Sunday August 13th 2006
On Sunday August 13th 06, around midday GMT, 10 gamers from the Clan faction found themselves disconnected from the game and their accounts suspended. The 10 were the total of everyone present at a Tower Battle, and included prominent and high profile clan leaders.
This followed over a year of stagnation with Tower Wars (faction based mass PvP) where Clan had dominated, and had gone as far as reducing the opposing Omni faction to zero bases at one point. One of those banned hosted the majority of the Clan side raid bots (3rd party software providing a common chat channel for raiding along with various features), including the Clan PvP chat channel and Clan server wide broadcasting.
Within a week, the Omni faction dominated in number of bases held for the first time in over a year, and since August faction based PvP has seen significant increase in activity and player involvement.
Below is a timeline of the battles on that Sunday, as well as a basic outline of Tower War mechanics, providing context for the material in the next section.
Timeline:
TLR 3 [2006-08-13 09:43:02 AM]: The Clan organization Genesis Voleris attacked the Omni Omni Rage at their base in The Longest Road. The attackers won!!
placed for GV, it goes 75% due to bug. At least 5 of the people banned were either not present or not even online at this time.
Andromeda 9 [2006-08-13 10:24:05 AM]: The Clan organization Alpha Omega Disciples attacked the Omni Ring of Fury at their base in Andromeda. The attackers won!!
placed for AOD, it goes 25%. Nothing happens.
PM 8 [2006-08-13 11:11:42 AM]: The Clan organization Demon Inside attacked the Omni Paradise at their base in Pleasant Meadows. The attackers won!!
placed for DI, it goes 25%. Nothing happens.
Clondyke 9 [2006-08-13 11:43:38 AM]: The Clan organization Devil Inside attacked the Omni Omni Rage at their base in Clondyke. The attackers won!!
placed for DI, it goes 25%. Nothing happens.
Clondyke 3 [2006-08-13 12:34:21 PM]: The Clan organization BANDA attacked the Omni Unity at their base in Clondyke. The attackers won!!
placed for BANDA, it goes 25%.
SAV 1 [2006-08-13 01:10:15 PM]: The Clan organization Genesis attacked the Omni Peace $ Love, Inc. at their base in Southern Artery Valley. The attackers won!!
placed for Genesis, it goes 25%. GM bans everyone there, bam bam bam, you can literally see the ppl dropping in succession from Gimpybot.
"6 bases we took, bam bam bam, every single one we did the exact same way: Got org dmg on CT, and placed with the org that did damage, thus negating tedious click spam competitions and having omnis ninja the base. The only one that was different from the 5 others is the first one, TLR 3, which did not go 25% as it should have."
Tower War Basics:
- A base will cycle through 18hrs in 75%, 5 hrs in 25% and an hour in 5% - it is only attackable in < 75%
- If an org with towers initiates an attack, that org enters "wargas", and all towers of that org will go to 25% instantly (if the org is attacking another side), or 5% (if the org is attacking the same side).
- The attackers take down the towers and control tower while the base is < 75% gas.
- Upon the removal of the control tower, the land reverts to the natural gas of the zone, in most cases that is 75%, but it can be 25% as well in a Political Zone.
- During this 20 minutes the damage/attacking org has the exclusive rights to place a Control Tower.
- If the damage org does not place a control tower, once the 20mins is up it becomes a FFA for all factions.
- Once a control tower is placed, either within the 20mins or in the FFA, the land should go to 25% for an hour, before entering the cycle outlined above.
- If nobody places in the 20 minutes, the site goes FFA for all factions. Peoples spam clicks then, in order to be the first to place thus to win the land. If the org winning the clickspam is not in wargas, the site will go to 75% at once. If the org winning the clickspam is in wargas, the site will go 25% or 5% until the wargas has timed out, before entering the normal cycle. This clickspamming is called ninja-placing.
- The attacking org may have members that have temp joined that org solely for the purpose of getting damage on the ct - it had been clarified unofficially many times prior to Aug 13th that this was acceptable and NOT an exploit, and had been a tactic employed by all factions since the release of the NW boosterpack.
- *Sometimes* a bug shows up: the winning org is in wargas, decides to place a Control Tower, and then the land turns 75% nevertheless instead of 25%! This bug is not 100% reproducible, it has been tried by GMs on the test dimension, and they didn't succeed.
Petitioning:
A brief explanation of how petitioning works taken from Funcom's official page here:
How do I get help in-game?
Please only use this for emergencies and abuse that we need to handle at once.
Write in the chat window /petition and a short explanation of the problem. This message will be sent to a petition queue that GMs and ARKs read through. They will help you as soon as possible.
What happens with my petition in the game?
It is sent to a petition tool where your request is listed with the requests of other people. Funcom-employed GMs and some players (ARKs) have access to this queue. They will contact you in the game when they get to your request. In order to get the best possible view of your issue, we ask that you write all needed information in the original petition . Please note that it could take time for GMs to get back to you.