Mordred's Story

From Universe Wars

Mordred's Story

A History of UWars

   A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
   George Santayana

I would like you to know, first of all, that I am not bragging about what I have done. I am not trying to inflate my e-penis to the size of Viper's. I am telling the truth. Ever sense 8th grade I have been fasinated with history, and with truth. So I will try my hand at being UWars' Livy. Telling the story of this wonderful game through my eyes. I will tell the truth, as far as it is in my liberty to tell. I will not betray secrets of my friends, I will not post things that I know/think WILL happen, because that is not the job of a Historian. For some things, like Beta, which I did not play, I will interview friends of mine who did play in Beta. So, until those interviews have been conducted, I will skip that time, and begin from Round 1, a hazy time that few people remember.

   Do not applaud me. It is not I who speaks to you, but history which speaks through my mouth.
   Fustel de Coulanges

Round One:

Before I say anymore, I need to make sure you understand that Round 1, compared to where we are now, was the stone ages. Alliances weren't created until about a month in, there were no Orbital Habitats or Deep Space Colonies. There was a trade board where you could trade resources with other players instead of the Market we have now. Spycraft was non-existant. When you explored it only cost 1 gold per worker, and you would only receive one kind of resource node.

People were growing, and war was plentiful. Of course, without alliances it was absolute Chaos. And, as you can probably guess, people attempted to gain the upper hand by making under the table alliances with off site forums. Two men, cousins, Cloud Strife and Paradigm created something that became a juggernaut, and would effect the game almost as much as what followed after them. They made a forum, brought in some friends, and soon began recruiting for the Mafia based alliance; La Cosa Nostra. The 'family buisness' was booming, most people didn't even know they existed, they worked in the shadows at first. They started small, a few of the top guys. Soon it became all the top players, they either joined, or were decimated.

Things began to get out of hand, so many people were in LCN that without in-game alliance tags it was impossible to keep track of who was who, people who had never posted in the off site forum once were found to be jumping in complaining that they had just gotten hit by other LCN members. And while the forums were trying to sort themselves out, the power of LCN began to mutate. They began to act like a REAL Mafia, extorting smaller empires for oil (Remember: No 50% rule!). The LCN sorted them into Galaxies, and demanded 1 million oil from each galaxy, if they didn't pay up, each empire would be decimated without predjudice. Because of this, the 50% attack rule was enforced.

At the same time as the LCN was dominating, the other thing I mentioned, the one thing that has affected the way the game works more than LCN, was evolving. A group of friends were playing the game, they called themselves the Ebolters. They had two advantages over everyone else: A unity unheard of in the game, they had been gaming together for years, and as Bim, one of the most talkative Ebolters put it: "We lived, loved, and died together". And a total devotion to the whole of the alliance, the Ebolters truly embraced "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts". 90% of the Ebolters were not worth over 100k worth, those were the guys that didn't need any worth. The other ten percent had been playing the game smart. They realized the most valuable resource you can get is not oil, nor gold, nor even your army. It is land. Six Ebolters all held the top land, their names were Cow, Beaverton, Strongsadia, Coffe, Jynxid, and Heat Vision. These six explored and only explored, they didn't want an army, they wanted land. The army could come later.

LCN eventually caved in on itself, the first in a long line of Super-Alliances to fall, and chaos reigned again... or so it seemed.

Alliances were implemented, just the same as they were in Round 4, no alliance caps. Several alliances were created, one, a very inconspicuous one, was created by a certain Al Franken, some of you may know him a Buttercup. It was called ICA. Inner Circle Alliance.

Soon it became clear that one player was growing at an exraordinary rate, his name was Cow. He was getting fed resources from his friends, and growing at a rate that far surpassed the normal players, no matter how good. He grew so fast that he even attracted the attention of Andy himself, who sent a mail demanding to know what cheat Cow was using, what exploit was giving him these massive resources. Cow told the truth, and revealed to Andy how his fellow Ebolters were giving him resources through the trade board, Andy even examined every single member and verified none were spies. Soon after that the Ebolter's system was discovered publicly, dubbed 'feeding', vilified and cast as evil. Now Cow, alone at the top, had an enemy of the entire player base. The Ebolters knew that even with his large lead, Cow was not invulnerable, so they took Strongsadia and Raspise, already in the top ten, and began to feed them as well. Their goal was to establish a group of people under Cow, one at 75% of his worth, and one at 50%. Soon enough the Ebolters had gotten the top three, then four, then five. Knowing that these players were working together, and looking to even the playing field, SOLDIER, a new alliance lead by Cloud Strife and inhabited by many old members of La Cosa Nostra, declared war on the iCa and all Ebolters. It is hard to describe how difficult their situation was.

1) Cow, Strongsadia, and Beaverton had, respectivley: around 50m worth, 35m worth, and 25m worth. Thats not even counting who the Ebolters called "Enforcers" the body guards of the top three. In total, the top Ebolters probably had near 200 million worth, that was an astounding number back then, with 500 workers maximum and no market. 2) SOLDIER tried to get spies into the iCa (I was one of them, but thats a different story), it was neigh impossible, because they had off site forums, and only let people into the in-game alliance which held nothing of any importance. Those people, far from helping the alliance they were spying for, only acted as a smoke screen for the Ebolters to keep their true identity's hidden. 3) The Ebolters had spies in every alliance that was against them, far from trying suddenly to sneak spies in like SOLDIER did, they had all round to work on their network, you can probably guess how easy it is to get into an alliance when the alliance your really working for doesn't even exist yet. 4) No combined attacks. Thats right, the only way to do any damage to anyone in those days was to send 50 empires worth 1 million at them at once. They would all loose, of course, but they would also (hopefully) kill a small amount, and those fifty empires would usually do a good bit of damage to the bigger ones.

The major players in SOLDIER, to name a few, were Cloud Strife; the leader, Engi; Second in Command, Nanook; Second in Command, and Plato; Poster boy of the anti-Ebolter campeign. Cloud, Engi and Nanook, along with other commanders, lead the military attacks on the few Ebolters that they could hit and they knew about. While Plato was doing all he could to gather the player base together under a single flag. Plato thought of a 'lotto' that would soon become famous. The way it worked was simple, feed Plato 250k gold, and you get one ticket. That ticket would count towards any prizes that Plato won because of the lottery. Hundreds of people were signing up, and Plato was rocketing up the charts. Time and time again the Ebolters smashed Plato and stole his resources, but every time he got a little further up there, a little closer to the top. The Ebolters realized the only way they could stop it was to crush the spirit of the public. So they began the largest forum war anyone had ever seen, publicly mocking Plato and getting people to loose hope, think he was a fool. The Lottery slowly lost steam, and people were loosing faith in Plato. The Ebolers won again.

Things settled down for a time, the Ebolters spies managed to distract SOLDIER and the other alliances by causing friction between them, UNIXVille, an Ebolter, caused havoc by attacking allied alliances and spreading the blame.

SOLDIER grew, more and more people were joining the ranks of what seemed like the only hope of destroying the iCa. Cloud Strife, Engi, and Nanook planned an all out attack. The #6 Ebolter, a guy named Coffee, was the target of this barrage. They started 12:00 PM, and attacked Coffee for hours and hours. Remember there were no smurfs, no CC's to destroy. You could float your army indefinetly. For 12 hours the SOLDIERS knocked on Coffee's door, never finding him at home. Soon enough though, Coffee succumbed to sleep, and one after one SOLDIERS began to hit his massive army. The attack reports were coming in, each one listed a little bit less lost, and a little bit more killed. Coffee's graph began to plummet. SOLDIER had scored a massive victory, they proved the Ebolters could be taken down, they were not invincible gods who's wrath was to be avoided, but mortals. Morale soared.

The Ebolters knew exactly how to handle the problem, they would make a joke out of it. One of them that was handy with flash even made an animation of the line rider guy riding down Coffee's graph. The great victory was made into a total joke, and once again the war seemed lost. But the fight was not out of SOLDIER yet.

There seemed to be a lull in the fighting for a while, but SOLDIER was only preparing what was to be the biggest jump in the game. They had hundreds of people save up resources for a week or so. The plan was simple, feed the top land owners in SOLDIER to a massive worth. Then when the jump was done they would find out how many Ebolters they had to take out to get one of the prizes and start battering them. They knew they couldn't get the worth to directly take Cow, Strongsad, or Beaverton down, but they planned on trying to attack and knock one of those three below the SOLDIERS. The plan was set in motion: Plato, Cloud Strife, Engi, and others were jumping up like no one had ever seen.

Cut to the Ebolter HQ: Alarms are going off, and the onliners are brainstorming on how to deal with this new problem. After much deliberation they decided to resort to a tactic that has worked in real life hundreds of times over: a trade embargo. The Ebolters had massive amounts of resources from their feeding tactics; they weren't able to get the land to spend them fast enough so they had plenty of gold just lying around. So they imposed a massive food embargo on the trade board. Every trade for food that was offered was snapped up by the Ebolters.

Back in SOLDIER now, the jumpers had plenty of gold, but they had little or no food. Their citizens were dying left right and center! Without a good way of recieving this vital resource the SOLDIER's growth was effectivley stopped. The final jump, the final hope, was lost.

The round ended, the Ebolters won the prizes and left the game for good. Spies were revealed, and the soap opera full of betrayals and defeat came to a close. The SOLDIER's licked their wounds. They would win, they were determined, they would get what was rightfully theirs.

Round Two:

So the players, eager to start a round without the Ebolters, waited for Andy to get his stuff together and start the new round. They waited, and waited, and waited. Chaos Mode was supposed to last for a week, it lasted much longer then it was supposed to. People got bored, people quit. But there was a large group of players that didn't get bored, the reason they weren't bored was because they were planning and preparing. SOLDIER had opened an off site forum, and allowed about 40-50 players in that would then be called The Core. This Core was the SOLDIER elite, I was a part of it, they planned the way that SOLDIER was going to play in Round 2. This forum itself gave SOLDIER Core a massive advantage over everyone else; communication. When the Chaos Mode ended the game was offline for about a week. In this one week the game lost many good players due to the fact that they were cut off from the friends they made. Players in IDK and DDay, the two alliances that might have had a chance to stop SOLDIER dissapeared. And so it seemed that, before the round even started, SOLDIER had it's way clear to the top.

The round started and was off to a good start, people were playing and paying to win. Just like every round one alliance won the first few weeks, this round it was SOLDIER. Early on SOLDIER had opened it's gates to whoever wanted to join. They didn't care about spies, the Core was secure, and that is all that mattered.

Owning the top 100 is a feat, even in Round Four, the round of the Mega Alliances, it was neigh impossible for any alliance to rule the top ten. SOLDIER ruled the top 50, and with the game as small as it was back then that was something to brag about. Cloud Strife came up with the idea to make a worth wall. Everyone would stop growing at 100k worth and bash anyone who got past the 50k line, they would save their resources, then jump to 200k, then 500k, and up and up. You can imagine the reaction of the player base, every time they reached 50k worth they would be smashed. 50k is a miniscule amount. While that was going on certain members of the Core were allowed to go past the worth lines and grow unhindered.

Pridictabely the forums were in outrage, alliances called "SOLDERSUX" and "FUCKSLDR" were made, yes, those are the actual names. But it worked, SOLDIER now had an undisputed rule over the game. Their enemies didn't have the energy or manpower to fight back, and the rest of the game was too afraid of the seemingly invincible SOLDIER to try to take them on. There were a couple of enemies, Miss Spell, MonteCristo, and Untamed were the three landholders that rivaled SOLDIERS landholders of Viper (yes, Viper. More on him later), Mordred, XyzzA, Noodle, Nanook, and others, many, many others. Hats off to you three, from me to you, you kept the game mostly fun for us, with your jumps and land.

SOLDIER was dominating, and just like when Cow was winning by such a large amount in Round 1, we were suspected of cheating. You may have heard of Jeff, he was UWars' multi hunter back then, he was the leader of the Mods and had power like Andy's. What happened to us was what would have happened to the Ebolters, only this time there was no mail asking what exploit we were using, just bans, immediate and without question. I was one of the people banned, along with several other Core players and many just normal SOLDIERS. As you can imagine, SOLDIER flipped out. There was a massive post on the forums about it complaining, and Jeff didn't explain himself until a week later. A week after Cloud Strife imposed an embargo on the game. He didn't get SOLDIER to quit, he didn't tell them to stop paying for plus and tokens, no, he did something MUCH worse. In Andys mind, at least. He made a post telling the Administration that until they unbanned the SOLDIERs or give undenyable proof that they were cheating, he would lock down the game. Up until then SOLDIER had been giving the enemy alliances a break, letting them grow a little bit because they didn't have a chance of winning anyway. What Cloud Strife had in mind was complete and total annhialation and non-stop farming of EVERYONE in the game. Imagine what would happen to the game if no one was actually able to play. Everyone would quit and Andys precious game would be dead except for SOLDIER, victorious in revenge.

Day one of the embargo, no answer from the Administration, so the combined might of SOLDIER and Shinra slammed relentlessly into the helpless players of the game. They were farmed so badly that already there were people saying they were quitting. And the best part was that no one blamed SOLDIER, they blamed Andy for bringing this storm upon them. Day after day people were logging on and seeing their empires ravaged, their time consuming Rocketteers decimated, and their resources gone. SOLDIER and Shinra wouldn't stop, revenge for their lost comrades (and in Shinras case, fear that they would become one of the farmed), fueled the death. And still Cloud gave the chance for mercy, if only Andy or Jeff would publicly admit their mistake, if that happened then everything would be over.

No one knows whether it was Cloud's "Storm" that got the attention of the Admins, or if the Admins just logged in and decided to read the interesting looking 12 page thread called "FUCK YOU JEFF" (Or something like that). But in either case Jeff, the now missing in action chief of Mods, posted about why he banned the SOLDIERS. As it turns out, every ban was revoked and I and a few others we let back into our accounts. The Storm lifted, and while most people pretended to be greatful, no one was going to let SOLDIER get away with what they had done.

Now SOLDIER didn't have the whole universe against them, oh no. A man named Sephiroth created an alliance named Shinra (SOLDIER and Shina, anyone get the joke?), and pledged loyalty to SOLDIER. This alliance was the only alliance that SOLDIER wouldn't destroy, so naturally people flocked to them. Shinra soon became number one, and SOLDIER didn't even have to fight their own battles, they had Shinra as their pawn. Then there was one independant alliance that had earned SOLDIER's respect: BandCamp (sound familiar, anyone?) *NOTE TO SELF: BANDCAMP HERE* Lead by commander Paia they were a thorn in SOLDIER's side until they came to a peace agreement. I was the "embassador", jumping back and forth from alliances to make sure BandCamp wasn't plotting any treachary.

You may be wondering "What next? What is going to happen to UWars now?" Well I will tell you something: Nothing. Not much interesting happens in the game until the last couple of weeks. Except the occasional booting of Non-Core/suspected spies from SOLDIER to keep the masses interested the game was boring beyond belief. Now, in a forum hidden somewhere on the internet, that was where the real action was going on. Cloud had gone inactive, and Core SOLDIER was begining to get antsy with an inactive leader. But the forums and chat were still bouncing. There were a bunch of socialites in Core, but one had an ulterior motive. He called himself Alpha, Roaming Rouge, and Viper. I will be the first to admit, he was charming, he was friends with everyone, and everyone was his friend. Now that I look back on it, it was obvious what he was doing, but no one was suspecting any trickery from the inside, and Core thought they were invincible. Viper had the most land in the game, and with second place a determined enemy of SOLDIER he convinced us to feed him. He wasn't stupid enough to make us dive in the deep end, he did what any good dealer does, start the victim out small, and take baby steps into the pool and before they know they are up to their necks in shit.

What I am about to recount is one of my greatest regrets in this game. Cloud Strife was inactive, so we voted Nanook into the spot of leader. No, that wasn't the regret. Nanook, realizing what SOLDIER was getting its self into by feeding Viper, booted him. SOLDIER flipped out, instead of realizing what we were doing, we thought Nanook was booting Viper because he was jealous Viper was winning (Nanook was in second place at the time). It was full out rebellion, and I was one of the ringleaders. If I had taken a step back and realized what I was doing SOLDIER may not have lost it's steam that round.

Nanook broke off and started an alliance called Nutters, meanwhile Baasch and I broke off and started Templars. Nutters was filled with mostly non-Core players that we had manipulated, and Templars was filled with several Core players and a few new guys that we liked. The most promising of these was Kato. Templars and Nutters didn't fight with armies, but the political battles and overall boredom made many people quit, doing more damage than any fighting would have done.

Meanwhile Viper was in an alliance called Smashers, it was famous for having the most players, and the most farms. While Templars and Nutters, the two powerhouses, concentrated on each other and trying to get Core back together, he got Smashers hundreds of players to feed him. The game witnessed a rebirth of Cow, and Viper was growing without stop.

There is one interesting point that is worth noting, Untamed, the number 1 land holder, jumped into third place in the last few hours of the round.

There is nothing more to tell. Nutters and Templars were occupied with their cold war, and Viper kept on growing. He won, as he loves to point out. Round Two was only the second round of UWars, and already people were getting bored of it. I said earlier that most of the game was comprised of SOLDIER, now much of SOLDIER had quit and dissapeared. And so the third round began.

Round Three:

When the round started the remainder of SOLDIER was in for quite a shock. The alliance they thought was dead: DDay, was still around! They had been hiding, pulling strings, making things happen. People like Miss Spell, MonteCristo, and Untamed had all been working together underground. They formed an alliance called Akkadian. That was a pretty large surprise, but nothing compared to the other major alliance that was in the game.

Players of Round 1 were struck by the resemblance to the Ebolters. A group of players from another game had joined Universe Wars, they came from the game Race Wars Kingdoms and called themselves LandStorm. Soon after the game began they blew both FightClub (SOLDIER's name), and Akkadian away with their co-ordination and activity level. After the first few weeks the game degenerated into the classic mid-round slump that bores the hell out of people. LandStorm ruled, and everyone else just... waited.

SOLDIER was all but dead. The forums were inactive, the Core was quiet, there were 'plans', but they were never put into action. Akkadian on the other hand was preparing for war.

Fast forward to the last month of the round: Akkadian declares war on LandStorm, it was an even match, but Akkadian came on top in the end. LandStorm was decimated, and would never have even close to it's old power again.

At the end of the round, dubbed "The Plauge" by Snuffles because it seemed like everyone had died, FightClub split, a guy named TIG was tired of the inactivity of the leaders and made an alliance called Splinter, later to be known as Immortals. Sargon, leader of Akkadian, retired, leaving leadership to Tinman who renamed it EightBall, and FightClub was crippled and small.

I don't know what the rest of the game thought of that, but to Core it seemed like our power was diminished, like we would never have our former glory.

Then something else happened. It was the catalyst for a new age in UWars, no one will forget it, and it happened in Round 4.

Round Four:

The server was up, people were joining, and things were looking bleak. There were 200 some players who had joined in the first 24 hours, some of whom were speculating this would be the last round. On the second day of the joining period Andy was online. ANDY. Andy was never online unless something big was happening. And, as we soon found out, big didn't even begin to describe it.

There were maybe 10 people in chat, we were chatting, having a good time, wondering what Andy was up to, when suddenly someone said "DUDE! Look at the planets! It's up to galaxy five!" Everyone thought he was bullshitting until they looked. Then someone pointed out the "Playing Now" counter. There were 100 people. The most we ever had was 50. We thought all thought someone had made a macro and was churning out multis like no tomorrow. But then Andy, eloquent as always simply said "lol facebook"

Things soon became clear from the hundreds of people jumping in that there was a Facebook application that had just started. It also became clear that these guys had no idea what the hell they were doing when it came to playing the game. So me and a few others who saw the importance of training these new players created RAWR, our mission was to prepare the Facebookers for war. More on RAWR later.

This was the first round the market had been introduced, and although most people loved it, there was one big problem. You know how now you want to always keep 1000 guys on oil? Well in Round 4 oil was even more expensive. Think 100-200 gold EACH. The first person to get oil was someone now famous in the game, Emmi. Once she got oil she quicky rose in worth, rocketing up with a growth unheard of in the first week of the game. People didn't realize that most of her worth was in resources, if most people under her 50% attacked her they would have struck gold. But that didn't occur to anyone until it was too late.

Not only was Emmi herself an intimidating powerhouse, her alliance, 8Ball, swiftly grew above the rest, fighting it's way to the top with their ally Immortal. FightClub, now known as Syndicate, had few active players, and was weakened. The mighty alliance of 8Ball and Immortal had no competition.

At least, no competition among the Veterans of the game.

There was a new factor in the game, one that few people thought would make an impact at all, the Facebook players. Most people agreed that they would be just like the normal noobs, but what they forgot was that the main difference between ‘noobs’ and ‘Vets’ was that the Vets were much more active. Sure there was a small amount of skill involved, but people who were able to spend more time on the game always had a massive advantage. Many, many of these new Facebook players had that time.

RAWR was popular, all of the new players were jumping in because it was one of the few alliances that opened it’s gates to Facebook players. There were around 600 people in RAWR at it’s biggest, but that number was no where near the active number. There were at least 50 people in chat at all times. RAWR was busy, that’s the only way to describe it. There were around 5 to 10 Veteran players, and the rest of the people were constantly asking questions and talking. For the first week of running RAWR I was answering questions non stop, There were around 10 stickies, all full of information. Soon the active new players began to be able to teach others on their own, and I had more time to plan what I wanted to do with RAWR.

In Core things were looking up, Syndicate had recruited a large amount of very promising new players, and RAWR was slowly getting the hang of things. 8Ball and Immortal began to take notice, but I don’t think they were afraid of the two alliances, they were full of noobs, what could they do?

RAWR soon decided to test it’s power. We declared war on the mighty Immortals. The war was, on our side at least, chaotic. It was the first war these people had ever had, and they didn’t all know exactly what they had to do. It was a flashback to the first days of RAWR, me and a few others who knew what was happening yelling commands while the rest of the chat tried to keep up and talk more about boobs. Immortal, although they only consisted of 50 or so players, slowly but surely took down RAWR players. The war was going badly for the new players, and we decided that we wouldn’t be able to keep it up.

Duznot’s terms were simple, it was what most alliance leaders asked when an alliance surrendered. Only with one added thing. I had to post this in General Discussion “Duznot is a better leader than Push”. What? RAWR agreed with me, they thought it was ridiculous. Why would he demand that? I did post it, but it was a joke. Duznot left a large impression on the new players of RAWR; that of a, in HollywoodOz’s words, “massive douche bag”. He would end up regretting it.

More to come later, check back soon!