I got AvP Gold Edition in 2000. I thought the box looked wicked cool and I had seen the trailer in the VHS version of Alien: Resurrection. I liked the franchise so much that I also bought four posters to go along with it. I popped in the disc, installed it, and played it. Though sections were frustratingly difficult or frightening, I loved the game. It looked realistic (to me), had great lighting, funny yet strangely competent AI, great level design, very fluid controls, and great weapon diversity and abilities for the different species. I thought it was a great game. I never played it on multiplayer because I didn't have an MPlayer or GameSpy account and I wasn't big into multipalyer games anyway. I found them too competitive and ego-driven. Though I did explore the multiplayer maps on my own, it wasn't until much later that I played with others online.
Now, periodically from 2001-2010, I would return to the game. I knew most of the alien and predator levels pretty much inside and out, and I enjoyed popping the game back in every once in a while for some good old fashioned fun. At a certain point, I began to feel that I had missed out on the game's glory days, and I regretted not being a part of it. After 2010, I was unable to play the game because of the graphical issues. I was only able to play it on an old 2004 Dell computer that still used Windows XP.
In 2013, I had the random inclination to search Aliens versus Predator on Steam. I may have been looking for the 2010 version, I'm not sure. However, much to my surprise, features from the old game showed up when I clicked the trailer for AvP Classic 2000. I knew I had to have it, and that was the point when I bought it. My purchase history lists it as the first game I bought on Steam on November 5, 2013.
At first I was excited to revisit AvP, not having been able to play it since before college. I did play a bit of single-player but I was entranced with the option of playing multiplayer. One day, I tried out the multiplayer, and I vividly remember my first game. I joined a TEST-SESH Stranded coop game that had maybe 4 or 5 people in it already. In 2013, this wasn't inconceivable. I joined as a predator. I remember switching to thermal vision, getting out my speargun, and shooting a marine in the head with it, pinning his head to the wall. I was so giddy with glee that I exited the server to change my Steam name to one that I had used for over a decade: Olde.
For a couple months, I set up and joined multiplayer servers. One notable one, Brood Wars, had the infamous BROOD-Malice playing. At that point she kicked my ass so far it came out my mouth. I considered her a shark and mostly stayed away. Two of the best early matches that I remember were: 1) a mass-DM where I played as a predator spamming the disc against another disc spamming predator in Nostromo, it was hilarious just to see who could get the kill first; and 2) an ATAG in Nostromo where everyone agreed to not use the alien tail. Since we were all pretty low skill level, this made things interesting and actually gave the possibility of the alien dying to a single marine, let alone a group.
Unfortunately, the only players I could add were uncommitted players. My friends list stayed at about 25, filled with random names of people who very occasionally played the game's multiplayer. I eventually found the custom maps through a post by [GMS] K4M4KURU5, linking to the maps. I explored them and thought they were cool. I remember playing with one player with whom I never spoke again, in spite of him walking me through getting the B-maps (basically campaign maps turned up in difficulty 1000%) and us playing through them. A bit later, I added Bloodmind90x. Thankfully, he wanted to play quite a fair bit and test out the SADAR and other explosives on the B-maps. We had a rip-roaring good time playing through a lot of the levels. Another player I played a lot with was Joauro. Once I had gotten a bit more experienced, he was a great match for me because he was slightly better than I was, his reaction time was very fast, and his movements were unpredictable to me. Still to this day, one of the best matches I ever had was this early match with him in Office; I'll never forget how fun it was to go AvA in that map.
At one point, I saw one player using the 'slingshot' alien move. I was too inexperienced to know what this was, but it clearly looked like an in-game trick and I wanted to know more. Flash-forward to when I meet Grzegorz and Newt 2.0. Newt saw me play as an alien in Subway (at this point I had played a few times as an alien there) and said I wasn't a bad alien. Clearly better than I was, I thanked him and asked him to show me how to use the moves that I saw the other player use. He showed me and I stayed up until 4 AM learning and practicing. Grzegorz was present in the game, simply watching.
Newt and I had many discussions on our own. At one point, he mentioned that it was lamentable that no one made a commentary for AvP Classic, they only showed gameplay videos. I said that I might not have the best equipment or voice, but I'd be willing to try it. He helpfully walked me through getting a video recorder and how to get it to save, encode correctly, edit, and upload to YouTube. Thus my first videos were created. The problem with those old videos is that I used the Sony Vegas brightness boosting aspect, which made the game look like shit. I also encoded using the Lagerith Lossless codec, which Newt recommended (and may in fact be better) but it made a single minute of video take up 4 GB of space, making it take an enormously long amount of time to encode and upload. I later moved to the much quicker x264 codec.
At some point, probably around March or April of 2014, Newt, Grzegorz, and I came up with the idea to have a tournament. I always wanted to be in one or see one, and I thought it would be cool to host one, or see if it was possible. We all agreed and Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000 Tournaments was born. Around this time, I met and became friends with CK4MajorPayne, Ernix, and White Panther. In any case, we discussed how it would be possible to do and we decided to set up a demo tournament in July. This is the July AVPCT Tournament referred to. It only had 8 players, all friends. I ended up being the winner of the tournament. Some of the matches are recorded. We also created a Steam page and even an external site (with forums) dedicated to AVPCT.
Between August and September, we hosted an extremely long league-based tournament for the grand prize of Alien: Isolation. The last week, which took place in October, was a bracket-system KOTH among the highest eight players. The final match was BROOD-Skorpion against PREDMAN, with Skorp winning. After the tournament took place, Ernix came to me with a suggestion for a Halloween tournament, which I agreed to co-host with him.
After the Halloween tournament, there was buzz surrounding the release of AvP Classic 2000 on GoG. I like to think I played some kind of role helping players get accustomed to the game or teaching them how to play. I made five tutorial videos for GoG players.
Because of the increased player base for the game, I soon after had the idea of creating a kind of archive for AvP materials. I created three archives: one for maps, one for skins, and one for sound mods. It took a surprising amount of work (and revisions), and it occupied my time from December 2014 to March 2015 or so. At that time, BROOD-Malice came to AVPCT to suggest a new tournament idea, which she offered to host. Around this same period, Lestat, the most respected and feared alien player in the entire game, had recently returned. We held the Palace of Malice Tournament for four weeks (three days per week would see games), and it became the best-recorded AvP tournament ever held. Most matches were recorded and are uploaded. Lestat won, with BROOD-Skorpion in second place and BROOD-Malice behind him.
After the Palace of Malice, I was busy with personal things. During this time, Newt and I made a cooperative commentary on Alien: Isolation. In July, we set up for the biggest tournament we'd ever hold. The grand prize would be a $100 Steam card with the second-place prize being a $50 Steam card. Newt made a fantastic trailer for it that really took the game engine to heights it had never before seen. Unfortunately, at a certain point, we had a falling out and the tournament ended up being a complete bust. After that I was disillusioned with playing the game for a while.
Then one day, in September most likely, I ran into a fellow named UberFoX on a multiplayer server. He talked of things like breaking the game, massively re-writing its coding, and releasing trainers. Upon talking to him further in private, I tried to convince him that creating a rebalancing mod would not only be much more successful and important, but also more difficult. He accepted the challenge and he and I joined forces to create a massive rebalancing and update mod, which we called uMod. We worked on this mod for months, testing it out on our own or with whomever we could get to try it. We never finished it, as we would need the source code to do what we really wanted to do, but eventually we determined that it was in an acceptable enough condition to create a final release.
Grzegorz and I eventually determined that it would be best for us and the AVPCT group if we didn't host tournaments for a while, though leaving it open to the public. At around this time (the end of 2015), I found Dragons Kin, a great L4D2 player who loved to play custom campaigns and who was very knowledgeable about L4D2. He was even working on his own campaign. MandatoryAlcatraz, another AvP player, joined us on our adventures, too. We all eventually started playing custom campaign after custom campaign together, so much so that I created a massive guide and an even larger review page dedicated to them. This took up a lot of my time and took me away from AvP for a while. I later went back to add a lot of content to the Universal Packs. I've never said I've been done with AvP, and I love playing the game still (even competitively). It doesn't take up all my time anymore, though I still enjoy going through archives to see what others have written, screenshotted, and done with the game. I can't say what the future holds. All I can control is what I do, and that so far has been trying to preserve this game as best as I can so new players and people after me can enjoy the best that this game has to offer.