Blacktown

About Us:

Blacktown was founded in October 2008 by Adrian "Cyberwolf" K. and Michael "Darkknight" K. We were both quite young, but this wasn't a problem for us when setting up the project. The whole story of Blacktown started with an IRC server, which stands for Internet Relay Chat. We set up our server to communicate with each other. In general, we wanted to know more about the technology that made IRC chats possible. But that wasn't enough for us, so we connected our server to several other IRC servers, and through that, an IRC network was built. The biggest server was called IRC-Town, just to refer to the significant one.

At this time, I was a member of a clan that played the game "Command & Conquer: Zero Hour". To communicate with each other, we used the voice communication tool called "Teamspeak 2". This was quite necessary, as you can't start writing during a game to discuss strategy. Later on, we closed down our IRC server, as it was no longer needed.

So in January 2009, we decided to install a computer with Windows XP. We configured it so that it was accessible from the internet, which was also a new experience for us. This computer was set up and running in one of our houses. Furthermore, we installed the Teamspeak 2 Server on the computer. We knew about this kind of tool from my current clan. What is Teamspeak 2 exactly and for what reason is it used? To describe it in a few simple words, TS2 consists of two components: a server and a client—so you need both of them to get it to work. It is used to communicate with your voice, which enables you to talk while you're playing a game. This is quite a big improvement for clans, because they don't have to type anymore. From now on, we had our own Teamspeak 2 Server, so we learned quite a lot about the administration of a server.

In March 2009, we renamed our project to Blacktown-Sponsoring. So we started to offer free Teamspeak 2 servers to clans, communities, and guilds. With this step, it was necessary to register our own domain (www.blacktown.eu) in May 2009. Through this new domain and webspace, we thought that it would be nice to offer some free webspace or hosting of CMS (Content Management System). This was started in October 2009, but a few months later it was cancelled, because it was too time-consuming for us.

In January 2010, the new release from the Teamspeak Company was published—Teamspeak 3! The product was still in a beta stage, so we took a deep look at that tool, and we decided to offer free Teamspeak 3 servers as well. A few months later, we had fewer users on the sponsored Teamspeak 2 servers, because everyone wanted to have a TS3, as it came with some really practical functions (e.g., File Transfer, better Voice Codec). Therefore, our conclusion was to discontinue the sponsoring of TS2 servers at the end of June 2010.

In the middle of June 2010, we reopened a clan called "Prog" (= Performance Racing over Germany). Within this, we were the official sponsor of this clan. We set up our own TS3 server for this purpose and furthermore configured a Trackmania server for the clan. Through this, we got much more attention for our Blacktown-Sponsoring project, because the clan participated in several events and was playing in the ESL (Electronic Sports League) quite successfully. Through all those changes, the requirements for our server increased heavily. Now the time was right to get our own root server, which is hosted by a dedicated provider in a data center. The server location change happened in October 2010.

Unfortunately, we had to close the Performance Racing over Germany (Prog) clan due to less activity and some disputes within the clan members. This happened at the end of December 2010.

For a long time, there was not much new to tell about the Blacktown-Sponsoring project. On the 1st of August 2011, we opened our "Team Blacktown". The founders were Adrian "Cyberwolf", Marc "renki", Joscha "Transporter", and Seb "pro2type". This clan existed until the 10th of November 2012. It was closed because of inactive members and the reduced number of players in the Trackmania Nations Forever section.

On the 1st of December, the Teamspeak Company published some new rules with regard to the NPL (Non Profit License). Through this, it was no longer allowed to sponsor clans and communities. Unfortunately, we were forced to stop the sponsoring of our TS3 servers. That was quite a hard step for us, because we had sponsored servers for a long time. The question was now how to go on with Blacktown-Sponsoring…

I (Adrian "Cyberwolf" K.) took over the complete management of Blacktown.eu. This happened in February 2013. The initial step was to rename Blacktown-Sponsoring into Blacktown Community, as the old name was misleading by now.

Note: The Blacktown Community has been closed as of the beginning of 2023. We would like to thank all members, supporters, and friends who were part of this journey over the years.