The History of "The Ville"

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The History of "The Ville"

Post by spm97 » Thu Aug 06, 2009 12:28 am

I made some edits below. I still need some info on the founding of USV, and the re-forming of TVB.

The history of The Ville

If you've found this website, and you're ready this file, you might be wondering "What is The Ville". The Ville is more than just a collection of game servers and forums; it is a family friendly gaming community that is open to all players, as long as you follow the rules. While the games have changed a lot since the originally founding of the Ville, the core values of team play and a family friendly atmosphere have long been a part of the Ville. The Ville doesn't compete in organized competitions, but does have some internal fun events meant to build friendships and introduce new people to the Ville community.

What eventually became The Ville was started by a small group of Friends, including "Robert E. Lee", "Buford Pusser", and Cadman at a company called Clark Graphics located in Huntsville, AL, sometime around June of 1999 after Clark Graphics got a T1 line. The group of friends would set up a TFC server online after work called TurkeyburgerVille so they could play TFC online from their homes. The name turkeyburgerville was a combination of turkeyburger, the map the server was running, and "Ville" for Huntsville, AL. About a year later, the server switched to Warpathville, and then switched to Avantiville shorty after that. Sometime in the next year, a WWW server went online at tfc.clarkgraphics.com. The community continued to grow to three servers, and in August of 2001, the name of all the servers officially became "The Ville". At the same time the servers were renamed, the third set of Ville Forums went online and served The Ville until 2006. Those archives can be found here.

During the early years, The Ville was frequented by members of clan -TPF-, <PWG> (Hellz, Fragfailure, Silverone, Snakeyes, MarshallMashburn, and many more), a group of engineers with the clan name E4, and a lot of regulars. A few people got together and decided to form NSA, which was a guild made of regulars. Some of them wanted to move on to competition and play on avantiville as well, so Bakuryu formed Bloody Roar with a few of John Does's friends (including a guy with 19" arms...no joke, TIII is a beast). Bakuryu was still in high school and classes took their toll and he stepped down and Axis took over running [BR]. [BR] continued to frequent the servers for years, and in 2009 decided to retire from competing.

The date is Sept. 12, 2001, in the immediate wake of the 9/11 tragedy. TheVille was still in it's relative infancy but growing steadily by the day. There were a few clans out there around this time which were largely competitive and based outside of TheVille. Many of these clans' members frequented Ville servers and some were admins here. These groups were <NSA>, E4, <PWG>, and [BR]. FragFailure was a member of and the recruiter for <PWG>. He was also an admin at TheVille during this time. FragFailure's growing attachments to TheVille and a desire to bring people together after 9/11, led him to create the first Ville based guild, The Ville Brotherhood, a non-competitive Ville based guild. A vote on Sept. 13, 2001 decided the guild's name. The group was almost named [FDV] Famiglia de Villa but the vote swayed towards TVB. The tag was to be viewed as {TVB}, but NSA member, Maian suggested <TVB> to go along with <NSA> and <PWG> and the <TVB> tag was born. Eventually, <NSA> merged with <TVB> quickly swelling it's ranks. The purpose of this guild was not only fun, friends, and enjoyment of games, but also to bring people together from all over the world in ways that reached beyond the gaming realm. It was what TheVille stood for in every sense. The guild's roster eventually soared, involving over a hundred members over the years. In time, <TVB> members would eventually branch off to create new Ville guilds such as =USV= and <eVa> in order to offer more choices to members of the community. Though there are far too many to mention, many original/old <TVB> members you may still recognize today, such as: FragFailure, SilverOne, Merf, Robert E Lee, John Doe, ROOFCUTTER, Thom Yorke Obliterator, Kjeldorian Royal Guard, PowderMilkMan, Mr. Hat, Hamese, Sgt Stutter, Simpleman, and our timeless friends BlueRuler and Trigger Happy. RIP. And many, many, many more. While much smaller today, <TVB> is still with us after all these years and will always be a corner stone in the history of The Ville.

The second "Official" guild was =USV=. Hoaxie, Blue Ruler, and Roofcutter were the original USV founders and made up the leadership called WE3 for USV. At the time, there were tensions between the competitive and non-competitive elements of The Ville, which was composed of a number of independent clans. USV was created in an effort to rekindle the relaxed and fun vibe that made The Ville so popular in the first place. At the time, it stood for United "Societies" Ville, later changing to "Society" as the current Ville took shape.

On March 10th 2003, an unguilded member, Typh00n, announced he wanted to create a competitive clan comprised of Villuns who were not already in clans/guilds here at The Ville. The group was officially dubbed [TVR] by Stevo on March 14th 2003. From announcement of the concept, it took only 4 days to form the group and get a website up. Typh00n lost interest fairly quickly and went inactive, and Stevo took over. After many many months of Stevo asking for a forum here, TVR was eventually granted a forum here, thus recognizing it as an official Ville Guild.

On April 18, 2004, Fragfailure announced TVB was being retired as a official guild. Current TVB members could continue to were the the TVB tag, but there would be no leadership council or forums.

On May 18th, 2004, The Ville suffered its greatest lost when Blue Ruler passed away. Blue Ruler was a long time Villun and Admin at "The Ville", and his contributions to The Ville will forever be remembered. As a reminder of what a great man and close friend Blue Ruler was to "The Ville", many Villuns will continue to wear the tag -RBR- for "Remember(ing) Blue Ruler". A section of the forum dedicated to remembering blue can be found here.

On May 23, 2004, <eVa> was announced to the rest of the community. The leadership team was composed of Sgt Stutter, Simpleman, Clay Pigeon, Powdermilkman, and Kjeldorian Royal Guard. Those five members can still be found playing on "The Ville" servers today with the -FF- tag standing for "Founding Father". Orginally, <eva> had 10 additions members, and many of them still play at The Ville today. Those members can be identified with the -FM- tag.

In December of 2004, Robert E Lee passed on ownership of the Ville to JFet and Powdermilkman <Insert more details here>

On Febuary 3rd, 2005, The Ville suffered a second great loss when Triggerhappy's life was tragically cut short by a motorcycle accident.

In October 2006, The ownership of The Ville passed from Powdermilkman and JFet to Simpleman and Sgt Stutter. At that time, the forums were upgraded to the current forum software and Dog came on board to help maintain the servers.

<TVB> reforming after orange box release information here

Though not a competition site, the Ville has hosted numerous fun competitions, including MeleeMania, Sniper Wars, Heavy-Medic wars, and the Ville Cup. These competitions are purely for fun. One of the weirder competitions in recent years have been the "Kill 'Some Person'" months, with L3eeron and Carpe stepping up and offering a prize to whoever kills them the most in a given month. A full history of all the events can be found at the bottom of this thread.

One of the common questions is "How do I join a Ville Guild?". While all the guilds have different recruiting policies, all the guilds are by invite only. Asking to become a member of a guild will not help. The main things todo if you want to join a ville guild is hang out on the ville servers, participate in ville events, be supportive to new players, and participate in the forums. If you do all those things, you'll be noticed, and probably get invited to join one of the guilds. One of the main things with all the guilds is they have a "no guild switching" clause - once someone is wearing one of the guild tags, they are off limit to recruiting by the other guilds as long as they stay active in their original guild.

Before 2010, the ville was overseen by the owners (SgtStutter and Simpleman) and a group of admins refered to as the "Senior Admins". Then, the Ville Council was created Jan 6 2010, at least that is when the forum was created. There were email discussions and such before that but Jan 6th would be the best date for it. The Senior Admin group at that time was comprised of John Doe, Mad-Hammer, Squirrel and KRG. They had just brought in a few long time friends of TheVille, [BR] into the guild fold here. It marked the first time a Ville guild was not created completely internally. In the end, it did not work out and from it we learned that an impartial group of administrators would be beneficial to TheVille as a whole. Sgt Stutter asked the Seniors if they would be willing to take on a new role of impartial Council Members overseeing Senior Admins, Guilds and everything in between. They all dropped their official guild affiliations and took up the positions. Immediately afterwards, the vacated Senior Admin positions were filled by l3eeron, Gizanked, gator and Stevo. The Ville Council still works closely with the Seniors from time to time. The creation of the Council helped greater distribute the work load all around and it's proven very beneficial. It must be noted that Dog was a part of all of it every step of the way. He's as much a Council member as he is an everything here.

Another very common question is "How do I become an Admin?". Admins are chosen by the Senior Admins, and are by invite only. Typically, they are long time villians that have shown their maturity by their actions in game and on the forums. Asking to become an admin will get you nowhere; it is by invite only.

Since 2010 (When Spam first made this post), The Ville has lost three more members of the community.

On Nov 14, 2014, Tyson Stinson aka JCOM passed away. JCOM was one of the original 3 players on the ville at Clark Graphics. More information can be found at : viewtopic.php?f=25&t=27180

Around Oct 2nd, 2017, DDYzERO passed away from a stroke. More information can be found at : viewtopic.php?f=25&t=28291

On Feb 9th, 2021, the ville lost one of its best friends, its current owner, server admin, and everything else here when Steven "Stevo" Charles Guidetti passed away at age 32. His full obituary can be found at : https://obits.ocregister.com/us/obituar ... id=6915148. A full post about Stevo can be found at viewtopic.php?f=25&t=29187

Here is the full time line with the best guess at dates, including dates of major releases of Valve products, as the history of "The Ville" and Valve are closely intertwined.

08/24/96 - First release of Team Fortress on Quake Engine
11/19/98 - Valve releases Half Life
4/07/99 - Valve releases Team Fortress Classic
6/18/99 - First beta of Counter Strike
6/??/99 - TurkeyburgerVille comes online at Clark Graphics
8/??/00 - TurkeyburgerVille becomes Warpathville
9/??/00 - Warpathville became Avantiville with the release of the Avanti map by Valve
9/??/00 - JD becomes an admin at Turkeyburgerville.
11/8/00 - Version 1.0 of Counter Strike is released
1/12/01 - First Beta release of DoD - this was before the team joined Valve
8/13/01 - Avantiville renamed to "The Ville" and has grown to 3 servers
9/12/01 - TVB Forms by FragFailure after he leaves PWG
9/07/02 - =USV= Formed by Hoaxie, Roofcutter, and Blue Ruler
3/10/03 - TVR Officially formed by Stevo (Date from TVR leadership board)
5/1/03 - Valve releases DoD as an official MOD
4/29/04 - TVB temporarily disbands
5/18/04 - The Ville loses a great friend with the passing of Blue Ruler.
5/24/04 - Eva formed by KRG, Powdermilkman, Sgt Stutter, Simpleman, and Clay Pigeon.
8/11/04 - Counter Strike:Source Release
11/16/04 - Valve releases Half Life 2
12/27/04 - Ownership of "The Ville" passes from Robert E Lee to JFet and Powdermilkman
2/3/05 - The Ville loses another friend with the pasing of Trigger Happy
9/26/05 - Valve release Day of Defeat:Source
10/07/06 - Ownership of The Ville passes to Sgt Stutter and Simpleman
10/09/07 - Orange Box released by valve, includes Team Fortress 2
10/??/07 - TVB reforms after the release of Orange Box.
11/18/08 - Valve releases Left 4 Dead
11/19/08 - The game that started it all off, Half Life, turns 10.
11/16/09 - Valve releases Left 4 Dead 2
06/23/11 - Valve releases TF2 as "Free to Play" (Free to play = No Hats. If you owned TF2, you received the "Proof of Purchase" hat)
11/14/14 - One of our original Villuns, JohnCarterofMars, passes away. RIP Jcom
10/02/17 - DDYzERO passes away.
02/09/21 - Stevo Passes away.

History of The Ville Cup:
2001(?): Pimps With Grenades (TFC)
2002, May 7th: Blade-Runners (TFC)
2003: No Cup Held
2004, April 23rd: Hobo Strike Squad (DoD 1.3)
2004, late: Little information - cup hosted by No Dice (Natural Selection)
2005: No Cup Held
2006, May 15: The Black Label Society (DoD 1.3)
2007, Mar 04: Preacher's Crusaders (DoD:S)
2007, May 19: Death Dealers (DoD 1.3)
2008, May 17: Boobs Boobs Boobs (TF2)
2008, Dec 13: Veggies of Vengeance (DoD 1.3 single-day mini-cup)
2009, Nov 14: Moobs (TF2)
2010, Feb 05 (2011): Shakespearicles (TF2)
2011, Nov 29: Heroically Expendable Reinforcement Operatives (TF2)
2012, Nov 17: Supernumeraries (TF2)
2013, Aug 03: Team Innerds: Meat Explosion (TF2)
2014, Aug 02: The CarpeTBaggers (TF2)


The Ville Picture Archives
Pictures of Villuns past and present!
Note: Older archives, will contain many dead links but sifting is fun!

2011 Collection created by l3eeron
2010 Collection created by Gizanked
2009 Collection created by Squirrel
2008 Collection created by Gizanked
2007 Collection created by l3eeron
2005 Collection created by Kahlan Amnell
2004 Collection created by Stevo
Scattered 2004-2006 Collection created by Kahlan Amnell
1999-2002 Flash created by OneBigHoax aka Hoaxie
Last edited by spm97 on Wed Mar 02, 2022 12:51 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Post by arfy4 » Thu Aug 06, 2009 11:38 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theville.org It will need some changes, but it's there. :)
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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by Clay Pigeon » Fri Aug 07, 2009 12:49 am

Way to steal someone else's research arfy.
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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by NoahTheBoa » Fri Aug 07, 2009 1:37 am

[citation needed]
MLA format please
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Post by shimmybot » Fri Aug 07, 2009 1:48 am

:lol:

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Post by spm97 » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:11 am

Arfy,

Can you please delete the wikipedia entry? What is posted here was a very early rough draft, and I do not appreciate it being just blinded copied off to wikipedia.

Once it is far more complete, I'll talk with the Site Admins about if they want The Ville to have a wikipedia entry, and if so, then it can be copied there.

Spam

[quote="arfy4";p="187612"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theville.org It will need some changes, but it's there. :)[/quote]
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Post by arfy4 » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:28 am

Should I just get rid of it and when the entire history is finished put it back up completed?
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Post by shimmybot » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:38 am

[quote="spm97";p="187629"]

Once it is far more complete, I'll talk with the Site Admins about if they want The Ville to have a wikipedia entry, and if so, then it can be copied there.
[/quote]


patients young grasshoppa

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Post by spm97 » Fri Aug 07, 2009 3:03 am

Please just get rid of it for now...

I'll figure out with the site owners / admins is it should be on wikipedia in the future.

Spam

[quote="arfy4";p="187635"]Should I just get rid of it and when the entire history is finished put it back up completed?[/quote]
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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by TheCarpe » Fri Aug 07, 2009 10:49 am

Wikipedia is very strict on it's content, and even when it's complete, I highly doubt we're notable enough for an entry.
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Heck's Kitchen - TVC'08 & '11 ** The Axecutioners - TVC'09 ** Hale's Angels - TVC'10 ** CCCP - TVC'12 ** Ville Cuppin' Cakes - TVC'13 ** TheCarpetbaggers - TVC'14 CHAMPIONS

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Post by Stevo » Fri Aug 07, 2009 11:11 am

An article about a gaming community does not belong on Wikipedia...

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Post by !B a T m A n! » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:46 pm

sure it does stevo :)
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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by Nuckin » Fri Aug 07, 2009 3:06 pm

I think we had a thread on the old forums explaining the history of the ville.. I might be crazy but I remember seeing it a few years ago when we had the old forums...
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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by spm97 » Fri Aug 07, 2009 3:37 pm

[quote="Nuckin";p="187716"]I think we had a thread on the old forums explaining the history of the ville.. I might be crazy but I remember seeing it a few years ago when we had the old forums...[/quote]

I've been looking for it, but haven't found it yet....plus, if it was on the old forums, it might need updating.

The goal is to get something posted here that is "Stickied" at the top level for everyone to see.

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Re: The History of "The Ville"

Post by KRG » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:03 pm

March 2003, Complaint Dept made private (used to be public)
January 2003, Kjeldorian Royal Guard becomes an Admin (people of TheVille rejoice)
February 2002, Forum spam’d, new measures taken
February 2002, The Ville Mascot appears on Avanti
February 2002, Robert E. Lee still looking for his first Llama in the Bush
February 2002, Kjeldorian Royal Guard Joins <TVB> (People of TheVille rejoice)
January 2002, Stats for POTW turned off
January 2002, NeoTF 1.2
January 2002, Munkey starts the mulch server as the Grudge Server
December 2001, Banned list produced
December 2001, Site banners are gone
December 2001, New admin’s. {E4}MikeRotch and Warhammer-TPF
December 2001, President Bush requests Robert E. Lee to head up the nation wide Anti-Llama Taskforce. He returns from Washington DC looking for Llama’s.
November 2001, New admin, RoofCutter
November 2001, The Ville V added
November 2001, Ville store opens
November 2001, Kjeldorian Royal Guard joins TheVille (People of TheVille rejoice)
October 2001, NeoTF on Ville 2
October 2001, Ville Cup Tournament
October 2001, New admin’s MyMunkeye{LB} and -ice_guido-{LB}
October 2001, The Ville IV added
September 2001, Warning to stat cheaters
September 2001, TFC 1.1.0.8 patch
August 2001, Crowbar Wars
August 2001, Donations are solicited banners start.
August 2001, New forum server
August 2001 - Servers renamed to The Ville
July 2001 - Avantiville 3 is added. (Thanks LlamaBeans)
Mayish 2001 - Avantiville 2 goes Avanti/Warpath after trying several
different map combos. (Can you say "They hate Cornfield")
March 2001 Avantiville website comes up - Thanks Rob.
Mar 2001 Avantiville 2 is added.
Feb 2001 Avantiville 1 returns.
Jan 2001 Avantiville 1 goes DoD and is called War Wounds.
Oct 2000 Avantiville 1 is created.
Oct 2000 Turkeyburgerville goes away, Warpathville is tried briefly.
Sept 2000 JD becomes an admin at Turkeyburgerville.
Spring 2000 The perils of running a server from a fella called Eddie Munster.
Last edited by KRG on Fri Aug 07, 2009 10:07 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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