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Delta1212

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Well, I didn't have as much time to post event-by-event updates this past weekend as I thought I might, so I'll just do an overall recap of the events of yesterday and today a year ago.

April 19th, 2009 was a Sunday. I'd been up pretty much continuously since Thursday by that point, and I was rnning on raw adrenaline. The weekend had been taken up with activity that revolved pretty much exclusively around the goal of keeping us from getting crushed. A good deal of time was spent discussing diplomatic strategy regarding the talks and how the were going, and the rest of the time was taken up in attempts to build and organize a coalition that would be capable of winning in the event war actually did break out.

The talks had been interesting. (You can find most of them here in a saved copy of Sponge's Tattler article). They started with TORN and TPF demanding that OV come clean about what they had done, but not being very specific about the details other than that it was regarding Blackstone Collusion. The accusations that were thrown out in the talks included signing a secret treaty, passing intel about TPF to Blackstone, knowingly harboring and building up Blackstone nations in OV and accepting a screenshot about NPO war chests. The part of all of this that is interesting is that all of it except for the NPO line was completely abandoned by the end of talks, and the only actual evidence present were logs that SethB posted himself of the conversation in which he received the screenshot.

This lead pretty much everyone in the fledgling coalition channel at the time to conclude that the whole thing was a fishing trip designed to find something to pin on OV. The fact that the alliance that claimed the CB at the end of talks and declared war over it wasn't even one of the instigating parties who claimed to have known what OV had done was a pretty major indicator.

Now, to switch over to the coalition side for a bit. Organization was a bit hectic. We simply weren't prepared for events to heat up this quickly. There had been a few incidents over the last month or so that looked like they might blow up and had brought a few of the core alliances together so we had some idea of who was on our side or not, but nothing had escalated to the level this had and at the rate that it was moving. It wasn't just a handful of alliances interested in finding a way to avoid getting stepped on, it was them and their allies and everyone who wanted to topple the existing political order because by the end of the weekend, it wasn't just a backroom diplomatic incident, everyone on the planet knew something major was going on and the details weren't a very well kept secret. (The afforelinked logs were published publically on the 19th in Sponge's Tattler). The level of arguing and dissent on the forums had risen markedly over the past few months in comparison to the prior year, but that weekend saw public clashing on the level you'd expect to see when you're already at war.

Propaganda was flying about, taunts were tossed across both sides of the aisles and the whole world was staring over the edge of a cliff and waiting for it all to topple over. In fact, I recently stumbled across a sig I made in response to mhawk's repeated quetioning of whether they were sure of an answer and specifically the line "<mhawk> alright thats your final answer to that/"

Final-Answer.gif

Fun times all around.

Anyway, the coalition channel swelled to the bursting point and the forum we had set up was a bit of a mess. At some point, there are just so many vioces that people don't know what the hell to do with them all. That's where I have to tip my hat to Archon. He stepped up where everyone else was pretty much either unwilling or unable and provided the initial kick that got people to start doing what needed to be done in terms of organizing something out of the chaos we had. Once everything got rolling, it built on itself pretty well and by Sunday, we were pretty optimistic. Any war still looked like it might be a bit of struggle, but we had some decent enough organization going, TOP and MHA were both confirmed to be leaving Continuum and while talks were still a bit rocky, there was no CB with anywhere near the strength we had feared might be possible when events had kicked off.

It was right about that point that we almost died. Sunday is when Chill decided that he thought the CB was valid and would oppose Grämlins' entering any war that was started over it. In case you don't know who Chill was or understand why this is relevant, suffice to say that he effectively had veto power over any Grämlins war declaration at the time. With Grämlins suddenly seeming to be out of the game, a lot of other alliances started to sound iffy about their involvement in the coalition. You could literally see that first domino wobbling. A lot of time was spent yelling, screaming and pleading with Chill from all corners and I even got word of Ejay leading something of a revolt within Grämlins that had an overwhelming majority in favor of the war, but none of it really worked. By that evening, SF had basically decided we were going to get stomped and started going around finding who we could count on to go down swinging with us. We'd pretty much figured months ago that we'd probably wind up going FAN in that kind of situation, and I even started talking to a few members I knew wouldn't want to fight an indefinite war letting them know they might want to get out early on in the fighting. It was not a pleasant time. There was chaos in the coalition channels, and quite frankly, if the attack had happened that night instead of the next, I don't think we'd have won.

That said, finding out who will go on a hopeless death ride with you tells you a lot about who your friends are. There was one conversation I had with Tulak, for example, where I pretty much went about trying to talk him out of it and hestill committed, anyway. Things like that stick with you.

Of course, by update we'd stumbled upon an argument that brought Chill around. Essentially, the CB was that OV had accepted information, and the only way to have found this out was to have accepted information, so we'd ask for mhawk or his informant in exchange for SethB and if they shot that offer down, Chill would support coming in to defend.

By Monday, April 20th, things had calmed down considerably. Our coalition had held together, we actually had a plan for the negotiations and the drama of the night before actually had many of us feeling fairly confident in the resolve of our friends should things turn sour.

Now, as regards a name, a lot of suggestions got tossed out on the coalition forums. I don't remember most of them. I do know Archon wanted The Revolution, and that was mildly popular. Whether or not that would have been a better name, I'm not entirely sure, but at the time, all it did was remind me of an old alliance (also name The Revolution) that, for various reasons that don't need to be brought up in-depth here, I didn't particularly like. So I tried to think of something else instead and suggested Karma. That got a lot of support in the channel, and then pezstar gave us the banner and the name stuck.

Talks resumed that evening. There were several rounds of negotiating including an offer on our part of two weeks of war against SethB which was rejected and, somewhat amusingly, cited as being an offer NPO gave us which we had rejected by many general membership after the war had started. There wasn't a resolution reached, but by the time Moo pinged out, we had pretty much figured there wouldn't be a war that night and people were starting to sign out and go to bed. We took the time to discuss options and came up with an offer we figured might actually have a decent chance at being accepted for when Moo got back. Of course, I no longer have any idea what in the world that offer was going to be any more because about five minutes later NPO started hitting OV. The coalition channel pretty much erupted at that point. People were laughing, screaming, and wondering where the hell the DoW on the OWF was and shouting about the fact that the negotitions hadn't been officially ended yet.

When the topic was posted seventeen minutes after update, we all got a second shock. The logs quoted in the OP were from the talks that had taken place the day before and completely ignored the ones that had been on-going and which were being mediated by a member of TOP. It should be said that before this point, we'd all pretty much been crossing our fingers and hoping that TOP would stay out of the war. That changed quite fast. In fact, I laughed out loud upon reading Feanor's post in that thread and it's stuck with me ever since. Granted, Crymson and a few others' behavior in backchannels pretty much wrecked my image of TOP during the war, but I've always liked Feanor and at the time I could have kissed him. I pretty much spent the rest of the hour repeating "We just won" in a slightly giddy sleep-deprived voice in the Skype call I had going at the time (shout out to that call which made the whole build up period that much more fun).

That was easily the single most intense weekend I've ever had in this game.

Side note: I tried to be as unbiased as possible, but considering this involves a recounting that includes my thoughts and feelings at the time, it would be difficult to have presented this entirely objectively without losing out on a lot, so expect various people to have a different perspective on events.

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TheAUT, Delta's story is word for word how I would have described Karma's side of that war. It was an absolute chaos and we actually felt it would be really close. Especially as Hegemony already had their communication channels in place and we had to set up everything from zero.

Session Start: Sat Apr 18 19:14:39 2009

01[19:20] <Tha_one[FOK]> Our side misses coordination and we should get something up and running.

01[19:21] <Tha_one[FOK]> I think leadership is the biggest problem.

...

19:32] <Tha_one[FOK]> Someone needs to take control

...

01[19:36] <Tha_one[FOK]> Maybe first get a coallition board up and running.

...

[19:38] <Tha_one[FOK]> I saw the chaos yesterday in #collective

About the alliances which we felt where on the fence, you can see in the following talk in the central channel a lot of people had their doubts:

[15:20] <@Tygaland> but, if NpO get raked into the war on the other side, STA will not

...

[15:21] <@Tygaland> we will sit on the sidelines while you all kill yourselves and hopefully gain a sanction taking in everyone's refugees

[15:21] <@Tygaland> :D

[15:21] <@Revanche> Even if people don't believe ODN will enter this war, there's no reason we should give them a reason to by attacking IRON so early. No reason to create an enemy when we could possibly gain an ally by having either the RnR or Vanguard treaties invoked before the IRON one.

[15:22] <@Tygaland> true

...

[15:22] <@Micheal_Malone[Orion-MoFA]> Revanche, ODN has been discussing this in their members section for a while now, they want to sit out and pick off any bandwagoners "due to conflicting treaties"

Maybe we where all unreasonably scared about the future, however karma continuously got compared to Aegis/league. Up till the point Delta so accurately describes nobody ever seriously considered winning of the NPO since GWI. I personally only really felt we won the war when the CoC thing happened, which was probably shared by many if we consider how relatively easy TORN got out.

@Delta: Good job writing this down.

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If NPO doesn't declare during peace talks, and Gramlins back out, there's nothing preventing TOP from following NPO's side and possibly pulling part/all of Citadel with them. Not just neutral, but actively AGAINST the Karma side, it's unlikely, knowing most of the alliances involved, but it's possible. If that happens, MHA has less of a reason to be semi-neutral...

Things could have changed dramatically. It wasn't "cut and dried" by any means.

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If NPO doesn't declare during peace talks, and Gramlins back out, there's nothing preventing TOP from following NPO's side and possibly pulling part/all of Citadel with them. Not just neutral, but actively AGAINST the Karma side, it's unlikely, knowing most of the alliances involved, but it's possible. If that happens, MHA has less of a reason to be semi-neutral...

Things could have changed dramatically. It wasn't "cut and dried" by any means.

Even if the rest of Cit was neutral, TOP going with NPO likely would have pulled TSO and AO over there too. MK, Vanguard, OBR (with Blackwater), DT and PC are good, but we would have been pretty much the only top heavy alliances of any size on the Karma side. We would have been smoked if we had to fight IRON, TOP, NPO, Valhalla, AO and TSO.

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Arsenal told me himself he had no intention of honoring the IRON treaty over the CnG one, I know Revanche was close to them but when were those logs? (As in day)

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Certainly TOP, MHA and NpO were all 'swing states' at the beginning, and that was 30 million NS (so a possible swing of 60 compared to what actually happened, with all three rolling with Karma). Sparta could have been kept on the Hegemony side too if they hadn't been shut out of the Continuum club (their C&G connections were much weaker then).

If Hegemony had waited until someone in their target area (essentially modern day Supergrievances ... OV being picked as one of the few alliances that connected SF and C&G) actually did something that was a decent CB, instead of trying to force that one, they'd probably have succeeded. If they hadn't jumped in the middle of negotiations, and made MHA and TOP (particularly TOP) not worry about leaving them out in the cold, it could have been quite different.

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Arsenal told me himself he had no intention of honoring the IRON treaty over the CnG one, I know Revanche was close to them but when were those logs? (As in day)

Your notion of "Arsenal is ODN Dictator!" really has no bearing in truth. At the time, he was Secretary of State; a position without vote or decision making authority. If you are really curious to know, then the decision was made by a Senate vote on April 21st after the issue was thoroughly debated in a 300-post discussion thread by our general membership over the previous two days.

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Certainly TOP, MHA and NpO were all 'swing states' at the beginning, and that was 30 million NS (so a possible swing of 60 compared to what actually happened, with all three rolling with Karma). Sparta could have been kept on the Hegemony side too if they hadn't been shut out of the Continuum club (their C&G connections were much weaker then).

If Hegemony had waited until someone in their target area (essentially modern day Supergrievances ... OV being picked as one of the few alliances that connected SF and C&G) actually did something that was a decent CB, instead of trying to force that one, they'd probably have succeeded. If they hadn't jumped in the middle of negotiations, and made MHA and TOP (particularly TOP) not worry about leaving them out in the cold, it could have been quite different.

Did you see George the Great's quote saying Sparta was in Karma well before the war even happened?

Your notion of "Arsenal is ODN Dictator!" really has no bearing in truth. At the time, he was Secretary of State; a position without vote or decision making authority. If you are really curious to know, then the decision was made by a Senate vote on April 21st after the issue was thoroughly debated in a 300-post discussion thread by our general membership over the previous two days.

Yes but I also remember you guys being overwhelmingly in favor of CnG. You felt disrespected by IRON. Not saying I know your inner workings but the vocal minority left to go to IRON when the Blood Brothers pact was canceled. Are you going to argue ODN wasn't in favor of a side before the war or that campaigns and opinions weren't overwhelmingly in favor of CnG well before your vote?

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Sparta could have been kept on the Hegemony side too if they hadn't been shut out of the Continuum club (their C&G connections were much weaker then).

Uhhh, no.... no they couldn't have. I remember Delta back then saying he was trying to avoid pulling Sparta down with us, but them being adamant about rolling with us. He even wrote it in this blog somewhere...

What are you using as a basis of Sparta being a 'swing state'?

Edit: Also read Delta's reply above.

Aut,

The fact remains that it looked really bad for us, and like we might lose, just before the war broke out. Yes, it's a fact. I've stated that's what happened, and I was involved. So has Delta and so has Thaone. Unless you have proof Delta, Thaone and I are lying, Aut, you should really drop this line of the argument. Things looked bad, it looked like we might lose, and your side had the upper hand. It's the simple truth of the matter.

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Yes but I also remember you guys being overwhelmingly in favor of CnG. You felt disrespected by IRON. Not saying I know your inner workings but the vocal minority left to go to IRON when the Blood Brothers pact was canceled. Are you going to argue ODN wasn't in favor of a side before the war or that campaigns and opinions weren't overwhelmingly in favor of CnG well before your vote?

Depends on who you talk to. While people like Arsenal may have been opinionated, they didn't speak for all of us. It wasn't like our membership was posting for the sake of posting. The future of our alliance was on the line and we did not have an easy choice. There was widespread division of opinion at the outset, and it wasn't until after a great deal of very thorough and serious deliberation that a decision was reached.

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The ODN started the discussion thread wanting to back IRON, or to stay neutral. Events that occurred during the discussion swayed the GA and senate into backing Vanguard, The International and R&R over our IRON ties and our hollow purple ones. There were a number of reasons for this. But at the beginning of the thread, the pro-Karma faction within the ODN was in the minority.

As for Sparta being a swing alliance- I don't think anyone doubted that they would join Athens and their SF friends.

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Yeah. It was not cut and dry, and was up in arms basically until the day the senate completed it's vote. The opinion rapidly shifted towards the end of it(although the government was significantly more deadlocked than the GA was) due to a variety of things, but before that, things were much more heated.

EDIT: I was writing my post before the lot of you and was just lazy :colbert:

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The Grämlins thing was the worst

Not being in the channel but being a bit in the loop was scary at times casue you got told stuff just after it happened with some not very well taught out speculation added in. First time I was told about the Grämlins thing it was Grämlins want out and Citadel will go in with Q. Seeming as before I heard this I taught at worst Citadel would just sit out but probably be on our side safe to say I was !@#$ting it for awhile :P

Or the wait to see if TOP and MHA would hurry the f up and get out of Q before the NPO kicked off the war

Would love to hear something like this form the NPO side

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So while everybody's reminiscing, who here remembers the "secret Q meeting" held without Sparta, MHA and TOP in it?

The leadup to that war was the best CN period I've been in. Good times.

I remember sitting in the top3 channel for the Continuum when someone (I honestly can't remember who) mentioned something about the meeting. I naturally questioned this in the channel and I was met with silence for some time. It was hilarious.

Now, had the NPO not attacked during our negotiations I still don't see us siding with them in the war. Our relationship with them had significantly deteriorated for the past few months and we were going in a different direction than them before the OV incident ever appeared. Had the war not even occurred at that time you would have seen us leave the Continuum before MHA/Sparta did (I think our open discussion of us leaving prompted them to do the same) and we would have been on a completely different path than the NPO.

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I remember sitting in the top3 channel for the Continuum when someone (I honestly can't remember who) mentioned something about the meeting. I naturally questioned this in the channel and I was met with silence for some time. It was hilarious.

Now, had the NPO not attacked during our negotiations I still don't see us siding with them in the war. Our relationship with them had significantly deteriorated for the past few months and we were going in a different direction than them before the OV incident ever appeared. Had the war not even occurred at that time you would have seen us leave the Continuum before MHA/Sparta did (I think our open discussion of us leaving prompted them to do the same) and we would have been on a completely different path than the NPO.

Apparently Citadel was solidly and firmly on our side with the likes of Gre and Umbrella in the other camp and now this coming from TOP. :rolleyes:

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Apparently Citadel was solidly and firmly on our side with the likes of Gre and Umbrella in the other camp and now this coming from TOP. :rolleyes:

Wait, what?

Can you ever admit you're wrong, Aut? We've all said the same thing and you still are trying to claim that we're lying and NPO walked into this war knowing they were going to lose yet did it anyway.

Are you serious? Like, at all?

NPO wanted this war because they thought they could destroy SF and maybe CnG. They thought they had the upper hand and for a while so did we. Our victory was very much in doubt in the days before the war.

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Wait, what?

Can you ever admit you're wrong, Aut? We've all said the same thing and you still are trying to claim that we're lying and NPO walked into this war knowing they were going to lose yet did it anyway.

Are you serious? Like, at all?

NPO wanted this war because they thought they could destroy SF and maybe CnG. They thought they had the upper hand and for a while so did we. Our victory was very much in doubt in the days before the war.

Now, had the NPO not attacked during our negotiations I still don't see us siding with them in the war. Our relationship with them had significantly deteriorated for the past few months and we were going in a different direction than them before the OV incident ever appeared. Had the war not even occurred at that time you would have seen us leave the Continuum before MHA/Sparta did (I think our open discussion of us leaving prompted them to do the same) and we would have been on a completely different path than the NPO.

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I'm not sure what the argument is for. Obviously people on different sides of the war had different impressions of it. Apparently a lot of Hegemony thought they were screwed and resigned themselves to it months beforehand, that doesn't change the fact that until NPO made such a terrible blunder the outcome of the war was up in the air, or at least believed to be so by our side.

As I mentioned, I ran the numbers using slightly out-of-date stats on the 20th and we only had a narrow advantage. The swing alliances could have decided it one way or the other. We just happened to get all of them after NPO's attack, and then the CoC affair just sealed the deal.

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Now, had the NPO not attacked during our negotiations I still don't see us siding with them in the war. Our relationship with them had significantly deteriorated for the past few months and we were going in a different direction than them before the OV incident ever appeared. Had the war not even occurred at that time you would have seen us leave the Continuum before MHA/Sparta did (I think our open discussion of us leaving prompted them to do the same) and we would have been on a completely different path than the NPO.

What's your point? That TOP might have been neutral? How does that change anything?

And Brendan, kind of but not really. He's trying to argue either that we're lying about what we thought (which he has provided no proof of because there isn't any) or that we were extremely incompetent if we saw a possibility of losing.

The second aspect is easily debunked as well: NPO entered a war they thought they would win. They wouldn't have entered if they thought we would. Furthermore, it looked like they'd have an advantage on us a few days before the war without any Cit help and numerous other alliances on the fence. We've already explained how it looked bad to us. So instead of debating the fact he's bringing up little details that he hopes to prove us wrong on (like TOP saying they'd be neutral when people on our side said they considered the possibility that TOP would be with NPO). By trying to discredit the little facts which don't change the overall picture (which he still can't do), he hopes to make the case that since we were wrong that TOP might roll with the Hegemony, we were wrong about everything else, too, so in reality we just thought we could lose even though the situation never looked bad. Thus proving his argument that he's right and we're wrong and we're just completely incompetent, I guess.

It's typical Aut fashion: When you've lost the larger debate, try to nitpick a small piece of that argument. If you make it look like the person is wrong on that small piece, then you've won it all because they're clearly wrong on everything else, too! It's really a good indication of when Aut knows he's wrong and doesn't want to admit it. He'll just search for something he might have a shot at winning on and keep repeating it over and over without explaining how that changes the greater picture.

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Apparently Citadel was solidly and firmly on our side with the likes of Gre and Umbrella in the other camp and now this coming from TOP. :rolleyes:

It's only logical for people on the "Karma" side to believe there was a good possibility of us siding with the NPO. They had no way of knowing what we were thinking internally or how our relationship with the NPO had drastically changed. I would also add that this is my opinion of what I think would happen and it's not "coming from TOP." Stop grasping for things that aren't there.

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Lord Brendan: seems like I did come off as a bit stubborn. Well I'll say that I always remained overly pessimistic leading up to the war. From my skype calls with Shurukian and mhawk they can tell you themselves. mhawk had the likes of MHA/ODN/NpO siding with us and I kept pointing out that wouldn't be the case at all. I remember disagreeing with ironchef as well. So perhaps I may have misjudged things, however from my perspective I always had the feeling we were on a death march. That CB on OV was only the final nail in the coffin.

It's typical Aut fashion: When you've lost the larger debate, try to nitpick a small piece of that argument.

Typical Penkala fashion, ask and beg for war then run away kicking and screaming when someone brings it to him. :smug:

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It's only logical for people on the "Karma" side to believe there was a good possibility of us siding with the NPO. They had no way of knowing what we were thinking internally or how our relationship with the NPO had drastically changed. I would also add that this is my opinion of what I think would happen and it's not "coming from TOP." Stop grasping for things that aren't there.

You were part of Karma. Karma doesn't exist anymore because it ended with the Karma war.

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You were part of Karma. Karma doesn't exist anymore because it ended with the Karma war.

I believe the use of quotes was because Karma didn't yet exist at the time he was referring to. Ir was still a lose grouping at that time.

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