Fight on the Flag

May your lewtz be phat, your battles be awesome and your enemies tears be many! Merry Christmas!

In every game the members of FOTF play, no matter what realm or race, we notice similar things about the underdog side.

The unending complaints and excuses for why they are not winning bind them all together.

First, blame the other side for:

• Hacking
• Cheating
• Using cheap tactics and/or OP classes
• Alarm clock raids to avoid a fight
• Cross realming
• (This is contrasted with our side’s desire to play legit and get a good night’s rest)

Second, dehumanize the other side because:

• They are in school and have nothing better to do than play a video game during their ample free time
• They have no social lives and/or live with their parents
• They don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend or spouse or are too fat to get one
• They don’t have a job or are on unemployment
• They have cancer or some other terminal disease that allows them to play so much
• (This is contrasted with our side’s ability to get jobs, have social lives and families, and we also don’t live with our parents, have good hygiene and work out)

Finally, criticize your own side, shift blame and minimize the helpful things that could cause you to perform better

• It’s everyone else’s fault but yours
• Class balance favors the other side
• Developers don’t play our side so the other side is OP
• The uber guild won’t let us join their warbands, therefore we can’t work together to win
• Perle is a big meanie and won’t let us join her warband because we don’t use Vent. Vent doesn’t really help anyway (actual conversation during a city defense):

Do you know of other excuses people use for why the underdogs lose? Feel free to post them below and I’ll add them to the list!

It is traditional to host a housewarming party when one takes up a new residence. According to Emily Post, the party is hosted by the homeowner to welcome friends and family to their new home. Schwenderhalle Manor is a prime piece of real estate with views of the river and within sight of the Reikwald Fortress. Fight on the Flag and some members of Knights of Valor and Obliteration took up residence. It was supposed to be a good time.

Unfortunately Destruction is not aware of the rules of etiquette. We had our King Keg out and they wanted to walk right in, completely uninvited! This outrage did not go unanswered. We repelled them for a good 10-20 minutes.

Alas, the beer ran dry and Destruction was able to make it into our new home.

They ransacked the place and had their way with the dwarves. I’ll never look at a beard the same way again.

It was a tough couple of weeks, but I think we’ve found our groove again! We hadn’t played Order for four months when we returned to Gorfang (we spent two months on Phoenix Throne and two in, er, Aion). The corpses piled up and we had a grand time in RVR, which is nearly constant these days.

We spent lots of quality time near flags (even if they weren’t owned by our realm).

(more…)

To kick off this post, I wanted to share a screenshot of the text message after Order kicks Destro out of Altdorf:

(Just in case you cannot read the text in the picture, “Altdorf stands strong! The city is Recovering. No mercy for the straggling Order.”)

For those who haven’t surfed the forums relentlessly, Istaflyiii on Gorfang discovered a bug that basically hands Destruction the keys to Altdorf three times a day. By just respirating oxygen into carbon dioxide, Destruction can flip zones and get to Altdorf.

And order can do nothing about it. In fact, if Order tries to do something, it actually works in Destruction’s favor.

Wow. What a disincentive for RVR if you have any shred of realm pride. Fortunately, Mythic says they are working on the bug, though the timeline for a fix is sketchy at best.

One player on Gorfang wanted to try to quantify the gear and renown haul due to the VP bug, and Destro of course, say it’s not a big deal (though there are the few who are calling attention to this).

Case in point: Cald noticed that Order owned one keep in Thunder Mountain. We claimed it, noticed we had about six people and called in T4 channel for help. Anyone who wanted to defend with Ventrilo could join our warband and we could try to prevent Destro from taking the keep.

I wish I had taken screenshots of what some said to me (and I would blur the names to prevent too much humiliation). I got several tells from people saying “Don’t defend it only flips to the city faster” who were actually ANGRY at me trying to defend our lands!

Of course I didn’t listen, and we led about three groups from TM to KV to try to defend. It was all in vain. We were up against 5 warbands at one point (90 on the keep and another warband defending BOs).

Morale on Order side is very low. Let’s hope they fix this bug soon.

That pain in my neck is not the new Pilates routine, it’s Destro stomping all over my about-to-be-dead corpse:

They got into our city at least two times Saturday, but it was probably more because they were pushing pretty hard to get there again when I logged to make dinner.

FOTF had a really fun time in scenarios though. It almost feels like we’re getting some of our groove back. After not playing Order side since July 4 or thereabouts, it’s a rough awakening going from best on the server (several of our guildies were #1 on the leaderboards) to complete nobodies.

Oddly enough the people who seem to remember us most are the new transfers from Phoenix Throne. They were some of the elite Order guilds that we fought against when we played Destro over there. I am glad to know we were more than just a speed bump to them!