Fire Friendly first started back in 2007 with an Iceworld Bunkers server. Back then our server was called Fire Friendly Bunkers, but the community I ran was called Best of Bunkers. I also ran an Iceworld scrimmage team called FTS, which stood for Fear the Squad. This clan is also where I got the name Fearts, which I use on other websites as alias. Evan, my Co-Leader at the time, helped me run the Bunkers server and also paid for half of the costs monthly.

Around mid 2008 I started trying to expand the group and made many different servers trying to gain a player base. It wasn't until 2009 when I opened my first Jailbreak server that things really started to improve. Evan,Candyman, Blondie, Don, Moose, Scottish, Dangerous and Tim all played key parts in helping me grow our Jailbreak server.

March of 2009 I started my new group Fire Friendly. We had a few servers but our two most popular ones by far were the Jailbreak and the Bunkers servers.

In early 2010 something drastic happened. Evan, Blondie, and Moose; who were paying me monthly to keep the servers up, all left within a two week period. Evan was getting married, Blondie was moving and Moose was going into the Army. Having this happen in such a short period made it very hard for me to continue to pay for the servers by myself. I made the choice to merge my group with another called Spadez. Two months after the merger another devastating event happened. I was unaware that the person hosting Spadez servers was a online friend of the owner. One day, out of the blue, the host decided to stop hosting servers and shut us down. Shortly after I left CS:S for about six months. Candyman, Don and Tim opened a new Jailbreak server where our members could still play, it was a complete failure. On a random day six months later I get messages from Candyman and Don begging me to reopen the Jailbreak server. At first I didn't want too, but after much conversation I gave in.

In very early 2011 I reopened the old Jailbreak and Bunkers servers, hosting them off my own computer. It got a few player here and there, some of the old players came back to check it out, but for the most part it was dead.

For the next few months I improved our Jailbreak and we started gaining more players each day. In April 2011 I moved Jailbreak to the IP it is now. In the next few months I started playing a lot of Surf and left the Jailbreak to Candyman and the rest. In the next month or so I ended up opening a Surf Greatriver server which became the go to server for people who enjoyed that map. The Jailbreak and Greatriver were running smoothly and slowly growing each day.

In the middle of 2011 Candyman suggested I open a server with a default map rotation and I agreed. Around August is when I ran into Fatty and a few of his DISC members playing Dust2 on my server. I remembered DISC and Fatty because their Iceworld server was one of the first servers I ever played on when I started CS:S. As well, a lot of their members were regulars on my Bunkers server. At the time I was looking to expand but I had reached the limit of what I was able to afford each month. I saw Fatty was now the owner of DISC and had a Iceworld with a player base. I added Fatty and we started talking about a merger. We agreed on the terms of the partnership and DISC-FF was born.

The Jailbreak, Greatriver and Iceworld were running fine, however the default map server never got any players. In late September I changed the server to Mini Games. In the middle of October me and Kris became friends. He was a regular player on the new Mini Games and was key to its success. He would play on the server even when barely anyone was on.

At the start of November 2011 I met SoulHarvester. He used to play on the Jailbreak from time to time but was most active on my forums. He has been a big help to me in wording my Jailbreak rules, making sure the forums were running smoothly and just in general advising me on different matters.

At the start of 2012 all our server were doing very well. We had a steady player base and new people flowing in each day. One of these new people by the name of LolzZORZ came to me asking that I put up a Dust2 server. I told him I could not afford to open anymore servers, however he agreed to send me a monthly payment if I opened one up. I figured it was worth a shot since some of my other members had also been requesting a Dust2. For the first month the Dust2 was pretty much dead. Then one day in early February the population sky rocketed. To be honest I have no idea to this day why the Dust2 became so popular over night.

Towards the middle of February I was approached by Preston, who has been a loyal long time member of my community for many years. He requested I open a Gun Game server. Still being short on cash I told him if he would send me a monthly payment I would open one up for him. He agreed and I setup the new Gun Game, it was a horrible failure. A couple weeks went by without any success. In the end I told Preston it wasn't worth keeping the server up if no one was playing on it. We talked and came up with the idea to change he Gun Game into an Office server. About a month went by, then just like the Dust2, the Office started to get a huge influx of players.

One of the players I met during the rise of Office was Phantom.

Phantom was immediately liked by most of our players. It wasn't long until he received admin on Office, and later on Jailbreak as well.

A few months went by and all of my servers were highly populated during most of the day. In the middle of June 2012 Phantom came to me requesting that I put up a Zombie server. Like the others, I told him I wasn't able to afford any extra costs and if he was willing to pay me monthly I would put up the server for him, he agreed.

Around the same time me and my friend Mitch started experimenting with an advertising company called Pinion. I knew Mitch from years ago from his Sandbox mod back when I used Eventscripts on my servers. We found this service, which would pay you to put ads in your MOTD page, and wanted to see if it was legit. I hoped that if it worked I would be able to expand my community even more.

Middle of July Phantom was promoted to Top Admin after a unanimous vote from the current Top Admins.

I worked very hard trying to get the Zombie server right and trying to increase traffic with events and contests. However, in the end the server was shutdown because we couldn't maintain an active player base.

Towards the end of July Breezier, an admin on my Office server, comes to me offering to give me control over his TF2 trade server. Usually I don't accept servers, but his was already populated with players, and I had hoped to one day open some TF2 servers myself. I accepted his offer figuring it would help spark my player base once I started in TF2.

August 1st I received my first full payment from Pinion. The money I was making was enough to pay for all of my server costs. As well, I had enough left over that I could open more servers if I wanted. The money I got from Pinion also helped to hire people to code custom Source Mod scripts for my servers as well as get some modeling done. Also, now for the first time, I had money for giveaways and contests for the player in my community.

Middle of August I found a server host that was having a free server box promotion. They had opened a new location in Canada and needed people to use their boxes to help test their bandwidth as well as other things. I was lucky and got a box from them for free for three months. I used this opportunity to try and open a few TF2 servers, as I had never hosted on TF2 before. It was a good learning experience on how to install, setup, run and configure TF2 servers without a game server provider who does most of that for you.

Towards the end of September I saw a thread on the forums by Fatty. He explained his real life businesses had been raided by the FBI and he, along with many others, had been arrested. He explained to me in private the full situation and claimed he was innocent. He also explained that they went to his home and took his computer and he wouldn't be on for a while.

In the beginning of October Phantom opens up a MineCraft Tekkit server with Soulharvester. I agree to advertise it on my servers because many people have asked me to put one up in the past. After a while it started to get some traffic, 6-8 people on at a time playing.\r\n\r\nOctober 6th 2012 DISC-FF and Vigilante Gamers become affiliated. At the time I was looking to expand to TF2. I was getting some requests to bring the Zombie server back and open up a CS:GO server. One day I saw some Vigilante members playing on my Mini Games server and I decided to check them out. I went to the VG community page and looked over their servers. I saw they had popular Zombie Mod, ScoutzKnivez and CS:GO Dust2 Death Match server. I joined his servers and saw they were nicely run and had some custom content. To me it looked like a perfect fit as we had no competing servers. I contacted Woody, the owner of Vigilante, and after a long chat we got to know each other and agreed on the terms of the affiliation.

Toward the middle of October Element, a long time member and admin on my Jailbreak, comes to me asking me to put up more servers. I informed him I was planing on putting up some TF2 servers. He wished to help and he offered to pay me quarterly half the cost of a virtual dedicated server. I accepted his offer and start putting up some vanilla TF2 server with quick play. While I'm busy trying to populate the new TF2 servers, I tell my Top Admins Candyman, Kris and Phantom to look after the CS:S servers.

In the middle of November Mitch joins our group. For the past few months he had been my go to guy for custom script coding. As well, Mitch brought with him his Sandbox server which he has been working on for years.

Around the same time I came across the ArcReflex community, purely by chance browsing Steam one day. Reading their group page, they were having issues paying for their servers due to some unforeseen circumstances. I contacted the owner Cupcake offering to help pay for the servers in exchange for ownership of his Steam group. At the time he was no longer interested in being part of the group anymore. We talked for a while and I offered to buy the community from him. He agreed, and I became the new owner of ArcReflex. The TF2 vanilla servers I had up were doing alright, however I couldn't afford to pay for Arc's servers and host my own. I ended up keeping the Saxton Hale and Trade server, and moving the IPs over to the new virtual dedicated server I obtained from Cupcake. Once everything was up and running, all of the old members started to rejoin and populate the servers.

Thanks to the money I was making from Pinion ads, I was able to hire a web designer to make us a new website. Towards the end of December the new site was finally finished, and running the custom style it is today.

[To Be Continued...]

Well this has been a summary of our communities history. I will add more once more time has passed, maybe during the middle of this year. Thanks for reading and being a part of our community!