As many of you are already aware, The Irish Eagle passed away last week. I would like to thank Pappalaz for letting us know. I have moved his message and the replies here so that they can be kept together as a memory to him. It's never easy to lose someone and I'd like to just keep something together here, dedicated to remembering him.
Irish was such a huge part of NordInvasion that I cannot quite explain how big a loss this is to everyone here. He was a huge part of both the community & the leadership team here and was instrumental to the success of this mod and I am so thankful for all his help over the years. Genuinely, there is no way that we could have done this without him, and I don't know how we can every repay him for everything that he did. So, I want to try and put a few words together to remember him, along with an apology to him for doing it so badly, as well as invite you all to share yours - even if it is years later you see this news, please still share them.
I don't know how Irish first found NI - he found it before me - but once he joined the admin team, he quickly became the Head of Admins and it's this role that saved me and many others in the team from so much stress dealing with all of your shite
How he had the patience to deal with it all so nicely (atleast openly - I shan't repeat what some of you lot drove him to say on TeamSpeak) is insane. The guy was amazing at his job here and critical to the success of the mod. It would not exist without him. He dedicated himself to dealing with the community and was hugely active in the game. I don't know how many people remember NI back at the peak of its popularity, but suffice it to say that the servers were frequently full and Irish was always busy having to deal with someone or something that was going on. Arnie was a policeman in his past life and had already retired when most of us knew him, but for us I think this past was what prepared him for dealing with the problem makers in the NI community. I know that his frankness and desire for justice didn't always sit right with some players, but honestly, I don't think we could have asked for someone better to have taken on this role. When everyone else would have long since tapped out, he'd still keep plugging on.
He was incredibly passionate about NI, opening tickets for issues and pushing for improvements to the game, website and even our processes. We used to host servers in many timezones (EU, US and AU) and he managed all the admins across all these timezones to ensure that they remained happy, resolving any issues, acting as an escalation point for the admin team. If you ever tried to join the admins, he was always your first port of call as he would vet the applicants & conduct all the interviews. He also created regular meetings for the admin guys, and set up our monthly catchups where everyone in the dev and admin teams would come together to catch up, discuss the state of the game, roadmaps, feature requests and issues that needed resolved, and then usually finding a server for us all to suddenly descend into, overflowing servers with loads of admins and devs, and surprising whomever happened to be in the server at the time. Without him though, these meetings would never have happened and they were hugely beneficial to everyone involved and NI in general. He saw where we were lacking and made sure that we came together to improve.
I have so many fond memories of playing NI with Irish, hugely improving how I played the game, and telling me off when I did badly or if I was being too evil when controlling the bots. I've spent countless nights just chatting on TeamSpeak (and latterly, with great begrudgery, Discord). I could almost always count on him being there, chilling in the Eagles Nest (his dedicated channel in TS), waiting to chat with someone about whatever was going on in NI, his visits to Sweden, what he was up to with his son, working in the garage, how I need to watch "We Still Kill The Old Way", and how "Rab C Nesbitt" was both the funniest thing he ever saw and the most accurate depiction of all Scots. Sorry mate, I still think "Still Game" edges out Rab, but both are brilliant - though word of warning to anyone that hasn't spent any time in Scotland, you will likely need subtitles to watch either.
It feels somewhat fitting that he should pass in this way - without much of a heads up - an actual Irish Goodbye. Those who knew him here will recall how incredibly bad at leaving calls he was. I think his shortest record for leaving was probably around 30 minutes, but the norm was usually him being on calls, repeatedly telling us that he needed to go now and was hanging up, only for him to still be there hours later, chatting away - still telling us he was gonna hang up, and that his wife was gonna kill him if he didn't. In truth, that's probably why he was taken this way - otherwise he'd probably still be here telling everyone that he needed to go because god was getting impatient waiting on him to stop talking only for us to still find him here 3 years later, still telling us he needs to go to the pearly gates, but before he does so, did you hear about x/y/z?
Irish, I know you'd probably have told me to fuck off already with this soppy shite, so I shall stop now. But wherever you are now, I hope you are at peace and know how important you were to so many of us, as a leader, as and admin, and as a friend.
Rest in Peace. Love ya mate.
Irish was such a huge part of NordInvasion that I cannot quite explain how big a loss this is to everyone here. He was a huge part of both the community & the leadership team here and was instrumental to the success of this mod and I am so thankful for all his help over the years. Genuinely, there is no way that we could have done this without him, and I don't know how we can every repay him for everything that he did. So, I want to try and put a few words together to remember him, along with an apology to him for doing it so badly, as well as invite you all to share yours - even if it is years later you see this news, please still share them.
I don't know how Irish first found NI - he found it before me - but once he joined the admin team, he quickly became the Head of Admins and it's this role that saved me and many others in the team from so much stress dealing with all of your shite
How he had the patience to deal with it all so nicely (atleast openly - I shan't repeat what some of you lot drove him to say on TeamSpeak) is insane. The guy was amazing at his job here and critical to the success of the mod. It would not exist without him. He dedicated himself to dealing with the community and was hugely active in the game. I don't know how many people remember NI back at the peak of its popularity, but suffice it to say that the servers were frequently full and Irish was always busy having to deal with someone or something that was going on. Arnie was a policeman in his past life and had already retired when most of us knew him, but for us I think this past was what prepared him for dealing with the problem makers in the NI community. I know that his frankness and desire for justice didn't always sit right with some players, but honestly, I don't think we could have asked for someone better to have taken on this role. When everyone else would have long since tapped out, he'd still keep plugging on.He was incredibly passionate about NI, opening tickets for issues and pushing for improvements to the game, website and even our processes. We used to host servers in many timezones (EU, US and AU) and he managed all the admins across all these timezones to ensure that they remained happy, resolving any issues, acting as an escalation point for the admin team. If you ever tried to join the admins, he was always your first port of call as he would vet the applicants & conduct all the interviews. He also created regular meetings for the admin guys, and set up our monthly catchups where everyone in the dev and admin teams would come together to catch up, discuss the state of the game, roadmaps, feature requests and issues that needed resolved, and then usually finding a server for us all to suddenly descend into, overflowing servers with loads of admins and devs, and surprising whomever happened to be in the server at the time. Without him though, these meetings would never have happened and they were hugely beneficial to everyone involved and NI in general. He saw where we were lacking and made sure that we came together to improve.
I have so many fond memories of playing NI with Irish, hugely improving how I played the game, and telling me off when I did badly or if I was being too evil when controlling the bots. I've spent countless nights just chatting on TeamSpeak (and latterly, with great begrudgery, Discord). I could almost always count on him being there, chilling in the Eagles Nest (his dedicated channel in TS), waiting to chat with someone about whatever was going on in NI, his visits to Sweden, what he was up to with his son, working in the garage, how I need to watch "We Still Kill The Old Way", and how "Rab C Nesbitt" was both the funniest thing he ever saw and the most accurate depiction of all Scots. Sorry mate, I still think "Still Game" edges out Rab, but both are brilliant - though word of warning to anyone that hasn't spent any time in Scotland, you will likely need subtitles to watch either.
It feels somewhat fitting that he should pass in this way - without much of a heads up - an actual Irish Goodbye. Those who knew him here will recall how incredibly bad at leaving calls he was. I think his shortest record for leaving was probably around 30 minutes, but the norm was usually him being on calls, repeatedly telling us that he needed to go now and was hanging up, only for him to still be there hours later, chatting away - still telling us he was gonna hang up, and that his wife was gonna kill him if he didn't. In truth, that's probably why he was taken this way - otherwise he'd probably still be here telling everyone that he needed to go because god was getting impatient waiting on him to stop talking only for us to still find him here 3 years later, still telling us he needs to go to the pearly gates, but before he does so, did you hear about x/y/z?
Irish, I know you'd probably have told me to fuck off already with this soppy shite, so I shall stop now. But wherever you are now, I hope you are at peace and know how important you were to so many of us, as a leader, as and admin, and as a friend.
Rest in Peace. Love ya mate.