Wow, it's the first time I've ever heard about HWV being a fraudster.I'll save 1 for last because it's more personal.2. I don't remember who IOA was. Was that the angel guy? I remember an angel person.3. TF was forced to drink milk out of bags as punishment for giving fire to humans.4. I honestly don't remember. Probably something to do with guns or Colorado.5. You came very close. Rumors were floating around the mod community that you would be getting it once Blank returned.By far HWV being revealed as a fraud. I was honestly very angry about this. I was a young kid, 13 years old at the time, coming from a very rough family. I was looking for role models in my life, and this dude named "HardenedWarVet" who was the administrator of my favorite website, started reaching out to me and being really chill with me. He was giving me reputation, pming me saying my posts were great. He started inviting me to his private Skype calls and I felt like I was in with him and accepted and appreciated. Despite myself being nervous and intimidated I would join in, and he would keep reaching out to me. He was really good with tech stuff, would give me advice, and I ended up entering a career in computer science myself. I work as a software engineer to this day.I remember he posted photos in the "post your picture thread" of himself. They were personal photos of this badass dude, handsome as hell, big, strong, tough, in his army uniform in the desert. I was inspired and felt so lucky that a dude like this saw so much in me at a young age. He gave me moderator, and then put me in charge of running the clan managers. I loved that role and felt really proud about it all. I busted my ass and wanted to make him proud and the community strong.Things continued like that for a long time, a few years.Towards the end things stared falling apart. I saw lots of favoritism from him, and not like an "old boys network" kind of thing, not a looking out for your teammates kind of thing, but really bias favoritism from him. Things where people would get away with things just because they knew him, times I felt like my friends on the website were targeted just because he wasn't familiar with them. I had to stick up for my friends a lot.Then I remember a Firefox extension came out, a tool to reverse search images. Out of curiosity I reversed image searched the photos he posted in the post your picture thread. I was surprised to get a result, a link to a website. A blog in honor of a fallen soldiers. He had posted fake pictures, of another man, a dead soldier. At some point after this someone linked me his Facebook. He looked nothing like the man I imagined him to be, let's put it that way. He worked as a grocery bagger, I don't think he had ever even been in war, and certainly hadn't been "hardened". He looked like a grown man who was still living in his mother's home.The last time I spoke to him I confronted him. This was after about 3 or 4 years of looking up to this guy. I asked him why he lied, why he posted these fake pictures. All he said was "Why didn't you call me out? I hated living a lie." I was angrier - as though it was my responsibility to reveal his lies?It took me some time to realize that the man I looked up to never existed. It was stolen valor.
For some reason HWV was one of the few active users I barely had any contact with (he barely played the games IIRC).
Still surprising to hear about this.
Usergroup "Elite" was one of the dumbest ideas ever. I was one of the many mods who were against this groupwhat did you think about eiliosdraye's e-lites idea, and do you think elites were a good idea to begin with