eyo I said I might do one of these on minecraftbeast94’s thread and now I’ve got here it feels right to mark my time off in some way. Note this is personal to me. I wasn’t around for some things and yes I cared about ELO a lot. Most people do, whether or not they admit it. Sorry if I do get some details wrong though, this is all from memory so it might not be entirely accurate. With that being said, I figure I ought to introduce myself a bit better since I never actually have and nobody even knows my real age: I’m Shadow. I’m 19, from the UK and recently started my first year at university studying music. Over the period of July 2015 to October 2019 I’ve been the most consistently active player on OITC. I don’t know if anyone’s gonna actually care about this thread and I’ll probably look back on it and cringe but oh well here’s a thing I wrote: I don’t remember exactly when I started playing OITC. I joined Minecraft November 2014, version 1.8 on a new Dell PC that I shared with my younger brother for the first year or two until he bought a laptop for himself. I used that same PC up until about a month ago and still use the same keyboard and type of mouse. When I first joined J&H, I didn’t play OITC. I was more into spleef and only started playing OITC more often at some point in mid 2015. I was enjoying it but I was ok at best and never really had any intention of playing regularly. However, at some point along the line I thought it would be cool if I could get on a Minecraft leaderboard, and while I was originally thinking of spleef given that it was the only game I was considered at all decent at, I noticed one day that when OITC had updated it had got this new ELO system. 100th place was roughly 1500-1520 ELO and I checked my own and saw it was about 1350 already from the games I’d been playing casually. This was the moment I decided to play OITC for real. At first my only goal was being #100 which I eventually managed, but I was enjoying playing too much and kept wanting to get higher and higher. My goal went from #100 to #50, to #20, to top 10, to top 5. I started off making a few friends with others who weren’t very well known like weco and daveboy99 and soon developed some rivalries with other players at the top of the leaderboard – namely Duck, Eassen and Lone. Despite making it as far as I did, I wouldn’t have considered myself a great player back then. Like a lot of people, I abused the old spawnkill system, I was trash with a sword and while I fought the others for those top spots I was never really on their level. To put it into perspective, I remember losing 14-13 to a 12-year old Nix and thinking that I’d done well. However, I was having fun and without anything else to aim for I set upon an ultimate goal - to reach 2000 ELO. In my head I probably thought that I would improve for maybe several months until I was good enough to make it, even though realistically I should never have been able to get close for my skill level. I was not at all prepared for a reset. Now to be fair on me, while I did spawnkill at first, I was never an advocate for it and I did redeem myself. I don’t know if anyone else ever realised but for the first month of the 2016 OITC reset the ‘fixed’ spawns were actually ordered on a numerical pattern based on the old spawns. I picked up on it, notified the owners, gave proof of the new system and within a week they had fixed the spawn order to be fully random. Thanks to this I was now forced to improve for real if I wanted to make it up the leaderboard again and improve I did. I remember late 2016 as a pretty good time - I made new friends with those who returned/arrived with the reset like Da15y, Adem, MrMangoGoose, uvebeenkilled and found new rivals in returning, competitive players such as Jelly, Uno, Pickkle, Trevor, Kinghakaka, NeedMoreRamen and mdhall. I was having a good time, winning some games, losing some 1v1s, developing my playstyle of dodging and short distance bow. Pickkle even bought me VIP rank. I got some shit for having a playstyle that some people didn’t think required any skill but as I still couldn’t consistently beat most of the top players at a 1v1 anyway it felt fairly accurate. I do regret not integrating with the community a bit earlier. Though I played a lot, my private nature and staying completely anonymous meant I was never part of any skype/discord servers etc. Being a teenager, I did make some mistakes and say some dumb shit, even as a relatively calm person. I remember seeing Pickkle’s player model do the weirdest jerky movement while he moved naturally for 20 seconds one game. I asked privately whether it was hacks afterwards, he got angry and left. As far as I remember we haven’t spoken since. Anyway, after a while activity started declining, my improvement hit a wall and I lost motivation. I took a break and though I do remember being active when YFIOTR made his OITC update ideas thread, it was a couple of weeks after the 2017 update that I found out it had happened. When the update first dropped there was a lot of hype. Reset stats, reset boards, new ranks, new maps, cosmetics, game improvements like /votestart. With it came a wave of new and old players – LuckyBoyAidan, Fjodor_da_one, Junjou, MatiGames999, Booo_, LogosToLogic, Nathan44game, minecraftbeast94, Jamezu, UnluckyRIP, codeclimber, TheRealDoram. It felt kind of like a new era or at least that OITC had revived again. The top players raced to get Master rank, the newcomers climbed the board. I started abiding by my own unwritten rule to wait at 19 kills where possible to give a leaderboard player a chance at getting 2nd if they need to so they don’t lose ELO. It slightly countered the problem of people leaving so they don’t lose ELO and always felt good when it worked out and I’d helped someone. However, like always, the hype died and now that the pinnacle of achievement had been set at only 1700 ELO, a lot of the players who had been around in 2015-16 starting calling it quits. Activity still remained high for a while and, thanks to Boo, in late 2017 an invitational OITC tournament became the 2nd to ever finish. For the most part this was a fun experience but towards the end things started turning sour. The toxic mentality competition brings got increasingly worse. Every other time I won a 1v1 it was discredited as bowholding but missing every shot and winning every melée was seen as a strong play. This was never opinion this was just fact and any opposing views were entirely incorrect and it was frustrating. Bow-centric players got fed up and became inactive, melée-centric players got fed up and became inactive. The leaderboard competition became increasingly insignificant and progression became harder. I got first at some point but it didn’t feel like a huge achievement any more. Around this time J&H were adding new games and leaderboards to existing games to try and retain players. I thought that if the worst came to the worst I wanted to leave the server having made my mark and decided to aim for making it onto 5 different minigames’ leaderboards - OITC, Spleef, Sumo, Herobrine’s Chamber and PrisonMMO. I’d also made it on to Battle Royale which was dead if I needed a backup. I grinded for a couple of months, made it on Sumo and was closing in on HC before I had to break for A-levels summer holiday. As soon as I came back, Spleef and Sumo were removed. Soon after PrisonMMO was changed to Prison and reset. At about the same time both Boo and Mati tried running OITC tournaments, neither of which finished. The last conversation I had with Boo was about a conversation he’d just had with Mango on the future of OITC before Mango had left. By early 2019 Prison had reset again and at this point I had given up on making it to 5 leaderboards, only managing 3. I was one of the last left and truly didn’t think OITC would last another few months. I’d only seen one new player (WingerRage1044) join and stay active since 2018. Though I still played Minecraft I eventually joined the server less and less. Then Minecraft makes a comeback. People start returning and things are looking up for once. I still came on from time to time but after a while exams took over and immediately after those I went on a 3-week holiday with my family. I came back to find a surprisingly active OITC server thanks to a combination of summer and Minecraft’s resurgence. Several old players – Kai, Jelly, Aidan, Trevor, Adem, urcute, Jamezu were all back once again and there were even a couple of new people like Atslex and MrSidmanFu. Moreover, Kai had also become the 2nd (legit) player to break 2000 ELO. Feeling my motivation renewed, I began playing to improve again, this time with a year’s extra semi-active experience. I adopted a ‘lose to nobody’ mentality, i.e. that if I really wanted to be good enough to reach 2000 ELO, then excluding Kai I shouldn’t be coming 2nd to anyone else consistently unless I didn’t deserve my rank. Sure, I could’ve boosted or selectively played only people who could never beat me or abused some game mechanic or shifted in corners the whole game or whatever, but that wouldn’t have felt right. I was doing this for the achievement, not the number, and as such I wanted it to feel legit. For several weeks I trained hard, improving a lot but making no leaderboard progress. I’ll admit I wasn’t having as much fun at this point as I used to; if OITC died again that would probably be it for me. Then one day my mouse broke. Not the first time, my mouse was cheaper to replace than upgrade and I bought another to be delivered for a couple of days later. However, stopping playing would’ve backtracked a lot of the effort I’d put in, so I borrowed a spare mouse we had lying around. Considering the quality of my current mouse you can probably guess how good this mouse was, and so though I at least didn’t lose any progress in terms of improvement, I lost about 150 ELO in 2-3 days, dropping just below Master Rank. I kind of had a moment of realisation at this point. In roughly 2 and a half weeks I was going to be heading out to university. Not only that, but I was finally going to get a new PC, monitor and all that to take with me. If I didn’t make 2000 ELO now it was possible I never would. Ultimately, I decided to commit. I was taking it very serious during this time, I had a schedule and everything of how much ELO I needed each day taking factors of +/- per player per my current ELO into account. It went extremely well, I made it to 1960 well ahead of time and was training against Jamezu extensively which was helping a lot. That is until, with 5 days to go, I hit a rough patch, he got the better of me and I fell to 1880. With no time left I dedicated myself to getting 30 ELO a day, spending hours waiting for games to start, getting +0s constantly, 1v1ing people who I knew could beat me if I had just one bad game. I got close, I got so damn close but at 3:40am the day before I left, I lost my last 3-man game with Aidan and dropped from 1992 to 1983. I stayed up for another 40 minutes until it became clear not even the Americans were still awake and I was forced to call it quits. I went to university determined to just finally finish it off for good ASAP. It was only 17 ELO so I was hoping to just hop on, sort out my settings enough that I could still play ok and that would be it. Nope. For the first 2 weeks of uni my PC wouldn’t connect to the internet. When I finally got it working it was too late. I was rusty and had a monitor 8 inches bigger than my previous one. I spent the first couple of days on Hypixel Pit just trying to sort out my FOV and sensitivity as best as possible then went back to OITC once again. At this point it was almost back to its 2018 self, the summer was over and most people were semi-active at best. There were only a few people still fully active and only one willing to 1v1. That one person was Jamezu who had spent the last 2 weeks and his time before then 1v1ing as many people as possible to the point where there’s now a rift between him and several others in the community who got tired of it/think he’s hacking. However, with almost no gold or platinum ranked players left there was no other way to even get a +1, so more determined than ever, I started training with him once more. It didn’t go well, I was trying harder than I ever had but his improvement and my new settings meant I struggled to win more than half of our games and I fell right back down to 1870. The only positive is that during those 2 weeks, Jamezu had climbed the leaderboard significantly and so thankfully I lost a lot less than what I could’ve. I’ll be honest I was in a bad place at this point and fully aware of it. I wasn’t having fun at all; each large string of losses would feel like a punch in the gut and all the while my first week at uni had just started and the shadow of my studies was looming. I knew that I couldn’t keep this up without seriously putting my mental health at risk, but I couldn’t let it go just yet. I continued, now used to my settings and put everything into it. I was in the zone, playing better than I ever had and I was rising back up fast. On my last day I got lucky, OITC was randomly active one Friday night. I managed to win 5 1v1s against other strong players – Trevor, jelly and Jamezu and on the 4th of October I finally realised that small dream I had 4 years ago. Then my keyboard broke and it took 2 damn weeks to figure out why and so writing this whole thing took way longer than it should’ve. Anyway I’m gonna mention a few people who I think deserve it because that’s what people do after writing lots of shit and stuff: @minecraftbeast94 – Thanks for the original idea for this thread and for being the only person to 100% consistently never steal a kill @Mats9799 / @YFIOTR – Thanks for your contributions to OITC updates and maps @Booo_Guy – Thanks for running one of the only successful OITC tournaments ever and being a good person while doing it @duckswaggs_gen2 / @Lone / @Eassen – Thanks for being the real OGs, good times @Pancho – Thanks for the rank my guy @Groofer – You never got me that cape you eggroll nerd smh. Guess I’m not 13 either @Aidannn (think this is the right one?) – Thanks for how much you’ve done for keeping the server alive, I feel like you often get overlooked for being one of the most active on the server during times when most other people don’t stick around @Sir_Matigames_YT – Thanks for always being up for a game, always being positive and just being a good friend @Jamezu – Thanks for being the one to keep my dream alive Thanks to all those who I’ve mentioned already at some point and all those who I haven’t for making this game mean so much to me for so long Thanks to @ItsJerry and @ItsHarry for making this server So yeah that’s everything, hope it wasn't too boring. I’m gonna be gone now for a while (is what I was going to say before I left anyway because stupid keyboard), probably a few months at least but this isn’t really a leaving thread. I’ll still come on every month because ELO decay and that and I’ll be on discord/forums. Plus, I’m considering applying for staff later now that I’d be able to but that’ll depend on how things go… Anyway, as far as I’m concerned this is the end of my time on OITC. Thanks for the memories. cya
@ShadowFlames I read this whole thing and trust me this isn’t cringe. Not to make you feel any worse but I do wish you were more into Skype and discord back in 2015-2017 because i am also 19 and everything on here clicks with me and all the memories I have of grinding for 2k elo in 2016. I feel like we would have gotten along really well through voice chat. I also can relate because I also was a bow player with average melee skill and would get a lot of shit for hitting shots and losing melee. You were a huge competitor when it came to grinding elo and it was hard to be as consistent as you after 2017. Great thread man. Maybe we can still talk on discord some time. Pm me and I’ll give you my disc if you ever read this.
@ShadowFlames You are one of the many people I look up to, not necessarily as a top player (which you are anyone), but as a generally awesome person. It always excited me to see you get on as you are one of the few people I remember from the past. Thank you for sharing your story. It was absolutely incredible.
Always was fun playing against you on OITC back when I used to play all the time (when I was actually good at it lol) loved having more competition that wasn't just Duck.
Amazing time playing with you, wished we could play more often and like Dylan said, been more active on Skype. Cya
Damn... I know we didn't ever really talk all that much but I always had a great time playing against you. Sorry for getting angry all the time whenever I lost lmao, was all in good fun. Have fun in college my man.
i read this post about a month ago and I forgot to reply. I had a really great time playing against you even tho I was losing most of the time.
