How did you join Legends League?

[Rouke]

After seeing Rick's NYOC race report and his description on what he was doing prior to joining and the reason he joined us it became interested in hearing more about these stories.
Just for fun but also perhaps something that the league can use in future recruitement attempts.


So share with us how you found Legends League, what attracted you, what you where doing before you joined, maybe tell abit about other leagues you where involved in etc.

Should be interesting :-)

[Rouke]

I'll start off then :p

I had never joined a League appart from some semi-serious attempts. Been simracing on and off for many years going back to GPL. I used to join organised events whenever i could find them. usualy organised by leagues or groups where non-members where able to participate.
But mainly i was a pickup racer, semi serious (as serious as it could get in pickup races) and i was able to find good servers/groups to race with most of the time to get my fix. and through the years i hooked up allot with my friends online or at lan's.
GPL, F1C, FIA GT mod (simbin), Life for Speed, GTR, rfactor, at a later stage i pretty much changed sim every week as they all had their own pro's and con's.

Untill i arived on the Legends server as a pickup racer in the first F3 mod by Lo^. Had great fun for a few weeks with the guys (Ray, Warren, Rik, etc) and they had asked me a couple of times to join their league which i kindly declined.
At the time i was asked quite often to join a league when meeting people on servers but i was reluctant to do so. i just came from 15 years of organising clans (fps games) , setting up leagues, websites, joining clan-leagues and ladders, hostile takeovers of other clans, endless clan matches, etc etc. and i was finaly free because the games we played where aging and all the new games either where overloaded with cheaters or they did not meet our criteria's (we mainly focussed on capture the flag vs other clans) so it kinda died a natural death. (we still have a forum to keep in thouch though, even Marcus joined it recently hehe)

So i didn't realy want to join another community, i knew what was going to happen, i would get involved, start to feel the love and before i knew it be part of organising things. i realy didn't want that anymore at the time.
Besides, i also did not want to have to do 3 races per week, endless practise sessions etc.

But the guys told me it was just the sunday's and it was up to me how much i practised and where i would want to finish in the pack. All they wanted was drivers whome where no wreckers, took racing somewhat serious and where extremely handsome.
(ok i made that last one up but it is still very much true)

So i thought, what the hell, only sunday night racing, i can do that.......

And look at me now.....



F*ck you guys!



just kiddin :-)
[or am i...]


Back in those days we did not have a website. we used a Yahoo Group as a base for all activities which can be found here and is -as you can see- still connected to our website. and i still get that pesky Formation Lap Etiquette email from that group every month lol.


It changed my sim racing completely. no more 'whatever' races vs guys i didn't know, this was serious stuff. rules, boundries, regulations, expectations and goals.
All i remember from the first season though was nerves, dont ram them off the track, just survive, dont touch them, excuse me for beeing alive....
When my hesitations and shy went away and felt comfourtable with the group and got to know induvidual driving styles i relaxed and started racing them. and i was hooked completely. this was what simracing was all about.
And with each race we did i got better at it, took me years to get somewhere vs the aliens and each time i got faster it became more serious, the bar was raised and pressure increased.
But it was frustrating as well. Every time i found a second on a track 'they' found 2 seconds and eventhough my overall results got better and better i was facing an endless stream of 3rd places in championships, sometimes a glorified 2nd place and my first championship win in 2007 was a technical win because Mr. Walker wasn't allowed to take both crowns in the combined-championship :p


And then they started to hurras me to join the admin team. i declined many times, i dunno how often, i knew what was going to happen if i did accept. no way i was going for another 15 years of beeing part of an online organisation........

screw you guys!!


Lol, this is more a 'history' then a 'how i joined' , sorry for the long read :p

[Rik Walker]

Resistance is futile!

Back in those days we did not have a website. we used a Yahoo Group as a base for all activities which can be found here and is -as you can see- still connected to our website. and i still get that pesky Formation Lap Etiquette email from that group every month lol.

I keep meaning to log in and get rid of that email, doesn't even go out to those who need it most. Wonder if I can remember my password...

My story:

Back in the dim mists of time (well, 1996) I was eagerly awaiting the release of Grand Prix 2. I had discovered that among all the porn that the Usenet newgroups had some more serious groups covering essential stuff like gaming. There was even one dedicated to sim racing, namely rec.autos.simulators. Some useful info, some decent people on it but boy were there some real twats who spent every waking opportunity letting the rest of us know just how thick and obnoxious they were. Anyway, GP2 came and was just about everything we had hoped it would be. People were posting their lap times but there were occasional whispered references to a magical land called SPRTSIMS where you could find the really fast guys hanging out and where discussions could be had in a polite & welcoming environment. The trouble was that SPRTSIMS existed in the evil corporate entity known as CompuServe which you had to pay extra to access. That didn't seem at all right in the land of the free WWW. But after a short while I took the plunge and 'met' some great people, finding somewhere that finally felt like home among the dross of the 'net.

At the time SPRTSIMS ran competitions for GP2 (the Formula 1 Simulators Association, F1SA) and also for Indycar Racing 2 and NASCAR Racing 2. Over the next couple of years we branched out into some fun stuff such as Monster Truck Madness which we could race head to head and, if the Internet gods were smiling on us even get 3 to connect together! At least the game was a huge amount of fun. Less fun were attempts to get racing online with a F1 sim. Ubisoft's Formula 1 Racing Simulator in particular caused many, many evenings of frustration.

Then GPL came out and online open wheel racing was suddenly a realistic possibility. The NASCAR guys had the TEN subscription service (which I did a lot of racing on) but this was the first time we could reliably run proper race cars online. Not long after CompuServe started to shift its business model and forums like SPRTSIMS were clearly on the way out. Racing legend, Achim Trensz, took the bold step and led most of the ex-F1SA guys out of SPRTSIMS and Legends League (or LGNDS as it was frequently referred to back then) was born!

ps: how come we didn't have a big celebration back in 2009 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Legends existing as a separate entity? We old timers missed a good opportunity there!

[Kat]

It's quite humbling to think I am one of the longest serving members of this league.

I joined back in 1994 on Compuserve's SPRTSIMS forum, and hit the high point of my 'career' shortly after when I one the Steering Assistance class after a season long battle with Ian Withycombe (sp).

Back then many people didn't have wheel's so we allowed some aids in one of the two race series. Those who drove without any aids were known as Water Walkers, and I was one of them, but raced in the SA class due to being more competitive there.

I raced in GPL too then faded away a bit, did some IL2 when we took a brief break from sim racing, before rejoining perhaps 3 years ago when I refound my racing Mojo.

Still as slow as 17 years ago, but having lots of fun

[Bret Metcalf]

Wow-I am a virgin sim racer then compared to most

I only got internet about 3 years ago, discovered rFactor, joined a few pick up races, I always seem to find the morons though, driving track the wrong way and they just would wreck other drivers. I found Legends quite by accident (searching google) and thought-this looks a good group of people so decided to give it a go and join up. Pretty scary at first, not wanting to cock it up, seem to recall I joined just after a TWF1 Zolder race had taken place. After a couple of sessions I really got hooked to Legends, received an email from Costa who asked me to be his team mate and all systems go since then. Still enjoy being here very very much.

Cheers,
Bret

[maiph]

I trace my simracing origins back to 'chequered flag' on the ZXspectrum which was a very primitive hotlapping game, then the amazing 'Revs' for the Commodore64 which atleast had some AI racers.
From there to the other Crammond games; GP1 and finally to many enjoyable nights of 'hotseat' multiplayer racing on GP2 (see my BOUS ghost-site for a flavour of the era ), GP3 and GP4 all the while driving with keys or joystick. Then along came GPL but until I got given a basic thrustmaster wheel I could not begin to control the pesky thing. Wow that Ferrari engine sound has never been matched since.
The excitememnt of finding the WinVroc community was a major event, here was a great reason for staying home and for a while it looked like my buddies were similarly enthused. How could they not be? But for some reason they were not, the thought of live multiplayer racing clearly only sets certain minds alight, I must admit I thought less of those friends who didn't 'get it' subsequently.
But here was a different type of friend, geographically divided yet united in rabid enthusiasm for this new sport. I raced thousands of laps in pick-up races at watkins glen, monza and kyalami on GPL. Then upgraded to a cheap BRD wheel (an amazing special offer; a new metal Ball-Racing-Developments wheel and pedals for £15!) and eventually 'went negative' on GPLRank. By then patience with the chaos of pickup racing had worn down to the canvas so I joined the UKGPL league and raced 4 or 5 seasons, the highpoint being a win at the Nordschleiffe. Numbers dwindled eventually so I quit and spent a couple of years racing Nascar4/Nascar2002/Nascar2003 in pickups and then I bought Rfactor upon reading the reviews.
So I spent a year or so racing on Rfactorcentral's official events before getting frustrated with the crazy-heads. I searched around for a league, saw that familiar names from UKGPL (such as Baz) were already involved in Legend-League so I sent in my CV. Received a warm welcome and immediately felt at home among the codgers, even turning in some respectable performances occasionally. Long may it continue.

[JohnW]

Arriving at Legends was the closing loop of a kind of long journey.

Started with "Revs" on the BBC, but really frustrated with keyboard only. Tried it again on the C64, but in general racing sims fascinated me - Pitstop II, Stunt Car Racer, Racing Destruction Set - just fascinated by the idea you could drive and race in a computer. This despite racing in real life too

An Amiga brought me F1GP, but the switch to PCs with Indy500 (and F1GP as well) brought me to SPRTSIMS on Compuserve. Fortunately my company had accounts, so I could also access the SPRTSIMS area and raced very happily with Ray, Achim et al for a long time, especially ICR2 I enjoyed. I think I fell out of that as Mike Laskey had got me involved with Papyrus, as he was helping them with a new title called Grand Prix Legends - after him getting me involved there I sort of lost interest in driving anything else

A couple of years later GPL was released and I raced that pretty constantly, but got kind of burned out. Marc Nelson and I had been writing "Sim Racing News" which I really enjoyed doing, but other things got in the way and I guess from 1999 through until finding Legends I barely raced sims. In 2008 I was messing around with GPL again, tried RFactor, and was kind of hooked! I googled the SPRTSIMS things I could remember, wondering what happened to those guys, as very "gentlemanly" racing. That search brought me back here - I kind of think of it as "back where I started", as I got into online racing way back in the dark days of the internet with many of the same people, and I enjoy it a much now (and with the same principles) as I did then. It's not what you're driving, it's who you're sharing the track with

John

[Baz West]

Well I don't feel quite so old now, in sim racing terms as I came late to it. My 2 boys were about 6 or 7 ish so I told myself they need to learn all about computers so our first computer was an Amiga 600 but it came with Geoff Cramonds Grand Prix so they still haven't learned about them that was back in 1992. Then much the same as Ralph hot seating with 3 other mates, 2 who happen to be Legends now. Graham P and Keith L . We would spend Friday nights doing full length GP's 4 laps each in turn. Whilst one was driving the others would tell jokes and take the piss out of the driver but all in good spirits. Then along comes GPL, Keith was the one who introduced me and Gray to it, I will never forget seeing him drive round Watkins Glen at 8 frames per second saying it was brilliant. I looked at Graham and we both burst out laughing, until we had a go that was. I could not get enough of that Ferrari sound. The first time I drove it down Hangar Straight I would not brake as I wanted to hear it just a bit longer . So that was the end of our social evenings and time to by modems.

First on-line race was Kyalami in the F2 Cooper Saturday afternoons on WINROC Alison Hine was in front of me on the grid and as the flag dropped - Disconection But the bug had bit.

Joined MARA (Middle Aged Racers Association) http://www.baldrick.pwp.blueyonder.co.u ... t_mara.htm and raced Wednesdays and Sundays met a lot of interesting people, some are still here with us, Tony Rickard, Alison Hine, Dave Hawnt, Fulvio Policardi Graham, Keith. The European section only folding when iRacing formed. American section still going with iRacing now.

Also joined UKGPL http://www.ukgpl.com/ in 2000 support league right through to 2005 Div2 and was in HikiWaza Racing Team http://www.hiki-waza.dsvh.co.uk/ Where we just wanted to have fun not necessarily win, well with a Honda

Then at the Whizz Kid charity raising event at Goodwood Fest of Speed I bumped into a guy known as Nosher who kept raving about this Lgnds league, so I joined which was racing the Trans AMs at the time. That died out and so did Legends for a while. As we all still had active Yahoo accounts it was a social forum then rFactor came out and the F3 mod that Rouke mentioned and Ray offered to help kick it off again and here we all are today.

So its all you bloody fault Nosher

[Phil M]

more simple for me

I'm search a league with fair driving
It's these one
the only problem is fast drivers
the majority of the drivers
. :sadbanana:

philippe

[Rouke]

Lol Phil


But how did you find legends? google? and advertising? friends?

[Ronny]

Everyone seems to have such a fancy story and mine is well... rather uhmm uninteresting.

Started simracing back in 2008 when I tried the LFS demo for a little while. Then moved to rFactor. I used my mouse to steer/accelerate/brake and the keyboard for shifting and the rest of the key mappings. At first it was really hard to pull off but I got used to it in little time. Did about 2 months of offline practicing and decided to look for a league in RFC. I found SimJunkies there where I still run today. I was lucky to be on the pace on my very first race, setting pole in my very first online race. Won my very second with a 25+ grid and man, was I eager to do some more!! It was definitely a boost to know I could be fast with a mouse/keyboard and only after a few months of getting started in simracing. I shared the title of the first cup I ran there with Jarkko and had mixed results from there on. Finished 3rd in SJ's first GP79's season. I was in love.

Some time after the season had finished I really wanted to do them again and was searching for public servers for a few laps. You guys were running Suzuka and I remember Sulla and Paul introducing me about the league. Paul was specially very helpful! letting me know about the handicaps and so on, also letting me know that 5 gears was faster than using 6 with the 79's. Knocked a whole second off my time, thank's again Paul! I also remember Jef joining that weekend and doing very well from the start. I visited the website and was fascinated by the organization and the sheer level of competition. Registered and read all the rules, guides, forum threads.. everything!! Boy was I hooked

Every race weekend was very intense, all these guys going so fast.. Ales, Timo, Rik, Jef, Roberto, Miguel, Paul, Bret.. (sorry Rouke you weren't THAT fast back then .. if I only knew what you'd become ). I remember my first race here like it was yesterday. One of my favorite tracks... Zandvoort and me and Jef were going for it hardcore. The rookies were here to stay Had very good pace but my race wasn't very fortunate. Started a string of amazing on-track battles between me and my future teammate. This race is one of my most appreciated simracing memories. After that season I got a wheel and became definitely much more safer/consistent driver... not that I'm much of both right now anyway

So here I am a little over a year here and still loving it. The new additions to the league have been fantastic: Grant, Angelo, Fernando, Nik.. I'm also glad Timo is back on it, I miss the other guys from the first season I ran but I think we've got our plenty share of talent as it is now!! The admins keep doing a superb job bringing us top quality championships season after season.

I still haven't been a serious title challenger but every season I'm all for it! Already can't wait for the next campaign.

I'm so glad I've joined Legends, thank's for the memories and I'm sure there are many more to come.

[Kat]

Had to chuckle at Sulla making it into a mention, Ronny. I introduced her to the servers a while back as I was running in another league with her. Her league commitments have prevented her officially joining legends, but she's been a regular club race fixture for quite a while now. Keep trying to persuade her to join properly but she's resisted so far ( and ironically would change names if she did join as 'Sulla Looming' is her avatar in Second Life.

[Corrado Toxiri]

Nice stories, indeed

My sim racing story started quite a long time ago, in 1983 just like Ralph: a ZX Specturm with that wonderful "sim" that was Chequered Flag
By the way, you can still play it here, scroll down to 1983 and you'll see it: http://www.zxspectrum.net/

After that, I pretty much tried almost all the F1 and GT games that came out for the PC platform, including Test Drive and all its successors, Need for Speed, and many others, although I never went online until year 2000. Internet connections were not very common in Italy before then, and anyway quite expensive and painfully slow. It was only when I moved into this house at the end of year 2000, subscribing a good, flat rate ADSL connection, that I started looking at online racing.

At that time, the Need for Speed series reached number 5 of the saga, also known as "Need for Speed - Porsche Unleashed (Porsche 2000)", and a lot of people were filling the EA online servers for quick, thrilling pickup races. The competition was hard and yes, there were cheaters and morons of all kind, that's why there were also big teams with members always recruiting good, fair drivers to build up a fair attitude in the community. It was then, at the end of 2000, when Dennis aka DC_Targa invited me to join the Demolition Crew (http://demolitioncrew.altervista.org/), one of the strongest NFS-PU teams around, where the basic principles were perfectly expressed by the Team motto "Fair, Fun, Fast"

Having a limited amount of free time, I played NFS-PU for quite a long while, dis-regarding the other sims that were popular at that time, except for some short experiences with Nascar HEAT and GPL that were also popular amongst the "Crew" members. I almost went negative with GPL, but never found the time to be really good in online races, so I dropped it because I was a bit scared by the aliens... I joined GPL too late, probably... too many aliens around and not much space for newbies.

When EA stopped supporting NFS-PU removing the needed racing servers (I still remember that last night online, where all the people gathered for a final huge meeting before the switch-off), I started trying several different games, looking for that good old "chat-race-laugh-restart" online experience again. I tried World Racing and World Racing II, similar to PU as far as the race style is concerned, but much worse as online experience. I had a blast with Mercedes Benz Truck Racing (also because I was following the REAL truck racing series for Pirelli at that time) but there were too few people playing it. Then I moved to F1 Challenge '99-'02 and its several MODs, expecially the GT mod that later became GTR by Simbin; but again, the online experience was disappointing. Also Nascar Racing 2003 became one of my favorites for a while, expecially when I joined the iRacing Beta team that was based on the NR2003 engine and was not yet called iRacing I followed iRacing also later on, until they finally became a pay-per-play service and I moved out, because meanwhile rFactor had taken my heart away

In fact, the Demolition Crew had (since 1998) a sub-group, called Saturday Night Racing, who was meeting every week for a 45' hard-core race event with SCGT (Sports Car GT). I joined them in 2002 and there I met a lot of wonderful people, some of them also became friends in real life, like Paul Harwood (DC_Sagan), Pawel Korbel (DC_LeBrok), Sylvain Leroux (DC_Kid), Lance Skene (DC_Spd) and of course Costa Gozadinos who joined us in the late years of SNR, in 2006 I think, when the "DC" tag was mostly a good memory and only the Saturday Night group was really active amongst the Crew members. We had developped our own SCGT mod, the Ferrari 360 Challenge, and we had a 51 week race calendar, as we were taking a pause only in the first week of the year to organize the incoming season.

In 2006 SNR moved from SCGT to rFactor and suddenly, when the game allowed more than our usual 6-to-11 drivers (whereas we had to split SCGT into 2 servers when we were more than 7), we found out that people was joining larger Leagues and that we were "too small". To attract new people we developed our own MOD again, the SNR Ferrari Challenge based on the wonderful Ferrari F430, and we had a lot of fun with it, but the group was shrinking more than enlarging, and we made the 2007 and 2008 seasons with often no more than 5 drivers per race. Although we didn't give up... also in 2009 we tried a few other MODs, but eventually stopped being regular and started to race only once per month or so. We still race at SNR, but only short, fun events for the pleasure of meeting our old friends, as we chat more than what we race

Meanwhile, Costa - who was already active at Legends - invited me in year 2008 to join the Two Oceans Racing Team with him and Bret. I was a bit scared by the huge fields and spent the first season trying to avoid contact with the other cars But I loved the friendly attitude coupled with the good old "Fair, Fun, Fast" principles, who brought me back in year 2000 :gpl_start:

Sorry for the long post, but after all it's now starting my 11th year online and my 28th year with a racing sim... it can't be a short story to tell

[Rouke]

For those members reasonably new, here is how Marcus Adams joined Legends League:
http://legends-league.com/twfr/index.ph ... t&Itemid=2

(and some additional story lines)

[Bret Metcalf]

For those members reasonably new, here is how Marcus Adams joined Legends League:
http://legends-league.com/twfr/index.ph ... t&Itemid=2

(and some additional story lines)

ROFL-I went through this a couple of weeks back-still brings tears to my eyes