Archmage History: ATCQ vs AoA

[Guest The Grinch]

Just for fun, I thought I'd repost this old history that was originally posted in the Archmage Banquet Hall in the summer of 1999, in response to a comment by Buzzrock, in two parts. It was "ancient history" then... I wonder how many are still around to remember it now?

 

History: ATCQ vs AoA

 

Funny you should mention that. There is a big piece of that story still untold. But I wonder how many here remember it. With so many others writing stories in the BH, I guess I’ll have a go at it and write Terra’s first anecdotal history. It’s a long but interesting story, partly a mystery, and it has a surprise ending. If you don’t want to read it, stop now, but you’ll miss a good tale. (All of this information can be found in the Banquet Hall if you are willing to go back far enough).

 

For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, this was a war back in January between A Tribe Called Quest or ATCQ (now simply “The Tribe”) and a guild called Angels of the Apocalypse, or AoA. ATCQ was led by a mage named T-Bone, was compose primarily of college students, and played an aggressive, no-holds barred kind of game that spared little room for diplomatic niceties. AoA by contrast was composed mostly of players in their 20’s and 30’s, and followed more restrictive rules of engagement, discouraging multiattacks, and cultivated diplomacy. They were led by a mage named Azrael. These were two old and well-known guilds that had been around almost since Archmage began, and had managed to avoid each other.

 

A dispute broke out among members of each of these guilds, that quickly escalated because of AoA’s use of devils. Back then devils were a new, devastating weapon, and skilled Black mages could run them almost continuously. To AoA they were just a very good ultimate unit, and a legitimate tool . ATCQ considered them excessive, and declared that any mage who used them on its members would be terminated. So once the devils were deployed, there was very little room for negotiation. The guild fought a number of pitched battles. These were the days when the Pegasus hordes ruled the skies, and in one battle, T-Bone, a Black mage, lost about 9000 liches to White attacks. (I wasn’t a member of ATCQ at the time, so maybe Buzzrock can fill in a few details here). Frustrated communications caused tempers to flare between T-Bone and Azrael, quickly degenerated into personal attacks, and make negotiations even more impossible. Pretty standard stuff, really. AoA held it’s own for a while, but it was an old guild, and many of its members and leaders had grown tired of the game and were looking for a way out of it. Many members had already left over the Christmas holidays. In terms of active mages, AoA was outnumbered about five to one, and its casualties were not interested in restarting. ATCQ members were developing devastating strategies like the stasis barrage, that prevented an enemy mage from moving - ever. It was only a matter of time.

 

These were also the bad old days of rampant cheating in Archmage - hacking, unauthorised deletions, and even developers playing the game as active, involved participants. These were the days of KAIST and Penguin. Multimaging was common and even expected, while enforcement against it was, in the eyes of most players, meagre and highly subjective. I am sorry to say that both sides multimaged in this war. AoA multimaged a little, mostly as players left the game and gave their accounts to those who remained. ATCQ had a core of players, college students on winter break, who multied even more - one player was documented as controlling eight mages at once! The irony is that in the number of players, both guilds were much closer than the number of mages would indicate. But the ATCQ had the time and motivation that AoA lacked, and turned this into significantly superior numbers. And they loved to coordinate mass attacks. In a classic example of people in glass houses, each side complained to the developers about the other. But multimaging was to become the least of the least of the issues. In one message, T-Bone bragged to Azrael of friendship with Penguin, a member of the Archmage staff who also played the game, and was widely believed to “favours” for friends. This veiled threat would come back to haunt him.

 

Frustrated with trying to negotiate, disgusted with the personal nature the communications with ATCQ had taken, and no longer enjoying the game at all, Azrael declared he was quitting as leader of AoA and threatened to disband the guild. Instead of disbanding, the Grinch, leader of AoA on S3, took over, and seeing that the situation was hopeless, declared a unilateral cease-fire and asked T- Bone for terms. However, T-Bone was in no mood to negotiate. His response to the Grinch was “Don’t even try anymore.” So it appeared that ATCQ would be content with nothing less than the complete extermination of AoA (Sound familiar, LoTR?) Still hoping for peace, the Grinch took a different tack, and made a public appeal for peace to the members of ATCQ, calling on them to replace their leader if necessary. It was a long-shot, and of course it failed, but it had two important effects. It gained AoA considerable sympathy in the Banquet Hall, and several offers of alliance, and became the start of what may have been the first organised propaganda effort in the BH. Second, it gained AoA some sympathy within ATCQ. A dissident, who we’ll call “Deep Throat”, contacted AoA.

 

At this point, ATCQ grudgingly began to talk to the Grinch. Their terms for peace were harsh, demanding the heads of four AoA members including Azrael and the Grinch. Both these players were sick of the game, and the other two were multis, so the deal was made. However, while the two sides were negotiating, five key AoA mages including Azrael were deleted. Interestingly, of those who were deleted, only one had been a multi, and that player’s other mage was left intact. More interestingly, another mage named “Grinch” (as opposed to “The Grinch”), completely unrelated to AoA, was deleted at the same time.

 

The following morning, AoA obtained an incriminating message from the ATCQ message board, compliments of Deep Throat. It was posted by T-Bone, and went something like this: “Five AoA mages are gone this morning. Looks like our friends at the Battle Angels came through last night.” In follow-up message said that Penguin had told him that the five were the same person, so now they were gone. Needless to say, this bit of information proved to be a deal-breaker. AoA members posted the text of this message in the Banquet Hall, much to the embarrassment of T-Bone, who tried to backtrack on some of his previous statements. His statements on the subject were confused and contradictory, but denied knowledge of the deletions. Indeed, his initial message in the ATCQ forum may have been inaccurate, since only one of the deleted mages had been a multi, and one had not even been an AoA member. An amateurish job indeed, not the work of developers who would have had access to account and IP numbers.

 

Rather than surrender, the Grinch officially disbanded AoA and told the remaining members to join other guilds. But the remaining AoA members, outraged by events, refused to hide and continued to fight a guerrilla war, symbolic but ineffective. Those who had so recently planned to quit the game found reason to remain. The Grinch, who could not resist the mystery of the deleted mages, organised an information service against ATCQ, not only gathering information on ATCQ, but also providing it to their enemies, and posting key bits in the BH - ATCQ’s exploitation of a bug for new mages, for example. Through this information exchange, the Grinch gained a clue in the mystery. The accounts of a number of deleted mages, including AoA, had been entered by members of a guild called the Battle Angels, of which the developer Penguin was a member, and which was an ally of ATCQ. And certain Tribe enemies continued to disappear. T-Bone’s comment, “looks like our friends at the Battle Angels came through last night” highlighted the connection suspiciously. But it was an ambiguous connection. T-Bone claimed that he had asked Battle Angels for help against AoA, and had provided a list of targets, but had never asked for their deletion. The mystery was solved, but only partially - if any Tribe member had conspired with the Battle Angels to delete AoA, they were keeping quiet about it.

 

Azrael tried something different - he restarted as a mage called “T-Boner”, and a guild called “A Tribe Called Queer” as a parody of ATCQ. The Tribe itself continued to hunt down AoA mages, but it could do little to get them to shut up - when they killed them they just restarted. When Armageddon finally came a few weeks later, some AoA remnants were able to muster enough strength to kill T- Bone and several other leading Tribe members, already weakened by other Tribe enemies, and then gloat about it shamelessly in the BH. With the reset, the doors of AoA remained closed, Azrael and the Grinch did not return to Terra, and the Archmage staff underwent a major shake-up and crackdown on unauthorised deletions.

 

At this point, we might expect the story to end. But, because of one nagging loose threads - the connection between ATCQ and the Battle Angels, it didn’t. Though the story disappeared from the Banquet Hall, it continued on in a surprising new direction, still waiting to be resolved and told.

 

******************************************************************

 

As we left off in Part 1, AoA had closed up shop on Server 1, at least officially but it continued to operate on Server 3 as a small, peaceful guild, lead by the Grinch’s S3 alter-ego. S3 was guilded, non-blitz server at the time, and was home to the Lords of the Realm and Corvus’s Tarakian Guild, the two great rival guilds. AoA was a friend of the Tarakian Guild, but managed to avoid guild conflict and end the game successfully with a member, Zouhl, in the Hall of Immortals. AoA members found this particularly satisfying because ATCQ had failed to reach the Hall of Immortals on S1. Following the reset, S3 became Blitz Server 2, the guilded blitz server. AoA closed up shop altogether, the Tarakians migrated to S1, and LoTR spread out to both S1 and B2.

 

ATCQ, meanwhile, continued much as it had, but with a change in leadership. A few weeks before the reset, T-Bone had to quit the game because of school. His mage continued to operate in the game, but real leadership passed to Jellybean, who officially became Tribe leader after the reset. Jellybean was a very effective warrior, but not a diplomat, and if anything the Tribe became even more warlike under his rule. Its members looked foward to another big war. After crushing a couple small guilds (who actually quite deserved it), ATCQ came into conflict with the Lords of the Realm.

 

I don’t know much about LoTR, so maybe a former member will jump in with some information here. They were a long-time rival of the Tarakian Guild, and on Server 3 they had fought for months until finally, in the last weeks of the game, they came together to fight a cheating/hacking guild whose name I don’t recall. This alliance continued after the reset, as these two guilds found themselves as the new kids on the block in S1, in unfamiliar diplomatic territory. And, as stated, they were active on the new blitz server as well, with most members dividing their attention between the two.

 

The war between LoTR and ATCQ came about because LoTR landgrabs against Tribe members appeared to form a pattern. Members were being randomed by several LoTR members within the space of a couple days, and it seemed that Tribe members were being targeted (sound familiar, AFK?). Jellybean sent a few messages, and did not receive the sort of answers he wanted. Declaring that “These S3 guilds don’t respect us enough,” he ordered the attack. The Tribe was aided by its allies League of Fear, Calculus for the Masses!, and Wolfpack. The situation was one of overkill. LoTR was taken by surprise, badly outnumbered, preoccupied with a concurrent war on B2. If I recall correctly, this war lasted about as long as the AoA war. LoTR found it too hard to fight wars on two servers at once, and decided to devote itself to B2. On S1 it split into two factions. One faction joined the Tarakian guild for protection, hoping the Tribe would leave them alone. The other faction continued to fight, eventually changing its name to Vigilantes of the Realm.

 

The problem was those LoTR mages that joined the Tarakians, and maybe some Tarakians will help me with the narrative here. Much as with AoA before, Jellybean refused to let them go, and refused to recognise their change of affiliation. The Tribe’s allies thought this was unwise and excessive, and each broke its alliance with ATCQ. After sending Corvus some curt messages that were mostly threats, Jellybean told the Tribe to prepare for war with the Tarakians - alone. However, the Tarakians were not in the same position as LoTR, and since they were not active on the blitz server, they could devote their full attention to the Tribe. Another war seemed like a bad idea to some of us, but we didn’t realise how bad an idea it really was. I know I’ll provoke some comments by this statement, but I think the Tarakian Guild is the most efficient war machine I’ve ever seen in Terra, and they did it without hacking or multimaging. And against the Tribe they were very effective. I don’t remember the kill record, but we took the worst of it, and I’m not sure we killed any of theirs. Furthermore, the Inner Circle alliance was forming, and the Tarakian Guild was invited to join. While the Tribe stood alone, the Tarakian Guild made some powerful new allies.

 

A critical moment came when Jellybean took a severe beating, from which he might not have been able to recover. A number of us met in a chat room, myself and Buzzrock included, and decided to ask Jelly to make peace. If he refused, it might be time for a change of leadership. As a result of this meeting, Buzz telephoned Jellybean, and it was then that he learned of the widespread cheating mentioned earlier. (Correct me on this if I’m wrong, Buzz)

 

The next morning Jellybean announced that he and several other core members were leaving because of school (No time for school and running eight mages? Go figure.). The rest of us were to be passed off to League of Fear. The rest of us, however, enjoyed playing the game together, and did not want to be passed off to a guild of 200 mages, especially without being consulted. Beaten and isolated, the Tribe was a shambles, but we didn’t want to leave it. I spoke up, offered my services as leader, and since nobody else wanted the job, I got it. I made peace and started rebuilding ATCQ into the New Tribe. Buzzrock, disgusted to learn of the cheating, left with the rest of the core, but luckily returned to be instrumental in rebuilding. Many new members joined, and the Tribe survived and prospered.

 

That’s the official story. But what of Deep Throat, Azrael, and the Grinch?

 

Deep Throat, it seems, left the game. Disgusted, he never came back to the Tribe, never contacted AoA after that initial, fateful exchange, and never restarted under his former name. Although for all we know, he may still be here.

 

Azrael was instrumental in what was probably one of the more amusing chapters in Terran history. Just for fun, as soon as the Server was ready for the restart, he started a mage called T-Bone and a guild called “A Tribe Called Quest”. The guild page was an exact duplicate of the real Tribe page. Tribe members, trying to reform, were confused, but quickly guessed what was going on. Jellybean posted a warning in the Banquet Hall, which provoked a prolonged debate over who was the true Tribe and its true leader. Azrael had his fun for a bit and then moved on. However, this proved to be only the beginning as several other T-Bones appeared in the Banquet Hall. At one point I think I counted 3 T-Bones, 2 Azraels and a Grinch, none of whom was the genuine article. False factions of ATCQ and a false AoA appeared in the guilds of Terra. ATCQ was embarrassed by appearing to be disorganised and divided, which it was not. People got sick of it, but the situation became a running gag in the BH for a long time after.

 

The Grinch took a different approach. He wanted to know whether the Tribe had specifically requested that the Battle Angels delete AoA. This information could only be found within the Tribe. So with the reset, the Grinch took a new identity, befriended a Tribe member, and joined. The spy now had full access to the Tribe’s message boards, searched them for clues, and found... nothing. The Tribe was on its guard against leaks and spies, and for a new member to raise the issue of AoA was decidedly unwise. So he waited, settled in, and became a contributing member. He waited for the Tribe’s aggressive ways to get it into trouble, and then planned to create an opposition faction to the existing leadership, with an end goal of bringing about a more moderate regime.

 

The Tarakian War was exactly the trouble the Grinch had been expecting. He questioned the wisdom of the war, and in doing so found a voice for opposition that was calculated but also in the genuine best interest of the Tribe. When Jellybean announced the dissolution of the Tribe, he might have taken that as a victory. AoA’s great enemy was defeated and dead. So a victory it was, but there was also an aftermath - with the core of ATCQ jumping ship, there remained a group of players who enjoyed playing together, enjoyed each other’s company, and had become his friends. Many of them hadn’t even been around for the AoA War. Now they were left hanging. If he helped the Tribe to survive, he would be saving something of genuine value, and could also enjoy the irony of knowing that it owed its survival to its former number one enemy.

 

So the Grinch did what he had to. He spoke up, offered his services as leader, and since nobody else wanted the job, he got it. He made peace with his old friends the Tarakians, and started rebuilding ATCQ into the image of Angels of the Apocalypse, with the same AoA internal structure, and adapted the AoA guild rules into the Code of Honour - and overall the Tribe members approved. The New Tribe had members and traditions of the old ATCQ, but the values, principles, and spirit of AoA. New, like-minded members joined. The Tribe recovered, prospered, and by its success proved to be AoA’s ultimate vindication.

 

Bulldog

Leader of the Tribe

Lover of irony

The Grinch...AoA/Tribe

"The beatings shall continue until morale improves..."