Started by Anteo, Apr 10 2015
The Beginning
Everything has begun in 2011, the year had just started and I was quite active in the Drift Andreas server which was the most known server about drifting back then, and it was also the only english server I have ever joined to and knew about since I decided to leave italian servers for a while after having been in them for 2 years straight, so I obviously didn't know the english language at all, but you know how things go, when you are clearly surrounded by people who only speak english in the chat of the server, it is just a matter of time before you start learning the language.
I actually used to join in the server with a couple of italian friends that I knew in the italian server that I have been haunting in the past, so I wanted to bring them with me as they also wanted to hang out in the server and know something more about it and the players who used to join there.
As the days went by and I get used to the english language, I started to speak some word in english and so from that point onwards, I began to know some players which later became my friends and guess what, I suddenly happen to know a guy named RemY, we immediately started to know each other and started to drift together with our cars and later on, we became close friends.
First Ideas
After being in the Drift Andreas server for half a year, I officially began to speak english properly and so I had my ideas clear on what to do in my career.
Back then, the server was full of drift teams which leaded some players to join in them and drift along with the members of the actual team and have a career in it.
One day, I started to think about making my own team along with the best friend I had in the server, this was the first idea that popped out of my head, and therefore, I spoke to RemY, which was the only friend that I had more confidence and trust, so we both started to think about a name to give to our team as we were talking in the main chat, a couple of players joined in our discussion and helped us to give a name to it, they started saying a lot of names that could fit in a drifting team but we didn't like any of them, but suddenly, another guy joins in our discussion and says a name in the chat, «Underground Drifters», we both thought about it and we didn't like it at first sight but after running out of names to say, we thought that it was definitely the best name out of them and so we had to choose that one.
Earning Players
As we were so excited about the name that we chose for our team, we started to earn a lot of requests about joining in the team, as a lot of people knew what kind of players we were, they were absolutely sure on what they expected after joining in our team, therefore the first players started to join in our team which they were: iiS, Elite and Shad0w.
They were our close friends so we couldn't do else than letting them join in as we knew that they were very talented and they knew how to drift an elegy correctly, but after them, a lot of other players started to record their own tryout as our rule was to make a tryout video to join in the team so we could see what their skills looked like, but we weren't the first team to have such a rule as a lot of other teams had it as well, even though some players had a low-end PC so they weren't able to record some clips and upload the video on their YouTube channel so they wanted us to test them in-game but me and RemY didn't agree on this and so we sadly had to avoid some players just because of this little issue.
After having earned about 15 players, we both thought about not getting any other player in the team because we were quite a lot and I personally didn't want to have a team of 30 members as some other teams had back then, so we added this rule to the other rules we had set for the team.
We also started thinking that it was too much to have such a high number of members in a server that wasn't even ours, we didn't find this appropriate.
Getting Noticed
To get known by other players who didn't hear of us yet, we needed something to get their attention, and Elite had a perfect plan to do it.
As me and RemY were taking care of the team, we wanted to show people some stuff about us, about who we really were, so one day we thought about recording our own promotional video and some other videos of me and him drifting together by doing some twins, but we didn't have a proper place to post them besides his YouTube channel, so Elite came up with a surprise, he created our first blog on a useful website and it had a free domain as well, so he right away started fixing up the layout of the blog and some other stuff to improve the look of it.
When he finished to settle down the blog, he finally decided to post the video of our first promo in it, so we clearly started thinking that we could get noticed from people by visiting our blog and browse it to know something about the members, the server we used to play on and much more.
Additional Features
When you think at the basic things that a team requires, a lot of stuff pop out of your head, and one in particular caught my attention, it was a YouTube channel for our team.
It's certain that a team needs such a feature, a channel could have meant a lot to us, judging by the fact that a lot of players use to post their own tryout videos in their channels, we definitely needed a place to gather them up and show them to other players who was interested in watching them and see what their skills looked like, so that they could have an idea of what skills our team required to be successfully accepted in the team.
Afterwards as the channel gets noticed by players, it proceeded to earn its first subscriptions and comments as it should be.
Privacy Needs
We truly needed a server, we needed it now.
After having been in the Drift Andreas and Paramount Gaming servers through the years, we still didn't get the chance to have our own server, not that we didn't want to play in that server or we didn't like it anymore, it's just that you happen to understand that a team needs some privacy sooner or later but, after having seen the ending of Drift Andreas first, and Paramount Gaming server then, you definitely needed a server to play on and it was supposed to be as cool as the servers we have been playing on, no matter how much privacy a team needed in that moment.
As the players started to demoralize about the sudden and sad ending of Paramount Gaming server, Elite thought that we definitely needed to surprise players by opening a server, and the following server was planned to be called «Drift Generation» as he was the official owner of it together with Prodr1fterX aka ProoX.
It was a server where we could at least have a little more privacy than we had before since they were both our members and so we had nothing to hide to them, but it was really worth it seeing how much effort they did put on it with the script and everything else.
Once Elite was officially done with the server, he started to share the IP of the server around and a lot of people began to join in it as they were so happy to see a new server to play on especially if it was related to players who used to be admins or just ordinary players from the old Drift Andreas or Paramount Gaming server as Elite used to be admin in there, so he was pretty known from the players who used to play there.
Dream Coming True
Things can change in quite a short time, even when nobody expects it.
One day, all of a sudden, Elite had to say something to all the members of the team and he told them an awesome news related to the Drift Generation server, this news was about making an affiliation with Zone-X Gaming by using our team's name as name of the actual server.
When we first heard this news, we couldn't believe our eyes, we were seriously surprised and shocked by what he just said, nobody had ever imagined to be affiliated with another server as it meant to have our team's name to the server, this clearly meant that we finally had a server for ourselves, a server that could have shouted to everyone that our team was alive, we had a mansion where we could earn communities and teams from all around the world, it was unbelievable for us.
So, at the end of the day, this was exactly what we always dreamt, we had a blog, we had a channel, we had a server, we had talented members, what we needed more? We were happy of what we had, we really needed nothing more, but well, some people never get tire of wanting stuff, especially from the members of your own team.
People Loss
Sadly, not everything goes in the right way, you happen to struggle with the dark side of your career and in these cases, you need to face the truth somehow.
The reason of all this mess was caused by a few members who joined later in the team, they suddenly started to leave the team for various reasons, some of them had very high expectations from the team, some of them got bored of the game, some of them even prefered to join in other drifting teams and by doing so, they leaded us to have a very low amount of members compared to the members we had before their leaving.
For a moment, me and RemY thought that we had reached the finish line with our team, but we didn't have to give up, we had to look forward and think positive till we could have had the strength to handle it.
Raising Times
With our server earning a lot of players day by day, Spinno, a close friend of us, which has been the owner of the Drift Andreas server in the past, after having left the sad ending of his server behind his back for a while, he didn't give up and he decided to help us with our server by making the script for it without even thinking twice.
We surely knew already how good he was at scripting so we didn't want to miss this opportunity that was given to us.
In the meanwhile, me and RemY had to forget about the loss of our members and start to move on with our team, but surprisingly, once I opened the tryouts of the team, we happened to find a couple of pretty good tryouts so we clearly couldn't avoid to accept some of them in our team.
This thing kind of raised us a bit as we definitely needed some good news for our team and thanks to this, we suddenly happened to have 15 members again as we always wanted from the beginning.
We obviously knew that the bad times had to pass by sooner or later, so we kept ourselves calm without worries and at the end of the day, it looks like it helped us a lot.
Everything was going perfectly fine, no troubles, no dramas, you could smell the peaceful air around, and as we were chilling out a bit, another surprise was attending us, a surprise that nobody was expecting at all.
Revolutionizing
Not satisfied with what we've been getting to our team, another feature was about to be added, and it was intended to be connected with the server that our staff was hardly working on.
The feature was probably the most important thing that a server could have required to grow up even further by getting more and more players and eventually ending up by reaching important levels of popularity with the server and our team.
That was a smart move to do, despite the fact that it could have leaded us to something that we weren't planning yet, and possibly, to something that we didn't even need at the moment.
We suddenly happened to have a forum, yes, a forum, something incredibly awesome to have but as expected, it was supposed to be linked with the Zone-X Gaming community, which is led by Elite, Prodr1fterX, Tito and TheGang and they were actually the people who decided to lead the forum and also the people who first thought about creating one for our team, that was quite hilarious for us.
Once the players started to notice the forum, a lot of them didn't think twice to register in there and be in touch with us by following the news, topics and everything you needed to remain entertained.
So unexpectedly, we happened to become a community by having our team's name as name of the actual community.
Who could have ever think or imagine to become a community from nowhere, apparently none as it wasn't even planned or needed for our team but we didn't mind to become such at all, even though it meant to say goodbye to the privacy we needed but after all, having a community could perhaps have meant to become as famous as Drift Andreas and Paramount Gaming servers used to be back in the days but who knows, only time could have told us.
Nowadays
If you're wondering what happened to us afterwards, you're in the right place to know it.
Regarding the members, well, they obviously had been joining and leaving through the years, but most of them can't really complain about the staying they had with us, they've actually been learning a lot from us and as far as I know, they most likely passed the best moments of their career in it as they yet remember the times we spent together back in the days, sorrowfully, the loss of members will never end as we're yet losing some team members, but in compensation, new players yet desire to join in our team and have a career with us.
The blog had to change its domain as we moved it to blogspot mostly because the domain we had before didn't satisfy us in the way we wanted and once I started to adjust the layout and everything else in the new blog, it immediately started to get a lot of viewers and visitors from many world countries.
The channel had reached 200 subscribers and 1k viewers on the introduction video of our team.
The server had made great strides by getting a shitload of players from all around the world judging by how we've been forced to change the max slot of the server from 50 to 137, this little thing could get you thinking about how famous we did become from 2012 to nowadays, in addition that many other players joined in our staff such as Loot, which he's been helping us a lot with the scripting by improving and fixing everything that occurred to the server during the years that succeeded.
Last but not least, the community had proudly been growing a lot, as many drifting teams, touge teams and many other kind of teams had been joining us by playing and having fun with us, although, we've been losing a lot of important players and teams in the years, but well, as you guys know, not everything lasts forever, but if there's one thing that we know for sure, it's that we will still keep on rolling and entertain our players at the best way possible until we will reach the end of our journey just like Drift Andreas and Paramount Gaming have unfortunately faced, but hopefully, as late as possible.
