TAW - Why Did You Join?

Hey there,

I'm curious...why did you join TAW?  

Why did you chose TAW vs other gaming communities?

What keeps you as a member staying?

I am asking these questions in order to help in the recruiting process and the answers I receive we can all use to prospective recruits. :) 

Share your answers below. 

Hello there!

Hell Let Loose Division here, and on the HLL servers i would run into TAW players every now and then and all of them where super polite, nice and helpful.

That led me into a Google search of TAW and when i saw the organization behing this group and the dedication i knew i wanted to be a part of it.

No other group had this positive effect on me, not saying that every other group is inferior to TAW, but for me the qualities i want in a community i find them all here.

I guess the reason i want to stay, and i wanna show up to mandatory events is the fact that i enjoy playing with this group and i know we are gonna keep moving foward, improve and have even better gameplay experiences.

Oh gosh here we go... I joined TAW back in 2012, into the League of Legends EUW battalion, pretty much just because I got invited to join by a good friend of mine, so I can play with other people and be part of the squad, etc. Didn't really think much of it at the time I suppose. We had fun and that's all that mattered :) 

Having been here for nearly a decade, and held nearly pretty much every position in both army and operations sides (besides of top5), I can share that there have definitely been many ups and downs. I have been hurt and let down by people, got involved with drama (my officer notes make a bestseller story!), and yes I have considered leaving on several occasions  But in the end, this my family and I wouldn't really want to go anywhere else, here's why:  

I know that, for a fact, if I'm ever bored, I could pop down into any of our divisions in TAW and be received with open arms, whether it's to be shown how to play a game or just a casual chat. I have also been taught a lot about leadership and organisation, which had a direct impact on me successfully getting into IRL job role I wanted to get into for many years. I have also improved quite a bit in the games I've been playing over the years by playing with fellow TAW members. 

I have been staying because of the friendships & comradery I've forged while being in the community, which I now practically consider my extended family, my brothers & sisters. I have mourned over the loss of some of these. I met my partner (soon™ to be husband) here about a year in so that's pretty huge too and yes I would invite certain people from TAW, despite never having met some of  them in person, to my wedding. 

Fast forward to today, I have been in operations for about 5~6 years throughout my time in TAW, and now have a innate sense of duty to provide for, and protect TAW at the best of my ability. On the rare occasion whenever I'm not working or working on projects, I do occasionally do visit other units to chat with people, so don't be surprised if I randomly pop in one day. :P 

Hello!

I originally joined back in 2013 (when i was 15 which is a scary thought). At the time Myself and a friend (Sidthesloth) just got into Arma 2 and had been playing on a Coop vs AI Domination server. Within said server there was a rule that you had to be part of TAW to fly the jets - and i was a very keen jet-pilot and I enjoyed being called in to help clear the objectives, transport troops in some higher equipped helicopters and aid in side missions. We both signed up thinking its just a way to get access to the better assets and had no idea what we were actually signing up for.

After that we stuck around playing 4-6 hours per week of Arma 2, then Arma 3 and if you're a Arma 2 'Vet' you'll remember the ACE nights , League of legends, Valorant, Hell let Loose, TSO and more.

Fast forward 8 years and I'm now building TAW's new site, what a ride!

Hey hey.

I've chosen this community back in 2012 on a whim, because at the time I was heavily involved in League of Legends and I wanted to become better at it, so I thought "where else to go than a community that prides itself on being well organized and with a focus on gaming without the 'extras'." 

I quickly discovered that this place was something else. I had a great deal of admiration for all the staff that were running the show, so I told myself that I would also want to give back to the place. I grew within League of Legends, and once I felt like I had hit my limits there, I wanted to widen my scope. Since my objective was "help people", I figured that joining Operations would be a good thing for me. I got involved and helped the original launch of the EDU division as a member of TAW Academy. I got to teach dozens of a classes a month, met a bunch of great people and felt like I was making a difference by teaching the next generation of TAW leadership.

I did end up taking a longer break because I had to focus on my IRL career after finishing my studies, but now, over 3.5 years later I'm back and ready to continue my project of helping to transform this community into something better every day. This community has helped convince me that I can be a decent instructor IRL, so now part of my job is training people, just like I do within TAW University.

There's good things and less goods things about this community, just like any other, but it definitely sets itself apart from the rest. I'm just hoping that we can all work together to give this place a fresh coat of paint so that we can adapt to the ever changing gaming environment of today.

The friendships you make here are the primary reason most of the 'vets' are around many years later.

To be honest... Dreamus slipped in my dm's through a HLL community page and recruited me into TAW 👀 And it looked the most professional at the time.

Never had the intention to get up in the ranks. But when no-one else did.. well

little over 2 years later and here we are ... 

Stepping in positions made me appreciate what all the others before me (and all others in other units) did and voluntarily do.

TAW, in this structure, depends on a lot of volunteers. I want others to enjoy this community as I did and still do. So I'm helping where and when I can, in a way I do enjoy as well. Doing that makes me happy, and I hope it makes other people happy. That's what is keeping me here 😉 

I was just a casual gamer and happened to be invited by an SUL who was trying to set up a spin up team for Heroes and Generals which was a game I was trying out at the time. He showed me some fantastic promotional material of TAW which piqued my interest. I seemed to know a few things about tactics so I was asked to step up to Field Specialist and the rest as they say is history.

A wise man once said a sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create, I think it was actually  Mahatma Gandhi. Anyway I can honestly say I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with and nurture future leaders within TAW even though many of them have gone on to out rank me! Officially this is my last day in TAW and I will be leaving after 7 years. It has been a fantastic experience and the only regret I have is not having more time to dedicate to TAW.

Was playing Star Wars Battle Front and saw some players with the TAW tag that provided the link for the site www.theartofwarfare.net which i thought was nice, so i remembered it. Weeks later i started playing the BF2 Demo and wanted to play with others so i just remembered the link and went to the site and now I'm here. Kinda weird to think about it.

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I was in a random match because my friends I usually run with wasn't on so I decided to run some plunder to get some WZ kills and ran into tedtom and seemed cool and I checked out the website and joined the discord and it all took off from their and this clan/community has been the best iv experienced. Glad to be apart of an organization that is truly not toxic and come from all walks of life.

I joined a long time ago after playing on the TAW Quake Wars server. Someone named Ben sent me an invite, and then Feanor, Hook, Todbot and Bravehardt taught me all about TAW.

I joined back in November 2012 under different username, but, the gist is that one of my buddies told me about this MilSim game ArmA II and how he played that with an online community. I was very curious and decided to join, since non of our other friends are into those titles.

That's pretty much it -- TAW offered one of the better ArmA II experiences and therefore stood out. We had a legendary public server, good times.

Ahahaahah DutchAvenger , "Dreamus slipped in my dm's"  

Glad I came across you back then

I use this quote quite a lot for some time for recruiting when trying to sell in TAW to a potential new member:

"I joined to play a game but stayed for the community"

The community aspect to have other people with the same interest as you playing a game actively together and getting to know eachother better I think is great.

Some of the people I been gaming with for years now and some I met up with in real life. 

Each story to why someone likes TAW is different though but what I see all across TAW in my experience is that the community aspect shines through as we meet on a regular basis to play games with eachother it helps a lot to form close friendships lasting longer than some games lifetime.

Dreamus:

Ahahaahah DutchAvenger , "Dreamus slipped in my dm's"  

Glad I came across you back then

Haha, Glad you messaged me, I guess the community is now keeping me here aye

MercenaryHG:

Officially this is my last day in TAW and I will be leaving after 7 years. It has been a fantastic experience and the only regret I have is not having more time to dedicate to TAW.

If I may ask, why the departing? 

If I remember correctly I asked if I could join after I saw a list of [TAW] tags on my team, they were helpful. I wasn't great in the game but they gave some quick tips for that match. That was in Company of Heroes and with the SUL DeSoto. Over the course of the next games I played with them, once I was able to join them (had to buy a mic first), I greatly improved at the game. The entire division was just all around great/helpful to new players. That really stuck with me and is still the greatest aspect of TAW in my opinion.