A teacher told us about it in the physics lab, we played one afternoon straight, and then it was on.
I spent a large part of my teenage years on this game. I was a devoted T:V player when there were a handful of competitive teams and a worldwide tournament.
I recall a few names from that time like zbd from Drunken Masters (DM), prokhoi and darkyangel from Where is Your Flag (WYF), nävis and aquasky from Original Crime (oC), yidbon from Actual Injustice (ai), zhou yu from Dynasty Warriors (DW), Kiss My Ass (KMA), preShot (pS), etc… and I’m definitly forgetting a lot of people here.
This game made my childhood a little happier and allowed me to escape life’s hassles.

In high school, someone brought in a burned Starsiege: Tribes CD-R into the computer lab and a few of us played it after class. I was instantly hooked, and after buying a CD-R off him for $2 I started playing at home every night.

Playing at home on 56k as a HPB I cut my teeth, and got into the scripts and decided to host all of the scripts I could on Planet Tribes on a site called Tribes Depot. Eventually we got up to ISDN 128K and I became an LBP, and I started doing a little bit of work on Planet Tribes as well. I would play primarily with friends from school, then started joining community servers and eventually found my way into a few clans. Tribes got me through a very heavy bout of depression in high school, as during a prolonged illness it was my only contact with the outside world and it was the only thing that kept me going.

This continued into college, with me going to a midnight release of Tribes 2 to get the game as soon as possible (unfortunately Unhandled Exception errors meant I didn’t get to play that night). Playing Tribes on a T1/T3 line was absolutely game-changing, and I probably played a few scrims. I even went back and bought a real copy of Starsiege: Tribes in a jewel case when I got Tribes: Aerial Assault for the PS2.

As T2 wore on, I somehow didn’t get that excited for Vengeance when it came out, and when Ascend came out I was super hyped but left quickly as I didn’t like the business decisions they were making. I migrated over to Team Fortress 2 and then World of Warcraft, and stoppedp laying Tribes.

But I would keep getting an itch for Tribes, and was disappointed that there wasn’t one. I found out that Starsiege: Raiders was a thing, then forgot about it, then when I found Starsiege: Deadzone was getting swapped with development for Tribes 3: Rivals the hype was back, stronger than ever.

The tribes 2 memes on 4chan got me hooked. Gave it a shot, and it was fucking awesome!

In the mid-nineties on a fast (for the time) university internet connection. It was a blast!

Truthfully? My stepdad going on about a guy at work who played tribes 2 and pointed out that it was somethign I could do more than shoot.

I am not a great shot so having options was always gonna get my interest.

A friend on the competitive scene described deploying turrets. I was sold.