Cayl

An old Fury bigshot.

Interview

(10th February 2004 by Zhil)

I remember pretty well how I started. Before Planetarion, I played on a mud, and was the top Immortal there but that was getting old, one of my friends on there named Pop Krispey popped in and said "You want to join my alliance?" What the hell are you talking about Pop? "Oh didn't I tell you about Planetarion? Go try this out..." That was round 1.

I ended up in 7:1 with Ghengis as my GC. I was looking for a game that I could spend about 10-20 minutes on two or three times a day. I was -intending- to spend more time on class and get more hours at work. Planetarion initially seemed to fit the bill, ticks at that time took anywhere from 1-8 hours, depending on the load so things moved real slow. There were about 4 active people in our galaxy. I decided I wanted to be good at the game, so I read the galaxy board, decided that the thing to do was join C7A and get on IRC. I also set my sites on the MoD spot, the only minister at the time but it was a while before I got it.

Most of C7A's activity happened on the web boards, people would login and cry for help, with avg of 6 hours between ticks, that actually worked for a while and everything was brand new, the smart people were already on IRC but the masses of peons thought the boards were good enough

I kept seeing these posts from "Egoist" and I thought, man this guy is a total !#$%, he was mean and condescending and heartless most of the time in his posts. Eventually I met him on IRC, Ghengis held him in high regard, he went by the name Synthetic_Sid there, and my opinion softened a little.

He earned the right to be a jackass by being the GC of the largest galaxy in our cluster and by being right. There was also this Obi guy. We didn't talk too much, do I didn't have an opinion on him. Not too long in Sid and Ghengis get together and decide, this C7A crap is for the birds.

Obi-Wan. Not sure if he was Tuba or not, or whether Tuba existed back then

Tuba didn't exist yet, he was just c7a as far as I knew. Ghengis and Sid get together and say, screw this sending defence out to the huddled masses and getting squat in return. Ghengis shows up and says "We're dissolving c7a and going to use them as our personal roid farms till the end of the round, you in?" Sure thing Ghengis, you're the GC, (Farming didn't have a negative connotation yet) So we gave them a couple days warning and all the people who actually showed up and were cool we let in, we didn't even have a name yet. I mentioned Obi, I should say that this is where his long hatred of Fury began. I guess Sid or Ghengis denied him then. Just before we dissolved c7a, we had an alliance with Nodrog's alliance (T6e was it? Maybe the cluster 8 alliance) Well alliance is too strong a term, we had an agreement with them. They came to Obi and said, this guy in 7:1 attacked us, we want a retal, he said "Sure ok guys" without verifying any facts at all, they roided Ghengis and my MoD, who was inactive and hadn't attacked on his own in weeks, he just kind of helped ghengis or me whenever we needed it, so the claim was utter ****. Ghengis was -pissed- and blamed Obi, so that's why he didn't get into c7r.

Once c7r was established I guess you did systematic roidings of the other galaxies in your cluster

(Correction: they roided Ghengis and my MoD, should be the roided the MoD of Ghengis and my galaxy, Tarun) Yes, including Obi now and again. He got defence from friends in Concordium as I recall but being in cluster we always snuck a few roids away.

So, with c7r established what happened after with Concordium?

Well Concordium was pretty much -the- alliance to be in. They had the tools and enough super active people to manage the alliance, multi'ing rules were a lot more relaxed, babysitting was allowed. All the opposition were basically dumb and just threw ships at them in anticipation of the round ending, well then the round didn't end and it just kept going, so that it was supposed to be done 2 weeks after I joined, and I ended up being in the top 200 personally before it really did but with most of the universe cleared of ships, they happily raided the remnants of their enemies, sp0rk and Anti Conc come to mind but they always had their eye on 7:1 and :21 and a few others because we had all the roids of our cluster concentrated on a few planets, ultimately they made their move. Sid managed to shuffle a lot of roids out before they got there by having friends attack, there were a lot of tricks that worked r1 that never did later, it mostly just ticked him off. The second most powerful alliance was Rinoa's Eclipse.

The last couple days, Sid put together a big attack on one of Conc's galaxies. I seem to remember this being on Jonka, but I could be mistaken. Nodrog got wind of this through back channels and sent all his ships to attack too but what Sid had in mind was just a feint, our ships went out a few hours, came back and attacked defenders so Nodrog called us cowards, but we were one of the only alliances to feast on Conc roids that round.

It worked then?

Yeah, for everyone but Nodrog. Conc ended up getting some back from us, the end of the round had a lot of controversy, the top 3 were really close. One of the galaxies was 7:21, the other two were Rinoa Eclipse tagged. When we did that big attack on conc, those two galaxies asked RE leaders for permission to defend and were told not to get involved which was kind of different from what they'd expected because RE got big by not ticking Conc off, defending now and again, and basically staying out of the way.

Yeah, I heard something about 7:21 winning on the stated time the round was supposed to end.

So these top galaxies were friends with Conc, when they were told they couldn't defend, they split off. I found out when I woke up, checked top 10 and saw [Ooooooomph] instead of [RE] on several galaxies so it was that Tuba was founded on the principle of defending concordium. So now the top 3 were 2 Tuba and a c7r. 7:21 had all their strategy and score set to come out at the time the creators stated the game would end at, people were attacking but wouldn't get there till just after. At the time the creators advertised the game would be over, 7:21 was on top, there was some problem, maybe a missed tick or something so the creators after the fact said, ok ok we'll end it at this other time, a few hours later at that time 7:21 was second and one of the Tuba galaxies was on top and THEN they ACTUALLY took the snapshot AFTER the SECOND set time when the second Tuba galaxy was on top and 7:21 was third. So in my opinion all three galaxies have a valid claim to the top spot. What was important to us at the time was that conc didn't win, of the top 3 galaxies they had none and only 2 of the top 3 players were conc even though as a whole they were undoubtedly dominant the whole round.

After r1 finished, when and how did c7r decide to become Fury for r2?

Well it was decided that we had all the infrastructure to be a full alliance instead of just breaking up into new cluster alliances. We were looking for a good name, the execs like The Furies, this idea of mythological figures of vengeance. We batted this and other ideas around for a while, my RL friend Raeven came in and said "Why plural, why not just "The Fury" " That seemed to go over well with everyone so that's what we went with. Raeven ended up in the top 5 that round as I recall, incidentally. The round of Thieves, the round of alliance tags, the round of galaxies after 32 being filled in sequentially. We recruited just our friends for Fury, people in c7r and people they knew were welcome so we were much larger than we had been and required more formal structure than we'd had before. c7r was just a collection of people who all had opinions and all shared them and were smart enough to realize the correct decision to make when we heard Sid explain it, no formal leaders. Even in r2, Sid wasn't a total leader. He could have been, we would have all still followed him but he set it up as a council of equals, 3 execs.

As far as I'm aware, Sid didn't officially become Chief Exec till r3

Since galaxies after 32 were filled in sequentially instead of randomly, most of us waited to sign up for a specific time. We waited until 34 was full and we made our move and almost all of us got into 35 at the same time, UPC (I think), Joker's alliance anyway, was doing the same thing and ended up in 35 with us. They had been anti conc the previous round, with Joker being the individual in the top 3 who wasn't Conc so we got on well, and made it more formal.

I don't really recall what happened to them, they seemed to kind of fade away into Fury as the round progressed.

What position did you hold in Fury at the time?

I was GC of my galaxy and as a c7r, I kind of had some status, but nothing formal to start.

Hm, I recall you having ops in #fury

This was where I learned that power is there for those who take it, yes, not day 1 though, well maybe because I ws c7r and had some status but no title. But as things progressed, when something needed doing, I arranged it, when a job needed done, I did it. Since I was basically acting like an officer, I quickly rose to that position.

So you were very much a part of round 2 Fury?

Yeah that was one of my more active rounds for sure. Fury wasn't really taken seriously at first because there were individual tags you could set your alliance to and we didn't have a lot of them and other people did. We started off at like 9th on their list but our very defensible position and the fact that r2 we had a lot of quality players we rose quickly as others fell out of the ranks and were eaten. Tuba had like thousands of people tagged it also marked the first written agreement between Fury and an alliance, which was Tuba complete with retal policy and all. Blame Sid for that hated concept.

Did you deal with any of the diplomacy that resulted in what happened for that round? Such as the deal with IPC/SK etc for Fury to take on TE whilst they took on WaC

A bit, but there was one decision that shaped how PA for all subsequent rounds was played and while the first TE war was important at the time, really what I remember about that round was sitting in a room with Sid and Ghengis and maybe a very few other trusted Fury advisers. It was time to take down Tuba, they had grown huge, because they had agreements with WaC and Fury and everyone else thought their size was too massive an advantage to take on. We realized that their size made them totally unmanageable, VtS had just come onto the scene, at this point we could either ally with them for Tuba or we could maintain an agreement with WaC to divide up Tuba before we went at it with them. VtS seemed to have close ties to WaC, and we were worried that they might betray us to them before it was all over, in the end Sid decided we should go with VtS and most of us agreed. That decision cemented the place of Fury and VtS as basically THE top alliances for that round, and all of round 3. Tuba, of course scattered to the winds, once the huddled masses realized that their name wasn't providing any protection, they shed their tags.

So when did your activity begin to wane for the game, and for Fury?

Llater that round some of the quality Tuba pulled things back together, round 3 for all involved I think. STEL was supposed to be this big super alliance that would be a worthy competitor for Fury and VtS but they didn't see it that way and basically looked like a deer caught in the headlights when we came and carved them up, that round also dragged on and on, everyone wanted it to just end so we could start over, but it didn't. Neither Fury or VtS wanted to break the alliance this round, leaving them split for the subsequent rounds. Sid kind of favoured the cold war attitude that eventually took over that round because he thought we could come out ahead on retals and such if everyone played by the rules but ultimately by this point the game had lost its shiney newness for everyone, and stagnation and boredom set in.

Then Wolfpack happened and that brought things to r4, where we know Fury lost

Yeah at the end that shook things up a bit.

In your opinion, why do you think VeX won that round?

Heh short answer, because Fury wanted them to, instead of NoS but we were put in a position to have to choose the winner instead of being the winner because the whole game, and Fury suffered a loss of quality and activity. To function as a top level alliance we had to have uber security, which meant that the social fun of previous round was systematically stripped to prevent leaks. This security was very labour intensive on the part of officers and execs and that burnt them out quickly. Sid had RL problems to attend to, so wasn't active very much.

Which left mainly you and Ghengis

Pretty much, Ghengis wanted out, but both of us felt too tied to our duty to the people who trusted us in Fury to do what we really wanted to do. Also Sid being basically a total dictator worked when he was around, worked really well, its an amazingly efficient form of government but when he wasn't nobody could take the initiative on major things, so maybe I or Ghengis would have made an incorrect decision here or there but I think it would have been better than not making any decision at all which happened a few times but I really have to credit the members who were still there by that point, we'd separated the wheat from the chaff, the people we could trust and who were active were still around, we could still compete in the round.

Nos and VeX were starting to tear each other up a bit, I knew at this point a display of leadership was necessary to let the members know that they still mattered, we were still Fury by god, and maybe we wouldn't win, but we wouldn't lay over and die like WaC and what I said basically just game out fully formed,with a little research on the details.

And Fury survived, to go on to win round 5 quite convincingly alongside Legion. But what did you do after r4?

Well you may recall back in round 1, how I wanted to spend some time on class, I'd always known I didn't want to be Sid or have his job with Fury. Round 4 burnt me out a bit, that and the previous rounds had a negative impact on my life, classes, girlfriend and such. My whole time with Fury I had a girlfriend, a full class load and a job, you can't short the gf her time, and you get fired from your job if you slack too much, in fact they cracked down on on-line game playing there at various points so a lot of my Fury time came from school.

Would you agree that after r4, Fury changed?

Yeah the difference between a young cocky undefeated Fury and a strong seasoned fighter Fury, it's good to have your nose bloodied a bit as long as you spring back from it. There were others to step up and carry forward, such as Meth, me and Germania to name very a few

Although you didn't entirely agree to my position for Wrath in r5

You were always quick to shoot your mouth off. Execs in Fury had always been more diplomatic up to then but it seemed to work out.

For the end of Fury, did it go as you had hoped?

At various times, I'd hoped to go out on top, never go out at all, and for it to just fade away without an embarrassing end. Ultimately keeping Fury around as long as an original r1 member around was a good choice to keep the original spirit of the alliance alive.

Some people feel that Fury should have ended r7 rather than r8 - mainly due to r8 not being a winning round.

Going out on top is better than going out not on top but you never knew until you try.

Looking back on it all, if you could change one thing - what would it have been?

Well ultimately, I made lots of little mistakes, maybe I could correct one and not have an enemy here or there but looking at the big picture, I think we made the best big decisions we could at the time. No one incident pops out that could have changed the course of Fury or PA for the better.

Presuming you keep up on things nowadays, especially Alliance Discussion boards, you would notice that Eclipse is being called a new Fury. Do you share that opinion?

That is an incorrect assumption, I have no idea about anything current in PA.

Do you ever intend to return to PA, with r10 (the new PA) in mind?

At the moment, I don't think I could ever return to a lifestyle that would allow me to be successful in PA, if the rules are anything like what they were (ie no babysitting) I keep in touch with my old galaxy, and really that's what made PA and Fury special, the community, and working as a team with a group of other dedicated individuals, the game itself was actually somewhat simple, it was the fact that a diverse group of people spontaneously organized themselves that made it interesting.

Do you have any regrets?

I'm sure I did as I went along, or just after I left but the farther away in time I get from the game, the less I sweat the little stuff, mostly it was a good challenge, and over the many months I spent playing it, I learned a lot of things from a lot of people. No real specific incidents come to mind.

That was the story.....