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[Hanzoku]

Probably because of how things were shaping up with Weaver towards the end of the civil war. At least to those involved in periphery wars and weren't seeing the full story, it seemed like he had declared himself a god, and the House of Order was his secret police/inquisitorial service. Even with Weaver dead, I think that that linkage remained in most people's minds.

[Doctor Urist Carpslayer]

Urg, I shouldn't make posts late at night when I am overall grumpy. Anyway, I think it is the names etc. We originally were going to swear fealty to the original liege of the area, but her reputation looked unpleasant. Not sure how much the game mechanics supports this, but we were planning on playing as guerilla rebels striking from the shadows.

[SaintofWar]

Yeah, I can see it going down like that, Hanzoku, but still- it seems super weird to me that people just make a random assumption like that, you know? There are certainly fanatical themes in the HoO, but I wouldn't go as far as to say they are religious, but then again, I might be the only one aware of that distinction. I was just curious why the newcomer thought so as well, but I guess Litany of Fury's reputation precedes her.

Doctor Urist Carpslayer, I assume, met Litany of Fury-- and I am fairly certain he knows why she might have a reputation like that. Her business is usually... not nice. The HoO usually stays away from people, but when they come visit you, it's not for tea and snacks. So pretty much all of them have a terrible reputation. Winters of Ash once said 'Your reputation is the measure of how well you do your job'.

Anyway, if Litany didn't completely put you off, you should give EI another, and proper, try. Seek out Martyn Lann, ask him for directions, and I promise you that things will go as smooth as butter, and you'll never even notice that HoO exists. Except for the part when he sends you to Aurora and Litany, who is technically the temporary Duchess of the Northern Restoration-- which includes the little bit of land you guys conquered.

I think Martyn would appreciate someone with a desire to explore the more 'intrigue' parts of the game, clandestine and covert parts of the game.

EDIT: You can definitely play guerilla tactics and striking from blindspots-- it takes a lot of experience. I don't want to sound like I am blowing my own horn, but HoO is pretty much the worst opponent you can pick to fight, next to the Hawks. It's a professional army-like organization that is active non-stop, applies actual real-life operational doctrine, tactics and strategies, and a lot of other stuff. I personally think they are the most powerful military force in the world, pound for pound, but I am biased-- it is after all my creation.

[Hanzoku]

Hawks managed to kill the Archonian Dominate in the south. As far as I know, the area never recovered from so many players quitting the game.

Mostly it came down to Hawks being the 800 pound grizzly in the room. As soon as one part start running into war exhaustion, they called in the rest of the very-extended Hawks network and forced a surrender because there was no point or possibility to try to resist. Noone in the Dominate enjoyed or appreciated that Hawks could dictate whatever they wanted and all you could do was take it.

[wereboar]

Shouldn't play a game if you can't take a beating.

[Zangi]

Noone ever likes losing, then to take the cake, suffering the humiliation of the surrender terms hoisted upon them afterwards. 
And in a game like this, players could just sit around amassing higher quality troops forever.  It goes faster with more resources.  So it is hard for underdogs to legitimately get stronger then the big dogs. 
They can wait for enemy noble activity to go down/slumberblight.  Not as fun.

[Reelya]

Probably because of how things were shaping up with Weaver towards the end of the civil war. At least to those involved in periphery wars and weren't seeing the full story, it seemed like he had declared himself a god, and the House of Order was his secret police/inquisitorial service. Even with Weaver dead, I think that that linkage remained in most people's minds.

You know, that guy was our arch-nemesis back when Bay12 was playing the game simrepublic.com (the game no longer exists). It was after most of the bay12ers left, but a few of us stuck around and founded new nations, got pretty successful too. I had two major conflicts with him that have stuck with me:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- I was helping newbies get established by getting them the top-grade machinery at cost (or even on credit). The machines would basically pay for themselves in under a day, so it was sensible to make sure everyone had them. This would save them months on getting basic production happening, and it meant they were producing enough to actually import more things rather than getting frustrated with slow progress and quitting. Weaver ran a 1-person nation with two businesses: the same machinery I made, at about 4 times the price, and machinery repairs. I didn't have a repair business yet, so I started directing my customers to Weaver for repairs, thinking I was doing him a favor. As soon as I did that, I heard back from the first girl I'd sent over, that Weaver is spamming her with long, really angry emails berating her for buying stuff from me rather than him. The girl seemed like she was freaking out because she made a point of how genuinely boiling mad he seemed to be over something that was basically none of his business. Of course, I never directed anyone to Weaver's businesses after that point.

- later on, Weaver joined a big nation, while I built a big nation from scratch, starting with just me and a tractor, and recruiting tons of newbies. The leader of Weaver's nation quit, and Weaver took over as head honcho. Our two nations ended up being the largest two non-slumbering nations. Weaver then pioneered a new trick: each week bonus credits (the actual real world money type) would appear in different nations. Weaver constantly invaded and destroyed any smaller nation that got the bonus that week. People were quitting the game because of this. We decided enough was enough after a few months of this and our nation basically used our entire arsenal to obliterate Weaver's nation in a surprise attack when they were offline. This was necessary in order to ensure their invasion apparatus was permanently offline. Recently, I heard in M&F that night-time sneak attacks are one of Weaver's favorite tricks. Dirty tricks: brought to you by the brilliant minds at Bay12^tm

Shouldn't play a game if you can't take a beating.

IDK, the implication of your phrase is a single match type game: e.g. chess, soccer or tennis, and may not be valid for an MMO which is basically an ongoing shared world, instead of a "match" type "game". e.g. say you play chess aggressively vs a newbie, using powerful openings crush their defense. That is valid, that is where "you shouldn't play if you can't compete" is legit. But playing an MMO, becoming powerful then stalking out the entrance to newbie zone and killing everyone that comes through: that is not valid. You're not just playing an asshole in the game, doing that makes you a bona fide asshole, period.

Like, if the game was "sandcastles simulator" and you play that, and do nothing but run around crushing sandcastles that other players spent weeks making, are you completely in the clear ethically because you can claim you were "just playing a character who's a bastard"? What if I stomp real, actual sandcastles, then claim I'm not responsible because I was only "play-acting" as a bastard who likes to stomp sandcastles? It's not really any different.

you're a bad sport OOCly

Seriously? Really? You just said people should be prepared for completely unmerciful beatdowns if they dare play an MMO, or just GTFO for being weak, now you want people to go softly-softly and "respect mah feelingz" when they trash-talk you for being a PK-er. Really?

[wereboar]

Like, if the game was "sandcastles simulator" and you play that, and do nothing but run around crushing sandcastles that other players spent weeks making, are you completely in the clear ethically because you can claim you were "just playing a character who's a bastard"? What if I stomp real, actual sandcastles, then claim I'm not responsible because I was only "play-acting" as a bastard who likes to stomp sandcastles? It's not really any different.

If a game is about building cool castles, I'd agree it's unethical to arbitrarily mess with new players' castles.
If a game is a medieval politics and warfare simulator, you don't get to receive special treatment. Understand that PvP in this game is not so much about actual destruction of characters or stealing their lands, but primarily about vassalage and building realms via negotiations or coercion. And it's not some novelty philosophy of the genre, things have been like that ever since OGame and the like. You just had to join clans to not get wrecked by old players and grow within those frameworks.

Seriously? Really? You just said people should be prepared for completely unmerciful beatdowns if they dare play an MMO, or just GTFO for being weak, now you want people to go softly-softly and "respect mah feelingz" when they trash-talk you for being a PK-er. Really?

It's not about feelings but about distorting facts.
Also, stop treating this game as some sort of WoW or Lineage. PK-er, really? What does that even mean in a browser strategy game?

[Reelya]

Well I made the case that being on the look out for very new / vulnerable players in a strategy game is similar to camping to PK newbies: by definition it's pretty unlikely to actually be a profitable use of the player's time - they're unlikely to have much in the way of worthwhile resources, and if they do happen to camp on some good resources, then why wasn't the player already there? If they just happen to decide they want a specific resource whenever a newbie collects it, you'd have to question that. Since it's not about the resources, you'd have to ask what the appeal is, and it's easy: Bartle's "killer" personality type of the 4-quadrants system: feel good by ruining someone else's day. The advantage of harassing newbies is that it's easy, a feeling of power, if they complain, even better because the player can gloat. Any resource the player might end up with is a rationalization for the killer behavior (especially when it would have been more profitable to just collect the resource without the killing).

[Insanegame27]

Ok. Regardless of what game you're playing, whether it's minecraft, MLP, Might and Fealty; I don't care what game it is, coming along with end or even mid-game gear and utterly crushing a newb for absolutely no reason is a complete dick move. Even if we should be prepared for it due to the nature of the game, it's a total dick move. I've had the benefit of being just about everywhere on the M&F map bar the far south (and even there, with bandits) and I can say that without people being nice to me early on, I wouldn't be playing today. With the state M&F is in, we need player retention, and that doesn't happen when people run around being dicks and no-one is able to stop them because they've got end-game stuff.
It pisses me off to no end when I see this kind of behaviour. If they're an established realm and they have a decent military, feel free to have minor skirmishes with them. But against newbs with only the soldiers from the knight offer, or even less because some asshole's stomped their 30 medium infantry with 300 heavy cav, it's complete bullshit.

[wereboar]

It's nice to be judgemental when you have no idea what you're talking about, isn't it? Perhaps I'll explain what actually happened.
There was this province rich in metal, wood and having a river flowing through it. A premium region which also happened to have a strategic value for me, being right next to my capital. I noticed at some point that its lord was slumbering. I took some heavy troops and traveled there to take it over. When I arrived I've noticed a newbie noble squatting there who has already started a takeover with his low level troops. If I was an evil zomg player-killer I'd just attack him or tell him to gtfo. But I appoached him and offered to keep the province if he swears fealty to me. He basically said "sure, just let me inform my other mates". So I left and in a few days noticed he swore fealty to my rival in the area. As a player I am totally fine with that, I enjoy intrigue and double-dealing. But my character has a very legitimate grievance and if you think it's unreasonable bullying on my part then you're simply biased.

[SaintofWar]

I am not the Weaver from simrepublic- I never even played that game. So M&F Weaver and that Weaver are not the same. I never bullied anyone in M&F, I was disliked and called a bully because I used a tactic people considered an exploit. And it wasn't night-time raids. We never did that either, in the exact meaning of the phrase.

To give you an idea of what was going on, we were a small unit, of maybe 1000 to 2000 soldiers, up against 10,000 or so. A lot of people were involved, and they had no clue what they were doing. We ran a strategy of isolating small units, and intercepting them, while it was most likely that those around them were too far away to assist- or in a few cases, we figured were asleep and would not notice in time. You have to understand that we were at war with 2 Realms, with a lot of people. Night-raids are impossible. We had a small patch of real-estate around Locust Court that was our killing field, where we caught people unescorted, and obliterated their units.

What later got us into trouble was the tactic/exploit we used where we'd engage one part of the army with throwaway troops, so that they cannot assist the other bunch that we committed against.

I do not enjoy hurting newbies. Yes, I did it a couple of times in M&F, when people come to take independent lands, and then act like dicks, but I still do not enjoy it. For me, any kind of conflict is just business. I do, however, enjoy beating up others who are conceited. Like in the Civil War, our opposition was all gung-ho happy, because they outnumbered us 10 to 1. When everyone did the math later and saw we killed 6000 of theirs for 1000 of ours, they all suddenly became very polite.

There is one other important characteristic that I need to share with people here, so wrong conclusions are not made. Weaver was chivalrous, kind, righteous, a good-guy all the way through, until the civil war. He was playing the role of a tyrant and an asshole for the purpose of the civil war, so that Martyn Lann would emerge as the new Imperator, and lead the remnants of the Imperium down a path that was not decadent like it used to be. It was the most roundabout purge of Imperial Nobility, and in that sense, yes, the House of Order is a secret police, as they were, after all, the executioner in the whole ordeal. For this reason, Weaver at the end of the Civil War, after he defeated the enemy armies, suicided on their remnants.

[Reelya]

Ah, ok, sorry to have confused you with that guy. I kinda figured it might be the same guy because of the identical handle, playing a similar style of game (both nation building games, and pitching for leadership roles) and some similar stories that I'd heard.

Definitely didn't think it was a b12 person, this other Weaver I'm thinking of definitely wasn't.

[SaintofWar]

I don't really like leadership roles either. I just always end up in them.

[Reelya]

Yeah, and the politics-related bay12 game efforts don't always bring out the best in people.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In that simrepublic thing, i wanted to be active, but not be the leader. Then, one other not-to-be-named bay12er (who I haven't seen around) starts to try and threaten me*, and get me to support them in destroying the bay12 player who was the original leader so that they could be leader. I then mentioned that to the existing leader, it becomes common knowledge, then people are accusing me of trying to undermine the colony.

And then when I'm more established people are asking me why I'm not throwing my hat into the ring to be elected as leader: but look at what people were doing, trying to get rid of active players so that they could be at the top of an ever-smaller anthill. I then went and made my own country with like 2-3 bay12 people (for which I was then accused of disloyalty to The Hive), and I promptly discovered that the leader can appoint other leaders so we just appointed everyone as leader. It made things run better too, because the leader actions are the bottleneck on opening up land for economic development. All the backstabbing in bay12 land with who was the "supreme leader" was therefore completely pointless in the first place: it just bottle-necked development for no good reason.

* we're not talking in-game or in-character threats here either: it was OOC threats to get me banned from the game unless I backstabbed the player who'd brought us into the game, because right at the start, i'd had a throwaway account (no email, therefore deactivates in 48 hours) that chopped wood for a couple of days to get the bay12 colony started faster. So the ultimatum I was given was to kill other bay12ers or the puppet-master would have me banned from the game completely. Of course I said to GTFO, because once you start that, they can use your backstabbing to threaten you repeatedly.