This months MOTM is our own Solo!! And as Hemi and I had
our little weekend away planned near him in Belgium, it seemed
like a cool idea to do the interview with him in person! It all seems
like a strange coincidence come to I think of it…
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So Saturday afternoon, we set out to meet one of our founders. The
roads must be part of his evil plan, maybe to keep people away from
his lair, because they are almost undriveable. We sat quietly in the car,
while I concentrated on swiveling through the giant potholes. Hemi
twiddled his thumbs nervously. The navigation system finally said we
were getting close. It had turned very dark outside, but as we pulled up
into the street we had no trouble finding the right house. It was nothing
short of a castle. As we looked up at the giant daunting building, we
forgot all about the roads. What had we gotten ourselves into?...
The whole family welcomed us at the door. Solo, his wife, and 2 children
and even my arch enemy, Spammi. Yes he is an actual robot, programmed
by Solo to annoy me in the chatbox, and do the vacuuming. When we
sat down we were presented with a special kind of drink our leader
had prepared himself, we took a sip of the fragrant drink. I could have
been imagining it, but I thought I saw a smirk glance over Solo’s face.
A little suspicious, I put my cup back on the table. After introducing
everyone and showing them my ring, I mentioned we had an ulterior
motive, being the interview. A frown crossed his face briefly, but he
quickly turned his Belgian smile back on. “Ofcourse, ask me anything
you want.” And he refilled Hemi’s already empty cup again…
With my hands trembling, I took out the piece of paper from my
bag and started reading the questions.
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“For those who don’t know, please give us a little background story on
who our leader really is.”
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I'm about to be 40, bald and with a little belly. Married for about 10 years
now, and happy dad of two wonderful kids: Marie 9 years and Hugo
1,5 years old. I work as communication/IT/webmaster (and each and
every things people don't want to do things) manager. Outside, I don't think
people would believe I'm founder/leader of an hardcore gaming clan.
Outside my family, I have a great passion for Internet, which I succeed in
developing in my work life. On another "hidden" side of my virtual personality,
I'm what we use to say, a "Xooper", that is a member/user/developer/contributor
of the Xoops project (a CMS - Content Manager System - the open-source
program powering this current website). Saying that, I'm also
I was about to read the next question, when a cat walked past
us and jumped straight into the families Christmas tree! Apparently
this wasn’t something new, it actually took naps in there. It seemed
an appropriate time to ask the next question.
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“Imagine that you have 3 rabbits (or other little furry animals). Would you
name them Wolf, Pack and Clan? Why?”
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I don't have rabbits, just 2 kids and a cat. Is it the same?
Not sure how to react to that, I decided to just move on.
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“What is your proudest moment as a leader for the WPC? What is your best
memory linked to the clan ?”
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There has been so many. I could some of them in an unordered list:
* I always feel happy to visit the website and see each and everyone's involvement
into the clan life. I'm not only talking about the Council team (which is doing a splendid
job) but also reading the forums discussions.
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* Members of this community having (I tend think so) really friendly relationship. I'm
amazed to see the dedication members of this community have kept through the years.
The WPC has restarted today as if it was yesterday we quit, while it is almost 6 years ago!
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* The WPC winning the AvP2 competition. That's even more true that it was
absolutely not a priority in my mind, but the team spirit here was so strong that
it pushed our competition representatives to their best.
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* I tend to think that many of us have learned a lot from the WPC. Of course,
we are just a "gaming community", but most of us have developed skills in different
manner (not only gaming ones) but also in the use of the Internet (some are experienced
webmasters now), human relationship and, I think more generally speaking, the respect of each
others; members of this clan, or more simply, online gamers.
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* The democratic process we use to develop here, and that each and everyone respect.
We have elections, members become representatives, fill a job and do it with responsibility
and maturity. This is what impressed and makes me highly proud: if your respect people in
whatever they do, imagine, take under, then they will respect you (I mean the community) back.
More generally, I like to manage this clan with everyone who's involved here. You can trust
them blindly. Not sure I could say that in real life, could I?
While asking the questions, his daughter Marie was breaking every high score on her Wii.
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“Will you introduce your kids into the wonderful world of FPS gaming as well?”
No. She beats me on this already.
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One of our members submitted their questions in French, I had no idea what I
was asking. I decided to take a gamble and go ahead with them.
“Avez-vous des projets pour le site pour le Nouvel an ? (Do you have plan for the website
with the new coming year?)”
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He he, yes, I have. I always have anyway. Website development is part of my hobbies (and my
job). Fact is that the WPC is my favorite test-ground, so I like to test and develop stuffs for it.
Anyway, yes, I have some plans for the website, and you will all see it, but shht, this is a surprise...
“Qui est votre membre favori ? (Who's your favourite member?)”
First, I don't want to talk about my body parts, this is highly private.
Second, if you're talking about the WPC, there is only one name coming in my mind, and
that is because ### is the best ##### the WPC ever had. Not to mention about the fact
that #### has the biggest ##### and that #### knows all about my evil plan. Well, in fact
you all know ####, as being the member that ### in the #### of the ####. Ok, enough,
I don't want to make #### feel more uncomfortable now.
I’m sorry Conor, the drink was having its effect on us, when we got back to the hotel we
couldn’t remember who he was talking about!
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“Vous êtes le seule membre belge. Qu'est-ce-que cela vous fait? (You are the only Belgian
member. How do you feel like?)”
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You mean, being citizen of a country which still has no government for more than 200
days now? I don't know. People use to say that Belgian have the sense of compromise
(which maybe explains the above sentence). This is maybe handy when it comes to manage
international communities, with wide range of sensibilities. Besides this, I've not always been
the only Belgian in the WPC, there has been a "Flemish" one back in the early days. And we
had very good relationship by then. See, even miracles can happen... on the Internet.
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“Decrivez le WPC de votre point de vue. (Describe the WPC from your point of view.)”
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The Wolf Pack Clan is some kind of a unique experience in the "gamin clan" world. Not only
for existing since 2002 (who would have ever though it was possible?), but also on the way it
works, and the way people like it. The WPC is not a one person's property, but truly is what
members are doing of it. The WPC is not the result of a one man's work, but the produce of a
whole community contribution. Whereas you did more or less, you did, and that's what the
WPC is made of. The fact is, unspoken rules are far more important than written one, but only
dedicated (did I said addicted?) members know what I'm talking about...
“Vous etes le membre du mois, vous êtes fier de vous ? (You're member of the month, are
you proud of it?)”
Of course, yes, I'm. Who wouldn't? Oh, and thanks everyone for that! (Add WPC member's
of the month on his CV).
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“On a besoin de parler en francais sur le site du WPC, vous êtes en d'accord? (We need to
talk in french on the WPC, do you agree?)”
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Totally! Except that being an international community, English still his the core language...
Unfortunately, not everybody speaks English nowadays (in non English speaking countries).
Which is a shame. My 10 year old girl asked me to take English courses after Hemi and Snooze
visited us... She told my wife she (also) wanted to be able to meet and talk to anybody in the
world. See, there is some hope there...
Feeling releaved the questions weren’t anything weird, I felt it was time to tackle the most difficult
subject.
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“There have been a lot of questions about your evil plan. What is the actual plan, how far is it
from completion, how many people are behind it?”
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He had of course been expecting this question and burst out into evil laughter.
“People need to click on the link in my signature and find out.”
This answer wasn’t up to satisfaction ofcourse, and I tried again.
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“We all know that doesn’t give us the answers we want. What is really behind it all?”
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The smile on his face died down. Little Hugo wondered by and said something in French. The
word was: méchant, witch I later found out means malicious, or in other words, evil… Solo then
started explaining where the evil plan came from. I remember him talking about Napoleon, but
somehow that’s all I can recollect. What did he put in that drink?!
There was one more painful question to ask.
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“Do you intend, ever, to improve your shooting skills ?”
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Ah ah, everyone knows here I've the best uber shooting skills! That is, give me a 120 round
ammo belt and an high speed and small recoil heavy gun, you would be amazed to see how long
I can hold my finger on the left mouse button!
He was smiling again luckily. I obviously hadn’t told him who was behind every question, but
I got the feeling it wasn’t hard with some of them…
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“When was the last time you got really wasted at a rave?”
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Probably Snooze's birthday chat box party. Besides this, I'm not too much into "drinking" party.
Well, you know, I have to set up early in the morning, not that I want to, but with a little 2 years
old devil jumping on your back, that's something you have to consider.
Scary how he called his son a devil already… Last question of the interview, sweat trickled
down my back.
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“Why do you think camels aren’t pink ?”
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You better stop drinking too much irish beers...
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It was clear he saw right through the whole interview. How much of it is true we’ll probably
never find out. We continued on to have a lovely dinner, Hemi had drank quite a bit of Solo’s
mixture and was in a very merry state. The food was great and soon even I forgot about my
suspicions. Before we knew it, it was pretty late and I remembered those bad roads again.
We would have to cross them in the pitch dark now. I finally got Hemi up from his chair and
we wobbled towards the door. We said our goodbye’s, and gave Hugo a high five. After
strapping Hemi in his seat, I turned on the engine and switched on the lights. Solo was still
standing in the doorway. I swear I saw that smirk on his face again. We drove off and waved
one more time.
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How we got back to the hotel is a mystery to me. The next morning we both had giant headaches
and holes in our memory. Luckily I wrote some of it down, and we took a picture as proof that we
were actually there. Otherwise I might have doubted it had really happened at all…
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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Were running 2 new servers at the moment DOOM and FEAR...with some classic
gaming going on...Thanx to Lord Dean and me.. Drop in the servers...
FEAR is even for free!
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thats it...remember...there's always a wolf on deimos...
Re: Newsletter 44
I know its a pretty long read, but I had to throw in some story magic 
