Hey everyone this is huhuh from France. Since I don't feel sleepy, i figured out I would give a brief overview of what NS has been in France since Halloween 2002, until now, and how we are preparing things for NS2.   First off, I'll talk a little bit about myself. I've been playing since late 1.04 so whatever I say about 1.0 stuff will be very imprecise. Also I have been a pure pubber for a long long time and I was quite young when I started playing, therefore, as time passes by, my memory may fail me on some details or facts. I beg perdon for any stupidity i might write in the following. If you can correct some, I'd be glad to hear from you. Second, what I'm gonna write about deals with the whole French speaking community. I'm including Frenchies, Belgians, Swiss, and we even had some Canadians in here. Hehe ! Also, I'll mainly talk about the top teams of that time, because I think that none of you guys can really remember any of the second tier team. But there were tons of em, usually twice as many as the number of top teams. Don't forget these guys.   So everything started I guess a few moments before 2002 release. From what I know, some guys created the website NS-FR.com. Eryx and Burster were main webmasters at the time, I think until 2.0 or 2.01 or such version ( can't remember ). Burster's quite famous for explaining that saying "light machine gun" on vent is faster than saying "lmg". Go figure out ! Most Frenchie players at the time were players from TFC or DoD, as well as some CSers and Quakers. Anyway, pre-2.0 roxor team was d\y ( tag messed up, maybe double anti-slash ? ). As far as I can remember they had guys like T2K, Pomi, Epaulard, Cid, Crazy ( Swiss ), etc... I bet there was some Clanbase stuff at that time but I don't really know much about it.   Anyway with 2.0 and d\y folding, RaB ( featuring Naxo which was one of the leader of the community, FlyFlown, Roly ( moderator for NS-FR ), famous commander/fade Yoh, drAz, ... ) became n°1 team in France. The big changes in gameplay lead NS to be much more interesting for competitive level. NS-FR created the French Natural Selection League, or FNSL. Headadmins were all from the NS-FR staff : Naxo ( RaB ), Roly ( RaB ), PoMMe ( Cornichon LoverZ teamleader ), Mike/aZa ( FastSwitch )I'm pretty sure FNSL had 2 successful seasons and maybe a 3rd season. I'd say we had around 20 French speaking teams at that time, which seems incredible ! Season 2 featured teams like : RaB ( still Naxo, Yoh, FlyFlown, and Shivan, Ashrak, Kjee,... ), -o- (Rios, PaF, Schmurfy, Phy, tutu-, Eagleeye, FantaS) ( later Insane ), Dz ( FreeZe ) , a51 ( RmS, that guy raised from noob to pr0 in 2 months or so; some gayzors like Mancunien, Byakugan who released Naturally Born Selected ( [url]http://www.ensl.org/movies/16[/url] ) also Cortex), FastSwitch ( JLP, Mike/aZa, cr4zy, Erloom, TheRealPik, bk, PiMs, Epaulard, PoMi). I'm just giving names out of my head you know. According to Mike there has been much more seasons, and it could have kept going on it it were not for the next project : ENSL. Anyway at that time there were also a few IRL events : 3 nights in a cybercafe, a LAN somewhere in the middle of France ( some videos should be around ), etc... The NS Academy was also created around there by Freeze, the goal was to help beginners deal with NS at the start. We'd also give lessons for fading, lerking, commanding, etc... all sort of stuff. It started out pretty well actually, and dozens of people were attending it. T'was really great ! But on the long term it was given up, see later in the text. I think it is also by that time that some World stuff was organised. France fought with Sweden or Finland ( can't remember FFS ) during like 20 rounds or so, it was pretty epic at that time, they were playing like 2 maps every day for 5 days or so !!   Then it is pretty confused in my mind. FNSL folded for ENSL as we know it, with the headadmins from former FNSL, the first seasons were really successful since there was no decent EU competition at the time ( LUL clanbase ). Most of the French teams were still there. And then there was that huge period where there was 3.0 playtest and it fucked up the community. Vets and Consties could play Combat and realized it was shit. So when 3.0 came out they left the game 2 weeks later or so to go play Guild Wars / WoW which were just released. I'm pretty sure I myself stopped NS to play WoW, lulz ! Don't really know what happened, except RaB folded some time ( after 1st season accord to Mike ), leaving -o- the only pro team in France. Later on as Fastswitch had folded and -o- too, they mixed up to make Insane. I think they played some good stuff in ENSL ( see FlashNaabZ's video ) with guys like : anima, tutu-, PaF, Mike/aZa, Croquette/FlashNaabz, RioS, bk, ray, nirgal, ...Then I think RaB tried some revival ( Janury 2005 ) and failed quite hard ( taking players with potential in order to raise their skill, but it wasn't so successful ). Also NS-BE was created, it was like a small site for the Belgian guys like Zipper. Some National team DRAMA took place also, t'was lotta fun ! And the [t]error Menes joined the national team, which was quite fun also.Disagreement with the NS-FR team had been strong for a while, so some players created another French community called NS4ALL.   Anyway someday NS-FR stopped ( January 2007 ) so they carried on the French fire ! The community was already dying by now, and thousands of "NS IS DEAD" posts were posted by nibz and stuff. But some players carried on. Insane tried some revival without success, cause WoW/GW is skillless and DotA is no FPS. Also working is badder than studying. Anyway the few clans / attemps to farmteam died and soon the only remaining Frenchies gathered in one big group ( see s0s, Illusion etc ). Players like GuiZ, FlashNaabZ, Tjul, Chibi, Nmeu, Oulit, Spect, Ezekiel etc kept playing. Some players spread into European teams ( Hlook/Meyfarth in kE, Marmotte and myself joined later ).   So what's left of the Frenchies on NS ? We still have some pubbers ( FOX .... ( :( ), caca, , etc ), Vince raised from pubber to clanner ( and SD are doing really fine atm imo ! ). The few Belgians left quit NS for L4D/TF2 etc ( Tjul, Oulit, Spect, Ezekiel, nibz ! ). Some French Players remain ( Orox, Kadis, Chibi, King_yo, ... ). Now most of us are playing Heroes of Newerth ( DotA like ). Including former Insane guys, and frenchies from here and there.   But what's up ? NS2 is coming. Unfortunately around the time NS4ALL was created, some crazy motherfuckers created the biggest shit of the universe called NS-FC. Means NS Fun Club. Hell Yeah. What kind of fun ? Xmenu and shit bro. You see the Le Bordel de la Dinde server ? This is candy compared to theirs. Anyway they did their stuff on their own, playing with 255 plugins and stuff which we really didn't care about. Except that these guys were drawing too much beginners onto their server. Resulting in a great lack of French players for a long time. When Finnish and German still had their freshmeat coming and starting the games and spawncamping on Veil, the French ones were building OCs on the roof of NS_spaceshipmasta_reverse_b235_final.bsp. FUCK IT. Much drama followed with much meany stuff and all. Since no agreement could be found both communities just hated each other in a nice way. So. Don't care about the nibz, that's what you'd say. The issue is, Mike/aZa had bought the domain name ns2-fr or some stuff like that, just in case. But he forgot to keep paying for it or some shit like this. It ended up, OF COURSE, the retards bought all the fucking domain names that contained fr/france/ns2 and they started going for a website that would provide an "official French community for NS2" or some stuff like that. The problem is, we know what kind of people they are, and we REALLY DO NOT WANT NS2 to get fucking gangrained by these lam0rz. So after much drama, Byby Phoke got the NSfrance.net domain name and finally the guys from NS4ALL (MightyDucks, Byby Phoke, ...) and Mike, FlashNaabZ, Chibi made a nice website for the upcoming NS2, in order to have Frenchies players be directed the right way ! [url]http://www.nsfrance.net[/url] was born ( I joined them a little bit later, as translater ). We held a LAN for the 7th birthday of NS near Paris, and we actually had 16 crazy Frenchies there [Chibi, Vengeur, Sl!ce/Rhum, FlashNaabZ, Byby Phoke, Br/Joliano, Nmeu/Jinki, huhuh, Marmotte, Ray, SuiX, Mike/aZa, Nirgal, King_yo, CopaTTe, glh ] . Crazy Award goes to Mike for driving from Belgium to Paris !! Moar LANs will follow, for the release of alpha/beta/retail most likely ! Now we can provide the Frenchies with translated news, non-retard admins and good content for Natural Selection 2. SEE  YOU ON THE FIELD GUYS, FRANCE WILL BE THERE !