Our Story

The Beginning

Team *A51* was founded in 2000–2001 by ^Elimin8r*A51* and ^PO*A51*. Sadly, PO passed away from cancer early in the clan's history.

In those early days, the clan ran four servers, all hosted through Elimin8r's job at NTelos, where he was able to run them directly from the ISP. ^Roughrider*A51* soon stepped in to help administer our CTF server.

Around that time, we had roughly 30 members, with about half—sometimes more—playing daily on our CTF server. We hosted scrims and matches, and many clans visited regularly to play with us. It was a tight-knit, active community, and we maintained a strong regular player base up until around 2007.

The Dark Ages

In 2008, our four servers were shut down as most of our players had migrated to the web-based Quake Live.

The servers were brought back online in 2014 under Roughrider's administration, but this revival only lasted about a year before they were shut down again due to a lack of players.

An Unfortunate End

In 2024, Elimin8r and Roughrider began talking once more about restarting our servers, as the Quake III Arena player base was, remarkably, larger than it had been in 2012.

In June, we learned that Mark (Elimin8r) had passed away on May 28th. His loss was a heavy blow to everyone who had been part of Team *A51* from the beginning.

The Glorious Return

After Mark's passing, Roughrider recruited ^Toodles*A51*, and together they began revitalizing the clan's original server-side mod, Q3AS. Unfortunately, the mod was badly outdated and lacked many modern features.

Not long after, we became good friends with X, the admin of Necropolis (Adults Only). X introduced us to the founder of the legendary Thunder & Lightning servers. Together, we decided to merge under the *A51* banner and run the finely tuned Thunder & Lightning server-side mod.

Our Mission

Our mission is to continue supporting the great game of Quake III Arena. We are reconnecting with long-lost friends from years ago while also welcoming new faces into our community.

Team *A51* is dedicated to improving the experience for all players and proudly calls its player base “The Family.” We welcome newcomers and are deeply grateful to everyone who plays with us today.