So much history, so little time (part 2)

Now that the Conclave was founded the idea was that it would become a democracy. A democracy you say? Yes. Most clans are based upon a leader (usually the founder of the clan) and he makes all the decisions. The Founders of the Conclave wanted her to be different from all the rest.

The idea was that three separate Houses would be created. Each House would have a specific theme and a direct representative, a Senator. One House had a military theme, another was fantasy based and one in honour of LSF a sci-fi/Star Wars based. This was the most evident when it concerned our avatars, which are House related.

The idea was that every six months the members of the Houses would elect a Senator (their direct representative) in a Senate. This Senate could then discuss with themselves and the Founders and propose stuff to happen within the Conclave. E.G; the formation of guilds (basic translation a normal "clan"), form competitions within and between the Houses and rules members should abide by.

Although great in theory, most members couldn’t be arsed with these finer elements of the Conclave. That however shouldn’t come as a surprise as members join up to play games and not to have other stuff happen. So the first parts of this demise of the Houses could be felt when the Star Wars based House was eventually replaced with a more general sci-fi House. They have stood the test of time though, so there may be hope for them yet. As I am a sentimental old fool I couldn't live without them. But I'm old. And sentimental.

Meanwhile the Guilds did their thing. They were formed when a demand was made and a certain game was played. Some guilds were dissolved as the games they supported lost popularity while others have been here from the start (Desert Foxes, the Battlefield 1942 guild).

In the beginning of 2004 the Conclave has grown from a fledgling community to over 100 members and a need for chance is heard from its members. Multiple members gather around and try to write up a more formal agreement on how to run the Conclave. The (in)famous Constitution has been born. New titles were created and general guidelines for acting within the Conclave, our Code of Conduct, were formed and implemented.

Outside of the virtual life, members were starting to meet each other in real life as well. Beer meets were organized in various places all over Europe (London, Groningen, Utrecht, Warsaw) and Conclave members started attending LAN parties in England and the Netherlands. This even led to a real conclave baby. Who says the Internet can’t help you meet people.

As it seems the Conclave isn’t only an online community but a meeting ground for friends who share the same interests, namely gaming and having fun at the same time.

We Are Angry Robots - Guild Banner

A mini-competition was held to determine the Guild Banner for the We Are Angry Robots guild. We had some superb entries from both of our resident art experts, Norian and Entropy. Entropy's was selected, and I present it here for all to behold in awe.


Thanks, Entropy!

[DoW2] WAAR vs bYd

We came, we saw, we conquered.

Random.

The law of progression

Last week during the World of Warcraft 25-man raid for Naxxramas we were, for the first time, facing the effects of the law of progression:

The more progression you have the quicker you run out of content and the faster people will be bored and turn to other stuff like other games, levelling alts etc resulting in making it harder to keep on raiding.

It's a hard to grasp concept this issue of progression. Too much of it and people run out of content, too little and they'll get irritated over the fact that there's no visible forward movement towards vanquishing new bosses etc.

I'm really pleased with our progression in WoW since Christmas of 2008. We're currently the 6th Horde Guild on Auchindoun progression wise and with the new patch 3.0 coming out anytime soon in April we're right on track. The players with sufficient gear of a proper level can move to the new raid instance of Ulduar, which as we have been told will be no walk in the park, while the people with gear of lower quality will find a new incentive to gear up some more in Naxxramas 25-man and then move to the new areas.

I'm looking forward to exploring the new areas along with some of the veterans of our Guild like Incomplete, Psyclone, BlueWarlord and lots of other members in The Conclave's WoW group that I cannot think up right now (don't take it personally guys, my memory is a black hole when it comes to recollecting names :D).

Ulduar or bust I'd say!

[DoW2] WAAR vs FinalV - VICTORY!

My first tale to tell is one of glory and victory. Our opponent, who Random referred to as "The Germans" was a bit slow in getting in contact and getting the game together, but before long our first round would begin on Typhon Arena. Scientifically termed Mappus Gargantuos. 

Despite Random's loathing of the map he managed to solo the two northern victory points fighting against a Space Marine player who.. well, I never saw much of in the game. But suffice to say he heard the cry of OM NOM NOM enough to decide to switch race to Eldar next map. Me and Manesni together battled for the bottom point against an Eldar and Tyranid player. I found my forces, despite getting munched early on were more than able to contest the bottom point with Manesni while Random's domination of the so called 'Emperors Finest' sapped away their points.

Twenty points from the end of the game their already laggy leader finally bit the bullet and crashed. The game ended literally ten seconds later in our favour. No debates to be found here. GG.

Round two on our home map (Argus Desert Gate) was simply hilarious.  It started off pretty rough as my sluggas ran head first into Grav platforms up top and Random's gaunts ran head first into an enemy 'Green Tide' of Sluggas, but things improved once me and Random reversed roles. Being lord of the Slugga that I am I drove off the Ork wannabes from the middle with Manesni while Random took his sweet time claiming Top away from Eldar suppression guns. However the game was still very much in the air. They held two points long enough to sap us down to 150ish points while they had a strong 340ish. Manesni had just pushed through the middle and claimed back ground we sorely needed while me and Random battled to keep hold of the northern Victory Point.

Disaster then strikes. Or so you'd think. Manesni falls off the internet, blissfully unaware ofcourse as he continues to play in some parallel universe rendition of the very same game while all we get is an AI that decides to spam pings on Req points and throw his troops aimlessly into the enemy. We asked the enemy team if they wanted to Restart.

Their response? Here it is in it's entirety:

"jasaad: LOL"

Random seemed concerned with their less than polite response but with my third squad of Nobs heading to join the fray I was personally of the opinion "Fine. Screw em. We'll kill em without Manesni."

The game ended ~140 - 0 in our favour. GG.

That's not even the best part. When their score dropped to 40 and we held the entire map using Nobz, Zoanthrobes and a suicidal AI they said: 

"Ok then let's restart?"

Amazing. They had their chance and blew it in exchange for a humiliating defeat.

20 league points for us! Onwards to glory!

-Greyfox

So much history, so little time…

So much history, so little time…

It has been many years since the Conclave started, 6+ apparently. Now as my first lecture, I’d like to give you all some history lessons. Because you should know your history, or you are doomed to repeat it. This sometimes might not be a bad thing, but for now, assume it is. This is about my arrival at the gates of the Citadel back in good ol’ 2002.

Around 1998 I joined a group of gamers called LSF (Last Starfighter League). Apparently some parts of the website are still up, ooh the memories. It was a group dedicated to playing all kinds of Star Wars based video games. The most popular games within this community back then were Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and X-wing vs. TIE-Fighter. I myself played JK and some Rebellion (or Supremacy for you Brits). When I left LSF, due to increased study pressure, it was around the summer of 2001. Some time later I heard about trouble in paradise and the fact that LSF had split up in different factions due to differences in the approach of games and members in general. One of these were Ghost Legion, a former pie-rat faction within LSF. Another community was about to be formed…

At that time I already knew most old time Conclave members that are still active today. Chief started to bug me with spam mail (not the Monthy Python kind). He was constantly filling up my mailbox so I finally decided that it was time to start annoying the sh*t out of him in return.

I arrived at the gates of the Citadel in September 2002 and haven’t felt let down since.

Self-loathing Part 0

Well as I've been branded an author on this blog I might as well give you all an introductory post. I am Duke Raven, short for His Grace Duke Raven Greyhawk of Arien, which was a fictional character I invented for the Conclave. I've been around since the beginning minus a week or two as I was on holiday when the Conclave was founded.

Within the Conclave I am the only member that has fulfilled all of the positions, but if I did a decent job remains to be seen. I am now one of the five Directors who bicker on TeamSpeak every monday evening about what was, what is and what will be.

As for gaming I've played Battlefield 1942 which marks the beginning of the suckage. I've tried to dabble with Unreal Tournament 2004, but it is official First Person Shooters are not for me. Since then I've focused on Real-Time Strategy games and RolePlaying Games. When playing a game from those two genres I probably can describe my skill level as mediocre. But as they say in the Olympics "Participating is more important than winning!". I say, "Bollocks!". If you win once in a while it motivates you to continue playing, but constantly losing (read: being ground into a pulp) does not motivate at all.

On top of my genetic disposition to sucking at multiplayer gaming I've been diagnosed with an eye disease which forces me to wear sunglasses during the day, whether there is a sun or not. So I do get weird looks and glaces from people, but if they don't even bother to ask why I wear the sunglasses I think, "sod them!". As it stands I have a visus of 10%, which means that I can see about 10% of what normal healthy people see. This is just a number though, the point is that when I focus my vision on something it becomes a blur, that is why I look more peripherally and by doing so I can still function.

That's it for the first part. There might be more later, .... or not.
Duke Raven.

February's Picture of the Month

The Conclave holds a Monthly Photo Competition. The winner has the prize of selecting the next month's topic. There are a good many pictures in the archive there. It's worth a look.

February's topic was "Attention to Detail", and the winner was Sandstorm, with this picture.

The other entries can be found on the forum thread here.

March's topic is "Sports".

[DoW2] WAAR vs NonSense Match Report

Almost everything conspired against us not to play this match last night.

The match was scheduled for 8pm UK time, but a message from NonSense asking us if we could play at 11pm threw us a bit. Especially when they said, "or not, 21 is fine". We eventually reasoned that, they being Polish, meant 9pm in Europe, which is 8pm here, the original time.

It was really hard to get clarification from them, though. We joined their listed IRC channel, where they were nowhere to be found -- indeed, the people in that channel had no idea who they were. They also couldn't be found in our channel.

A message on the ESL match page appeared just after the time the match was supposed to start saying that the match was "Now I guess. We're waiting in the lobby." This was even more confusing: they game doesn't have a lobby!

Eventually, we managed to contact them through the incredibly poor messaging system which is Games For Windows Live (part of the Dawn of War II experience). More fun ensued: they had hosted a public game, which meant it kept getting filled up with other people from the internet while we were trying to join it.

A hundred or so NAT negotiation errors later, we all managed to be in the game, and begin with Argus Desert Gate. Which was listed to be the second match played, but whatever. Anyway, we stomped over them on this map. However, they dropped when they saw they were losing. Presumably in defeat, but the rules required us to file a protest, so we have. Anyway, we were in good spirits going into the second match, which was to be played on Capital Spire.

Now, let me take an aside here. While I mildly dislike Argus Desert Gate (I much prefer open plan maps to the blatant "lanes with walls" maps like these two), I detest Capital Spire.

So anyway, we lost the second game. Also, you have to love some of the network coding for DoW2. About 50 seconds from the end of the game, everyone saw that I had "crashed". Well, personally, I saw that everyone else had crashed. Why couldn't the game just pause and wait for me to reconnect? Anyway, we knew we'd lost anyway, so had no problems with handing over the victory.

So we had to play a decider game. After looking all over the ESL website (ESL: you need to organise your website a bit, it's ridiculously difficult to find stuff. For instance, searching for "decider" yields nothing, even though I know it appears twice in the rules themselves!) ... anyway, after looking all over the ESL website, I discovered that the decider map changes weekly. This week it's ... Capital Spire. *Grumble*.

About halfway through the third game, one of their players crashed. The scores were undecided at that point, so we restarted it, as was our perogative. Unfortunately, we lost the fourth game.

What do we take away from this? We need more practice, certainly. There are certain maps we always do well on, and certain maps we don't. Also, there are groupings of players that don't work so well together: I noticed a lot of unupgraded power stations last night, and I play a power-heavy game. That said, I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes too.

UPDATE: As I stated, we filed a protest (as the rules state we must) due to them dropping the first match. An admin has stated the following:

Hi We are Angry Robots,
hi NonSense,

Play one round more, as decider, map from decidermap list. Winner wins the match with score 2:1. I'm sure that you can find a suitable date for both teams on your own :)

Best regards,
Sendil, ESL Admin

So we haven't lost yet!

Update Again: After crashing during a match we looked like winning, we restarted and lost.  Oh well.

Guild for Dawn of War II and Left 4 Dead proposed

You can view the proposal here.

A small group of players have been playing both Left 4 Dead and Dawn of War II for a few weeks now, and have just started playing league matches in the Electronic Sports League (ESL).

As such, a proposal has been made to make this group, currently under the name "We Are Angry Robots", into a fully-fledged Guild.

This would bring the number of Guilds within The Conclave to 5, along with Desert Foxes (Battlefield 1942), Galaxy Puppets (OGame), Eradication (World of Warcraft) and Foxtrot Brigade (Call of Duty 5).

Self-Aggrandizement Post #1

Hi,

In The Conclave (CC), I'm known as Kaz.  On Blogger, that's Kaz Dragon, because Kaz isn't a particularly uncommon name, and I like dragons.  I joined The Conclave in 2004 on the recommendation of a friend, and have never looked back.  I started out by playing Battlefield 1942 in the Desert Foxes Guild, going so far as playing in their first ever organised competition.  

I sucked.

Anyway, since that time, I've been Ambassador (Conclave-speak for the leader of a Guild) for what was "The Art of War", which was dedicated to real-time strategy games, and also briefly for Eradication, which is our current World of Warcraft guild.

I currently hold the position of Director, which means I'm one of a few people responsible for deciding overall policy and direction for CC.  Go me.