The (JAWA) Retrospective: Part 3 – Once a JAWA, always a JAWA. (2006+)

Published: 6 September 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 3 of my retrospective of (JAWA), a clan I ran during my teenage years and early 20s between 2005 – 2017. This post covers everything after 2005, summarising a lot 0f events and milestones. The truth is after 2006, most things are a blur because we operated as “business as usual” for a very long time. We weren’t perfect by any means, but we cracked the code on longevity.

This is the last part, enjoy!

The Revival

(JAWA) was dead. The website – gone, the server – poof, ClanWarriors was moving on from Jedi Academy and there were zero members left. As I mentioned in Part 2, I was regretting my decision to end the clan and knew that if I wanted to salvage what we had began to build in 2005, I needed to act fast. After persuading Draggy and Kel to pull back on their new clan, Federation of Jawa, we focused on the future. Everything was up for discussion including our approach, our website, our ranks, events, the way we made decisions. Everything.

We of course had to make some big decisions around the server and forums, as we had neither. Those were the heart of the clan and without either of them, we’d be dead in the water. Just before the clan closed its doors in December the previous month, a kind visitor called Drako approached me about donating to the server. I refused at the time because I was dead certain on closing things down. I reached out to Drako again and he happily agreed while also joining the clan after the revival was announced.

I decided to use my own website at the time (sjeweb.com) to host the clan’s forum. My website wasn’t really up to the job of hosting a very active forum, similarly to ClanWarriors, but I knew I didn’t really have much of a choice. Throughout the years of using those forums, it was a little bit unstable, and I had to make some sacrifices and delete some older topics/posts sadly, but it worked out in the end (Although it pained me to wipe old content just like Gage did with our previous forums).

Some joke images we made about the instability of the new forums.

I also signed up for PayPal and could now start accepting donations, which was a huge relief to my finances as I was hosting the forums (And later the server).

Stability

We now had a website and server. I don’t know the exact date when we re-launched the clan, but it was on or around the 18th January 2006. News got around quickly, and I made an announcement to everyone that we would learn from our past mistakes and rebuild the clan with some very solid foundations. I made Kel my co-leader, none of that “Main Leader” bullshit. We also made a new council which also consisted of some of our most loyal members from the past year: Shinobi, Fluffy, HI and Chrono. Podoplovik, Xibios, Draggy and Drako would later join the Council. The new Council was a breath of fresh air, you had a mixture of people and everyone had their own ideas on what would make (JAWA) even better than it once was.

Now that we had some solid leadership, the first thing we wanted to address was our listening skills. Throughout 2005, we, and by we I mostly mean me, never really listened to the voice of the clan. It was my way, or the highway. We decided to experiment with some ways to get the member voice across such as:

• Help Desk – Literally a help desk LOL. I wanted people to be able to report things privately as there wasn’t a way to anonymously post on our phpBB2 forum at the time. I think I got the idea from working in some IT placements at the time during my work experience with college.
• Applicant Polls and Trials – It was a key requirement for us to improve our recruitment process. After the previous summer’s antic of chasing the 100+ members number, we had to to really look ourselves in the mirror and ask “What did we really achieve by doing that?” the answer was ego. We installed a new applicant poll section to our forums, where members would be voted on by the existing members. This slowed things down immensely, but it was needed and really weeded out those unsuitable for our ranks. We also put people on trial for a week or two with the tag (JAWA-T) to fully ensure someone was right for us.
• Closing Recruitment Strategically – This wasn’t really an imitative to help with the members voice, but I thought it was worth mentioning alongside recruitment changes. One thing I discovered during my experimentation of leading the clan was that if you restricted something, it became A LOT more appealing to those on the outside. I saw this first hand with events and Elite Trials. I announced that when we reached certain thresholds, we’d be closing our ranks. I recall some people thinking this was madness, especially when we were trying to rebuild ourselves, but it really worked wonders. People would hang around our server, patiently waiting for when we’d re-open recruitment, which gave them a chance to get to know the clan, while also still inflating our server numbers. The beauty of this approach was, when recruitment finally DID open, people would also encourage their friends to join because we often re-closed the doors within weeks again. It made us grow very healthily.
• The Committee – This was quite a big hit honestly, and quite a nice idea in retrospect. We had so many people who were potential council members in the clan, and they had no real way of showing that off to the leadership. So, we made this feature, which was essentially a junior council role. It had its own private board, and allowed Leaders/Councils to pass their ideas to them to discuss before release.
• Anonymous Feedback – When the help desk didn’t really work out, I also made a Google Form (Or something of similar functionality at the time) which allowed people to anonymously report issues very quickly without messing with a clunky help desk.
• Suggestions Board – To be honest I can’t remember if we had this prior to 2006 but we opened up a public suggestions board which anyone could throw their ideas into as well.

A screenshot of the weird help desk idea I had.

These were all big changes from the way that we did things, and it really reassured members that we were deadly serious on improving. Our numbers once again exploded as masses re-joined and new blood filled our ranks.

Communication was also heavily improved, instead of posting an update once in a blue moon, I’d make a topic for every update so members could share their views, and actually know what was happening behind closed doors. This regular update posting was well received and its something I kept going throughout my tenure.

Expanding on Ideas

Once we had earned some of our trust back, we knew we had to shake things up a bit and make the clan “fun” again, with some new ideas as well as improving on existing popular ideas. There’s quite a lot to list here so I’ll be brief.

New Ranks

We heard from members that they wanted more progression, and “rank ups” (Promotions) were of course a big dopamine hit. We introduced a new rank before Padawan  called (JAWA)InitiateName and another after Knight called (JAWA)GuardianName. We also dropped the “Full Member” rank, regrettably, because it never really fit with the look of all these fancy cyan/yellow ranks, it also made no sense as you’d put a yellow rank on again after passing it.

Elite Trials

One area we had always wanted to expand upon was the Elite Trials as previous to 2006, it was mostly just “Fight ___ and they’ll see if you’re worthy of the rank” which was o.k. but it never felt like an achievement in any way, more of a status symbol with no real defined structure. One of the reasons I made Shinobi, Chrono and HI council members early on in the reboot was to bring a better focus to our more skill based events and features.

We brainstormed some ideas, and ultimately settled on trials where we’d have set people in the council (The three mentioned) become the first Trial Masters. These trials would have very specific requirements, created by each individual Trial Master, which tested the triallists skill in multiple area e.g. how they handled a staff user, how they evaded, 2v1 situations, strafe challenges etc. It was launched in February 2006, and was very well received and encouraged people to test their skills rather than simply being judged.

The (JAWA) League

The one thing I really wanted to get going was a well structured league. The previous leagues were mostly experiments, again, no clearly defined structure. This time however I wanted to build something people didn’t want to miss. So, I put together the first “official” (JAWA) League in February 2006 which (As far as I know) has been an unbroken chain of monthly events since its inception, that’s over 20 years! Pretty cool.

I didn’t want it to be just a sweaty skill based event, so I mixed in some “fun” events which gave everyone a chance. In the end we settled on:

• Duel Master Championship (Later renamed to Duel Tournament)
• (JAWA) Championship
• Single Saber Championship (Later renamed to Single Saber Heaven)
• Dual Saber Championship (Later renamed to Dual Heaven)
• Staff Saber Championship (Later renamed to Staff Heaven)
• Fist Foot Championship (Later renamed to Melee Heaven)
• Force God Championship (Removed after a single event, it was pure chaos and just 20-30 people empowered on a platform 😂)
• FFA King Championship (Later renamed to Mixed Saber Heaven)
• Tag Team Championship (Later renamed to Tag Team Tournament)
• (JAWA) Darts (This was added much later in the year)
• Survivor (Later renamed to Watch Out For That Sniper!)
• Frag King Championship (Later renamed to Merc War)
• Team Free For All

As you can see, I made things quite “wrestling” themed with “championships” etc. I even designed BELTS. See below.Sadly, I accidentally overwritten the belts (Apart from two) so they’re all low resolution in an attempt to add them underneath member’s avatars on the forums.

As goofy as this was, holding a “title” and defending it monthly was a very nice idea and I kind of wish we expanded on that a bit more than just the (JAWA) Championship, the last remnant of that time.

The only downside to having such a variety of events is that this can go on for 3-4 hours sometimes, depending on the size of the group. In hindsight, I wish we weren’t so linear and allowed multiple matches at once, it would’ve halved the time of the league easily especially with events like Darts, Tag Tournament and Duel Tournament. This usually sends people to sleep and they’d often go AFK. Thankfully though people were usually good at coming back to the event and honouring their place in it. Shoutout to the early organisers of the League (Kel, Draggy, Mario) as well as Helena who came along a bit later but has hosted it throughout most of its lifetime.

Helena organising the League while Duster-Man daydreams.

I also added some “World Time” clocks on our pages to help people identify when the event would be in their timezone. We held it at the end of the month at 6pm UK time on a Sunday, which seemed to work out for everyone.

The League is one of my proudest achievements in the clan, I really love that its still ongoing monthly even to this day.

Toolbar

I don’t think many people reading this who weren’t in the clan at the time will remember this or know about it, but we actually had our own Internet Explorer / Firefox toolbar at one point.

Version 1

Version 2

I still miss this to this day 😂 it was an incredible time saver and really “connected” members to the clan at all times from any website they were in. The most popular feature was of course the server tracker which I have no doubt helped server activity at the time because the most common question was always “Is anyone on the server?”. Having set events in a Google Calendar as well was also a big win, as you could celebrate someone’s birthday but also see what clan events were coming up in your own timezone. Oh, and you could make a topic on the forum in just a couple of clicks, without visiting the site.

It was really neat. It died off when Chrome took over the browser world.

New Approaches

Diplomacy

Prior to 2006, an alliance was basically “We cool?” and if they said “Ye” then we’d be allies. I wanted to change that, so we began expanding our sights over the next year on alliances that would actually benefit both clans. It took us a year or two to find really solid allies, and I’m not going to list them all but three immediately come to mind: Knights of Honor, Council Clan and Angels of Fire. These three clans were so similar to us in a lot of ways, especially in their numbers and organisation. Also shout out to Knights Reborn (That alliance came a bit who are our longest living ally from 2009 – Today.

I came up with the idea of hosting a tournament between all of our allies called The (JAWA) League Open Tournament (Later renamed to Open League Tournament, then The (JAWA) Ally Open Tournament), which actually turned out to be one of the coolest things we’ve ever done. It was as you’d expect, a 1v1 tournament with as many clan members as possible. We’d often fill the server when we did these events, sometimes having up to 9 clans join… it was an insane sight to see. We did this every 6-ish months, and our allies absolutely loved it. We ended up doing 17 of these things between 2007 – 2018.

Here are some screenshots from different Open Tournaments over the years:

As well as cool regular events between our allies, we also made formal “Ambassadors” which would spend a significant amount of time per week seeking out new alliances and maintain the current ones. I believe we called them “Outer Clan Ambassadors” as we also had “Inner Clan Ambassadors” who would help with internal conflicts (This never really went anywhere, and we just made people “Ambassadors” later on).

We started seeing more members wanting to start their own clans which we heavily encouraged due to our backstory with ClanWarriors. Most of these didn’t go anywhere sadly. It was usually the same cause: Server inactivity. Whenever a leader launched a clan, it was a death sentence to also buy a server at the same time. It’s understandable that they wanted to go out on their own and figure it out themselves, but I do wonder how things would’ve turned out if they just shared a server with us for a while before going out on their own. I’m still very much of the opinion that if you want to start a clan, you absolutely need help and support of a larger clan at the beginning.

A really amazing development in 2007 was CoF and (JAWA) finally settled their differences, we even went on to become allies for many years. They were probably one of our more reclusive allies and stayed in their own server (This isn’t a bad thing, we did the same). Solving this long dispute between our two clans was a HUGE deal back then as it loomed over both of our groups.

We also went from almost no clan matches to A LOT. I’ll cover it in the (JAWA) Knights section below.

Meet and Greet

Even though this came a bit later, suggested first in 2010 by Monica and executed two years later by Dopie in TeamSpeak then eventually Yunie took it on and did it on the server. The Meet and Greet allowed members to sit down and get to know each other. It was mostly focused around the newer members, and we even had a map made for it eventually by one of our members which was really comfy. Very proud of these sorts of things, they are some of the fondest memories I look back on.

(JAWA) School

Kel suggested taking on a “headteacher” sort of role within the clan, guiding people on how to be a good fighter. This was very much Kel’s passion project, he set it up himself and really made this his own. It became incredibly popular with both clan members and server visitors. Classes were held every Friday, usually on The Academy V3 by Virtue. This also became a long standing tradition up until the late 2010s and helped train many people in the basics of combat Jedi Academy.

CHRISTMAS

Just a shoutout, one of the best things I looked forward to every year was our Christmas maps. December was PEAK (JAWA) In my opinion, fuzzy feels.

Link and Pearl chilling on the broken sleigh (Bespin Christmas for JK2)

Job Assignment

It was important early on that we established who did what, because the old way of me trying to do everything (And failing spectacularly) while the Council just sat there and chipped in was not going to work. I started giving out jobs, as you can see some of them were a bit… generic early on 😂 such as “Problem Sorter” which sounds like a bouncer. It was a big success, but we had way too many people on the council, and nobody “owned” a responsibility, so it got quite silly.

Maps

Early on we had some novice map makers in the clan such as Yoshi and Zajac, I also gave it a shot myself with very limited success. I don’t really have much to share on this right now, I have a big list of old .bsp .map and .pk3 files laying around that really need exploring and documenting at some point.

I can’t remember who it was, probably Andur, but he took my experiment with mapping (On the right side) and bolted it onto an expandable area sometime in 2006 or 2007. It was the first iteration of the (JAWA) Temple before it was abandoned.

None of the early maps ever really stuck sadly, until ZidZabre and Helena created The (JAWA) Temple which is still used to this day. It’s a really great map.

What I would like to share however is my REALLY CRINGY MAP PLANS 🤣 I can’t remember who I shared them with, probably Andur and Zid, but you’ll get a good laugh out of some of these weird ideas. Ego!

Graphics

Between 2003 – 2007, I was also part of a group called RuneSigs, completely separate from my (JAWA) days. I wanted to bring over some of those elements into our clan because I knew there were a lot of artistic folks that weren’t really showing off their skills. We came up with Signature of the Week, which was very popular. Draggy and Toroto also came up with the idea of making a comic strip every now and then.

Here’s some of my random gems I found in my archives over the years:

(JAWA) Knights

Finally, one of our more popular new features was (JAWA) Knights. This was created and led by Lordbell/Mario, who came from the base community, but fell in love with the JA+ way of doing things. He saw an opportunity to put those who were more skill focused to use, and give them something fun to do. It started off as training sessions, but eventually built into its own entity entirely with its own (JK) tag, inner ranks etc. At first I wasn’t too pleased with this approach, because I saw it becoming like what BBA / CoF did, splitting off entirely, but Mario was very professional and kept everything under check. We rarely had any matches in 2005, but went on to have hundreds in the early days. Apparently in 2006-2007 we were averaging around 1 a week.

Check it out for yourself:

Source

Inevitable Drama

While things were actually extremely stable, there was inevitably a lot of drama especially early on. We had clans like Orzhov split off from us (Shouting that I was a slave master 🤣). Here, check it out for yourself:

Me and Andur have also long since patched things up. Wishing him all the best as well!

We even had BBA merge with us, de-merge, revive and then die again. I’m not going to go into the specifics, they’re well documented on the wiki, but it made things a little turbulent early on for sure.

We also started encountering random trolls. At the time these guys drove me nuts, but in retrospect, they made the server quite fun and actually kept things entertaining.

One of my personal fav images from years ago LOL

Another big piece of drama early were some things we found out about Drako. Around 18 months after he began donating, we found out that he was multiclanning under the name WhiteKnight, and he had in fact taken the server from his current clan at the time and put his resources into our server instead. I was furious because I wouldn’t had accepted it if I had known, but looking back, almost 20 years later, I think I understand a lot of his intentions back then. I can see that Drako just wanted to make everyone happy while also having as much fun as possible in multiple clans. It’s been two decades or so since I last spoke to him about it, and it’s loooong resolved.

I used to think breaking rules was the worst thing, but honestly? The stuff I used to get angry about was really minor, and I should’ve been a lot more understanding of other opinions. I was very young and naïve. Ah well, we were all young and stupid, but nobody more so than I.

Cementing our History and Recognition

Awards

Straight after our revival, I absolutely wanted to make a Hall of Fame to show my appreciation to those earlier members, especially those that helped us through the more recent harder times. The first person I inducted was Kel, who as I’ve mentioned really helped me a lot with the clan, and was crucial (Along with Draggy) in helping me rebuild. The next day I inducted A LOT of others, I think between 15-20? Some of these people were simply just an active member of our community, others like Draggy/Kel were pillars for sure. After adding so many people into the Hall of Fame, I tried to make it a semi-rarity after that. I realise that some people aren’t a fan of me adding people who were simply “there” in 2005, but unless you witnessed what they helped build first hand, you really wouldn’t understand.

As well as the Hall of Fame, we also introduced the (JAWA) Honours, which were basically our Oscars (A little cringe, but it was a nice bit of fun). We had some really unusual awards early on such as Most Inactive Clan Member and Most Insanest Clan Member (Which Zan of course won 😂).

I made all of the awards back then myself in Photoshop, using a pixel art style. I had so much fun making those.

WikiJawa

After the massive loss of our ClanWarriors forum in 2005, I wanted to start keeping good records. I began looking at ways to house all the content that was stored in my memory and in the scraps I had left in my folders from that area. For some reason, I thought the most appropriate place to house this would be Wikipedia. Yep… Wikifuckingpedia. I created an article called “The (JAWA) Clan” which housed our history, ranks, people etc I remember spending AGES on it.

I actually found the discussion around its deletion here, feel free to have a good chuckle.

In the end I found out that Wikipedia actually uses some open source software called MediaWiki, which I could freely install on my website. It turned out to be the best decision ever, because I wanted a Wikipedia-like experience across multiple pages. I spent weeks putting that together, building the content mostly myself and getting as much content as I could from the clan. The wiki is still in use today and is full of hidden gems, it has 1,750 pages, 12,000 files (Mostly images) and 91,000 page edits since its creation around 2007/2008.

Obsession

Leading (JAWA) was an obsession, an addiction, an escape from my own personal issues at the time. It gave me something to focus on, which ultimately led to me getting pretty poor grades in school. I totally own this, it was my decision, it worked out in the end thank god, but I was totally swallowed whole by keeping the clan going. I was the typical “spend 8 hours a day playing a game and pretending to be important” person you see on GTA RP / Chat VR these days, it was way too much.

A picture from my old desk during my late teens / early 20s. As you can see I was a little obsessed.

When I got my first paid job at 16, I would spend hours on the trains writing ideas down in my (JAWA) journal, ready for when I got home so I could propose some new changes/improvements. It honestly felt endless, I could always find a way to try and make things better. Most of my ideas never went further than suggesting them to the council, but it didn’t really matter too much, it was a huge dopamine hit that felt more important than school or my career.

I mean, look at this. I went as far as making (JAWA) Cards… I designed them myself and got them printed by a US company, who overcharged me for postage. I ended up losing money even after eventually selling all 30.

The problem was, I knew it would be over if I stopped, or at least that’s how I saw it… and I really didn’t want to let everyone down. I eventually found more like-minded people like Kel after he departed the clan such as Caelum and Nightwing who were exceptional leaders. These two especially took the burden off me and allowed me to take a bit more of a backseat, Nightwing especially, who was just as obsessed as I was, probably even more so.

Random Images

Time for random images. Enjoy.

Also, have a random video, thanks to Jasp.

The End of my Tenure

I could write about the clan all day and night, it was a massive part of my life and still is in a lot of ways. But at some point I need to wrap this up, and honestly, everything between 2007-2017 is a complete blur in a lot of areas now. I wouldn’t be doing it much justice recapping everything, and this isn’t really a “history” article either, it’s just my own retrospective.

I’m going to skip ahead but first I want to acknowledge that I absolutely loved these early days. Stepping out of the shadow of ClanWarriors, rebuilding the clan from scratch with the new members and just … surviving for so long. It was a blast, and I met thousands of people in this game, most of whom I consider my friends, some my best friends and one my beautiful and lovely wife and mother of our lovely son 💖.

Between 2013 – 2018 I was in a relationship and it rightfully consumed most of my time. In the years leading up to my departure in 2017, I was more than done because of this, I really wasn’t paying anywhere near as much attention to the clan that it deserved, and so, I attempted to “retire” without much success. I suggested to the co-leader Nightwing to demote me down to Padawan to restart the ranks so I could play casually, which he did. Even this didn’t feel right, I knew my future probably wasn’t with (JAWA) but I didn’t have the guts to ever leave it.

Then, sadly, in October 2017, Nightwing added me along with 8 others into a conversation to say he was leaving and to “figure out the next leader” then abruptly left. To say it was a bloodbath would be an understatement. I suggested that I’d take temporary leadership on while a new leader was picked, but this didn’t go down well. I won’t name names at this point, but 2-3 others in that group who had been the friendliest guys ever up until this point, turned on me and basically threw me under the bus. It was an absolute shitty feeling to see the leader tag I held for 10+ years being thrown on the ground and then fought over so viciously. I was done, completely, and left the clan immediately. I remember sitting there in my room crying my eyes out at what had just happened, because I knew it was over, there was no going back and worst of all, the clan was in the hands of individuals who in my opinion at the time didn’t have the clan’s best interest at heart.

Retrospect: I was very angry with Nightwing for many years after this. He has long since vanished after this. I do now understand him better after thinking this through many times. I think his execution was terrible, and it caused years worth of trouble, but he had to leave. Absolutely no question about it. He, just like I, had poured way too much into the clan and quite rightly needed to detatch himself from it. I think the only way for him to really truly get away from the clan was to burn the bridge. If that’s true, nobody can really hold a grudge against him in my eyes. He did what was right for him. Wishing him all the best, and I hope he shows up again someday.

Now, everything after this point was a mess to say the least. I eventually made a new group called Arcadia . I basically tried to make a new ClanWarriors, which failed. I then rebooted it into a clan, which actually was extremely successful and got around 50 members in a mere few days. It was awesome. We recruited lots of really cool people but ultimately it was a big “fuck you” to (JAWA) which was quite childish. Eventually that died off as well. During all of this I was going through a messy divorce which pushed me deeper into resentment. For the next few years until around 2022-ish, there would be constant drama between my group of friends and (JAWA) which I now deeply regret. It wasn’t all on us, but our behaviour was absolutely to blame as a big part of it.

The worst part about all of this? (I am going to be very careful with my words here)… due to some “questionable”, borderline illegal content I saw on (JAWA)’s forums and discord, I asked the leaders at the time if they could remove that specific content mostly because it hurt my soul to see it associated with the clan. They refused. I warned them that if they didn’t, I would ask to remove all of my content to remove any association with said content. They once again refused. So, I triggered a GDPR request to remove all of my content from the forums which they gladly agreed. In hindsight, the reasons for me being upset were justified, even to this day I agree with my assessment of the situation, however my actions were not. I should have not, under any circumstances, had asked for my content to be deleted. I essentially removed tens of thousands of posts/topics containing endless history. I knew the pain of this loss from my 2005 times, but I still made that terrible decision.

The only saving grace from this is, I still have a backup of the forums from back then, but it’s so out of date by this point that it could never be re-integrated. In theory it could be extracted. A project for another day.

To summarise: Those days between 2017-2021 were miserable.

Making Amends

In 2025, 7ish years after leaving, I posted this.

A long overdue apology

Hi all,

I’ve been wanting to post this for quite some time, but I’ve shied away a bit mostly due to the timing of things, it’s been a hectic couple of years (All for good reasons).

In October 2017, I left (JAWA) after 13 years. I’m not going to air dirty laundry in public on why I left, but most are aware and I still stand by that decision. I didn’t take leaving lightly, especially after leading the clan for nearly half my life at that point. I made almost all of the good friends I have today because of this clan including my now wife Draggy, but after what transpired privately, I had to distance myself from this place.

The way I left was abrupt and harmed the clan short term, which I apologise for. I could’ve handled that a lot better, but instead I let things get very chaotic. Not too long afterwards, I went on to make a new clan called Arcadia around 2018/2019, which to be blunt was pretty much a middle finger to this place… I did the opposite of everything I did in (JAWA), which started quite a lot of fires unfortunately. I acted like an idiot during those times, and again, I apologise.

After that, I hermited in a group called Foxhole and just played games with them, which is still alive and kicking today which houses all of my closest friends (Including a bunch of ex and current JAWA leadership). During the early days of Foxhole (2019-2021) there were several occasions where drama would seemingly come out of left field suddenly, and in my opinion we reacted to it very poorly. For my role in those times, I apologise.

In the last 4-5 years I’ve really come to peace with my view on the clan and how I remembered it. I honestly didn’t want any association with it between 2017-2021 for how things went down during those times. Again, a lot of that was my fault, so I only have myself to blame. In more modern times, I look at (JAWA) as the reason for my happiness, something I should be proud to have been a part of and helped build.

I’m not going to mislead anyone here, I will be playing on the server going forwards actively. At some point in the coming months, when I feel the time is right, I will apply. I’ve been seriously considering this since the 20th anniversary late last year… I hadn’t felt welcomed by the clan like that in a very long time, and it stuck with me over the last 8 months. I have zero expectations on being successful with my history since leaving, and if I am denied, it will not change anything and I will happily accept the decision from the clan.

So to summarise, I apologise for my actions after leaving the clan, and for leaving so abruptly. I’m not asking anyone that doesn’t like me here to suddenly be my friend, to accept this apology or to even be neutral with me, but if you do, that’d be a big bonus for me. I am doing this to put a line in the sand, own the mistakes I made and move on.

If you actually read all of this, I appreciate ya :L
Link, 4th June 2025

I didn’t expect it to be received so warmly. In fact, it blew me away. Those tears that I shed in 2017 when I left returned in 2025, but they were of relief and joy. Things were SO positive in fact, that I applied and got accepted 💖 Between June and December 2025, I was once again a member of (JAWA) and began to climb the ranks as I once did as a teenager. It was therapeutic, and gave me a lot of happiness. I made TONS of new friends, met older friends and basically came full circle.

In December 2025, I once again departed (JAWA) but this time for the right reasons and on good terms. My son was about to be born, and I needed to shift my priorities. I was bid farewell, and still remain in contact with many people from those days. Ironically I just realised I’m back to my original name (JAWA)Link after retiring, just like before becoming Leader in 2004, full circle!

The End

This clan will forever be my home in a lot of ways, and I can thankfully say that it ended as peacefully as I could’ve asked for.

• I have an amazing close group of friends who mostly came from this clan, and I am thankful every day that I can still spend my free time enjoying life with them.
• To my lovely wife, Lindy (Draggy), thank you for giving that desperate teenager a chance eventually (I am kind of  glad it took a while 😂 we weren’t the easiest to get along with!) and for all your love.
• To my amazing son, I hope you one day play this amazing game and realise what it meant to both your Mum and I.

Here’s a video I made a few years ago which summarises my love for the community a lot better than typing it.

I’ve said it a lot, but to anyone that was a member of this community, thank you. You gave me everything without realising it.

Finally, here is some art I commissioned back in 2005/2006. I spent a considerable amount of money on this, which I immediately regretted, not because it was bad, but because I genuinely didn’t have the funds to do this at the time.

For some reason I never really shared this image and kept it to myself. However, I thought it was fitting to close off this retrospective, so enjoy!

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

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