A year ago, a few mates broke away from Australia's largest PS3 clan and formed their own.  One year on, that new clan is still going strong. Here's a recap on the year and an outlook toward the future.

Members & Clan Philosophy

Friday, 4th September 2009 at http://www.topsecretclan.freeforums.org, acriu55, GraphicX, RHYS5169, reflexionkiller, Gaz-Rosco (now known as Roscanaut), mookison and Boosted--1 huddled together, they'd recently left AUF along with ikiller1 & flipher. They were meeting to discuss what to do next, that being the formation of a new clan.  Those 9 would become the founding members of one of Australia and New Zealand's most tight knit PS3 clans, now known as Final Vertex.

The Top Secret Clan forum was used as their only point of contact beyond the PS3. They discussed at length what their options were; whether they would like to form a clan and how to go about making it.  It was agreed that the clan would remain a secret until after Season 3 at sixaxisgaming.com had concluded, in the hope that others would not follow them away from AUF.  Unfortunately, only a few days had passed before the the plans to form a new clan and website had been discovered. This was via the reading of private messages between the founding members at the AUF site.  This became an extremely difficult time for the 9, old friendships were pushed to breaking point but at the same time positives emerged.  With news of a new clan on the way created by old mates, both Oridin and dutch47 were keen to sign up.

FV was looking incredibly strong, all of the members had competed in various competitive teams with one another within AUF, thus it was decided to enter the closing Season 3 Call of Duty 4 ladder at sixaxisgaming.com to see how far they could push.  It was about this time that ikiller1's cousin, RevenageSeeker, joined FV and everyone was extremely pumped to get stuck into some clan wars.

Since the initial 12 members, FV has changed very little, all 12 members are still here & there have been several new additions.  The first new member was coma-bIakk, FV was his first clan and he entered being an incredibly skilled MW2 player. He represented the clan in many battles, the majority of which were victories.  Unfortunately, after a 3 month stay things didn't work out the best. Coma left the clan but can still be found posting on the forums, he wouldn't be the last person to join and then decide to leave the clan. NTC, who had been a long standing member of goRe joined & left a short time after, this was due to a lack of interest in competitive & clan gaming.  Goreseeker was stood down from FV after some questionable behavior & most recently TheExplosion & Soulfrit opted to step away from FV after a short stint in the clan, a day that's gone down in our history as Black Tuesday.

FV have been fortunate with some new members though, in February 2010, OC-138 was welcomed into the clan. Another mature aged gamer and a member of Australia's armed forces, both he and FV almost lost out as at the time as an incredibly large number of people were applying to join and were being declined without any thought given.  April 2010 saw another great asset to the clan join in the form of a mongoose, JDU21.  JDU's keen nature & SnD skills have made him a great asset to the clan.  JDU was the former leader of NvS and was struggling to juggle work, high school, a social life and clan leader responsibilities which led to the unfortunate result of letting NvS go.  Along with RevenageSeeker, JDU would be FV's youngest member.

July 2010 saw FV gain an extremely gifted player in the form UpSilonSnacHR.  UpSilonSnacHR joining FV was an extremely happy day for the clan, he had been long time friends with the majority of the members and played with them almost every night of the week, his joining was truly a delight.  Now at 15 members, the door to any new members have been well and truly sealed again.  It was unanimously decided to keep the clan small to maintain the high level of closeness in FV.

From day 1 simple foundations were laid within the clan, throughout the past year these foundations have remained strong and unchanged.  It was decided very early on to only allow mature people to join, which has led to the majority of the clan being over 20 with some even over 30. Even our 2 sub-20 year old members are incredibly mature for their age, both already employed and studying at the same time.  The clan has always been kept small, time and time again we have seen clans go beyond 20 or even 30 members, only for there to be a split over ego's or petty arguments.  At no point has FV had a leader, this is credited to the fact that the members of FV are mature enough as a clan to discuss decisions as a whole, rather than there being a single leader. Everyone treats each other with respect, in the past 12 months there have been incredibly few sour incidents on the FV site, none of which have involved current members.  It's these little things that we believe have built FV to be the strong unit that it is and has seen the clan change so little in regard to members.  Unfortunately, having such restrictions on membership has lead to a large number of people being turned away upon applying to join.  Mid January 2010, a membership page was placed on the FV site in the hope of deterring people from applying to join.  Since then the page has received almost 700 hits with the number of people applying to join at times being quite astounding.