This page outlines the evolution of popular war channels on DALnet.

As with everything in life, all existence has a beginning, a middle and an end. From a small, insignificant sapling can grow an enormous healthy evergreen. However, it never ends with one, the tree releases its offspring also. Exponentially that same evergreen turns into a forest with all types of vegetation and creatures - life. It seems invalid to compare nature to war, yet the concept remains the same.

War channels were originally designed for script testing, a little competition and fun. Everyone was treated equally, in the sense that they all had ops (the ability to kick/deop/ban other users) and all had a challenge to control one another. This "domination" extinct resides in many individuals and still continues to thrive. Unfortunately, equality never lasts for long.

When you have a user who does not like the rules, they automatically dislike the person who designed them. When this happens, it is as if there is a fork in the road. Instead of the same, boring path, there is now a new and undiscovered one. Everything that was black and white is now in colour and has millions of new possibilities. The user must now decide whether to try something new, or stay loyal to their upbringings.

The first war channel founded by mendy. Its popularity accounted for names such as: ShermanOaks, WarB|ade, AlphaX, TwIsTeD^1, Rent and Samey. With war scripts barely even being invented yet, you could imagine that these people not only had to be awesome scripters, but their revenges were out of this world. Even to this day, you have newbies begging for these people's scripts, striving to be as fast or as good as them. It's certain that they all started out as newbies themselves (yet you'd never see them publically admit it =P). As time progressed, some of these people moved on; to a channel called #Warfactory.

Mostly everyone knows this channel was first founded by ShermanOaks. AlphaX played a strong role in it too (co-founder and best bud). This channel is similar to #mirc_battle_room, it just had different management. Of course, there were always new additions: AQui||a (hiiiiiiiii), Tazina, `Jenkins, CCC, Subterfuge, |el`comanchero| (Storm^King) and myself, Yonkey. According to Samey, WarB|ade used to beat Sherman all the time when warring. As a result, ShermanOaks tried nuking both Samey and WarB|ade. |MacSevr| (WarB|ade) called ShermanOaks "lame" for nuking him and being a sore loser. Mac continued to fight Sherman and won again. Sherman's temper akicked WarB|ade from #Warfactory almost permanently. After this incident, WarB|ade decided on making his own channel. He no longer wanted to associate with people who "akick for no valid reason" and act "lame". From this one incident, these two became true rivals and despised each other so much, their hatred rubbed off on several people. Again, users had the choice to either stick with Vamp's (ShermanOaks') side, or be a part of #Dalwar.

|MacSevr|, the owner of the new channel #dalwar, established a fairly elite channel. When I joined #warfactory, I was one of those people who could choose where I wanted to stay. GUNZ was a character who biased my opinions. He hated Chris (a supposed friend of Mac) and Mac for the reason of being "lame". I agreed with Gunz, not only to make a friend, but to have a great warrior on my side. So I joined him in his fights against "lame Chris" and "lame Mac". Later on I realised that I had no problem with Chris, it was just Mac who I grew to despise. As I moved from basic to aop to sop, I felt the power to akick Mac and fulfill Sherman's desire. There were valid reasons why I had done this, however they are irrelevant today. In the mean time, #mirc_battle_room lost its popularity and was empty most of the time. At some point, |MacSevr| closed #dalwar and re-opened #mirc_battle_room. My hatred for Mac died, so I visited #mbr. I became friends with Mac, Samey, ircII, M0dified, TwIsTeD^` and Demonwarp who were regulars there, along with various bots.

Back in #Warfactory, the number of lamers and takeover artists grew. A lot of them got akicked by myself and others for disobeying the rules of the channel. There was one akicked user in particular who decided on making a #Warfactory look-alike channel called #Dalnet_War.

This channel was founded by Irc_Demon and Coolboarder. These 2 have the reputations of being takeover artists, script rippers and advertisers. They begged people to join their channel, then to bring in their bots. Of course, the channel fizzled out the next day since every war channel other than #warfactory and #mirc_battle_room had no real chance of survival. I was offered aop, then aop for my bot. Then I got sop, then removed sop, then got it again, then removed bot, etc. Just by explaining what happened there, you could imagine how disorganized the channel was. This place was extremely amature with bots kicking bots, the constant addition of new ones and never knowing what will happen to your access the next day. Coolboarder asked an ircop for Warfactory's channel password, then pretended as if he really didn't. The ircop told Sherman and the last words we heard from ShermanOaks were to akick Coolboarder and never allow him into the channel again.

In #Warfactory, the number of takeover artists grew, along with the number of Malaysians. Their racial heritage wasn't a problem, the problem was that you couldn't akick 1 artist because of the way their internet provider acts. When you try to akick 1 trouble maker, you end up akicking the entire country. 1 Malaysian decided on making a war channel for the Malaysian and Indonesian crowd. Their rules weren't as strict as #warfactory's or #mirc_battle_room's. The topic saying something like: "Kick, Ban, Deop, Nuke or Whatever. This is a War Channel". The channel #coba opened with a bang and was the only war channel remained for a great period of time.

The founder of #coba, Gohunt was also a reputable scripter. Many people had his released script, Gohunt. Gohunt was a part of #warfactory originally, yet he disappeared to be the full-time founder of #coba. The channel remains strong even today, with a large amount of Malaysian and Indonesian members. They say that takeovers and people breaking the rules isn't that of a big deal there, because they accept newbies not fully understanding the rules. I also noticed that a lot of the takeover artists from #warfactory were regulars at #coba. I came to the conclusion that these people were not newbies. They know exactly what they are doing. They don't takeover their own channel or break their own rules. They are potential competition.

A while later, I released my script to the public. Most people loved it, however there were a few exceptions. There was one user in particular who I saw at #dalnet_war and constantly sent me e-mails on how my script was unsatisfactory to him. Usually I would just ignore these e-mails, yet this guy kept sending them, expecting an answer. So we sent a few heated replies (flame-wars to be exact). However when I met this guy on mIRC, I realised he was different. He didn't fit into the lamer, foreigner, or mbr category. Later on, we became friends. He knew some scripting from hanging out in #mirc_battle_room, yet later on, Mac accused him of ripping ««Mail^Man»». This guy then decided on creating his own channel, #battle-room.

The famous Truc established a war room filled with his own bots at first. He said they opped faster in his room rather than #warfactory. However, he needed people to visit his channel so he became an advertiser. He's been akicked a few times by other people for this reason. He also gained a lot of people who wanted to be sop in #warfactory, yet with ShermanOaks being gone for so long, they decided on getting sop in #battle-room. It was a good experience for them, now feeling the responsibility of their power. However, most of the sops and aops of #battle-room were regulars at #warfactory and enjoyed being a part of both channels.

In the end, we have five war channels, all originating from one. There is no real hatred shown for being a member of one channel and not of another. It seems that it is better to diversify than to monopolize. People get different experiences, and learn different things from different points of view. People move around from channel to channel to see what's new and what they're missing. Users still get akicked and punished for breaking the rules, however their life does not end with just one war channel. And now, the whole evolution of war will not end with the breakdown of just one war channel.

Yonkey 28/08/1999