I'm too old for this game to have been my first Multiplayer obsession in my life. It was 2006 I was in 6th grade and I watched a video On IO On Demand about the best games of all time and they talked about how Counter Strike was this masterpiece of Mutiplayer Shooting and at the time I was educating myself about classic video games so I went to my local Micro Center and bought myself a boxed copy of Counter Strike 1.6 and got home and they key didn't work. So I complained to Valve in the early days of steam and they sent me a free code for 1.6, Half Life, Condition Zero basically all the early hits. So I was a complete loner when I was this young and had no previous experience playing games with others, and was I ever fucking blown away by this. I know this is entirely anecdotal but to me this was the best looking game of all time. Now at this point source was out but this game ran on my shitty desktop with integrated graphics, to me the GoldSrc engine just has so much fucking charm and life to it that I just get nostalgic even thinking about it from the visuals to the digital sound effects every gun felt amazing, every map felt massive and every round gave me this insane anxiety. The first server I ever joined was home of the Elite Immortals, there was a group of late 20s and 30s who were all talking like something out of a dive bar shooting the shit and trash talking. I had a shitty little headset that was made for telemarketers and I was so scared to talk. They instantly started taunting me because I had no idea what I was doing and I got kicked, I joined back and terrified to talk I said in my pipsqueak little voice "I'm new how do I play" They all erupted in laughter and jeering and a guy named "}{ells Reaper" said stick with me I'll help you. I played all night and it felt like hanging out with the cool adults, they taught me everything, I learned to joke with them talk with them, play competitive games of Counter Strike, what guns to buy when to save, how to traverse the maps. I went to sleep that night and all I could think of was Counter Strike I laid there thinking of routes to run, plays to make, the friends I made. I would sit in school and draw map ideas plan setups I would get home and talk to my 2nd Family, "Beantown, Johnny Ringo, Sweetleaf, Reaper, Sarah, Green Leaf" they were all this group of alcoholic degenerates who didn't play other video games in fact if you called CS a video game they would get mad because they weren't nerds, they were all rednecks who were just there to have a good time. I remember playing on Office one night and finally getting admitted into the clan, getting to put [EI] in front of my name felt so good, I felt accomplished. I got to play in some scrims and some matches when they needed an extra man, I cancelled a date with a girl because we had a big match. CS 1.6 wasn't a game it was a hang out, a place to go. The clan and server would eventually break up, I would drift in between Clerkz and other US East servers but that wasn't my family. This was the most formative years of my life and it meant the world to me. Cheers to all of the Elite Immortalz, you guys made me who I am today.