I guess I can share my story. Although I shall keep it brief, since it would be quite a long bit of text otherwise! In any case, here it goes!
In the early years before 2006, I played a cracked version of CS 1.6 that my uncle got for me, because I had just gotten a new computer and wished to play something different. But, at that point, most of my time was spent on a game called "Runescape" which I played excessively every day. But on the side CS was my go to as I was already in love with first person shooters. Come the year 2006 and that very same uncle purchases me a copy of CS:S along with a steam account which I have used till this day. Everything felt so new and fresh, and I was instantly addicted to it! The world of community servers was lovely and I first began playing on a community server run by a clan called NiF. Eventually I became their member and also started playing CS:S competitively in the EU league. On the side, I played a lot of climb servers.
But a few things happened and my time with NiF came to a sad end. However, if that had not happened, it would likely not result in me ending up where I am today. Now suddenly without a "home" I began searching where I could settle down. I was restless after what had occurred and nothing sat right with me. But I somehow stumbled upon an i3D Hosties server, which was incredibly populated, and very strict. After more research I discovered just how large the community was and I instantly wanted to be a bigger part of it. That inadvertently already set my path towards the start of EH. Being accepted into the Hosties admin team and later on getting access to the rest of the servers, I discovered zombiemod and escape, which became the number one favorite thing to play for me.
By this point I had already been friends with Nikooo777 and Salem and knew a couple of other individuals such as Xylon who was an i3D admin even before I was. If I remember correctly. I also met EH Rocky on these servers and with that Koboldmaki also. Which brought me to the EH server which existed back then in those times. All the clan members were bad-ass and I absolutely loved it, so I wanted to be a part of it. But just after I finally got accepted, the server we had, went down. By this point, I was no longer at i3D.
And thus, Nikooo along with Salem began building the foundations of the new server which is even till this day more or less known as V1. Alongside with me, helping out the best I could. And so, it all began, expanding into a large community with a tremendous playerbase and to my great happiness, still going strong, even today. I love this place, I am proud of it and it will forever be my home, where my family resides.
Kind Regards
Elite HunterZ AsH
P.S: These pics are from November, 2009!