Ironglove League Site Down

Questions: Contact Karsiss or 45 in IRC

Iron Glove League History

     The Iron Glove League (IGL) was founded by Helmut near the end of 1997. He started the IGL out with a Quake World Team Fortress (QWTF) Frags & Flags league. From the beginning, Nicodemus was our Site Administrator. This league was based upon player kills and team flag captures. The league started off quite well. Many well known clans joined up including 'Iron', 'Fifth Element', 'Knights of Quake', 'Attack, Punish, Resist', 'SinTheTiK', 'I'm 12', 'Megadeath', 'The Taken', 'Dark Shadows', 'Phoenix', 'Iron Curtain', 'Ministry of Pain', 'Clan Postal', 'Clan Maylstryx', 'Blood of the Fold', 'Braveheart', 'Aftermath', 'Autoaim', 'Null', and SO many more. In March of 1998 the IGL Council was formed and lead by Karsiss of Clan Null. This council was a group of 10 people from different clans in the league that advised Helmut on issues that were found to be in need of resolving. This Council was one of the high-points of the IGL. It created a way for the players in the league to have a voice in how the league was run. After 7 months of being extremely active (643 Emails), the Council disbanded as all major issues were resolved and the Council no longer had any way of improving the league. It must also be noted that during the life of the IGL Council, Helmut made a surprising announcement that he quit and left the IGL hanging by a thread. The IGL Council stepped in and after a flurry of Emails, voted amongst themselves to have Download step up as IGL Commissioner and take over where Helmut left off. After Download took over and ran the league for a few months, Helmut returned and Download stepped down, returning control of the league to Helmut.

     One MUST note that during this time, the IGL Public Message Board was THE place to be. It was the most active, flaming message board anywhere. Nothing under the sun was missed being discussed when it came to QWTF, clan hatred, anger, honor, cheating, confusion, and much much more.

     The IGL Expanded into other QWTF leagues including Teamscore (run by Tarrant), Battlegrounds (run by Rot), 5vs5 (run by MwhahahA), Highlander (run by Stormer), and the Euro Division (run by DownLoaD).

     After this 'Golden Age' of the IGL, TFC arrived and Download became the TFC League Administrator. It is at this point in time that QWTF started to slack off and die. Many of the IGL's QWTF leagues closed up until finally only Teamscore and 5vs5 remained. In January of 1999 Helmut vanished without any warning. The league continued with each League Administrator making decisions for their own league. July of 99 Download ended his run as IGL Administrator to give up the TFC League to Karsiss. With the help of Arod, they ran this league. At the end of January 2000, Karsiss stepped down from the TFC League Administration position to take full control of the IGL. This was due to a year long absence from Helmut. Swingtime took control of the TFC division when Arod no longer could put in the hours needed to keep the web site updated. Two weeks later, the Ironglove server had a hard drive crash that not only physically destroyed the hard drive, but the entire IGL web site. As an emergency fix, Swingtime set up the IGL on free web servers to keep things running while a new server was built.

     The IGL closed down all QWTF leagues officially, as there was no activity in the remaining divisions. The CS and Q3F leagues were created and ran well until the IGL hit a huge problem. The server that Ironglove.com was being hosted crashed and wasn't being replaced.

     July 18, 2000 our new server (donated by Swingtime, and built by Cannon_Fodder, both from Clan Null) and the Ironglove Domain came out of the ashes and the IGL started rebuilding from a blow that would take months to recover from. The Q3F and CS leagues were in bad shape though the TFC league was still moving along strong.

     The IGL's Q3F league is being replaced with a Q3F 5vs5 league and a new QWTF league is in the works. The CS league is rebuilding and the TFC league, run by Swingtime, is about to be passed on to one of his administrators, while Swingtime takes up a new position as an IGL League Administrator & Web Administrator, second only to Karsiss, the new IGL Commissioner. With new divisions coming online, and the IGL expanding, a unique opportunity came to the IGL. ActionBlaster.com contacted Swingtime to work out a relation between the two sites. The IGL is currently waiting for a game server server donated by ActionBlaster.com. Further plans include ActionBlaster sponsored, IGL events to include prizes for these special events. Over the next six months, ActionBlaster decided to move into the business of renting out servers for money changing their business model. The IGL never received anything from ActionBlaster even though the IGL advertised for Actionblaster for months. The end result was that the IGL decided to discontinue their association with Actionblaster. The IGL is looking at moving into other areas to grow and assert itself again as the number one league for competitive game play.

     In the summer of 2001, the IGL consolidated its leagues and focused on its two largest divisions, CS and TFC. After a very successful run, the IGL TF division closed. This IGL TF division was the last hold out of competitive TF play. Daolin headed up the TF division until the end where there were 5 remaining clans still willing to battle. With such a small field, and fewer and fewer people desiring to keep playing the Quake (1) mod, IGL TF closed. Good luck to all those who played, and who made the magic happen. You will be missed. The other efforts of Q3F, Q3F5v5 were also closed do to lack of interest. The Q3F mod never quite gained the following of past mods (like TF or TFC). Thus both the divisions were formally closed in August 2001. With two divisions remaining the IGL started looking for a new direction in competitive teamplay gaming. New games like Tribes 2 show some promise, but the realism of mods like Day of Defeat pull a steady following as well. Either way one thing is clear, the IGL remains the premiere league for the highest skilled clans in their particular game.

      On August 28, 2001, Tone-Loc stepped down as Head Administrator for the TFC league. Tone-Loc joined Karsiss in running the IGL in the areas of Web Page management as Swingtime went on a long vacation due to life itself that prevent him from continuing his long time service within the IGL. Tone-Loc was a welcome addition to the team who took up many of Swingtimes web duties.

     On September 11, 2001, a day the following posting was made on the IGL’s main page. “The IGL sends prayers to all victims and their families from the New York and Washington DC atrocities and to those who were injured or died in their attempts to save the lives of people they never knew.” It is a day that will always be remembered as many in the gaming community were effected.

     On November 26, 2001, Slayer (Russ) took over the running of the floundering CS league. This league was taken from ashes and brought to an astounding size in a short period of time. In June of 2002, the CS league broke the 400 clan barrier.

     January 2002 had the start of a new era for the IGL. With the recruitment of Milagre to code up a new, fully automated web page (this one), along with Narcdog who worked on the graphics of the site, and with Jason as a helper for Milagre on the coding of the site, the IGL began change from old html editted web pages towards an easier, web-based inputting system. In April of 2002, the IGL’s Counter Strike League moved to the new web site.

     In July, 2002, the IGL completed it’s change over from the old web site to the new web site. Now hosting CS 5vs5, DoD 7vs7, JK2 5vs5, TFC 5vs5 and TFC 9vs9, the IGL has taken off on route to go where it has never gone before. With the current clan count at just over 1,100 and the player registration count just over 8,500, the IGL has expanded to include new games. With Milagre stepping down from his lead position running the web pages, and with Jason stepping up to the challenge of continual improvements to the web site, the IGL has a great future as it enters into an area never before entered by this league.

More history to come....