Welcome to our weekly blog about DoF members.
We hope that these blogs will entertain you as well as help you in getting to know our members and DoF better.
We asked Darin 16 standard questions from our Meet the Member blog questionnaire
and then we gave chance to our members to ask 4 specific questions.
Hello! My name is Meade, though online I go by Darin. I was born (and lived almost my whole life so far), in Oklahoma! I just recently moved to Missouri. I'm twenty five and I don't have an alcohol problem! I can quit whenever I want... I was homeschooled and never went to a real college (I did college level courses at home till I was twenty/twenty one). I'm an avid gamer (have been almost my whole life), and that includes board games, pen and paper role playing, miniature wargaming, and of course, video games! The only type of gaming I've never been into is console gaming. I grew up with two older brothers who were both really into computers and IT since they were teenagers, so I always have been (and always will be), a PC gamer. That said thanks to my two older brothers I've played most of the classic early generations of console games on emulators, so it's not like I don't know what Mario is (though I still to this day suck with a control).
Favorite Quote/Line: Every army needs its canon fodder!
1. How did you (together with William and Dante) create DoF? Origin story time! So I met William and Dante in a clan called "The Kingdom of Holy Calradia" (aka TKHC), and after a while we kinda got bored with being the only super active people and after talking about how we would run our own clan, we left TKHC and started The Defenders of Faith! Now DoF wasn't the first name we had, we went through several like Men of God, Sons of God, Defenders of God. We eventually settled on DoF and the rest was history!
2. Why did you create DoF? Seemed like a good idea at the time? It come from a desire to participate in the Warband community in an organized way. Joining events, tournaments, clan wars, all that good stuff! And of course getting to do so with a fun and like minded group of people!
3. Favorite moment(s) in DoF? Wow... This one is really hard because there've been so many great ones! That said one of my favorites isn't so much a specific moment as more a "period", that being when several of the (at the time), top members left and started their own clan called TMW, and almost all of our active members left and joined TMW with them. The reason it's one of my favorite moments is because of how dedicated the handful of us were and all the work and effort everyone put in to keep DoF alive and to rebuild! Through all the ups and downs, that is one thing that we've always been consistent on, dedication and determination! I couldn't get past this question without quickly throwing out a few other of my favorites:
- DoF vs Rebels where they were favored to beat us, and we found Nevino, who at the time had just recently left DoF, talking trash about DoF to the other Rebels and telling them how it would be an easy win. We won that match.
- DoF vs rN where rN was heavily favored to win and we ended up winning on the tiebreaker map! This is one of my favorites because we had almost everyone from current DoF there, including several of our European members even though it was like 2-4 am for them!
- The whole "war" against The Kingdom of Veluce (TKoV), that we got involved in to help our "allies" Golden Kingdom (GK).
- DoF birthday events over the years have always been tons of fun and very memorable!
4. Favorite book? I read a lot so this one is also a tough one. One of my all time favorites is "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He's one of my favorite authors. When it comes to non-fiction, my current favorite is "Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles" by Bernard Cornwell (famous for his Sharpe series).
5. Favorite movies and tv shows? As a big history nerd, I really appreciate a good war film. Here's a short list of some of my favorites: Zulu (1964), Waterloo (1970), The Longest Day (1962), Midway (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and though it may not qualify since it's historical fiction, one of my favorites is Master and Commander (2003). And here's a short list of non war films: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Heat, the John Wick series, Star Wars episodes 1-6, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Without a Clue, Mad Max series. There are a lot more but those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head! As for tv show, I'd have to go with Falling Skies.
6. Favorite music? Classic rock, Metal (I lean heavily towards power metal), old school progressive rock (Yes and Kansas are two of my all time favorite bands), folk music, classical, jazz, swing, and electronic/synth.
7. Favorite food and drink? The meal I always asked for on my birthday growing up was chicken alfredo! I absolutely LOVE Italian food, but you also can't go wrong with a well cook steak. Drink of choice is a Screw Driver (orange juice + vodka), and I of course love some good old iced tea!
8. Favorite color? Green, because it's the best color.
9. Favorite time of the year? Fall/Autumn
10. Are you an (e)sports fan and if so what are your favorite sports and teams? Yes and no. I enjoy watching some esports (mostly StarCraft 2), but I don't follow any of them religiously. Two favorite StarCraft 2 players would be Special and PrintF.
11. Do you have any pets? Kind of. My sister has a schnauzer-poodle mix, which is kinda the family dog, but is technically hers.
12. Place you would love to travel to? Italy, Poland, France, and Japan.
13. Most inspiring historical figure? Captain Richard "Dick" Winters (highly recommend reading Beyond Band of Brothers)
14. Favorite games? Half-Life, Warband, any Total War game before Rome 2, Neverwinter Nights, and the original Thief trilogy. 15. Describe your playing style? Defensive/Cautious. I enjoy playing either a support or tank style role in most games. In Warband specifically I always mained Cavalry, which usually fell into a support role. When leading in matches I was definitely defensive or cautious (a lot of times overly so). 16. What will be your main class in Bannerlord? Probably cavalry but I'm really enjoying infantry as well (especially spear and shield).
And now we will turn to the specific questions our members had for Darin
17. Shinrog asking: Did you ever expect that this clan you created would grow to become what it is now? I always hoped it would, but I never necessarily thought it would. It's kind of funny because I never thought about DoF becoming what it is now until fairly recently when it hit me, it's reached the kind of level that I always hoped it would! 18. William is wondering What is, in your opinion, the most underrated game you've ever played and why? Post Scriptum! It's an amazing and immersive game that unfortunately only has a tiny player base, but thankfully that small player base is very passionate and dedicated! 19. Duncan really wants to know What is the most satisfying thing you've ever done in life? Being involved with the creation and development of DoF! 20. Erminas asking Do you think that gaming industry is leaning more towards satisfying casual players by simplifying games? And in relation to this do you think that Bannerlord (as of current beta version) is falling under this criteria compared to Warband? This is a spicy question! I like it! I'm going to give the short answer for each half of the question first. Yes, no. I think the triple A gaming industry has been leaning fully into simplifying there games. This is kind of to be expected, since they are trying to reach as mass market as possible (to make the most money as possible). That said I do think there are some game series that are somewhat insulated from this thanks to having an esports component to them (CoD, LoL, SC2, Dota 2, etc). The esports element requires a certain degree of complexity and a high enough skill ceiling in order to survive. So yeah triple A games I think, overall, have become more "casual". That said, if you remove the triple A developed games from the picture, I don't think the gaming industry as a whole is getting more casual or simplified. There are tons of indie or middle market developed games that are anything but casual or simple. Now as to the second half, do I think Bannerlord in its current beta state is more casual or simplified? It's hard to say since we've yet to see any organized team vs team matches, but overall I would say no. That said a couple of the reasons why it may end up more simplified/casual would be as follows. Polishing and streamlining. A lot of game series will, with each new entry, become more polished and more streamlined, and usually the first few instances of this are largely positive, but if the process of streamlining/polishing continues, the game will become SO streamlined that it's actually worse for it. So while I do think Bannerlord will certainly be streamlined from warband, there are two things that make me confident it won't cause it to be simplified, firstly this is really only the second game in the series (Warband wasn't really a proper sequel to Mount and Blade, more like an expansion), and the second fact being that they are adding in a lot of new features (specifically for single player). Now we still have a few months before Bannerlord gets it's soft release via early access, so this might change, but in my personal opinion, it won't be any significantly simplified compared to warband. It will be more streamlined, and that may remove some of the competitive depth, but that (competitive depth through jankiness), is a topic for another time!
Thanks to Darin for joining us in this week's blog.
Viglaf will be the next Member we get to Meet bit better?
Join us for his interview next Monday.
Thank you for reading this week's blog and we hope you enjoyed it!
Great read, don't forget that you still have time to ask Viglaf questions by posting them here: http://defendersoffaith.proboards.com/thread/4167/meet-member-monday?page=2&scrollTo=36859