• Prehistoric Days:

It all started when Goog Clan was officially created by Googliar on October 11, 2006. That was the day Googliar's friend and clanmate Bananagoog created our first website: goog-clan.blogspot.com. It was just a blog, and it was not suitable for the clan we would one day become. However, it was good enough to get us started, since all we needed was a foundation. Meanwhile, Googliar was recruiting some members through the Xgen forums and Stick Arena, but only a handful joined. The members he did recruit were generally not very good players, nor were they loyal. Things got worse after Googliar was banned from the Xgen forums for flaming. Despite our slow start, the clan was still alive, and we would soon rise to something much greater.

 

• The Rise:

In the wake of our new clan, Googliar decided to join the Katana Guild, which was the prominent clan of its era. However, he didn't want to give up on his dormant clan, so he kept it alive. As soon as the Katana Guild soon fell apart, Googliar was presented with an incredible opportunity. He acted quickly and reopened Goog Clan to the public, and he created original Freewebs site, as well as the Goog Forums, both of which became key components of our clan. In the process, he took in many of the members that were left clanless after the fall of the Katana Guild. This was the defining moment in the rise of Goog. These new members were very skilled, and in result they helped immensely in building our clan's reputation. Googliar promised them that they would never have faulty leadership like the Katana Guild, and he promised that he would never leave his own members behind.

 

• Expansion:

By early 2007, the powerful clans had been narrowed down to three: Goog Clan, Emp-C, and the Mighty Phoenix Clan. After no more than a couple months, Goog Clan was the only one that remained. With a large amount of Katana members and no significant competition, Goog had become the powerhouse of Stick Arena. Famous players including Renato, Focus, Disturbed Killer, Bhara, Reptilo, and Sneakymacnasty had joined the ranks. Goog Clan was the place to be and no other clan could match us. The Stick Arena community had just discovered XAT chats, so we added one to our website. The chat became our essential communication tool, overtaking the forums and Stick Arena.

 

• The Split

:One day a heated argument between the Goog members Reptilo and Chingy broke out. Minutes later, Chingy and his friends formed a brand new clan, without giving notice to Googliar. They called the new clan IOA. This clan would soon become a breeding ground for very skilled, though entirely egocentric, Stick Arena players. Almost half of all Goog members joined IOA; this was not a bright moment in our history. In a way, however, the split was beneficial, as the rotten members were removed from the clan and only the more loyal ones remained. Since IOA gained all of our unloyal members, they were naturally unable to maintain the level of member loyalty that Goog has kept for all these years. Players today tend to glorify the IOA Clan for their skill, perhaps rightfully so. But it is important to remember there is more to a clan than how they play the game.

 

• The War:

After IOA was founded we fell right into war with them. But wars were much less organized back then. There were no clear rules to determine a winner, and no one officially determined how it would even be conducted. In result the fighting was much more verbal than actually playing Stick Arena games. The actual war lasted for about four months anyway. It became stained with lies and fake evidence of defeating opponents. It led to nowhere at all, and of course, there would never be a winner. Players on both sides of the war were getting tired of the insults and lies that accompanied it. Admins from the two clans eventually tried to call an end to the war since it was so irritating, and that helped cut down on the animosity. The tension, however, did not ease until IOA finally died, which would be much later on.

 

• Summer Boost:

During our first summer, clan activity skyrocketed. Goog received a huge boost of new members, and a record was set: 67 members were included in "Last 24" of the Goog Forums. A variety of factors contributed to the boost. For one, members began joining from Riot Clan, a clan operated by Goog member Spyder. Also, since it was summertime, people had more free time to visit our chat and forums. Goog has experienced similar boosts every summer since then, but the summer of 2007 presented the most drastic increase in activity by far. This boost helped our members remember what Goog was capable of, and in consequence, it helped us get through the slower times that would soon follow.

 

• Forums Destroyed:

In September, the beloved Goog Forums were "hacked." Someone had managed to get Googliar's password, and they deleted almost all threads in the forums by pruning the system. The hacker essentially deleted a large portion of our clan; everyone was upset about it. Many members wrongly accused Poly of causing the damage. However, the security of the forums had been pretty much compromised when Googliar handed out admin privileges to people that weren't even in the clan. To this day we don't know who caused all of this, we can only speculate.

 

• Dark Ages:

After the forums were destroyed, Vallito created the new forums, which are still in use today. They started off incredibly inactive compared to what our old forums had been. Once again, people that were in Goog decided to join IOA. Though it wasn't as many this time, it was enough to do some damage. This was a very dark time for Goog Clan, as many of our friends that we thought were loyal decided to ditch us out of apathy. As a result of the forum disaster and inactivity, the chatbox was empty a lot of the time. Also during this time, the IOA Clan declared war on Goog a second time. Once again, there were no rules set for the war, yet this time IOA claimed to have won anyway, which didn't exactly help our reputation. Looking back on it, this period of inactivity was the lowest point in our history. But, despite all of our problems, we never gave up. There were still a few members that used the chat and forums every single day; not even a serious lack of members and activity could kill us. It was this era that truly proved we are the strongest clan of all time.

 

• WPA Merge:

In January 2008, Googliar decided to merge with the active WPA clan. They gave up their clan name to become a part of Goog. This gave us a much-needed increase in activity and members, and people were forced to stop saying that Goog Clan was dead. However, two of WPA's former leaders soon left us. First was Potato61, one of WPA's finest, and then Fabulous23, also known as Weezy. Fab was being obnoxious and was temporarily banned for constantly making racist insults. Instead of waiting out his ban, he decided to delete all the pages on our Freewebs site, leaving a big dent in our clan. To fix the problem, we took the opportunity to move to a "Complete Clan" website, which had a better design; things worked out pretty well given the circumstances.

 

• Call of Duty Division:

Seeing as many of Goog's SA players were also fans of Call of Duty 4, in mid 2008, Googliar decided to expand the clan to cover both games. Though the COD4 division of our clan had a rough start, it gradually grew into a full branch of Goog. We would soon add a short-lived Soldier Front branch was well, led by Assassin60, but the COD section proved to be much more powerful in the long run. A section of the forums was added for both Soldier Front and Call of Duty. Later, the COD division also expanded to the next game in the series, World at War. Over time, our COD division has gotten less and less formal. By the release of Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, there was no longer any organized Call of Duty division at all. However, some members still play Xbox together, though now it is more Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops than anything else.

 

• Rebuilding:

In July 2008, Googliar decided to start a project of "rebuilding" Goog Clan, and it would be his final great act as leader. The idea was to bring back the "good old days" by recruiting and maintaining skilled and loyal players. To do this, we began enforcing new membership guidelines. The biggest changes, and they still exists today, are that users have to post in the forums to officially become a member, and they can apply for positions once they are in the clan. For a while, the Rebuilding project received a large section of the forums for sharing information and discussion. But only few months after it started, Googliar stepped down as leader and eventually left the clan. As a result, the Rebuilding lost most of its momentum, though it still remains an important piece of our history.

 

• Ballistick:

Goog members had anticipated the release of Ballistick for almost two years. In November 2008, Xgen finally released the official expansion to Stick Arena. Many members criticized the developer for charging players to access many of the new features. However, the addition of moderators has greatly reduced hacking, and the cred system has helped to satisfy people without lab passes. Goog Clan has proved it is still a powerful force in the new expansion, showcasing many skilled players of the Ballistick generation, as well as our old member Sharpryno, who was quickly given the position of Ballistick moderator. Years later, our member Bridgebuilder would become a Stick Arena moderator as well. Overall, the release of Ballistick had a positive effect on our clan and the SA community.

 

• European Members:

After the release of Ballistick things were going very smoothly. We did have to transition from Complete Clan to Truimagz web hosting, but the new HTML website turned out fine. Then during he early part of 2009 we gained a handful of European members. This was most likely a result of the addition of the Amsterdam server to Stick Arena. Soon we had enough loyal European players to make a small division, and by July, Stamoulis was appointed Euro Leader. We gradually lost most of our European members, and eventually, the European division faded away completely. While they were here, though, they had a substantial influence on our clan and its development.

 

• EFO Merge:

In late summer of 2009, we were given a chance to merge with the EFO Clan, which had been led by TheKing24. As soon as Stickpirate accepted the merge, problems began to pop up. Many loyal Goog members found it very frustrating that EFO members instantly received leadership or moderator positions without earning them the old fashioned way. Arguments and tensions popped up all over the place. Within four days, King decided to unmerge from Goog, which upset some people but brought relief to most of our loyal members. The fundamental problem with the merge was that EFO had an entirely different type of members, the kind that do not appreciate clan loyalty or pretty much anything that is not related to Stick Arena. The failure of the EFO merge helped reestablish the idea that Goog Clan values different things than most other clans, and that is what keeps us going strong.

 

• Steam Division:

In December, Goog expanded once again, this time into Steam games. Steam is a program used for purchasing and launching PC games, as well as communicating via instant message and microphone with other Steam users. It has become fairly popular among our members, with well over 20 people from the Steam community joining the Goog Clan group. Our members have played a wide variety of PC games, but as a clan, we officially play Team Fortress 2, Modern Warfare 2, and Counter Strike Source.

 

• Capture the Flag:

Things at Goog were once again going smoothly. We merged with a third and final clan, Spectrum, in April 2010, but nothing much came out of it. None of their members were given moderator powers, and most of their members ended up leaving very quickly. By summer, we were looking for new ways to make Stick Arena fun, so we decided to try Capture the Flag. Goog wasn't the first clan to play CTF, but Poly came up with a unique new set of rules and maps. Within days a large portion of our members were hooked, and the Goog version Capture the Flag was born. Since then, many additional maps have been made, and our members have played countless rounds of CTF.