heat being directed towards our sniper who was, in retrospect, absolutely blatantly cheating most of the time. Sure enough, we ended up getting nailed for aiding and abetting a banned player, and I think we served a one season suspension. Shortly after this, Beach was killed in a car accident, and we were all fairly shook up.

The next season we were back full force, acquiring long time cheater and failed baseball prospect Jared “Toxinator” “Curt” Mundy from Sex Inc, and joining up with sponsor Veracity. Despite the barrage of insults being thrown at our bottom-half attire and garand recoil, we put up an exceptional CAL-i season (http://www.gotfrag.com/dod/story/6232/), losing only one match to Check-Six, and finally being eliminated on Donner by a strong Gamewyze-esque team, eLephant. The next season was the one leading up to the major DoD CPL, and with neither Jared nor myself able to attend, we were replaced by Ghandi and the legendary Damon “Crouchtoe” Steele.

At this point, I briefly joined an incarnation of Unreachable/Zero Kelvin, who were an incredibly cool group of guys to just hang out with and play DoD. The team was something like Girkins, Smellypants, Scubadrew, Ellsworth/Wood, Toejam, KileN Teqila, Gary Bavarski (Jesus Power USA!) and I’m certainly missing some. I think we played in their CAL-i, but I really don’t remember.

Following the internet slang of the era, and embracing the criticisms of the greater DoD community, Jared and I formed Online Thunder the next CAL season. Initially, we had a lineup that was entirely full of cheaters, basically on purpose. We picked up Shaken from itf, Revolt, mIKE pIsTiLLi, Polak, taX, and clucH`. THUNDER took a team to a LAN held in Aurora, Ontario consisting of myself, cluch, shaken, nbdyfms, ReconBeaver, and tax. Although we did extremely well for most of the LAN, I struggled in the matches that really mattered vs. cBerry, and despite having a lot of fun, was left with a bit of a bitter taste. Upon returning to the online world, we gutted the team, joined up with a sponsor borderLine and came up with a potent lineup of Hudson, Toxinator, SpecOps of SKULL fame, Bull of 85th, Forzazz, a laggy Euro sniper, and Polak of despise, with an occasional appearance by Motiv or Nuker. We were steamrolling CAL-i, until SpecOps forgot to record one half during our shit-stomping of United 5 on chemille, and our season ended prematurely.

At this point I went off to undergrad, basically stopped playing DoD, and for some completely inexplicable reason, my memory starts to become poorer. I certainly was playing in the summers (in different incarnations of THUNDER, mostly spearheaded by Jared and Corey), but I can’t remember any details, except for the final Web2Zone LAN, after what I believe was my freshman year. We took a team of Hudson, Toxinator (!), Ryanemo, Polak, Specops, and Rebirth, and I finally felt as though I had proven naysayers wrong, especially after an extremely dominant Harrington victory over a coL-esque pug, containing some of the players who I fell on my face against in Aurora, and who had continually criticized myself, Jared, and our play for years. There are some great videos I took floating around from this LAN, and I had a fantastic time, so hopefully someone has them uploaded somewhere. Tidbit : we slept at Polaks house in Jersey overnight, with SpecOps and I sharing a room downstairs. In the middle of the night SpecOps got up, and went upstairs to sleep with Ryanemo on the couch. And that’s how we found ‘em in the morning – condom wrappers everywhere. Haha, oh boy, just kidding! There were no condoms – a barebackin’ good time was had.

What keeps you playing DoD today?

Only reason I’m still playing is the good people, and the fact that we all apparently have poor sleeping habits. Although lately, I’ve been enjoying the game itself more, so thats a plus. I think the fact that 1911 is again the community hub is very positive. I especially enjoy playing against team Winnfield, as they always offer good competition, good laughs, and the highly trollable Joey Harter.

Final Thoughts?

When I started playing this game, I was a moronic 14 year old, and now I’m doing my PhD in arguably the most complex subfield of engineering, on the boundaries of applied math. Therefore, Day of Defeat changes lives. Since it changes life paths, I have reason to suspect it can also change our ostensible physical reality. Ergo, Corey Marko will be granted real feet the day he quits DoD.