We do currently still play PUBG. But the thing is that our PUBG group exploded. Some weekends it’s still possible to play PUBG 4 man squad modes. But there are more and more weekends where we have too much people online to play 4 man squad mode. So, I got an idea and tested the war modes that are currently in beta, because you can join with a lot more friends, and you can leave spots open for strangers. If you are alone, it’s difficult to get a server going because many strangers don’t have the patience to wait until slots are filled. But if you already join with 10 of your friends, you get the match going in no time even if you leave 10 more slots open for strangers. In fact it’s even possible to go higher than that.

I tested all kind of settings with my friends and they all are fun. We did test classic deathmatch games, we tested team deathmatch settings like 10 vs 10, we tested to split groups further like 2 man squads and other combinations. We tested starts with random weapons, or pure sniper matches. We even tested the conquest modes. And it’s so much fun to play with so many friends. Yesterday for example was magical. I don’t remember when I had THAT much fun the last time, but it must have been during our World of Warcraft period. I think the more friends join, the better gaming becomes.

Yesterday we had 8 people online from our city here in Schleswig-Holstein, and they all know each other personally. Apart from that we had one friend from Berlin online who previously lived at our place, two gaming friends from Austria which we met in PUBG and a female friend from Southern Germany we met in PUBG. That meant we had 12 people online in PUBG, and they all joined our TeamSpeak server and it really reminded me of the World of Warcraft time because at that time we always had more than 10 people online at the same time, but often even more than 60 because our guild was huge. I love it when there is so much chatter in TeamSpeak. Yesterday when we played PUBG, it came pretty close to that feeling. And teaming up with so many friends, or playing against each other, increases the fun a thousandfold.

And since we have a zero tolerance policy when it’s about toxic people, it’s self-explanatory how good the atmosphere is. By the way, it’s not just gaming talk, it can also get very personal if a person feels the need to talk about things happening in life. The woman from Southern Germany for example told us that her father got a stroke, and that she lives with him to be able to do the nursing. When she has a bit of free time because someone else cares, she’s able to play the game and it helps her to get a bit of distraction. We didn’t know that, and there was a lot of supportive chatter. We can be very focusses on the game, but personal chats don’t come too short. And to us, indivuals are not just gamers on the other end or at another place. We really care, even about the regulars that we met in games.

You know what another sign is that you have a grown up gaming circle? It’s if you have one woman and eleven men in TeamSpeak and not even one man turns into a sexist zombie. The woman from Southern Germany is one of the few we don’t know personally, except from voice chat and she was baffled that nobody tried to flirt with her because of her female voice. I know where she’s coming from, because this is a huge problem in all kind of gaming clans and guilds, that’s at least what I experienced when I joined larger groups of strangers in the past. This however is frowned upon in our private gaming circle. We would laugh at you if you would get horny just because you hear a female voice, and a bit too much of it would definitely lead to a ban on our TeamSpeak server. Why? Because we can do that, we’re admins and owners of the server. Most of us either do have a girlfriend, or don’t have any problems to take women home after a party. So, getting freaky because of a female voice is seen as weak, and absolutely not tolerated, because it spoils the party. She told me that she liked the atmosphere, and I invited her to join whenever she wants to since we do play regularly at the moment, mostly on weekends.

Another sign that you have a grown up gaming circle is when people laugh if they get killed in the game. No toxic “You’re a cheater, I don’t believe it’s possible what you’ve done there” or anything alike. It’s just having fun and laughing when you’ve sucked, because everyone has these moments where someone else was better. There are maybe some sarcastic jokes like “Turn off the aimbot dude!” but these are jokes and not genuine complains, because everybody knows we don’t have cheaters in our group. So, the whole atmosphere is fantastic.

Since there is a real life, we sometimes just can fill a 4 man squad but the last weeks it happened more often that we could fill whole servers because too many personal friends and gaming friends were online. I like it both, but if we are a larger group online, it really reminds me of the old times. It was common back then to have a huge personal army online that you could bring together to have fun in these games. I love that, especially like in our case where people can do both, focussing on the game but also chatting about personal stuff. Yesterday we had a very large group and everyone agreed that it was an extreme amount of fun. Of course we forgot the time and we simultaneously said “What the f…?” after someone said “I didn’t expect it’s already 4 AM”. That was the end of an amazing gaming evening (which turned into a gaming night).