LemonPunch
LP


Gurrazor was a senior administrator in a community called Defenders of Democracy (running by atleast 2008), and had run a few communities himself such as Genesis Roleplay. When Defenders of Democracy ended, he was behind a revival which ran a successful GTA RP server, but he and the other leaders would become too busy, so after a lengthy run they jointly decided to end it after putting together a fun ending.

Fangli owned a community called TwoScore (2012) and hired Gurrazor to manage a Half-Life 2 Roleplay server for it. But after a promising start there was a decline in playercount, and a few weeks later it was shut down.

Explaining where the name LemonPunch came from, Gurrazor describes: "I wanted to develop a new admin mod for Garry's Mod and was inspired by an older one by Conna called Citrus. LemonPunch was sort of similar so I went for that. When we launched a HL2 RP server the idea was primarily that it could be used for testing and feedback of the admin mod. After the HL2 RP server became very popular, priorities shifted and the admin mod concept of LemonPunch was dropped. The name stayed for the HL2 RP community."

A post on the xenForo forum in Nov 2013 notes the creation of LemonPunch "about a year ago" which would place the foundation in late-2012. The community had a "big following at launch." The new HL2RP and GTA RP servers were run with a wealth of management experience. People who were in TwoScore followed along, and Cryptic was brought in to be the leader of the HL2RP server. Gmod biZ and Divine Circles had run HL2RP servers which closed down before then, so some of their members also joined LemonPunch (along with some from Revolt Gaming).

While dealing with issues related to DDoS attacks, the hosting company referred Gurrazor to Alex as support. Alex eventually became an essential member of the community as a developer.

The main funding for LemonPunch was likely the donations/products which were around £20 as a one-off style payment, but around late 2014 it was changed to monthly subscription (probably around £10 per month).

HL2RP server rewards consisted of, Zombie whitelist, premium storage, 'Goodie bags' which contained smaller items and tokens, 2,000 claimable tokens per month, and bodygroups for citizen models. One veteran noted: "The main reason people donated was to get the tokens, cause 2k was enough to instantly gear a new character."

Forum rewards included the ability to add signatures to your posts, banners to your profile, and the ability to change your forum title. The WW3RP server rewards probably included a citizen whitelist.

On 21st May 2013 an announcement referenced an Automatic Donation System that gave players their donation rewards within only 5 minutes after they donated. In contrast the Gmod biZ community had to get a high ranking staff member to manually apply donation rewards.

Community culture
LP was a big community that drew lots of new players, and the playerbase of Garry's Mod had grown popular in those years. Arguably the influx of inexperienced players had a disruptive impact on serious gamemodes that relied on structured roleplay, but the LP staff were often seen linking new players to roleplay guides and in many cases teaching players directly.

One thing that many communities lacked, and was a strongpoint for LP was a properly run staff abuse report system. Another thing that gave strength to the community was their Teamspeak server where a lot of members would hang out. Probably by coincidence, a high ratio of the regular playerbase were Scottish.

In the post-Cryptic days Dirty Harry and Rictalspace were community managers, while Gurrazor and Alex worked on things like ServerGuard. Rictalspace eventually got promoted to Community Director. Other staff members included (among others) Impulse, Gr4Ss, Dallas, Toasty, Larry Gibbons, Bork, Blackquill, scrubmcnoob, and char.

LP was likely the source of the term 'Datastormed' as one veteran explained: "It was a term used to describe an unappealable permanent ban. It was named after a dude called Datastorm who got banned multiple times and used alts."

Forum
They had a Xenforo website and popular forum that had over 8,000 members and half a million messages.

Running HL2RP
There were mentions of LemonPunch in Gmod videos published on YouTube in Nov 2012, referencing a HL2RP Beta. The first mention of HL2RP on the LemonPunch Steam group was in May 2013. I believe that the server would start with the city_45 map. While Apoc was developing a map called industrial_17, Cryptic reached out to him over getting the LP server to run the map. The playerslots had to be increased from 32 to 90 as the server was so popular. Dallas posted the lore on the forum.

Cryptic was energetic in putting everything together, and he mentioned efforts by Superwaffle in bringing quality roleplay to the server, and Rapidjuice for development of the metropolice and rebel factions. They also had research roleplay, and administrator characters giving broadcasts. The HL2RP server would be what LemonPunch was widely remembered for, and would see a lot of events.

The crafting system was possibly implemented in Sept 2013, and possibly led to theft of valuable items. The HL2RP forum section was highly active, and had a section for character ban appeals. The community were passionate about serious roleplay, and gave insightful interviews.

On 23rd July 2014 an announcement read: "Thanks to some optimisations by Mr. Brightside, the FPS on our server is now heavily improved. You should be able to enjoy a much more smooth experience. Please feel free to comment on this announcement with how your game experience on the server has improved in terms of FPS!"

Then Gurrazor added in a comment: "This time, the optimisations were about rewriting things in a smarter and more efficient way. So we didn't really sacrifice anything, which is very fortunate given how severely the FPS has been improved." I believe Mr. Brightside was Alex's alternative name, and that the optimisations were in regards to the HL2RP server, perhaps even all the LemonPunch Clockwork servers.

HL2RP maps
Among the few notes made about map changes - there was a change to an updated version of rp_industrial17_v1 on 23rd August 2013. Another map change, this time to rp_nc_industrial17_v1a took place on 6th Feb 2015. A comment on the LemonPunch forum from May 2014 or earlier explains the districts of one of the maps:

• District 1 - contains the entrance to the nexus, ration distribution, CWU and ACE areas aswell as the loyalist apartments
  
• District 2 is a small back alley, contains several shops people use
  
• District 3,4 contains the GG, 2 civilian apartment blocks and the cinema
  
• District 4 is a 404 zone for the civil protection, theyre barely seen in there

Running TTT
The LemonPunch Trouble in Terrorist Town server was first mentioned in May 2013. On 28th June 2013 an announcement referenced a TTT Karaoke event, with the last mention being on 2nd August 2013.

Running Evolution / Phase 4 / Experiment
A forgotten source notes that this server appeared as early as 18th May 2013, which I think might have been 2014. Evolution had public testing on 4th May 2014 and moved to City 18 the day after, and appeared in a news thread on the forum. Alex said it was run: "multiple times - it’s first iteration was called Experiment or sometimes exp3riment, second was Phase Four. It’s basically Dark RP with XP and perks." The forum had an Evolution section on 17th May 2014 - the section had 55 discussions and 535 messages, which was relatively low compared to the HL2RP section (which had roughly 1,000% higher activity).

Running PERP
ToBadForYou was behind the PERP server as a developer/manager. The server is rarely mentioned, and it's not clear how much LemonPunch actually backed the project. ToBadForYou said that it was run under name of LemonPunch, but it seems to have been forgotten.

It had around 50 or 64 playerslots and was sometimes full during busy hours. The culture was described as semi-serious, and "a little bit more serious than Storm-Effect."

Running GTA RP
The Grand Theft Auto RP server had a strong launch with 100 players on 14th September 2013, with evidence suggesting that the launch deliberately coincided with the release of Grand Theft Auto V (released three days later).

A large number of people are named as server staff, with their roles changing as time went on. Rictalspace was the server director at launch, succeeded by Bork, although I think Larry Gibbons was also mentioned in that role but he refuted this when I asked him about it. Angel and AlexD were also on the staff team.

The server would see events where you could win cars, and their prices were "drastically lowered" on 2nd Oct 2013. Four days later, a mayoral election was hinted at as they were going to look "for our first EvoCity mayor". With few other gameplay references, the server may not have lasted long.

Running Spacebuild
A launch announcement was made on 2nd December 2013, and it finally launched on the 15th. A 6v6 space warfare tournament was mentioned on the 22nd. On 11th Jan 2014 the map was changed to sb_omen_v2. The last mention of it was a call looking for admins on 6th April 2014.

Fallout development
A Steam group announcement mentioned Fallout RP in Feb 2014, and veterans describe it as being in development by Gr4Ss, whom had "alright ideas how to differentiate and drive it forward, though he was also if not all the time working on it alone." The project was also supported by Gubbyfishy, but it was "in development for quite some time but never came to fruition."

Running Outlands
Half-Life 2 Roleplay: Outlands was set away from the main cities, where the citizens or rebel characters could improvise roleplay free from the restrictions imposed by the presence of Civil Protection characters. The announcement for the server read: "This qualitative server will enhance our Half-Life 2 RP universe and take the gamemode to a whole new level."

An image captured at an unknown date shows the server being full at 26 slots, and lists the map as rp_ineu_valley2_v1a. Their regular HL2RP server is also listed in the image - being full at 80 slots and running rp_lp_industrial17_v1a. Their first Outlands server was launched in July 2014 but was ended that year. They launched another in mid 2015 which was still running by the time the community closed nearly a year later.

Running WW3RP
Brawler's WW3RP gamemode had already been run under BnT, and would arrive in LemonPunch in late 2014 with its original Coalition versus Globalist format. Some of the old BnT members helped out, although the BnT style of shoot-to-miss and PVE combat would evolve into a shoot-to-kill experience under LP, but there was still a tone of serious roleplay within the main bases. Some contributors of Divine Circles also helped out.

The first Steam group announcement of WW3RP was from 17th Oct 2014 which linked to an overhauled lore, although the lore wasn't changed completely from the original BnT iteration, so perhaps it was just expanded on. One of the first maps was rp_ineu_valley2_v1a, WAC aircraft were slowly introduced along with tanks and jeeps, and there was likely a mixture of different weapon packs and gbombs. The way the WW3RP character Permanent Kill system was handled was controversial.

As the server settled in, Toasty was the server director, with Stephanov and Wulfeh being the main faction leaders. Felgroove was noteworthy in training many of the new players, and likewise Punchpacket helped maintain a high quality of roleplay (sometimes working throughout the night). Powley had been tinkering with things behind the scenes in Gmod communities for many years and probably had something to do with the success of WW3RP, if only in helping bring it back.

Several other people generously invested their efforts into WW3RP over through those years, and many staff positions changed. Out of the gamemodes that LemonPunch ran alongside their flagship HL2RP server, WW3RP seemed the most successful, although this mixture of roleplay and deathmatching was a difficult concept, so I believe that some of the key people involved were largely the reason behind its success.

On 18th March 2016 the lore was changed to 1983 under Char and Dazza, with Dallas being a major contributor. The Coalition faction was replaced by the Soviet Union, and the Unified Globalist Agenda was replaced by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The server was well-liked by its playerbase, and they happily gave interviews, and the server was named as the inspiration of Next Generation Gaming years later.

Vampire RP
An 8th November 2014 announcement declared that a Vampire RP server is coming, which had some members excited, but it was soon revealed to be a prank. For years some members still called for the Vampire server to be launched.

Running EuRoleplay
The first mention of EuRP from the Steam group announcements was from 22nd Jan 2015, and by April 2015 I was under the impression that it was up and running, but the Server Director (Larry Gibbons) notes that it was "never fully launched due to technical restrictions." He also explained that: "StarFox was the primary developer and worked directly with me for it. It had a good base foundation and used the NutScript framework (I believe)." It looked similar to PERP.

Running FTRP / QZRP
FrundTech Roleplay was announced on 3rd May 2015 and was running by June. By 9th July it had changed name to Quarantine Zone Roleplay. The server revolved around survivors and mutants trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic America. Mutants often tried to hide their abilities, and things would sometimes turn violent.

One veteran recalled: "The first launch of FTRP at LP. First day of the server and the MilRems wanted to elect a mayor. I was a mutant who could bend milk (an idea I legit just stole from The Misfits which is a good show). I didn't know the MilRems wanted to kill mutants so I went up and said "Hi, i'm a mutant and I want to be the mayor."

The major here then asked me to show him my power. He put a bucket of milk in front of me which I proceeded to float some up into the air. I was then met with an S2K /me, shot down and PK'd. The server was up for barely a few hours and I was already the first PK'd person on the server."

The last reference to it was on 27th Sept 2015.

ServerGuard
A product that was mentioned several times in the LP Steam group was a Garry's Mod administration tool called ServerGuard which was released in late 2013. It had a pricetag of $20, with a favorable reputation at 4.86 stars out of 5 (based on 91 reviews).

Beyond Garry's Mod
In June 2013 Cryptic made an announcement that Napoleonic Wars was on sale, and that LP had a regiment on it.

Community challenges
Gurrazor was busy with university and likely relied on his staff team to manage the community. In all the time I played on LP WW3RP I never saw him on the server, although he had directed his staff to run the community with high standards.

Without a properly functioning staff system, Gmod communities tended to succumb to internal corruption. LP dealt well with this challenge by operating a decent staff system and (importantly) had some unbiased staff members. There were incidents of abuse of staff powers on multiple LP servers, but clearly the community survived this particular issue which was endemic to Gmod communities.

Community moderation was fairly strict, which arguably aided roleplay immersion, but many of the players instead wanted the freedom to banter (which they would eventually enjoy more in the nebulous community).

Multiple communities from the era suffered DDoS attacks, sometimes without protection. One LP veteran said: "we were having some pretty heavy DDoS attacks on us by a bunch of rival communities."

One veteran recounted about the LP HL2RP server: "there was actually 2 people who would ddos the server and make it crash everytime they were about to get caught by cops." Another person said that LP was kicked off six different hosts due to DDoS attacks.

The DDoS trouble was intense in late 2013 - early 2014, and accusations were rampant. From this period LP developed a bad reputation. Eventually DDoS protection improved, and such attacks became less of an issue.

HL2RP challenges
Improving citizen roleplay was the biggest challenge early on for the HL2RP server, and with a functioning system in place they avoided the risks of shaking things up. Some might have wanted large changes to keep things fresh, but few gambles seemed to pay off in Garry's Mod.

The nature of donation rewards including guns was controversial (such as paying real world money for a Spas or crossbow in-game). It's not clear how common this was, and there's conflicting accounts about whether it was a secret or not. The case seems to be that the staff team were more aware of it than the playerbase.

There were cases where player killing stalled character development, and permanent character death was commonplace (possibly also cutting character development). One veteran said of a single character "he had over 50 PKs to his name, and 3 groups deleted from the rebel scene as a result".

The flow of new players was high, which must have helped keep the server populated, but it likely caused some level of chaos and wore some regulars down (perhaps contributing to a sense of individualism), with one commenting: "i gave up on new players when 9 out of 10 of them disconnect during or after teaching them how to play." Another commented (about treatment of new players) that the "attitude that LP seems to be -trying- to implement, that of the "we are not elitist, we are here to help" - but it seems there's a.....behavior...of quickly jumping towards punishment rather than rehabilitation." Administration certainly appeared overly strict when I had visited.

TTT challenges
Many communities had a token TTT server, and they were all fairly similar and didn't last long. There were only about 4 months between the first and last announcements that referenced it.

Evolution / Phase 4 / Experiment challenges
A problem with the concept of a meta base vs base PvP server is that it's rarely a nice environment for new or solo players. It was rarely mentioned after its brief runs, but alex had implied that it was meant to be a brief bit of fun when he mentioned that it was only supposed to be run "for a week or two".

PERP challenges
ToBadForYou notes that PERP was "DDoSed to death" and that there "was some kind of split attack" which led to not only the PERP server closing but also the departure of ToBadForYou from LemonPunch. ToBadForYou recalled "it had very much potential" and said of its closing "I was a bit disappointed."

GTA RP challenges
GTA RP was too restrictive and limited in terms of content. The economy was poorly balanced, too much of the gameplay features relied on bureaucracy from the staff or assigned individuals. The lack of development alongside some fundamentally poor choices for the game experience kneecapped its potential for the long run. The HL2RP server remained more popular (and likely hoarded most of the LemonPunch playerbase), and at one point there were only 2 active staff members on the GTA RP server.

Spacebuild challenges
A readable line of a blurry screencap of a LemonPunch news piece said of it "Spacebuild just brought too much effort and time to be worth its gains" and added that it would be replaced with another gamemode.

Outlands challenges
The server split the playerbase to some extent, causing disruption to the factions on the City server, so "Gurrazor wasn't too long off closing down LP's Outlands for these reasons, but the community went under."

WW3RP challenges
The gamemode had worked with some success in BnT, but was now in a different culture under LP. It was run as a serious roleplay gamemode, where the roleplay characters contributed to the structure of the factions and was integrated with the forum with document posts (like characters applying for promotions based on proving some competency through in-character leadership). But the balance between roleplay and deathmatching eventually shifted more towards deathmatching.

Many efforts were made to maintain the roleplay structure of the server, but it was easily broken when players ran around killing eachother like it was just a team deathmatch gamemode. The server lasted until the end of LP, but many of the regular players from 2014 had left by then. The gamemode continued to lean towards deathmatching in future communities to the point where (at a point in one community) a character promotion requirement was a certain number of kills.

EuRP challenges
It looked like EuRP had done little to differentiate itself from the PERP server which had already been tried, and was rarely mentioned after closing.

FTRP / QZRP challenges
With a heavy reliance on staff involvement for generating roleplay situations through events and having to judge every mutant application and moderate their activity, the staff structure was probably stressed more so than other serious roleplay gamemodes. The server was fondly remembered despite closing down after a short run, and would see more attempts at being run in future communities.

LemonPunch ending
An internal dispute led to doubts about the future of the HL2RP server on LemonPunch, and in April 2016 (following a long build-up of tensions) after a members group was formed, the main coder (and much of the playerbase) formed the new nebulous.cloud community which would be similar to LemonPunch in running popular HL2RP and WW3RP servers.

Without its main coder, LemonPunch closed in April 2016. Some of the remaining ex-LemonPunch veterans that didn't join nebulous had tried to form AfterFlash, which (like nebulous) also tried running HL2RP and WW3RP servers, but the attempt was fruitless. The official successor to LemonPunch (and Gmod biZ) became Monolith Servers which started a City RP server.

The cultural divide between the playerbases of nebulous on one side, and Monolith on the other was striking, and speaks to the mixing-pot of ideas that was LemonPunch.

Post-LemonPunch
LemonPunch had sometimes been described as having been run like a business. The funding of AfterFlash, Monolith, and nebulous contrasted heavily. AfterFlash ended quickly, Monolith took awhile to start but continued the business approach and gained $37,000 between July 2017 and July 2018. While nebulous was immediately flooded with donations (some of them generous in value) that weren't made for in-game rewards.

Many roleplayers have experience from LP, for example the HL2RP scene on VRChat was more or less kicked off by LP veterans. Among the playerbase was even a Television star. There was still a large ratio of LemonPunch veterans among the HL2RP playerbase in 2023 - a decade after LemonPunch started.

The LemonPunch Steam community group was founded on 17th January 2013. By December 2013 it already had 1,000 members, reaching 2,000 in June 2015, and in April 2016 it peaked at 2,300. When checked in March 2018 it still had 1,896 members, and by Jan 2021 it had been deleted:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/lemonpunch

The LemonPunch website (www.lemonpunch.net) was shut down, although an archive of the forum existed, but by May 2020 it seemed that the retrieval of threads from it was "no longer possible" - hinting that it no longer existed beyond some captures on the Wayback Machine.

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-- LemonPunch history
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