History
Fifteen years of history, are you ready? Here we go...
Origins
Åsgard formed as a separation from Dragon Team (Dead from November 2005, later reformed in 2008), founded by clanmates Sub Zero and Hundredth in June 2005. As DT fell apart through a new ‘quantity over quality’ mass recruitment, Sub and Hundredth gradually began to deter away from the DT mainstream, taking the decent members and setting up a new community. MentiX, BlackWe and Scorpio followed from DT, and other rival clan members and solo players were inducted such as PhiL and Koen.
Åsgard emerged into the wider Populous: Reincarnated community in August 2005, as they burst into the matchmaker lobby in unison with the new [AsG] tag:
- [AsG]Scorpio in
- [AsG]Sub Zero in
- [AsG]MentiX in
- [AsG]Hundredth in
- [AsG]PhiL in
Although members BlackWe and Koen were absent, they were eventually granted tag access. The wait was due to the Åsgard clan being disabled in the Pop:Re system by admin IncaWarrior after clan co-founders Hundredth and Sub Zero were given access to ex-clan DT’s administrative forum access, (Scorpio was given Dakini’s password by Khickman) and promptly went ahead and ‘messed stuff up’.
Hierarchy history
Åsgard has operated under a basic hierachy system since conception. Norse titles are given (along with other things in the clan) to depict status – Odin: leader, Loki & Thor: the high council (co-leaders), Æsir: the council, Vanir: members, Valkyries: recruits. Read more about the involvement of these names in our clan on the Norse mythology page.
When Åsgard was born, Sub Zero was crowned ‘Odin’ as the more experienced player of the two co-founders. The Æsir first consisted of co-leader Hundredth and Scorpio, with Koen replacing the latter in September 2005. As the clan grew, MentiX was a late addition in December of the same year.
Early 2006 saw Boyd replace Koen, and the implementation of the high council (which was planned from day one) upon Sub Zero’s leave from the game in April. Boyd and Hundredth (as Thor and Loki repectively) inducted NanoSaurus into the council to compensate for Sub’s absense. MentiX was demoted in June, and replaced for a brief period by Zasamel in July.
However the Council was again knocked back to four, until Ragnj was inducted as the fifth in December 2006. However, as fighting for your place with contributions and activity is important in Åsgard, Nano was also removed from the Council in April 2007 after a grande year long service.
Shakkazulu was added to the Æsir in September 2007 as a reward for being a loyal, consistently active, and to compensate for all three co-leaders’ own erratic activity.
Storm and Drummerdude48 were also added to the Æsir in December 2008 due to other council members’ absence and member growth within the clan.
Early 2009 saw at-the-time clan leader Hundredth leave his position (to go travelling for six months), reassigning Sub Zero as Odin. Shakkazulu was promoted to High Council as Loki.
In 2010, Apnea joined the Council, and was subsequently promoted to the High Council – with the title ‘Frigg’ – upon Boyd’s departure from the clan. Hundredth -in his absence- was then assigned the rank Thor, as honour to his years of leadership and contributions.
In 2011 SewerAssassin joined the Council – a long deserved promotion for a long standing loyal clan member. Storm decided to step down shortly after, due to real life responsibilities; the Æsir thus consisting of Ragnj, Drummerdude48, and Sewerassassin.
The year 2017 saw the return of many players, a considerable clan expansion, and a Council revamp. The Council members were given the choice to remain within the Council or return to members while keeping their original rank. Ranks and hierarchy became independent entities and, while the ranks represented a member’s roles or honouring title, the hierarchy started to reflect on the members’ ability to attend to their responsibilities.
Drummerdude48, as a consistently active Council member, was granted the title Hersir, while the inactive Council members returned to the role of Members keeping their Æsir rank. This change allowed the clan to both recognise the work of formerly Council / High Council members, while also ensuring the current Council and High Council were active enough to participate in relevant decision making.
Åsgard was the first Populous clan in history to operate under a ‘Council’ system, and the structure has since been implemented by many new clans; (along with other trademark aspects such as our application system and clan history logging).
Website and forum history
forumplace.com hosted the first basic Åsgard forum which was set up by Sub way back in June 2005 and used for around 6 weeks until the current forum was set up.
The first Åsgard website (along with the forum) was hosted on Dutch server funpic.de, until the server was ridden with ads and popups. The original clanasgard.co.uk v1 contained little content, and was based around a template made by Koen. It was written in PHP, which back then noone else understood aside from Koen himself.
Our first logo ever! From our first website launched in 2005
For the latter reason clanasgard.co.uk v2 was created by Hundredth in February 2006, followed by a move to a new server in November. v2 was coded in HTML (with a little JavaScript) and based around the (n00by) iframe format. Although there was a vast improvement in content and features from the first website, the iframe limited many features (such as direct linking to pages from external sites). Despite this, the website received much applause from the clan and community alike for its vast content (compared with other rival clan sites) and original look.
In March 2007 disaster struck, as the Australian server Qualisar (our third host) collapsed and wiped a large part of our MySQL database, resulting in the loss of around 5000 forum posts, numerous threads and important parts of our forum (tournament logs, news etc). Due to Hundredth’s absense from the game, database backup had been a sloppy, irregular excerise; so when the move to new host (Clanwebs, no problems so far) took place, the forum was rewound back to November 2006. Åsgard members took this in their stride, and quickly made up for the lost forum posts and were quickly acquainted to the new forum format (an expansion of existing sections and multiple new discussion boards) implemented by the high council.
The main banner of version 2, this website stayed with us for almost ten years.
Clanasgard.co.uk v3 was launched in 2017. No more iframe (except possible more intelligent uses), HTML based with JavaScript and CSS. The application form was automated through our website’s interface. This website was the first to contain real time data from a member’s profile both from within Åsgard’s forums and Pop:Re’s own leagues. This website was replaced in 2020 with the current version.
Version 3, a minimal, responsive design.
And version 4 is presently our home. It keeps most of the automation from version 3, and adds elements of responsiveness, adaptability, accessibility and accountability. The current application form has been divided into sections, with adequate form management and guidance. The forums and website work in synergy to host all of the clan’s information in one place, under our domain.
Further members' history
As time has passed, so the members have grown. Life has changed enormously for most of our members, and within the clan we have been witnesses of each other’s evolution.
We have had good things to celebrate, such as members becoming graduate professionals, engineers and doctors. We have seen members get married, have children, go on to relocate in other parts of the world. Many of our members have met each other in real life, some even being present for memorable moments such as another member’s wedding.
We have our own Åsgard child! Little Emily (who is not so little anymore and will be learning to play Populous soon, lobby beware!) arrived in 2015 into the family formed by Sub_Zero and Apnea.
We have seen some sad news too; in March 2020, after years of battling cancer, one of our dearest and oldest members, Shakkazulu, has passed away. We have dedicated a section to honour him and his deeds within and outside of the game.
Events unfolding around the world in the past decade have also hit home for some of our members, and we are happy that most of these phases have been successfully overcome. We stand together to try and support each other as much as possible throughout the years.