DeletedUser
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The story of W21:
------------------------
Well it's all done and dusted folks. Our world, the best world, W21 is over. The Pirates and Puffins have done it again,
with a big assist from our brothers over at Panda incorporated, and under the gentle, persistence guidance of backwards, W21 has finally ended.
I compiled these notes in the closing days of W21 on the advice of Mars (computergui) and I think now is the time to share them.
As recommended by my esteemed colleague and mentor Mars, I will do my best to tell the story of W21 from start to finish.
But I don't want this to come across as a final telling of how events went, please take this dialogue as an open invitation to supply with information
for the holes and gaps I will no doubt be unable to avoid. The information from behind enemy lines, from the other side of the world,
from another era of W21.
Let us, my friends, the survivors of W21, tell this tale together.
This story will be entirely from my perspective and based on the journey I took through this world and what happened to me and my people along the way.
Really for me, W21 began on W8 a year before W21 opened.
W8 was where I learned about war, defending, attacking and especially, working as part of unit or team.
All the basics a solider needs to know, I initially learned from merrick2 and her council under a tribe called Knights of Sauron -KS-.
After warring the second largest and arguably most devious tribe on the server CLOROX to a standstill for 4 months, we merged in to
The Chosen Samurai Pizza Cats (TCSPC) in order to organize a force large enough to be able to overcome CLOROX.
It was in this time, that I was introduced to Mars, the leader and head diplomat of TCSPC and his in game daughter Dulcycka.
Just existing in a tribe under these two taught me countless leadership strategies, the best ways to manipulate in game tribal diplomacy, how to get
the most out of your tribes continents and troops, but most of all, how to best motivate your tribes members and keep them guided towards the tribes goals.
Ironically, after the merges were settled and the war began, TCSPC began to suffer from spate of inactivity and in the end, the leader of CLOROX,
offered a deal, merge with CLOROX or face multiple bans to TCSPC's largest account's.
Whilst I am sure it aged Mars a year in 1 day, he begrudgingly accepted the merge in order to give his players who wanted to continue, a fighting chance
at W8.
It was around this stage, after about 10 months on W8 that I decided to seek greener pastures and try my own hand at leading, by utilizing the skills
I had learned from Dulcy and Mars on the newest server at the time, W21.
I had heard whispers of a W8 pre-made tribe forming on W21 anyways, so I thought, what the hell? Dumped my W8 account on Merrick (sorry merrick), grabbed
a few of my W8 homies Scarlet Ash and Jamie (currently playing d503) and set off to see what a world was like from the beginning.
My first day on W21 was a bit of a shock.
I had expected to start off straight up in the core, but it turned out my timing was off and I was 2 weeks late to the party.
4 large core tribes had already established a certain dominance.
From early game forward the tier 1 front running tribes were:
In the south west of the core there was [TNK] (I don't even know what that stood for) but Jamie was recruited by them and fed me a fair bit of inside
info as he and I are good friends in real life.
TNK was currently ranked 1st. They appeared to be an aggressive war tribe and had kicked off to a great start, with a large, juicy, idiotic family tribe
for them to feed off easily.
This provided a multitude of early, hostile player village conquers and their reputation and seemingly high aggression earn't them the number 1 spot as top dog early on.
They after their initial success in the first 2 months of W21, their activity waned, and SRWS was quick to recruit what large, powerful and active players that TNK held.
Once these guys left for more active and more experienced leadership in SRWS, TNK fell apart and eventually disbanded.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the core we saw the emergence of Muffin. A premade tribe headed by Bwah who had been tried and tested on previous worlds
and carried a fierce reputation with them to W21.
I will invite Bwah himself at this point, to fill us in on the origins of Muffin and who was on their original roster. But needless to say, they were quick
to lock down their quarter of the core and set themselves up in a commanding position for early game.
To the North West, Star Wars emerged as the power of that quadrant.
Whilst they shared a large border with [TNK], diplomacy was stable and they were able to look at all their other borders, which helped them establish
some seriously tight nit geography, also a pre-made, with highly skilled, dedicated members, they dominated 3 or 4 neighboring tribes in the first few months
and ended up merging the best from -LS- and BBRO, two of their neighbors.
This put them in direct competition with Muffin for the number 2 position.
To the east, Muffin dominated very early on.
Formed by Floopy Pancake (my all time personal favorite W21 player and forum poster), later co-duked by Royalist with Pervis and redman0777 along for the ride. Later when Pervis stepped down, Bwah stepped up to assist Floopy and Royalist with the running's of the tribe.
This experienced crew immediately established what they stood for and how they were going to lay it down.
I feel that Muffin, early on, aside from maybe P.O.E. were really the most successful in ultra early game. They had all the right moves.
Just to the south a little lay P.O.E. Process of Elimination, being run by gans43, I know less about them, as my dealings were virtually none with these guys and many of them left by the time ARG! came to power in W21, but again from the very first day, P.O.E established themselves as a dominant power encountered nothing but success until they joined with Muffin to create the powerhouse that defined how W21 ended, Puffin!
These were the tier 1 powers, who had surfaced as having the most success in their initial wars and established a degree of
dominance that the rest of W21 was yet to achieve.
But a second tier existed, not too far off the top 4, which consisted of tribes who all held experienced war fighters and
had strong leaders, but had yet to come up against other strong top 20 ranked tribes.
These tribes were 24/7:
who was hovering just outside the top 4, but had quickly locked down their home continent in the north.
Edgey's iP:
which shared a huge 1 continent border with 24/7 and showed a lot of promise and entertaining world forum value.
Sic Semper Tyrannis (SST):
Lead by Deskin, to the south of P.O.E. who had the worlds largest player and a personal ally of mine at the time, Airbobourne, in their ranks, who boasted the
largest player title and the title of "The Female Kraaken of W21" for a few months, due to her odd selfish remarks and rageful
gameplay style.
SEXY!:
Busamad's people, which consisted of a small elitest, pre-made band of W10 players. They did extremely well from the first
day forward, but as I understand it, after a month or two, activity started to wane.
SPAM/UE/CRayn.:
At the height of their power, CRayn. (back then SPAM), reached the top 4. They occupied and had essentially locked down 3
continents, 54, 64 and 74, lead by the wise and venerable astronomypouya, backed by the experienced karmaeffect and
with their champion war fighter Pazliver who was always amongst the top 10 players, they ended up holding 1 quarter
of the core of W21 and we felt the ripples of the effect they had on W21 years after they disbanded.
The 47 Ron family:
Were a vast and expansive family. W21's answer to mass recruiting. When at their largest I believe they boasted 6 individual
tribes, most of which were completely full.
They had warred here and there, never against a top 10 opponent, taking the majority of their holdings through recruitment and
child tribes.
Never the less, they were a top 10 side through a tumultuous and chaotic time in W21, they had huge bulk, clever leadership
which was able to play the diplomatic game well enough to keep them out of danger, and excellent world forum representation
in the form of GOK (God of Kings) and they definitely added a unique flavor to W21.
Other heavy hitters around this time were SPAWN, Disney and the WEB family.
Outside these heavy hitters were the tier 3 tribes.
Tribes that were considered to be rim tribes at the time.
Late starters who were on the outside of the world and had yet to prove themselves in any major wars, but were definitely a part
of early game and would later play an integral role to the end of W21.
ARG!:
The W8 premade, with some of the finest long term players from W8. Many of them were enemies on W8, but under Llello Yayo,
backwards and Dulcy's leadership, all came together to form a fine, efficient, ruthless war machine.
Located in the south east of K75 and K76, they were able to avoid more skilled and difficult opponents in their early months, and
gorge themselves on other rim noobs, which went a long way to catching up with the current super powers of W21.
They were in it for the long term and fully committed to winning this world, with a plan and outline that would take them there.
Dr NO.:
At the time lead by MattyJ, with propaganda specialists such as Tiene, LAT and Eleandar, they were a premade from W19, with a
similar make up to ARG! and even though they were locate don the opposite side of the globe up in K32 and K33, a mutual respect
was quickly established between the Pirates and Revolutionists which spanned the majority of the server life time.
Dr NO, were in a similar position to ARG! and able to clean up on less experienced and less organized neighbors, many of who
were actually larger than Dr NO when their wars began and this afforded Dr NO a nice widely known kudos for tearing down large
tribes.
HP:
Another small tribe, originally with about 6 members, if my memory serves, almost smack bang in the core of W21 between the top of
K65 and K64, they were not just able to survive in such a dangerous, unstable and volatile environment, but they were able to thrive.
Generally avoiding any top 10 tribes, they fed off whatever else they could find and were able to hold a top 20 position from the
first month of the server, right through til their end almost 10 months later.
A2A Family:
A union of A2A (Ashes to Ashes) and D2D (dust to dust) the academy tribe. I spent about 1 - 2 months in A2A as a result of a rushed
and botched merger between my tribe .:SK:. and A2A.
They were a strictly run rim tribe with a line of holdings that co-occupied Continents K75, K76, K66, K67, K77 and K68.
Their first major top 20 war came against ~IW~, largely fought in K65 and K66, where my people of .:SK:. converted the majority of
the caps.
This combined with their merger, took A2A into a top 10 rank.
KKND:
Lead by the infamous and perhaps slightly unstable, Zytech, was a tribe which showed potential initially as the recruited from the
ashes and dust the defeated A2A/D2D family. Zytech was aggressive, experienced and everything you would want in a player, but
had yet to prove himself as a leader.
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From this point forward, any other tribes that rose into the top 20 were late starters or late bloomers and never really rose to
properly challenge any of the tier 1 or tier 2 tribes of W21. I don't see it as that they didn't have strong leaders, or
decisive strategies, they simply lacked the territory and power to make any form of bid for world domination seriously.
3 or 4 of them did have an impact on how the world ended up, but they were never going to be front runners.
These are the tier 3 tribes.
~IMP~ Family:
What can I say, stubborn till the end. PnP's longest running, largest foe. Although all of the blows that were traded between IMP
and PnP did not come until mid-late game, when PnP's domination was already well established, they did not fold like most of the
early game "pro" tribes.
They were active, committed and through mass recruiting and nobling mass amounts of barbarians in W21's divided deep west, they
were able to accumulate a surprisingly large amount of territory whilst PnP was busy hunting down and finishing off it's old world
foe's.
BCB:
Rose up in the north in Mid-game. They were able to survive through clever diplomacy, quickly recognizing how dangerous Puffin were
and played to Puffin's requests in order to move themselves down the menu and eventually avoid full frontal conflict altogether.
With Puffin pacified, they were able to focus on smaller, rim tribes which were easy pickings for an organized, active and well
lead war tribe.
Over the span of about 1 year they were able to grow into and dominate about 5 Northern continents centered around K26/K17.
Their leader fireborne, played his hand as best he could to give BCB a commanding position in late game and avoid devastation
in early game when the Bouncy Castle Brigade were in an embryonic state.
=LT=:
The looney toons.
A small rostered tribe made of up of medium strength players who had mostly survived early game. Coming together from 47Ron,
A2A/D2D, The GA/TA and KKND, many of them were guys who were simply frustrated with silly family tribes and wanted to expand
without restriction, they struck out against the dead weight around them and at the height of their power, they controlled 5
far eastern, locked down continents and created an environment for themselves where they were the kings and their neighbors
either feared or respected them.
Lead by Bluemidgets and Shtaal, they later merged with BCB (their long term ally) when their leadership struggled with inactivity,
to create Panda!, a force that went all the way to finish beside PnP as the number #2 tribe.
IT!:
The counter part to IMP, an ally on equal terms that refused to merge in or be recognized as part of the family.
They had a much better concept of how TW should be played than IMP and together IMP and IT! controlled the entire western seaboard
of W21 as we went into end game.
They were simply lucky to avoid PnP's wrath as they were seperated from PnP by both Dr NO and IMP and a few other small tribes
that don't really matter.
Of course once NOw merged into PnP towards the end, IT! finally felt the heat and their long term, venerable and respected leader
Jen, went inactive.
Their territory quickly fell and if W21 had have continued on for a few more months, IT! would have been run off the face of server.
Positives are that they ended up outlasting IMP.
The GA/TA:
The Geometric alliance, made up of -ASA-, -SAS- AND -AAS- (angle angle side).
I often joked about their fourth tribe -ASS- which didn't exist.
Spacemanspiff and hl2dmlord were both horrible leaders and made some horrible choices. They will tell you that their horrible
choices were to prevent their tribe from attacking ARG! when ARG! first started up their initial campaigns against the GA.
I will tell you that their truly horrible choices came much earlier on when they harbored refugee's from many of the tribes
ARG! destroyed, ran around the south east of W21 threatening all the smaller tribes that they were ARG!'s academy and worst of all,
openly expanded in territory that ARG! had established as it's own.
However they were both brilliant players defensively but from that point forward, the moment they aligned themselves against ARG!,
their tribe was continually dominated, territory taken, until they fell apart in the final days of W21.
**********************************************VOLUME I: Early Game - Part1***********************************************
My time on W21 begins in K75, after the first 3 weeks of hardcore simming and farming had already taken place, sooo many pre-made tribes had already
been established, the world forums were vibrant and bursting with activity, wars were being declared (and undeclared but still
occurring) flame was being handed out on every street corner and tribal leaders were introducing their tribes, what they stood for,
where they'd come from and how they were going to play.
The world was full of hopefuls who had either encountered success or failure on some of the first worlds that tw.net had seen
and wanted to try their luck at the newest server out.
It was an amazing time of industry and flourishment to be a part of W21...
By pot luck, I chose to start off in the south east, (K75 at that time being the outer rim as the world was in its infancy)
and K75 was where a few of my W8 friends had started and the pre-made tribe ARG! had started on the K75/K76 border.
The first thing I did was to create a tribe for myself which I called -PF- (The Purple Frogs) for some unknown reason.
I was preparing for the possibility that I wouldn't be able to join any power tribe straight up and need to form my own fortune,
so naturally I needed a snazzy name for a tribe to entice people to follow me.
Fortunately, after about 5 days of simming, 2 of my real life friends had me invited into a tribe where they were barons .:SK:.
The Shadow Knights! Personally I liked purple frogs, but whatever, you get what you get, etc etc.
I quickly built up a strong rapport with Mace-2 the founder and duke of .:SK:. It didn't take me long to realize that he was a
nooby 14 year old who couldn't duke his way out of a paper bag.
So I started making suggestions and changes with the aim of securing some property in K75, with the ultimate goal of locking it
down as a base from which we could strike out at other K's.
At this stage, the biggest player on the world was only like 3000 points and I don't think many people had developed nobles yet.
Like under 10 players of something like 20 thousand had that ability.
At that time, SK had under 10 members, 2 of them were RL friends of mine, 1 was semi-active with some experience, the rest were
complete TW noobies.
We were too small to make any sort of noise in W21 or even K75 for that matter, so we needed to expand. We needed active, committed
experienced war fighters, who were ready to sim up and attack together as one military force.
Mace-2 didn't really understand this and was only interested simming barbs, but at the same time, he never really opposed me,
happy for me to make the changes that were necessary in keeping .:SK:. in a strong position.
These changes included, recruiting 5 more of my friends from RL who had some TW experience in W20, recruiting two buddies from
on W8 (Scarlet Ash and Dragonphoenix29) and then we recruited the most active, intelligent players from in and around the area
we wanted to dominate.
These included MrsB, KBS.Skill, Joktai, Angryplayer, Dancefloorcommander, Dragonphoenix (former W8 player) and about 8 others, whose names escape me at this time.
Now we had some semblance of a military force, as literally all these players were willing to sim, attack and noble other players.
My RL friends followed my lead and I did everything I could to make the tribe fun and interesting for the new recruits.
After our first 4 or 5 successful operations on individual players and small 3 - 4 person tribes, confidence was high, our geography was looking good and activity was booming.
This was all important as we had missed the start of the server by about a month and had a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the server, but were starting to build up some infamy in K75 locally, which is always good.
When I first joined .:SK:. was ranked around 300. There was a certain prestige surrounding the top 40 tribes in the first 6 months of W21 which I was reaching for but whilst I had about 1 years experience on W8, I had never lead before.
I laid out the goal that I wanted to take .:SK:. into the top 20.
After he properly recognized my experience on W8 Mace-2 agreed it was better if I co-Duked the tribe with him as I was already pretty much running it from the ground up.
I quickly delegated a few gifted barons, like MrsB, Angryplayer, KBS and dragon and 2 of my RL friends. Shortly after this Mace went completely
inactive and after about 3 weeks, I demoted him from Duke and his account went barbarian.
One of the few things he did do was establish a few, flimsy alliances with some of the local populace of K75.
These alliances were blocking our expansion and I needed to find a way to convert that territory to .:SK:. control.
Between the 6 main tribes we had loose associations with, who now populated K75, there was not much else left to noble there. To the west, occupying K76 there was ARG!,
my associates and former tribemates from W21, lead by llello Yayo, Dulcyacka and Backwards. We had an understanding with ARG!, they stick to their side of the border and we stick to ours. They had just as much work to do, if not more than .:SK:. as they started even later than us and were about 60 ranks below us.
I knew they had some of the best players from W8 and would make an excellent ally after they had had a few months to develop and our informal diplomatic agreement worked well for both parties. A stable, safe, western border for them and an eastern one for us for at least 6 months.
To the south was the Rim of W21, a barren desolate land of tiny player villages that were not worth nobling and barbarians.
No great expansion opportunities there.
To the far east SPAM (rank 4 at the time) had laid their stake to claim and I had come to an agreement with astronomypouya,
that .:SK:. would be left alone for the time being, provided they never crossed the K74 border. I could live with this.
We needed more time to build up and lock down our own K before expanding into others or challenging anything in the top 40 first
anyways.
We couldn't go North into K65, because that was inhabited by SST (sic semper tyranis) currently rank 7, Invictus Warriors ~IW~, ranked about 35 and
PWoT (pointless waste of time) currently rank 50.
PWoT were volatile and somewhat experienced. I knew we could take them on if we were of a similar size, but in our current state,
SK was simply outgunned. I needed to create time and space, so I used diplomacy to create it.
PWoT agreed to an uneasy NAP, tensions were always high, as we frequently recruited each others "future targets".
ARG! upgraded to an Alliance (for the time being) as we already had a good rapport and there was no reason for any local hostilities
in an already harsh and belligerent world.
A2A (a distant neighbour) agreed to an alliance, which was great for us as they were 1 and half continents away and could supply defense should we request it but were not close enough to choke us.
All the other alliances with the smaller tribes outside the top 100 which Mace had put together were dropped and either directly
attacked by .:SK:. or sold out to ARG! to eat.
Once the dust settled from this diplomatic overhaul, .:SK:. held about 80% of K75, had finally entered the top 20, as size at
which we could finally challenge the thorn in our proverbial backside, PWoT.
I never wanted to lead the guys in the long term, I had always wanted to grow up my guys to a size where we were an attractive
merge in option for a larger tribe and together, once merged, weasel our way into the top 10.
To achieve this we had to hold locked down territory and prove that we could war, which we had done, locally in the south east...
more or less.
For a while the tribe A2A's leadership had been toying of the idea of merging .:SK:. into their own family. A2A were about 20%
larger than .:SK:., ranked about 12th and they had an impressive academy tribe, floating around just outside the top 40.
At this stage however, it was just talk. A2A wanted to see what .:SK:. could really do and if we were just lucky noobs, or
serious war fighters.
Similarly to .:SK:. they had only fought small scale local skirmishes and no serious, inter-continental invasions against any
other top 20 tribes.
It was around this same time, nearing the 7th month mark, that PWoT's arrogance and naivety angered the ARG! leadership.
PWoT, over-confident in their greater size and oblivious to ARG!'s proven war experience on earlier servers, boldly nobled into
Pirate waters and this didn't sit well with backwards and llello yayo at all.
A PWoT recruit was rimmed. So in response to this harsh action, PWoT declared war, with a metaphor about "seamen coming into ARG!
villages".
Embarrassed and angered, ARG! hit back... but on the battlefield. PWoT had clearly won the battle of words, but could they convert
into caps?
This was ARG!'s first serious top 20 war on W21.
Whilst they had experienced nothing but crushing victories up until this point, they had never been close enough to a top 20 tribe
to have any sort of war.
And whilst ARG! were barely ranked something like 36th and PWoT 19th, this was soon to change.
ARG!'s attack pattern was brutal and unending and their defense was a cold efficient machine. First, PWoT's diplomat went AWOL,
then their largest player cracked, ARG! showed no signs of slowing down and PWoT was failing to turn up many caps at all.
Bamboozled by ARG!'s efficiency, PWoT was caught off balance and backwards was quick to follow up and grab large amounts of
PWoT's territory in the opening 2 weeks.
Sensing weakness, I assembled my shadow knights and we jumped on PWoT from the west, like a pack of hungry jackals onto a fallen
buffalo. By this stage there was very little resistance, and the great surge of troops which .:SK:. had been saving up for our
old rival PWoT was simply too much to handle.
It gave ARG! a chance to reload and line up for the final kill and then after a further 4 weeks of combat, backwards came out and
declared the war over with a nice picture of a happy looking condom, declaring PWoT's seamen to be dead. ARG! had won.
By this time in the area surrounding, K65, K66, K67, K75 and K76, there were essentially 4 main players, all who held top 20 positions
and between the 4 of them, they controlled the entire south east.
They were, ~IW~ (Invictus Warriors) ranked 11th, who occupied the K65/K66 area, the A2A family (ranked 12th), who had most of
their territory on the eastern fringe of and K76 and K67, ARG!, who pretty much had K76 close to locked down, currently ranked
20th fresh off the back of their victory over PWoT and .:SK:. who had profited greatly from PWoT's demise, ranked 14th.
The demise of PWoT helped ARG! and .:SK:.'s bond grow greater. It showed A2A and .:SK:. wasn't fucking around and that they could
mix it with top 20 tribes and it allowed .:SK:. to grab a great piece of real estate which pretty much turned out norther border
into an impregnable fortress. We were now well equipped.
But I was about to make a horrible leadership call I would soon regret and one which would change the .:SK:. crew forever.
--------------------------------End of VOLUME I: Early Game - Part 1-----------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
Well it's all done and dusted folks. Our world, the best world, W21 is over. The Pirates and Puffins have done it again,
with a big assist from our brothers over at Panda incorporated, and under the gentle, persistence guidance of backwards, W21 has finally ended.
I compiled these notes in the closing days of W21 on the advice of Mars (computergui) and I think now is the time to share them.
As recommended by my esteemed colleague and mentor Mars, I will do my best to tell the story of W21 from start to finish.
But I don't want this to come across as a final telling of how events went, please take this dialogue as an open invitation to supply with information
for the holes and gaps I will no doubt be unable to avoid. The information from behind enemy lines, from the other side of the world,
from another era of W21.
Let us, my friends, the survivors of W21, tell this tale together.
This story will be entirely from my perspective and based on the journey I took through this world and what happened to me and my people along the way.
Really for me, W21 began on W8 a year before W21 opened.
W8 was where I learned about war, defending, attacking and especially, working as part of unit or team.
All the basics a solider needs to know, I initially learned from merrick2 and her council under a tribe called Knights of Sauron -KS-.
After warring the second largest and arguably most devious tribe on the server CLOROX to a standstill for 4 months, we merged in to
The Chosen Samurai Pizza Cats (TCSPC) in order to organize a force large enough to be able to overcome CLOROX.
It was in this time, that I was introduced to Mars, the leader and head diplomat of TCSPC and his in game daughter Dulcycka.
Just existing in a tribe under these two taught me countless leadership strategies, the best ways to manipulate in game tribal diplomacy, how to get
the most out of your tribes continents and troops, but most of all, how to best motivate your tribes members and keep them guided towards the tribes goals.
Ironically, after the merges were settled and the war began, TCSPC began to suffer from spate of inactivity and in the end, the leader of CLOROX,
offered a deal, merge with CLOROX or face multiple bans to TCSPC's largest account's.
Whilst I am sure it aged Mars a year in 1 day, he begrudgingly accepted the merge in order to give his players who wanted to continue, a fighting chance
at W8.
It was around this stage, after about 10 months on W8 that I decided to seek greener pastures and try my own hand at leading, by utilizing the skills
I had learned from Dulcy and Mars on the newest server at the time, W21.
I had heard whispers of a W8 pre-made tribe forming on W21 anyways, so I thought, what the hell? Dumped my W8 account on Merrick (sorry merrick), grabbed
a few of my W8 homies Scarlet Ash and Jamie (currently playing d503) and set off to see what a world was like from the beginning.
My first day on W21 was a bit of a shock.
I had expected to start off straight up in the core, but it turned out my timing was off and I was 2 weeks late to the party.
4 large core tribes had already established a certain dominance.
From early game forward the tier 1 front running tribes were:
In the south west of the core there was [TNK] (I don't even know what that stood for) but Jamie was recruited by them and fed me a fair bit of inside
info as he and I are good friends in real life.
TNK was currently ranked 1st. They appeared to be an aggressive war tribe and had kicked off to a great start, with a large, juicy, idiotic family tribe
for them to feed off easily.
This provided a multitude of early, hostile player village conquers and their reputation and seemingly high aggression earn't them the number 1 spot as top dog early on.
They after their initial success in the first 2 months of W21, their activity waned, and SRWS was quick to recruit what large, powerful and active players that TNK held.
Once these guys left for more active and more experienced leadership in SRWS, TNK fell apart and eventually disbanded.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the core we saw the emergence of Muffin. A premade tribe headed by Bwah who had been tried and tested on previous worlds
and carried a fierce reputation with them to W21.
I will invite Bwah himself at this point, to fill us in on the origins of Muffin and who was on their original roster. But needless to say, they were quick
to lock down their quarter of the core and set themselves up in a commanding position for early game.
To the North West, Star Wars emerged as the power of that quadrant.
Whilst they shared a large border with [TNK], diplomacy was stable and they were able to look at all their other borders, which helped them establish
some seriously tight nit geography, also a pre-made, with highly skilled, dedicated members, they dominated 3 or 4 neighboring tribes in the first few months
and ended up merging the best from -LS- and BBRO, two of their neighbors.
This put them in direct competition with Muffin for the number 2 position.
To the east, Muffin dominated very early on.
Formed by Floopy Pancake (my all time personal favorite W21 player and forum poster), later co-duked by Royalist with Pervis and redman0777 along for the ride. Later when Pervis stepped down, Bwah stepped up to assist Floopy and Royalist with the running's of the tribe.
This experienced crew immediately established what they stood for and how they were going to lay it down.
I feel that Muffin, early on, aside from maybe P.O.E. were really the most successful in ultra early game. They had all the right moves.
Just to the south a little lay P.O.E. Process of Elimination, being run by gans43, I know less about them, as my dealings were virtually none with these guys and many of them left by the time ARG! came to power in W21, but again from the very first day, P.O.E established themselves as a dominant power encountered nothing but success until they joined with Muffin to create the powerhouse that defined how W21 ended, Puffin!
These were the tier 1 powers, who had surfaced as having the most success in their initial wars and established a degree of
dominance that the rest of W21 was yet to achieve.
But a second tier existed, not too far off the top 4, which consisted of tribes who all held experienced war fighters and
had strong leaders, but had yet to come up against other strong top 20 ranked tribes.
These tribes were 24/7:
who was hovering just outside the top 4, but had quickly locked down their home continent in the north.
Edgey's iP:
which shared a huge 1 continent border with 24/7 and showed a lot of promise and entertaining world forum value.
Sic Semper Tyrannis (SST):
Lead by Deskin, to the south of P.O.E. who had the worlds largest player and a personal ally of mine at the time, Airbobourne, in their ranks, who boasted the
largest player title and the title of "The Female Kraaken of W21" for a few months, due to her odd selfish remarks and rageful
gameplay style.
SEXY!:
Busamad's people, which consisted of a small elitest, pre-made band of W10 players. They did extremely well from the first
day forward, but as I understand it, after a month or two, activity started to wane.
SPAM/UE/CRayn.:
At the height of their power, CRayn. (back then SPAM), reached the top 4. They occupied and had essentially locked down 3
continents, 54, 64 and 74, lead by the wise and venerable astronomypouya, backed by the experienced karmaeffect and
with their champion war fighter Pazliver who was always amongst the top 10 players, they ended up holding 1 quarter
of the core of W21 and we felt the ripples of the effect they had on W21 years after they disbanded.
The 47 Ron family:
Were a vast and expansive family. W21's answer to mass recruiting. When at their largest I believe they boasted 6 individual
tribes, most of which were completely full.
They had warred here and there, never against a top 10 opponent, taking the majority of their holdings through recruitment and
child tribes.
Never the less, they were a top 10 side through a tumultuous and chaotic time in W21, they had huge bulk, clever leadership
which was able to play the diplomatic game well enough to keep them out of danger, and excellent world forum representation
in the form of GOK (God of Kings) and they definitely added a unique flavor to W21.
Other heavy hitters around this time were SPAWN, Disney and the WEB family.
Outside these heavy hitters were the tier 3 tribes.
Tribes that were considered to be rim tribes at the time.
Late starters who were on the outside of the world and had yet to prove themselves in any major wars, but were definitely a part
of early game and would later play an integral role to the end of W21.
ARG!:
The W8 premade, with some of the finest long term players from W8. Many of them were enemies on W8, but under Llello Yayo,
backwards and Dulcy's leadership, all came together to form a fine, efficient, ruthless war machine.
Located in the south east of K75 and K76, they were able to avoid more skilled and difficult opponents in their early months, and
gorge themselves on other rim noobs, which went a long way to catching up with the current super powers of W21.
They were in it for the long term and fully committed to winning this world, with a plan and outline that would take them there.
Dr NO.:
At the time lead by MattyJ, with propaganda specialists such as Tiene, LAT and Eleandar, they were a premade from W19, with a
similar make up to ARG! and even though they were locate don the opposite side of the globe up in K32 and K33, a mutual respect
was quickly established between the Pirates and Revolutionists which spanned the majority of the server life time.
Dr NO, were in a similar position to ARG! and able to clean up on less experienced and less organized neighbors, many of who
were actually larger than Dr NO when their wars began and this afforded Dr NO a nice widely known kudos for tearing down large
tribes.
HP:
Another small tribe, originally with about 6 members, if my memory serves, almost smack bang in the core of W21 between the top of
K65 and K64, they were not just able to survive in such a dangerous, unstable and volatile environment, but they were able to thrive.
Generally avoiding any top 10 tribes, they fed off whatever else they could find and were able to hold a top 20 position from the
first month of the server, right through til their end almost 10 months later.
A2A Family:
A union of A2A (Ashes to Ashes) and D2D (dust to dust) the academy tribe. I spent about 1 - 2 months in A2A as a result of a rushed
and botched merger between my tribe .:SK:. and A2A.
They were a strictly run rim tribe with a line of holdings that co-occupied Continents K75, K76, K66, K67, K77 and K68.
Their first major top 20 war came against ~IW~, largely fought in K65 and K66, where my people of .:SK:. converted the majority of
the caps.
This combined with their merger, took A2A into a top 10 rank.
KKND:
Lead by the infamous and perhaps slightly unstable, Zytech, was a tribe which showed potential initially as the recruited from the
ashes and dust the defeated A2A/D2D family. Zytech was aggressive, experienced and everything you would want in a player, but
had yet to prove himself as a leader.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From this point forward, any other tribes that rose into the top 20 were late starters or late bloomers and never really rose to
properly challenge any of the tier 1 or tier 2 tribes of W21. I don't see it as that they didn't have strong leaders, or
decisive strategies, they simply lacked the territory and power to make any form of bid for world domination seriously.
3 or 4 of them did have an impact on how the world ended up, but they were never going to be front runners.
These are the tier 3 tribes.
~IMP~ Family:
What can I say, stubborn till the end. PnP's longest running, largest foe. Although all of the blows that were traded between IMP
and PnP did not come until mid-late game, when PnP's domination was already well established, they did not fold like most of the
early game "pro" tribes.
They were active, committed and through mass recruiting and nobling mass amounts of barbarians in W21's divided deep west, they
were able to accumulate a surprisingly large amount of territory whilst PnP was busy hunting down and finishing off it's old world
foe's.
BCB:
Rose up in the north in Mid-game. They were able to survive through clever diplomacy, quickly recognizing how dangerous Puffin were
and played to Puffin's requests in order to move themselves down the menu and eventually avoid full frontal conflict altogether.
With Puffin pacified, they were able to focus on smaller, rim tribes which were easy pickings for an organized, active and well
lead war tribe.
Over the span of about 1 year they were able to grow into and dominate about 5 Northern continents centered around K26/K17.
Their leader fireborne, played his hand as best he could to give BCB a commanding position in late game and avoid devastation
in early game when the Bouncy Castle Brigade were in an embryonic state.
=LT=:
The looney toons.
A small rostered tribe made of up of medium strength players who had mostly survived early game. Coming together from 47Ron,
A2A/D2D, The GA/TA and KKND, many of them were guys who were simply frustrated with silly family tribes and wanted to expand
without restriction, they struck out against the dead weight around them and at the height of their power, they controlled 5
far eastern, locked down continents and created an environment for themselves where they were the kings and their neighbors
either feared or respected them.
Lead by Bluemidgets and Shtaal, they later merged with BCB (their long term ally) when their leadership struggled with inactivity,
to create Panda!, a force that went all the way to finish beside PnP as the number #2 tribe.
IT!:
The counter part to IMP, an ally on equal terms that refused to merge in or be recognized as part of the family.
They had a much better concept of how TW should be played than IMP and together IMP and IT! controlled the entire western seaboard
of W21 as we went into end game.
They were simply lucky to avoid PnP's wrath as they were seperated from PnP by both Dr NO and IMP and a few other small tribes
that don't really matter.
Of course once NOw merged into PnP towards the end, IT! finally felt the heat and their long term, venerable and respected leader
Jen, went inactive.
Their territory quickly fell and if W21 had have continued on for a few more months, IT! would have been run off the face of server.
Positives are that they ended up outlasting IMP.
The GA/TA:
The Geometric alliance, made up of -ASA-, -SAS- AND -AAS- (angle angle side).
I often joked about their fourth tribe -ASS- which didn't exist.
Spacemanspiff and hl2dmlord were both horrible leaders and made some horrible choices. They will tell you that their horrible
choices were to prevent their tribe from attacking ARG! when ARG! first started up their initial campaigns against the GA.
I will tell you that their truly horrible choices came much earlier on when they harbored refugee's from many of the tribes
ARG! destroyed, ran around the south east of W21 threatening all the smaller tribes that they were ARG!'s academy and worst of all,
openly expanded in territory that ARG! had established as it's own.
However they were both brilliant players defensively but from that point forward, the moment they aligned themselves against ARG!,
their tribe was continually dominated, territory taken, until they fell apart in the final days of W21.
**********************************************VOLUME I: Early Game - Part1***********************************************
My time on W21 begins in K75, after the first 3 weeks of hardcore simming and farming had already taken place, sooo many pre-made tribes had already
been established, the world forums were vibrant and bursting with activity, wars were being declared (and undeclared but still
occurring) flame was being handed out on every street corner and tribal leaders were introducing their tribes, what they stood for,
where they'd come from and how they were going to play.
The world was full of hopefuls who had either encountered success or failure on some of the first worlds that tw.net had seen
and wanted to try their luck at the newest server out.
It was an amazing time of industry and flourishment to be a part of W21...
By pot luck, I chose to start off in the south east, (K75 at that time being the outer rim as the world was in its infancy)
and K75 was where a few of my W8 friends had started and the pre-made tribe ARG! had started on the K75/K76 border.
The first thing I did was to create a tribe for myself which I called -PF- (The Purple Frogs) for some unknown reason.
I was preparing for the possibility that I wouldn't be able to join any power tribe straight up and need to form my own fortune,
so naturally I needed a snazzy name for a tribe to entice people to follow me.
Fortunately, after about 5 days of simming, 2 of my real life friends had me invited into a tribe where they were barons .:SK:.
The Shadow Knights! Personally I liked purple frogs, but whatever, you get what you get, etc etc.
I quickly built up a strong rapport with Mace-2 the founder and duke of .:SK:. It didn't take me long to realize that he was a
nooby 14 year old who couldn't duke his way out of a paper bag.
So I started making suggestions and changes with the aim of securing some property in K75, with the ultimate goal of locking it
down as a base from which we could strike out at other K's.
At this stage, the biggest player on the world was only like 3000 points and I don't think many people had developed nobles yet.
Like under 10 players of something like 20 thousand had that ability.
At that time, SK had under 10 members, 2 of them were RL friends of mine, 1 was semi-active with some experience, the rest were
complete TW noobies.
We were too small to make any sort of noise in W21 or even K75 for that matter, so we needed to expand. We needed active, committed
experienced war fighters, who were ready to sim up and attack together as one military force.
Mace-2 didn't really understand this and was only interested simming barbs, but at the same time, he never really opposed me,
happy for me to make the changes that were necessary in keeping .:SK:. in a strong position.
These changes included, recruiting 5 more of my friends from RL who had some TW experience in W20, recruiting two buddies from
on W8 (Scarlet Ash and Dragonphoenix29) and then we recruited the most active, intelligent players from in and around the area
we wanted to dominate.
These included MrsB, KBS.Skill, Joktai, Angryplayer, Dancefloorcommander, Dragonphoenix (former W8 player) and about 8 others, whose names escape me at this time.
Now we had some semblance of a military force, as literally all these players were willing to sim, attack and noble other players.
My RL friends followed my lead and I did everything I could to make the tribe fun and interesting for the new recruits.
After our first 4 or 5 successful operations on individual players and small 3 - 4 person tribes, confidence was high, our geography was looking good and activity was booming.
This was all important as we had missed the start of the server by about a month and had a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the server, but were starting to build up some infamy in K75 locally, which is always good.
When I first joined .:SK:. was ranked around 300. There was a certain prestige surrounding the top 40 tribes in the first 6 months of W21 which I was reaching for but whilst I had about 1 years experience on W8, I had never lead before.
I laid out the goal that I wanted to take .:SK:. into the top 20.
After he properly recognized my experience on W8 Mace-2 agreed it was better if I co-Duked the tribe with him as I was already pretty much running it from the ground up.
I quickly delegated a few gifted barons, like MrsB, Angryplayer, KBS and dragon and 2 of my RL friends. Shortly after this Mace went completely
inactive and after about 3 weeks, I demoted him from Duke and his account went barbarian.
One of the few things he did do was establish a few, flimsy alliances with some of the local populace of K75.
These alliances were blocking our expansion and I needed to find a way to convert that territory to .:SK:. control.
Between the 6 main tribes we had loose associations with, who now populated K75, there was not much else left to noble there. To the west, occupying K76 there was ARG!,
my associates and former tribemates from W21, lead by llello Yayo, Dulcyacka and Backwards. We had an understanding with ARG!, they stick to their side of the border and we stick to ours. They had just as much work to do, if not more than .:SK:. as they started even later than us and were about 60 ranks below us.
I knew they had some of the best players from W8 and would make an excellent ally after they had had a few months to develop and our informal diplomatic agreement worked well for both parties. A stable, safe, western border for them and an eastern one for us for at least 6 months.
To the south was the Rim of W21, a barren desolate land of tiny player villages that were not worth nobling and barbarians.
No great expansion opportunities there.
To the far east SPAM (rank 4 at the time) had laid their stake to claim and I had come to an agreement with astronomypouya,
that .:SK:. would be left alone for the time being, provided they never crossed the K74 border. I could live with this.
We needed more time to build up and lock down our own K before expanding into others or challenging anything in the top 40 first
anyways.
We couldn't go North into K65, because that was inhabited by SST (sic semper tyranis) currently rank 7, Invictus Warriors ~IW~, ranked about 35 and
PWoT (pointless waste of time) currently rank 50.
PWoT were volatile and somewhat experienced. I knew we could take them on if we were of a similar size, but in our current state,
SK was simply outgunned. I needed to create time and space, so I used diplomacy to create it.
PWoT agreed to an uneasy NAP, tensions were always high, as we frequently recruited each others "future targets".
ARG! upgraded to an Alliance (for the time being) as we already had a good rapport and there was no reason for any local hostilities
in an already harsh and belligerent world.
A2A (a distant neighbour) agreed to an alliance, which was great for us as they were 1 and half continents away and could supply defense should we request it but were not close enough to choke us.
All the other alliances with the smaller tribes outside the top 100 which Mace had put together were dropped and either directly
attacked by .:SK:. or sold out to ARG! to eat.
Once the dust settled from this diplomatic overhaul, .:SK:. held about 80% of K75, had finally entered the top 20, as size at
which we could finally challenge the thorn in our proverbial backside, PWoT.
I never wanted to lead the guys in the long term, I had always wanted to grow up my guys to a size where we were an attractive
merge in option for a larger tribe and together, once merged, weasel our way into the top 10.
To achieve this we had to hold locked down territory and prove that we could war, which we had done, locally in the south east...
more or less.
For a while the tribe A2A's leadership had been toying of the idea of merging .:SK:. into their own family. A2A were about 20%
larger than .:SK:., ranked about 12th and they had an impressive academy tribe, floating around just outside the top 40.
At this stage however, it was just talk. A2A wanted to see what .:SK:. could really do and if we were just lucky noobs, or
serious war fighters.
Similarly to .:SK:. they had only fought small scale local skirmishes and no serious, inter-continental invasions against any
other top 20 tribes.
It was around this same time, nearing the 7th month mark, that PWoT's arrogance and naivety angered the ARG! leadership.
PWoT, over-confident in their greater size and oblivious to ARG!'s proven war experience on earlier servers, boldly nobled into
Pirate waters and this didn't sit well with backwards and llello yayo at all.
A PWoT recruit was rimmed. So in response to this harsh action, PWoT declared war, with a metaphor about "seamen coming into ARG!
villages".
Embarrassed and angered, ARG! hit back... but on the battlefield. PWoT had clearly won the battle of words, but could they convert
into caps?
This was ARG!'s first serious top 20 war on W21.
Whilst they had experienced nothing but crushing victories up until this point, they had never been close enough to a top 20 tribe
to have any sort of war.
And whilst ARG! were barely ranked something like 36th and PWoT 19th, this was soon to change.
ARG!'s attack pattern was brutal and unending and their defense was a cold efficient machine. First, PWoT's diplomat went AWOL,
then their largest player cracked, ARG! showed no signs of slowing down and PWoT was failing to turn up many caps at all.
Bamboozled by ARG!'s efficiency, PWoT was caught off balance and backwards was quick to follow up and grab large amounts of
PWoT's territory in the opening 2 weeks.
Sensing weakness, I assembled my shadow knights and we jumped on PWoT from the west, like a pack of hungry jackals onto a fallen
buffalo. By this stage there was very little resistance, and the great surge of troops which .:SK:. had been saving up for our
old rival PWoT was simply too much to handle.
It gave ARG! a chance to reload and line up for the final kill and then after a further 4 weeks of combat, backwards came out and
declared the war over with a nice picture of a happy looking condom, declaring PWoT's seamen to be dead. ARG! had won.
By this time in the area surrounding, K65, K66, K67, K75 and K76, there were essentially 4 main players, all who held top 20 positions
and between the 4 of them, they controlled the entire south east.
They were, ~IW~ (Invictus Warriors) ranked 11th, who occupied the K65/K66 area, the A2A family (ranked 12th), who had most of
their territory on the eastern fringe of and K76 and K67, ARG!, who pretty much had K76 close to locked down, currently ranked
20th fresh off the back of their victory over PWoT and .:SK:. who had profited greatly from PWoT's demise, ranked 14th.
The demise of PWoT helped ARG! and .:SK:.'s bond grow greater. It showed A2A and .:SK:. wasn't fucking around and that they could
mix it with top 20 tribes and it allowed .:SK:. to grab a great piece of real estate which pretty much turned out norther border
into an impregnable fortress. We were now well equipped.
But I was about to make a horrible leadership call I would soon regret and one which would change the .:SK:. crew forever.
--------------------------------End of VOLUME I: Early Game - Part 1-----------------------------------------------------------
