It all started on a Christmas many many years ago. I received a Sidewinder joystick for a present. I was always into pilot sims such as Jane's USAF, Falcon, and other military airplane simulations. When I opened the joystick I noticed it came with a free game. As many of you know on X-mas day, you eventually get bored tinkering with your new wealth of items. As I looked around to see which of my presents I hadn't paid much attention to yet, I noticed the CD titled "Mech Warrior 3" still laying in the joystick box.

I was never into Mechs or any of those type things. But I thought to myself, that's close to piloting, it's just on the ground, so why not give it a try. I loaded up the game, and started to play.

The single player game was boring. I went through the training missions and very quickly got bored with the game. Then I thought to myself, why not play it online. I had never played a game online before, and was very curious as to how fun it would be

I logged onto the MS Zone and started to play. I got my ass handed to me over and over. I had never been beaten so badly in a game in my life.

I like to consider myself a "learner". When something doesn't go the way I want it to, instead of throwing a fit, I like to learn WHY and then come up with a solution.

After many more hours of being slaughtered I went to sleep. As I lay there I thought to myself, why am I getting beat so bad. What was happening to me? What was the other team doing that was making this happen to me? Then I realized that it always seemed like I was outnumbered in the game. I thought back to the battles I had fought and realized that in almost every situation I was being attacked by at least 2 mechs at once and none of my team were anywhere to be found as support.

So that is the key. Your TEAM. My teams always sucked. I'd be in a game with a bunch of morons who would not stick together or initiate any sort of strategy what so ever. We would just line up like a cheap kung fu movie and attack the enemy solo. I thought to myself, no wonder I die so much, 4 separate 4 vs. 1 battles is a sure way to loose. And that's what the enemy got, 4 separate battles where they had 4 and we had 1.

So how do I find a good team? I noticed that a lot of games the players each had initials in front of their names and many times the initials were the same. I discovered these were clans of people who fought together and played together a lot.

My solution!!! I'll start a clan.

My roommate at the time, Sean, had some interest in this new game. He started playing it, and that day when he got home from work, I told him my idea about starting a clan. He said he's in, and that was the moment that BK was born. He picked the name after the High School myself and him attended - Central Gwinnett Black Knights.

My next door neighbor was also a hard core gamer. I showed him MW3 and he instantly loved it. I told him we had started a clan and he said he'd love to be a part of it. So there the three of us were. On the zone with our BK names. I, BK_T_Bird, Sean as BK_Cavalier, and Dave as BK_SquireSCA.

We played many games. And we did outstanding for newbies. Though we didn't tell people we were new. We stuck together and used strategy to overthrow many of our opponents. My plan was working like a charm. We were literally winning almost all our games. All from one simple concept of TEAMWORK.

I can't remember how it all came about and who was recruited when. I do remember that BK Phalanx was our first member we recruited, Soon to follow were BK_Trynian, BK_Crimson, and BK_Avalanche, all of which not only were perfect candidates with their wonderful teamwork, but also were outstanding pilots who could top me any day in skill back then.

Eventually BK grew to about 20 people. I capped the roster off at 20 and would not allow any more in. We wanted the clan to be small. The reason being if you know each of your clan mates personally and fight with them often, this leads to outstanding teamwork. This way you are used to each others styles and your strategies become instinct instead of a thought process.

BK became a great success. We reached amazing status on the Zone. We at one point joined a league. We later decided to leave the league due to the fact that league play leads to stress and inner clan conflict such as who gets to play in which league games. When we left the league our score was 24 wins and 6 losses with the second place team only having 8 wins and 4 losses. We were so far in first that it wasn't hard to leave the league since it was getting boring anyways.

Through our days in MW3 we of course had some clans who hated us. They were jealous of our skill as a team and many times even accused us of cheating. We always thought this as amusing and actually took it as a compliment.

As time went on MW3 started going downhill. Near the end 75% of all MW3 players were cheating and hacking their mechs and maps. It was not even fun to play anymore. Some nights it would take up to 4 hours just to get one 15 minute game in due to the fact that every game someone was cheating horrible and we would have to start over. And for the most part, we had to change our names, as nobody wanted to play against anyone with a BK_ tag on. People would join games and say "Oh man, not BK" and leave. We had to hide just to get people to play us, and even then, after one game of losing to us, they'd all leave.

A friend of mine had mentioned a game to me, called Asherons Call. He knew I was always an adventure game fan. And the way he described it, I was amazed. I couldn't even fathom the idea of thousands of people playing a virtual reality type adventure game at the same time.