I apologize to all haters, but this blogpost is going to be all about me. I think, that after 8 years I should finally write something about me. I'm exactly 30 years old today, thus server basically took place in almost whole third decade of my life.
The first GTA I played, was GTA 3, which I played on my very first computer I got for Christmas in 2001, thus 15 years ago. At first, the game didn't attract me at all because of its cartoon-like graphics, which wasn't really good looking compared to other games, but after few hours of playing it, I realized, that this game is really catchy above all. It ended up with me waking up one hour earlier so I could play GTA a bit before going to school. I finished singleplayer multiple times on 100%. After two years, Vice City came. I was really excited about this game, as sunny Vice City looked more promising than rainy Liberty City after all. As soon as I launched the game, it was pretty clear what I was going to play next several months over and over again. Music from 80s and riding on bikes was just amazing experience. Storyline also was simply great. Before San Andreas was released, we already had internet connection at home, so I've read many articles expecting what more features will San Andreas bring with it. At that time I had a girlfriend though, therefore there wasn't much time for playing, however when she went on vacation with her family on holidays, I finally had some time to play! San Andreas was just great, although I did like Vice City atmosphere more, San Andreas contained much more features, which I simply missed in Vice City. I finished San Andreas on 100% multiple times as well and then have forgotten about this game for some time.
For couple of years then, I used to play Empire Earth, I have started a successful clan with few german players and we kept winning lot of tournaments regularly. That was for the first time I played multiplayer on internet. After some time, I spotted information, that there is a multiplayer being developed for Vice City, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I was lacking time for playing and at that time I was working on my first website Everymusic.org. However, I remember precisely the day, when I first installed SA-MP, it was on 14th February 2008, that day I returned from an exam from microeconomy, which was my last exam in first semester on university, I was so annoyed from all the studying, that I wanted to play some game, I thought of GTA but singleplayer was already so unexciting, thus I googled something about multiplayer for GTA and found SA-MP. I installed it and found server Vojna Gangov (War or Gangs), which is not running anymore. I have played on that server for about a week, until I realized, that server doesn't have any point as some hacker sent me millions of cash and I could buy instantly everything and it lacked any sense to earn money and the only thing that I could do was killing players. Therefore I found another server, Maikeroo Town, which also doesn't run anymore. This server was quite better, it had some sense at least, players had to earn money to buy a lot of available things. Nevertheless, I didn't like, that lot of features were controlled through commands and I didn't like that the server doesn't have almost anything in common with GTA, I missed a lot of features. That's the point where I first thought that it would be great if there was a server, which would be similar to San Andreas singleplayer, because above all, GTA is successful game because it's GTA...
And so I got the idea of starting my own server, which will offer much more features and more comfortable controls to players. Somewhere around March 2008 I begun working on game mode Original San Andreas and in April 2008 we opened the first server, which became popular quite fast. However, there weren't too many players on SA-MP, there were only 50-60 players online on server in peaks, therefore I had to place all features only in Los Santos, so players didn't have to search themselves on whole map for half of the day and I renamed gamemode to Welcome to Los Santos. In October 2009, I received a kind message from Kalcor, the lead developer of SA-MP, who was really excited about our pool minigame, which we had as the first SA-MP server, and he came to try it out on our server by himself. I really appreciate this compliment and it was a signal for me, that I was doing things on server well. Our server then received a lot of positive comments and rating on SA-MP forums and some beta testers came to play on our server too. I kept improving game mode until December 2009, when our sponsor Zaparit.cz told us that they can't run our server anymore. We had to make a fundamental decision whether to continue and pay for server by ourselves or quit. It was quite difficult decision because I wasn't sure if server is even able to earn on its expenses. We decided to open our web wtls.cz and pay for the servers from our own pocket. Since December 2009 players also had the chance to purchase premium account and support our server, you all are bound to these players that server today is where it is! Shortly we focused also on VC-MP, a multiplayer for Vice City, thus we renamed our web to GTA-MULTIPLAYER.CZ.
Server was further expanding and in April 2012 we opened server for english players. It was a great experience for me, because since then I started to enhance my english skills significantly. Not that I couldn't speak english before, but simply I could reach higher levels of english since I started to regularly communicate with english speaking players. The server also helped me with my university studies, because meanwhile others had to write 60 pages on boring topics for their dissertation, such as reform of retirement pension system in Sweden, I wrote my work on topic of marketing on internet with the help of my web. It took me only 3 days and at the end the professor told me it was one of the best works he ever read and it will be definitelly beneficial for other students as well, as he is going to share my work on his lessons. Impressive, isn't it?
To summarize it, I'm operating this server since I was 22, thus almost whole third decade of my life. During that time, I got a lot of new experience, met a lot of great people, some of them even personally, I could improve my english and managing skills. Thanks to all bureaucracy in Czech republic for people operating their businesses, I also learned how to run business on internet properly. I'm proud of that server was part of my life for last 8 years and that it brought fun to thousands of players for hundreds thousands of hours and I also hope that players got some experience while playing here as well, improved themselves in something or met new friends. Thanks everyone!
As a reward for everyone, who read through this, I have prepared a voucher NICEISOLD, which will give premium account for 30 days to first 100 players!