The Eagle Standard Interviews TWC Legend Spartan
Silver Guard has interviewed TWC legend Spartan, recently returned from the abyss of real life, former administrator of TWC, the creator of the first Trivium Organisation, and the man responsible for this very mod interview service, the Eagle Standard! TWC oldies remember him as creator of the modding sections of TWC and administrator, a huge asset to TWC and the Total War community; and newer members have him to thank for what TWC is today. Read on!
Silver Guard:
Are you busy at present?
Spartan:
Aloha! Just trying to read the thousands of posts I missed out on the past couple weeks.
Silver Guard:
You are one of the most well know characters of TWC history, but your image is somewhat confusing, as is your time before Sulla became Dictator. So I'll start from the beginning, what first brought you to TWC?
Spartan:
I made a post about this a long time ago. I came to TWC shortly after the great video fiasco happened. I was stoked that a fan site would do such a thing given the attitude on the official forums. Which, at the time, I was ****** at due to my posts about finding many errors in the RTW demo being deleted. I was also very frustrated with the .org site so I was looking for a new home and TWC seemed like the place for me. After joining I immediately contacted Sib as the primary admin and struck up a friendship with him. About a week or two after that I told him I was a modder and I wanted to turn TWC into a modder haven since the .org and .com did not seem to really care for the idea. Sib told me that TWC just started a modder forum (it had about 100 posts or so in it) and that he was not a modder so if I wanted to do something like that he would support me fully.
Silver Guard:
What made you so disenchanted with the .org? Despite having been there several times I don't know much about it.
Spartan:
I would rather not bad talk .org as that is not my style and it would serve no good purpose. Let's just say I seemed to feel a cold shoulder every time I tried to do something.
Silver Guard:
Understood, what type of modding did you go into when you joined TWC?
Spartan:
I did it all except the graphics. I believe I released the first mod for RTW, as that was how I found all the bugs in the demo.
Silver Guard:
I'm sure someone will be able to dig it out in future! Who were the other contributors to the mod? The other major modders of the time?
Spartan:
The first one was just me. As to other modders sadly there was only two or three others out at the time the game was not even released yet. These were demo mods.
Silver Guard:
Ah I see, who were the people of TWC you knew best in those early days?
Spartan:
There were less then 1000 members I think and Sib was the person I knew best. Nearly no one was in the mod forums as it was basically brand new. There were two or three people but for the life of me I can’t think of there names now.
Silver Guard:
All right, what was the first major event after your arrival?
Spartan:
I think it was some big fight with Sib and the other forum leaders. I was not too involved with the other areas of TWC beyond the mod forum.
Silver Guard:
Was the Black Prince, Boris or Paul involved? Do you remember?
Spartan:
Yes. But I don’t recall the details.I think the Black Prince had left or something. In my chats with Sib he told me that Paul had basically left and that he was doing with out him. They had also had to change the name due to some BS with CA and had just switched hosts. The Black Prince was posting as well as GEN at the time I think. However I don’t think that the Black Prince and Sib were getting along but he and GEN were OK and Boris as well. Again that was over two years ago and I really was not interested in what was going on beyond the mod forum and the game forum. I was doing some posting in the MTW forum I think as well as the RTW forum. A lot of the posts at the time were about the video thing with CA. After the demo came out the posts jump big time on all forums. Anyway, I tried to talk to some people at the .org and the .com about doing mods but I got no response and the mod I released seemed to have been well received. So I talked to Sib about focusing TWC efforts on mods. He told me most people were there for the other content from the prior site however anything I wanted done within reason he would do. I was still a nobody. Anyway, I started to suggest major changes and the addition of many new forums as well as hosting options and other such things. I also was able to get the support of a few other modmen (I think at the time there was about 10 or so mods public). To work together to share information and help each other.
Silver Guard:
I can imagine that. At that time were there still patronizations? If so who patronized you?
Spartan:
Sib is my patron.
Silver Guard:
No problem, at what point did you become a moderator, do you remember the date?
Spartan:
Gee... Moderator umm. Within a month (maybe). Again the mod forum was almost nothing when I joined and it is likely no one in the active community for the other forums even knew it was there. Anyway after I was able to get a few modders to agree to work together I had the idea to start the Trivium. I talked to other people about joining us at TWC from other sites and things started to take off.
The whole thing was based on community cooperation with the promise of full support of the site admin. In short I started to market TWC as the place for mods and I did not play politics and games with people. If you wanted to do a mod I tried my best to make sure the information you needed was there for you and the site supported such ventures.
Silver Guard:
From what I gathered on my arrival here, the new trivium organization was around, what happened to the old one?
Spartan:
Well when I left it basically died. This was because the management structure I set up was not centralized and the day-to-day operations required constant attention. The system in place was oriented around the project leader for each project. They served as a council of sorts and they would work together through me to support each other with shared resources and talent.
Silver Guard:
So you provided support for any new mods?
Spartan:
Yes - if you had the interest I did my best to support you. This simply was not done at any organized level on the other sites. The whole network thing was based on credibility and good relations between the different teams. I worked on certain projects that could be used by anyone and free gave permission to all modders to use my stuff and hope others would do the same and it worked. Another key factor was Crandar.
Silver Guard:
What links Crandar to the Trivium organization?
Spartan:
I thought the organization was strong enough on its own to survive without me as it leader but as time has proven this was not the case. Apparently it was what it was due to my credibility with people. Trusting him was my only true mistake during my time prior time at TWC. Near the end I appointed him the manager of the Trivum as I was to busy with Admin issues to devote the full measure of attention to the Trivum that it required. Also at that time a lot of other BS was going (hence my change of focus to the general community) and I'm certain that the modding community had a massive ripple effect as a result.
Silver Guard:
What detrimental effect did Crandar have? Crandar is viewed a "teh EVIL!" nowadays, what was your view of him?
Spartan:
He was running the private dev site for me and when he vanished the communications between the projects disintegrated as well. So the projects started to basically work independent of each other’s. At that time in my opinion he was a focused and business oriented person who had solid skills and that was the kind of person I wanted to replace me.
Silver Guard:
So bringing down Trivium?
Spartan:
In essence yes. Once I agreed to become a leader of the TWC the issues of Trivium had to take second place, as the greater community was now the priority and not my personal modding group. Moreover I had a real life business to run as well as take care of my family and developing health issues to deal with on top of the 6 hours or so a day I would spend doing TWC stuff.
Silver Guard:
What caused your leave of the forums? I have the impression this was shortly after the rise of Sulla
Spartan:
In short, I really played kingmaker in the case of Sulla. I publicly promoted him (for political reasons) after the attack. Moreover our political strategy was simply to blame me for everything so as to keep him loved by as many as possible. I chose to do this because I knew at the time I was likely to leave soon due to medical reasons. However he did not know that fact. Well if you had the full facts things would/should seem clear to you. It may be a bit much to you but that is the truth.
Silver Guard:
I think I understand slightly, a sort of vague idea of the situation.
Spartan:
Archer and others can attest these things. I hand picked Archer from the community and made sure his rise so to speak would be free of obstacles as well as SMACK and one or two others. But those are different stories for another time. I think picking Archer to be a servant of the community was likely my best decision as an Admin for the community.
Silver Guard:
Right, one last question, upon your return to TWC (was it yesterday?) were you pleased or disappointed? Why?
Spartan:
Pleased. The community has stood the test of time and I see that many things I started are still alive and well especially the ES and the hosted mod forums as well as the general notion that the modmen are the ones who make the community what it is. Back in the day hard as it may be to believe they were the underdogs.
Silver Guard:
They are not now? They are sorely outnumbers, one of out moderators, tGS, has never played a total war game
Spartan:
Well I been back a day and have only had time to read a few of the many posts but the ones I have read as well as the general forums composition lead me to believe otherwise. Moreover if this is in fact the case, it is all the better that I have come back now because like before I will do my best to support all the modmen of the community.
Silver Guard:
And we will thank you for it. That ends my questions in this interview; you have been very helpful, thank you. Do you have any questions of your own on the modern forum?
Spartan:
Sadly I have not had near enough time to digest anything but a small fraction of the information before me so I cant really think of any meaningful questions at the moment.Mainly for bandwidth for downloads and domain hosts.
Spartan:
You are not aware of it but I personally spent hundreds of dollars support the different mod projects. That is how much I believed in the community and its ability to serve the general TW public.
Silver Guard:
Sorry, shock moment, where did these dollars go if you don't mind me asking? I didn't realise Mods used money!
Spartan:
For example, back when the first patch came out there was only a few places to get it and the servers were stampeded with people. SO I put it on my host account and posted the link in the forums. More I still pay for downloads for SPQR and One of the LOTR mods. But this topic is for another discussion as well.
Silver Guard:
Thank you for the interview, Spartan!
Originally Posted by General_Sun
Good interview i knew bits and pieces but there was some things i didnt 
