The (JAWA) Retrospective: Part 2 – The Activity Boom (2005)

Published: 25 August 2026 Last Updated: 6 September 2026 Categories: Gaming

Part 1 – Where It All Began (2004) • Part 2 – The Activity Boom (2005) • Part 3 – Once a JAWA, always a JAWA. (2006+)

This is Part 2 of my retrospective of (JAWA), a clan I ran during my teenage years and early 20s between 2005 – 2017. This post covers the 2005 era in its entirety.

The Clueless Leader

On the 11th February 2005, I became Leader, I achieved what I wanted. There I was, a Leader of a gaming clan with no members with no clue what to do next really. The first and most important decision was, do I keep the tag? Its traditions? What IS (JAWA) without Matt? I experimented with changing the name to The Assassin Academy (TAA) but that really didn’t feel quite right, and sounded quite lame.

In the end, I decided that it was best to keep things as they were, but be a bit more open minded with recruitment. I spent the next week recruiting anyone that would join me, none of which were very well suited to the clan. Over the next week or two, they vanished, but who could blame them? Things just didn’t feel quite right, I felt like I was trying to emulate Matt and I was having zero success. If I wanted to lead (JAWA), I needed to do it my own way while honouring our past, because who knows? Maybe Matt will return someday soon (Spoiler).

I remember getting quite excited at this point, because I felt like I had just opened up a box of creativity. I had free reign to do whatever I wanted with the clan. My reputation was still the same, an admin abusing asshole that liked to get into fights with others frequently. I had some good traits too 😂, but I can safely say I was very difficult to be around back then and even my wife, DragonGirl, who I’ll mention meeting later in this post, can attest 😉.

The Aggressive Reboot

So I wiped the slate clean and was fortunate enough to recruit some of the most loyal people in the clan’s history such as:

(Apologies if I missed anyone obvious, it was quite a big list, and I tried to include those that made an impact very early in 2005. People like DragonGirl and Podoplovik etc came much later in the year.)

The earliest full screenshot I have of (JAWA).

These people were the foundations of a new and exciting clan, it didn’t take long for us to smash through previous records and hit 30 members.

The 30 member graphic I made – April 2005

I am not sure exactly when we dropped the Jawa skin requirement, but it would’ve been very early in 2005. Everyone was very relieved that I allowed this, to my surprise, because I assumed I’d get some resistance. I kind of wish I kept this requirement, honestly 😉.

Around this time as well, Eclipse returned and was pretty impressed with what I had done to reboot the clan, which was very encouraging, however behind the scenes I was struggling to manage this many members, and so I made Kel’born (Kel), Eclipse, MaStEr and Sirius into Co-Leaders, but I made it clear to them at the time that I would be “Main Leader” as I put it. Kel especially stood out, we got along very well and were very like-minded. Here’s a quote from him on how he joined the clan:

I joined at the same time as my friend Master the JAWA legend. Great guy. Anyway I came on the server and I see Link connecting then I asked him can I join Dueled him 2 times and heh I WON I OWNED LINK! haha but lets continue, After some Time I earned the rank of leader.. with the same time my actual best friend in the clan joined.. THE DRAGON GIRL.. with a short time we became friends..

Kel’born

It was also at this point that I decided to get us a forum, which was offered to us through Gage in ClanWarriors (http://jawa.clanwarriors.com). It ran on something called PHP-NUKE which was the same software that ran ClanWarriors.

Things began moving very fast from here onwards, in fact we began to rapidly explode with activity on both our forum and within our member numbers. We’d often occupy quite a large chunk of the ClanWarriors server and it suddenly became “cool” to be a (JAWA) member.

NOTE: I’ll add some fun polls and other bits to the bottom of this post from a 2005 snapshot of the forums back then. Nobody has ever seen these, and it gives a nice insight into how life was back then.

I began adding new ranks such as:

(JAWA)JediName – I felt like an in-between rank was needed when going from Padawan to Knight. In the Star Wars universe, it didn’t really make a lot of sense, but it kind of stuck and proved popular.
(JAWA)Name(R) – I still think this is a great rank, and something that we should’ve kept around. It’s the Recruiter rank, and it allowed very specific people in the clan to go out and recruit new members. I believe the first was Muffin_Man who did a great job at bringing in new blood. I fully trusted them.
(JAWA)DiscipleName – I really wanted to reward the loyalty of those who had stood head and shoulders above other Full Members, the ones that were there every day, helping out and making an effort. So, I made the Disciple rank.
(JAWA)EliteName – We weren’t a competitive clan by any stretch of the imagination, we rarely participated in clan VS clan events such as TFFAs/CTFs. In fact, if you joined (JAWA), you knew you were joining a social circle rather than a “Who is the best?” competition. However, our clan attracted some exceptional duellists such as Chrono, and as time passed and people like Chrono began training others, it became very clear that a rank was needed to demonstrate their prowess. Chrono was the first to receive this rank. Let me quote my younger self from August 2005 on the criteria “Only the best get this title, it is determined by each leader facing the person and saying if they are good enough. Not many pass.”. Basically, if you fought me and I said you were good enough, you got it. </ego>

Also during April 2005, we formed our first alliances with other clans on ClanWarriors, these were with Gods of Sith (GoS) and Eternal Starwars Legends (E-S-L). These never really went anywhere, but it was nice to be more open and friendlier with other clans.

A graphic I made celebrating our first alliances – April 2005

We also formed alliances with The Fallen Angels (TFA), KlanWarriors (!KW!), Dark Shadow Knights (DSK) and Bounty Hunter Clan (BHC) during this time.

The Founder Returns

Then, suddenly, he returned.

I got a ping on MSN from a clan member that Matt was on the server. I thought it was a joke, but there he was on the tracker. Again, I assumed it was probably an impersonator, but nope, it was actually him. I hesitated before joining, because I knew I’d either get a warm welcome or a cold one. To Matt, he would’ve had no idea I was leading (JAWA) at this point, would he try to take over? I knew if he asked I would’ve agreed because as I said in Part 1, I madly respected Matt.

I connected, and he was stood there in his Jawa skin, using the same Serren Sceptor he always had. He was surrounded by fellow members, which was actually very intimidating because even months later, the clan flocked to him as they did back when I was a member. Thankfully, everyone including Matt was very cool about everything. He was, as always, fully supportive of me and was very happy that the clan was continuing. He explained why he wasn’t around (Private) and we got chatting for quite some time about the clan and life in general.

A graphic I made to promote Matt’s return – April 2005

I did feel that it was only right to offer Matt his old Founder rank back, with no responsibilities attached to it so he could just enjoy the game. He accepted it graciously a month later when he could start playing again, but ultimately Matt became more of an observer, and rarely ever joined the server from then onwards.

Clan Life Under Link

The entirety of 2005 can be summarised as both our most chaotic time and our most active, by a long shot. As a total astronomy nerd, I really see those old days in a similar vein to our accretion period, where we were still coalescing into what we would eventually become.

Our numbers were rapidly increasing, and it was stable for the most part. I felt a great deal of satisfaction seeing so many people flock to what we were building. I sometimes wonder what Matt thought of what became of the clan, because it was much different to his original vision by this point, that’s for sure. I never thought to ask at the time.

One thing that started to become apparent was that our larger size really encouraged smaller groups. You’d have Griffin’s group of friends (Yoshi, Assassin, Wodec, 1UP, Exile and Griffin himself), Chrono’s group (Which consisted of anyone good with a lightsaber such as HI) and then you had Battousai’s group of friends (Battousai, Shouru and Sirius). There were plenty of others, but those are the main 3 I recall. I tried to discourage this, but it just pushed them closer together and eventually made them quite closed off to others. This would reach a breaking point which I’ll discuss later in this post.

We played on so many custom maps, such as:

BDC Racing Club – This was so fun to play on, we’d spend hours exploring it. It was GIGANTIC, easily the biggest map for its time. So many rooms, secrets and vehicles to race in. It’s an awesome relic for a forgotten time, as BDC didn’t survive much longer after its release I believe? Thankfully maps like this are a perfect time capsule.
Taspir Clan Edition – Massively underrated map, it deserves a lot more attention
Jedi’s Home JL II – Another incredibly fun map that mixes both fun elements and the movies to create a really engaging world.
Sith Council V2 – I’ve spoken about this map in great length already here.
Jedi Council GCX – I absolutely fucking love this map, lots of memories here 💖 We had such a blast here as a clan.
The Academy v2 – A beautiful, beautiful map by Virtue, who made the map for The Jedi Academy. Sadly it’s been forgotten about by its successor, V3.
Boonta Eve Tatooine Pod Race – These were such chaotic races, had a lot of fun racing my friends here.
DoA Flight Arena – Dogfights and absolutely nothing else.
JediVMerc – Another severely underrated map, for the old and forgotten Jedi V Merc gamemode in JA+. This was SO fun during the old days.
BlueIce Twilight – My all time favourite map, although its very close to Jedi Council GCX. It had true atmosphere, it felt like another world. An absolute masterpiece by Szico.
Bespin FFA – The most popular JK2 FFA map, ported to JK3.

Shoutout to sites like PCGameMods and JK3Files/FileFront for making Jedi Academy so much cooler than it would’ve been otherwise. Including the staff that ran it such as Inyri Forge.

By mid 2005 we had exploded to 60 members, which was absolute insanity.

A very old screenshot of our member list. – Sometime mid 2005

We began to experiment with a lot of ideas, nothing was really off the table at this point. We attempted a Dark/Light path system, which never really worked out and really left a bad taste in my mouth, I felt like we strayed too far from Matt’s vision on uniformity which was a tradition I wanted to keep with our tags and ranks.

I made a “Wall of Shame” which basically listed people that would break the rules constantly or even people I just didn’t get along with 😂

Wall of Shame graphic I made – April 2005

I began advertising on FileFront and other sites, which actually worked quite well. FileFront / JK3Files was basically the centre of the JK community back then, and it was filled with regular players:

It’s around this time that one member in particular really stood up and took on more authority, Kel’born (Kel). Kel was a force of nature, and really wanted to work alongside me and build (JAWA) into what I was envisioning. He was all in and just as much of a little shit as I was back then 😂 the members listened to him above everyone else, and he wasn’t scared to voice his opinion or disagree with me which I really appreciated because most people just went along with whatever I thought would be a good idea. I still remember his words back then “I will always be here to help” which he always stuck to through the worst and best times. While we still had this “Main Leader” BS going on, I always saw Kel as my second in command and he’d often replace me if e.g. I couldn’t make any events. Eventually though, we created The Council and introduced the Council rank, displayed as (JAWA)CouncilName rank, which was basically a new name for the Leaders who weren’t me so it was clear there was a distinction. In retrospect, this was a demotion but Eclipse, Kel, MaStEr and Sirius took it very well, we also introduced Battousai and Dark onto the Council who were both significantly more mature than us in both their actions and age.

Then, on a random day in mid 2005, DragonGirl connected. I remember it very well because she immediately started breaking the rules, and when we “slept” her (An admin term for putting someone on the ground, unable to move), she went absolutely apeshit like a fish out of water. She was extremely rude, loud and confused, but for some reason I was really attracted to this in a curious way LOL but no matter what, she’d continue laming (Attacking unarmed players), so I had to ban her. I thought that was the end of it, but she’d later reconnect and continue… resulting in another couple of bans. Eventually, she returned again with DSK tags, one of our allies, but she ended up going through multiple clans. A month or so later, it was our turn, and we decided to let this lunatic into the clan after we had some duels. Back then, if you wanted to join the clan you’d have to “fight” a Leader/Council to prove your worth, which made absolutely no sense as we were a social clan, but whatever. I think it was more for the visuals of it as we’d often let most people in. Me and DragonGirl went on to become very good friends, then enemies, then friends, and eventually 20 years later we got married and had a kid together, crazy huh?

As well as Kel and DragonGirl, another long time friend of mine Podoplovik joined the clan after being persuaded by his IRL friend Shinobi. Pod was quiet, and would just stare not saying a word, but somehow we really hit it off and became very close friends even to this day.

One of my besties, Fox, who was in Klan Warriors (KW) at the time under the name Plu3, also began hanging around a lot more. We got on very well and are still besties to this day.

Looking back, I got really lucky to be surrounded by really cool people who were very patient with me. I think if I recruited any other set of people, we’d never have gotten very far.

The (JAWA) League

The clan was very hungry for some more events, and I began toying with the idea of a wrestling Pay Per View for Jedi Academy, where we’d hold multiple big events once every month which I called (JAWA) League. At first it was simply 3 tournaments (Melee, FFA and Duelling) which we held on the top platform of Taspir Clan Edition.

An ad I made for the first iteration of the (JAWA) League, and also the first time I made a clan logo. – July 2005

It was fun, but it was A LOT of waiting around while people fought, so I introduced more events before settling on:

Duelling Championship – 1v1 tournament
FFA Championship – All out battle, no restrictions, last man standing.
Merc War Championship – Basically the same as FFA but with guns only.
Force God Championship – Basically the same again but force only, I can’t recall if we allowed sabers, I don’t think we did.
Melee Championship – Same as above but with melee only.
Survivor – Later named Watch Out For That Sniper!, probably the most unique event at the time. Each player takes a turn in the middle of Taspir FFA5 and tries to dodge the sniper shots of the other players. I have to note, Fluffy went on to ace this event so well that even 20+ years later its still not been beaten with an insane time of 3 minutes and 20 seconds. I remember we were all going nuts because we just couldn’t hit him no matter how hard we tried. Truly an incredible moment of pure luck that has never been replicated to this day.

Also as a note, I believe I spoke of these championships as “belts” back then, yes, I was a big wrestling fan. I expanded on this later in 2006.

Here’s some promotional videos we made around this time, as you can see we were experimenting with the Dark / Light ranks at the time as well.

A promotional ad I made for Merc War Championship – September 2005

The (JAWA) League was a success, but it was very unpolished, and needed a lot of work before it eventually became something really cool.

100 Members and ClanWarriors Concerns

Some time around July or August, we hit 100 members which made us by far the biggest clan in Jedi Academy, and as far as I’m aware the first to ever do so in the game. This number was completely unmanageable for a bunch of crazy teenagers and the warning signs had already begun to show earlier on. More smaller factions were forming, and the existing ones were keeping to themselves even more than they were. We should’ve put a cap on the amount of members we had, but my ego wanted to get us to 100, and I encouraged us to recruit anyone even if they weren’t the best fit. This approach didn’t sit well with the clan, and I clearly didn’t learn from the beginning of the year when I first attempted to lead the clan. There was a lot of arguments, a lot of fighting and we began losing members between August and September.

This is a monthly hits graph for our website during 2005, as you can see we rapidly exploded and collapsed just as rapidly.

Remember, during all of this we were still using ClanWarriors as a server, a shared server. Our overexposure was putting off non-clan members and moving activity away from CW in general. Gage spoke with me and he nudged me to perhaps look into financing my own server. It freaked me out a bit, but I knew he was right and if we wanted to be truly independent we had to fly the nest. We’d be in full control of our destiny and could do anything we wanted to do with our server without it affecting any other clans.

So, I eventually found a host for Jedi Academy called FW Gaming Servers. It dawned on me how expensive leading a clan was about to become, as everyone was in the same boat as me, we were teenagers with no income. I asked my Dad, and thankfully he paid for 4 months at $37.50 a month (Around £20 back then) which back in 2005 was an insane amount of money per month. My Dad fully supported me, but I knew this wouldn’t be a long term thing, and nobody was really offering to help with donations (I also had no way of accepting donations). We kept this server running for around 4 months before my Dad pulled the plug, and we moved over to a much cheaper host NewBoyzGaming, which was absolutely garbage unfortunately, but it was nearly half the price at $20 (Around £11). During that time, Dark actually sent me a £10 note to my home address in a brown envelope for a couple of months, which I’ll forever be grateful for. That was such an amazing gesture. It must’ve looked VERY SUS to my Dad though in retrospect 😂

Torn Apart

The bubble finally burst.

Between September and October 2005, tensions reached boiling points when Griffin announced that he’d be leaving (JAWA) to form his own clan called Berzerker Blitz Academy (BBA). Everyone in his inner circle of friends joined him, and it was dramatic to say the least. Things between BBA and (JAWA) were mostly calm, we even formed an alliance with them a couple of months later, but this one action was the beginning of a chain reaction. A month after the formation of BBA, Battousai, a Council Member at the time, got into an argument with Gage about some server admin disagreements. I don’t remember the context, but I remember backing Gage. Battousai felt betrayed that I didn’t have his back, and he along with his circle of friends split off to also form a new clan, Concordance of Fealty (CoF). Unfortunately, this was very bitter compared to BBA and the two clans got into fights and mud slinging regularly.

While all of this was going on, I was enjoying my time with Kel on a Lugormod server, which if you aren’t aware, Lugormod is basically a roleplaying / building mod that is VERY different to the mod we ran (JA+), especially when it came to fighting styles as Lugormod used base, whereas JA+ used its own flavour of combat. I decided to change the clan’s mod to Lugormod as I felt at the time it was a superior mod and something we could maybe build together as a big group. This was a terrible decision and ultimately was the final nail in the coffin and we had a massive exodus of members (70+) within weeks, it was unstoppable sadly, we dwindled down fast (See the chart above for September onwards).

More members were leaving to join other clans, including CoF and BBA. I felt like a complete failure, and what’s worse was, I felt it was totally avoidable, but my stubbornness had killed my greatest love at the time. I could no longer pay for the server either as the donations from Dark stopped coming (I probably asked him to stop as things were declining so much as I have a note saying Dark, Kel and Eclipse really tried their best to keep the clan going).

To top it all off, Gage approached me about the size of the forums. He told me that he urgently needed to delete the forums, and it couldn’t wait, especially with how poorly the clan was doing.

With all of this ongoing, I had no choice…

The Death of (JAWA)

The end of the clan
Posted by Link on Thursday, December 22 @ 09:26:01 EST (8 reads)

“Its a hard decision for me to make as ive been trying to keep the clan running, but its finally over. I tried to end it a few months ago when we had a lot more members than we did now so we could have a sending off party…. but everyone disagreed and said it will get better… 2 months on and its worse and we cant have a propper send off party now since the servers also gone today….. I revived this clan when it was just me… but that was a long time ago when JKA was filled with players… now your lucky if you can find a server with 5 people on it. Kel is making a new clan for you all to go to for now, but due to JKA is rapidly dissolving.. its possible that it wont take off. Our plans for new updates utterly depended on you all staying with the clan.. but lately people have been leaving and theres no way this clan can work now as a council clan needs a lor od members to start out with, 2 on a server isnt enough for us to get started. I had a lot of things planned for JAWA but none of them will ever happen now unfortunetly and the council idea was our only way to get us back to normal. Unfortunerly even if we did stay on JA+ we would only be recruiting newbies and we dont have enough active members to train them. Plus its a waste of the donators money for us to have a server as it will probably only have a few in it. I’d like to thank everyone who has been loyal and is still here, you are all JAWA Legends for sure, but mostly i’d like to thank Matt for making this clan in the first place. This will probably be the last time i play Jedi Academy too so its been fun playing with you guys. *drops saber on the ground* Sorry it had to end like this, i would of loved to have a big party to celebrate the clan. Your friend -Link”

Reading this back 20 years later, ugh, absolute, cringe. I made excuses, made things up (Like JKA dying, despite it being the most active time) and I aimed my venom at the members. The truth is, I knew Jedi Academy/(JAWA) was consuming my life and I was just starting college. I felt like I should’ve put more focus there, and I should’ve, but I didn’t. It was also Christmas time, and family life was my focus. My heart just wasn’t in it.

Gage promptly deleted the forums, and I am so, so pissed at myself for not requesting a full backup (I only have a partial backup). Tens of thousands of posts, thousands of topics, all those pages and history, gone. It really stings my nostalgia loving heart 💔.

Kel and Draggy began to plan a new clan. Draggy proposed an idea that kept coming to her, Federation of Jedi (FoJ), which they later renamed to Federation of Jawa. The clan had both light and dark sided ranks with each having its own leader (Kel = Light, Draggy = Dark). There was also one neutral leader, who was either Xibios or Gunmetal as both of them also were helping out with leadership/council duties.

The leaders of FoJ met with the leaders of the BBA and made an agreement that the clan could make their home on BBA’s server which allowed FoJ to become admins and recruit new members. After a while, both clans started to having regular arguments until the leader of Griffin told FoJ that they could not use the server any more.

It was also around this time that Matt vanished for A VERY long time, over 10+ years I believe. After the loss of the forums, nobody could contact him sadly. Gage also closed ClanWarriors server, which had also been declining since JAWA, BBA and CoF began doing their own thing.

I watched on as Draggy and Kel built FoJ from the ground up, and I was very impressed, but the emotion that was overwhelming me was jealousy and a side of regret. I really didn’t want to throw away all our hard work, and (JAWA) had a huge place in my heart. I knew if I wanted to act, I had to do it quickly, very quickly. Otherwise FoJ would essentially replace (JAWA). In retrospect, this was scummy, as Kel and Draggy should’ve been given the chance to go on their own. I discussed this with them, and because they are the coolest people ever, they were very willing to step aside, and to put all our efforts into a revival.

Looking back, I don’t think I understood what I’d actually created. To me, (JAWA) wasn’t a “gaming clan” anymore. It was where my friends were. It was where I spent most of my free time. If I came home from school, I went on the computer and logged into the forum or the server. My entire social life increasingly revolved around this bizarre little community of people scattered across the world who I’d never met in real life.

Part 1 – Where It All Began (2004) • Part 2 – The Activity Boom (2005) • Part 3 – Once a JAWA, always a JAWA. (2006+)

Bonus

Here’s a dump of some old data from a partial backup of our 2005 forums. Nobody has ever seen this before, so enjoy! It also contains a lot of names I forgot were in the clan.

Polls

: Any 1 up for a torney with just the (JAWA)Members?? — April 7, 2005

: Should I open a group that shows people how to beat the leaders or not? — June 1, 2005

: Who should be r new leader? — May 30, 2005Should I open a group that shows people how to beat the leaders or not? — June 1, 2005

: Which is Better Light Or Dark? — May 30, 2005

: saber locks : hate em till I cant hate no more or their great! — May 30, 2005

: Do I Need To Leave The Clan For Bad Attitude — May 28, 2005

: Should we lock old post? — May 28, 2005

: is dragon girl hott — May 25, 2005 (😂)

: WHO IS BEST RECRUITER — May 25, 2005

: Do you think we should ally wit da otha Jawa Clans? — May 25, 2005

: Do we need a trainer rank — May 14, 2005

Some other polls with no voting data attached:

What moment in Episode 3 you like the most. — June 4, 2005
Do you think we should have a clan password to get rid of fakers? — June 5, 2005
DO U AGREE WITH ME PEOPLE? POST WHY! — June 6, 2005
Should we start an all out war with the DESTRO. EMPIRE clan? — June 8, 2005
Do u belive dat we will Have Global Warming? — June 8, 2005
Which race and gender of that race is your favorite? — June 8, 2005
Are you happy Matt (the founder) is back? — Date not found
Who would you say is the best leader? (be honest) — Date not found
The current best leader in your opinion? — Date not found
Would you like a points system on JAWA? Where you can bu — Date not found

Poll Comments

Link — April 10, 2005

Subject: Re: Are you happy Matt (the founder) is back?

Looks like they want me to be the leader again :O, this poll will make me think alot so answer it honestly please

Eclipse — April 10, 2005

Subject: Re: Are you happy Matt (the founder) is back?

it looks like most of the clan did not know matt before he stopped playing for a while, he was a great clan leader and im happy to have him back in the clan!

Savage — April 12, 2005

Subject: Re: Who would you say is the best leader? (be honest)

Link and kel should be the only leaders matt shouldnt be leader … ok matt might have made the clan but he went 4 a long time so link took over did a great job runs this clan well and i think matt should start from the bottom like every 1 else and work his wy up again….

Battousai — June 2, 2005