New European Regiment

With the incredible success of Steven Spielberg‘s Saving Private Ryan, he had the great idea of ​​transferring all that realism to a game. I remember reading an article about it, I don’t remember where, and I was crazy about playing in World War II like my beloved Spear of Destiny, but with realism… participating in D-Day and much more.

I tried to keep up with the news online about what the game would have and what I would need to play, and one of the things I didn’t have yet was a dedicated internet connection. It was a cost, but I managed to get Velox 256kbps at home to wait for the game to be released while I played other things. Then they announced Medal of Honor Allied Assault for PC in December 2001. I was crazy with happiness… but December came and nothing… the game was postponed to 2002.

But it ended up being released in January, and luckily for me it was also released in Brazil, which at the time was not very common for games to be released here, most of them only arrived here through illegal means, and even stores sold pirated games. Of course I bought it as soon as possible, and I proudly keep the big box that came with it at home to this day. It was truly a revolutionary game, in addition to bringing an awesome single-player with countless new features and a plot created by Spielberg that practically put you inside a movie, it also had a wonderful multiplayer for 64 players.

But “wonderful” not so much, because for us in Brazil there simply was not a single online server. Few had a dedicated internet connection at the time, and the online community that existed practically everyone still played on the phone and older, lighter games, there was no server rental service, there was nothing. Well, I started playing on foreign servers, of course. I started in the US because the ping was lower, but it wasn’t as good as I imagined. Over time, some more serious servers started to appear and I discovered some European clans that were starting to build a realism community there, and little by little I stopped playing in the US and only played in Europe, even with an average ping of 250 in a game without ping correction.

At the end of 2002, with the release of the Spearhead expansion for MOHAA, European armies were introduced, which made the game even more popular there. I ended up meeting the [NER] New European Regiment clan in 2003, which was growing bigger every day and creating new divisions in several countries. I tried to enlist but they refused because it was exclusively for Europeans. But even so, I continued to play with them whenever I could, and I was always on one of the many [NER] servers.

At the end of 2003, NER was gigantic, [NER] was already changed to [NER-HQ] from Headquarters to be the NER’s Headquarters, where the founders of the first NER stayed. And there were [NER-UK] from England, [NER-PT] from Portugal, [NER-BNL] from Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg (Benelux), [NER-SP] from Spain, [NER-DE] from Germany and [NER-SCA] from Scandinavia with the guys from the Nordic countries, there were also other big clans following the same principles like ={UNA}=, [VS-UK], -[elF]- and [DRM]. The European realism community of MOHAA Spearhead was solid and closed (forbidden for those under 18 years old), championships were being played and even attended by many military and ex-military personnel.

In 2004, a few more divisions were created: [NER-JNR], which was the Junior Division for members under 18, but it didn’t work out for obvious reasons and closed its doors a few months later. And [NER-RoW] for the Rest of World, which I was lucky enough to be invited to join. In addition to having members from all over Europe, it also had some members who already played with them despite the distance, such as Americans, Canadians, Australians and even a few Asians and Africans, and of course, the only South American to participate in all of this, me.

I stayed with them for almost a year and we soon became one of the strongest divisions. However, what seemed wonderful because of one person’s envy, started a snowball effect that almost destroyed this great clan. When [NER-RoW] was created there was another leader for a few days, who left the position because he didn’t believe it would be possible or worth the work to bring together players from other countries without a NER Division, it was then that my friend from Norway took over the command of the clan and invited me as well as other foreigners who played there, and organized this entire division and we ended up assembling a great team of friends.

Then in 2005, the former leader decided out of nowhere that he was back in the division and my friend was no longer the leader. He took away all his permissions (since he was a global admin) and that from that moment on he was the leader of [NER-RoW], which was a very arrogant attitude and showed no respect whatsoever for the work of the current leader. We all thought it was absurd and complained to [NER-HQ] that unfortunately some (higher ranks) were personal friends of the former leader and instead of repudiating his attitude, they decided not to get involved despite several requests from us and from several members of various divisions, including [NER-HQ].

It was no use and that was it. Our Marshal felt betrayed and decided to leave [NER-RoW], and the rest of the gang ended up getting together and decided to leave with him to create a new clan. Out of almost 30 members, only 4 remained. A good American friend of mine who I believe didn’t leave for fear of not amounting to anything ended up going to [NER-HQ], and the other 3 that remained, including the former leader, were all French and started [NER-FR], which ended up not lasting very long.

Our Marshal was a very nice guy and had excellent friends in almost all divisions, and two more entire divisions left and formed the EBA, which became respectively EBA-SCA and EBA-UK. This shook the clan a lot, and ended up causing many losses in several divisions.

We formed <]3rL[> Three Random Letters in 2005 and became European Champions in 2006, among other minor titles, and on several occasions we finished among the top 4 in the most famous and disputed realism championships throughout Europe.

Being in a European clan with a great reputation in the community like NER, it was essential for the Call of Duty Frontlines that I developed online on the NER servers to spread quickly across Europe after players tried it.

At that time, Blood Culture was 100% dedicated to Quake, although we played other games together for fun, but when NER started to lose strength and Blood Culture also started to dedicate itself only to an old game, it was the right time for Blood Culture to migrate to Multigaming and of course, with a strong COD4 division.

Today, NER is no longer the reference in FPS, but it continues to be recognized as THE CLAN of Spearhead… it tried to come back a few times without success with the last official post in 2018, and with the website and everything else going offline for good in 2021. I can’t be sure, but I believe that NER was the biggest FPS clan that ever existed that I’ve ever known, with divisions all over Europe and players from all over the world.

It’s a shame that everything ends one day. I really miss these times, Spearhead, my friends, the Championships and everything that involved. The only thing I don’t miss is the high pings.

It was certainly my experience in NER and 3rL that inspired me to create Blood Culture, and I feel very happy to have had the honor of participating in all of this. Here’s a video made by the MOHAA Spearhead community as a farewell to a game that left its mark and, in a way, changed our lives.

Thank you Spearhead!