Finnster, of DAoC, TF2
  My dad used to play DAOC way back when and he always used esdf. Q for sprint and A for jump. I adopted it by playing when he didnt, and over the years translated it to every game I've played ever. It's so ergonomic. I have access to all the keys I ever needed. I play tf2, with a as jump, and space as reload. The number keys are more available too. With a crouch button on my mouse, I hardly ever have to move my hand. Esdf is the superior layout.

ancientvampire, of Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2
  It was really surprising to find out there are more people out there.

  When I mention my different controls, everybody reacts "how can you play like this", but it is actually more comfortable and gives more space for left hand to use more button commands than WASD. I really dislike the left shift for crouching and overall inability to set more keys for the left side because they are occupied by WASD.

  Few years ago I got a notebook with its A key broken and thus the WASD control scheme became unusable in all of the games so I had to devise my own.

  I just moved my hand one key to the right and started using ESDF. This had given my left hand more keys to operate - I usually set A for run, Q for flashlight, W for reloading, T for chat messages, C for voice communication, Z (American layout) for crouching, V - use items, - and it all works perfectly and I do not feel any need to ever return to WASD. When I got a new notebook I have thought I will switch back to WASD, but there was no need to. Consequently, I use ESDF in every FPS.

  I play (H-L, L4D, TF2, etc.). It is a bit annoying to redefine the controls for each new game though.

Fragger, of Quake 1 CTF
  I got into Quake 1 about a year after the game came out. I was drawn to CTF (capture the flag). The group of players I played with also used the Grapple mod. I was a very mediocre player when I started. I got better as I practiced more, but I still was just an above average player. I was missing something, I wasn't quite sure what. I saw other players doing things I could only dream of. It wasn't until I went to a Clan LAN party that everything changed. We did a simple 4 on 4 match, I remember it well. One of the guys on the other team was fraggin people and capturing the flag almost single handedly. Consequently, my team lost, so the winning team stayed on to play another team. I decided to go watch the other guy play, just to get pointers.

  He was doing moves I'd never thought possible. It wasn't like they were hard, he was grappling to walls spinning around and firing on people from elevated positions, I don't even think he walked on the floor very often. I asked him how he was doing it, and he was like just press 'A' to throw your grapple, and 'A' again to hold it. 'A'? I said to myself, isn't that the left strafe? It was then he told me about how to remap the keys and how he used ESDF. I was blown away. I immediately went back to my computer and reconfigured my keys. At first it was hard to get use too, my hands wanted to use WASD. But after enough practice, I began to do as well as the other guy had, if not better. A month later, I was in one of the top Quake 1 CTF guilds on the planet. I was a varsity player, I played in all of our matches. Once The PGL (Professional Gamers League) started, my clan got a lot more serious. To this day I have been making my living playing games in competition.

  I don't know where I'd be today if I hadn't switched to ESDF. Switching to ESDF literally saved me life.

Do you want to share your experiences with using ESDF?
  Please feel free to contact us at testimonial@use-esd.org. Please provide detailed story of how you saw the superiority of ESDF, as well as some good quotes we can extract. Providing pictures is also welcome, but keep them clean (And yes ESDF pounding or stabbing or doing any sort of harm to WASD is consider clean).

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