ROCK

Full Name: ROCK Public IRC Channel: #rock Alliance motto: Ever seen a ROCK hit your planet Website: rock-alliance.com

The Origins of ROCK

The origin of ROCK dates back to the end of round 2. It began in a partnership known as Stryke, which was a rapid reaction force working via email and ICQ.

During Furgion's total dominance of Round 3. Stryke's member base of 50 semi-active players did their very best to repel wave after wave of attacks. A tough decision was made to disband the alliance after both partners decided to go their separate ways. One partner made a sensible decision to join a "large" alliance in which he still prospers to this day.

In Round 4 TGO (founder of Stryke and p19) made the decision to launch a parallel alliance called [p19]. Planets in the same parallel had a distinct travel time advantage when travelling to each other, much like the cluster advantage later on. The original goal of this alliance was to be a small, secretive, tight-nit and covert collection of hard-core players specialising in infiltration and prevention, rather than outright defence. Unfortunately, harsh rivalry from x19th and pax19 made this largely ineffective and it became apparent that the only way forward was to open up the floodgates of random recruitment. It was at this point that the TGO began to seek officers who might aid him in this mammoth task. HC's were appointed: Druid, Tarik and The Infiltrator. A public structure was formed, and [p19] began to grow. Shortly afterwards [p19] was blessed with the timely and unexpected arrival of an enthusiastic and charismatic young officer named Defgha, whose hardworking and friendly manner helped to swell [p19]'s member base to over 100. At this point, many of ROCK's present officers and veterans began to arrive, setting off a craze of nick changes to adopt the T#O style (in the style of the great TGO, great nicks came about such as TFO, TDO, etc.), which created much confusion but helped to add unity and direction to an arguably Newbie alliance that so desperately needed such things.

As the end of round 4 approached, [p19]'s position versus the other two main parallel alliances improved greatly. This eventually led them to overtake pax19, and to finish the round just 20 places behind the almighty x19th. It was around this time that [p19] were lucky to acquire Judder (x19th's "Angel") and Terra (also an x19th player), who both quickly shot up the ranks showing maturity and ability to command and motivate. During these last few weeks, it was decided that the spirit of [p19] was something which nobody wanted to lose and the floodgates were once again thrown open, but this time as 'ROCK'. The motive behind naming the alliance ROCK has been forgotten - a few theories include the rock-like solidarity of the alliance's membership, the alliance's ability to "rock" the universe, or even the alliance Commander's taste in music. The most likely however, is that the name delves deeply into the very roots of Planetarion - after all, isn't that what this game is about - just a load of mineral enriched rocks? Since then, ROCK's mammoth leap into round 5 has provided success after success with it's member base swelling to over 300 actives including some very proficient officers. This elevated ROCK, by then already a well-known and respected alliance, up to an average of 4th in the PA tagged rankings, and approximately 13th overall.

ROCK Junior

At the very pinnacle of its greatness, with ROCK's new re-vamped image and style for round 6 coupled with an enhanced external affairs team, ROCK looked set to share in domination of the round and be considered one of PA's most improved alliances. Despite this success, ROCK did not rest on its laurels and limit its membership to only the elite of Planetarion. In fact, ROCK began to support the new influx of players as Planetarion grew in reputation and member base, wishing to improve the general playing skills of the community and attract more players to the game.

To this end ROCK was re-organised into a two-tier structure with the longer standing and experienced players in the main wing of the alliance and a new wing was created, titled 'ROCK Junior', intended for the training and development of beginners. ROCK Junior started small but soon ballooned to a membership of almost 200 players’ thanks, in part, to the efforts of the hard working and charismatic officers that led the group.

Many future greats in ROCK and Planetarion as a whole developed at this time, especially between rounds 6 to 8. Some stayed with ROCK after being promoted from ROCK Junior and others decided to leave to take officer positions in larger alliances. Much of the reputation of the 'ROCK spirit', or community spirit, was generated at this time and still exists today. At the peak of its activities in round 7 and 8, ROCK Junior rivalled the main wing of the alliance in terms of attacks, defence coverage and activity, spurred on by several initiatives intended to increase competition between ROCK Junior members. A controversial point scoring system was introduced by TGO and implemented by Thely, Tauc_Redfox and Assassin , who split the wing into a number teams - Nike (led by Thely), The Flying Foxes (led by Tauc_Redfox) and the Assassins (led by Assassin). Weekly goals were set by the captains of each team and the best of each team were considered for promotion. In political terms, ROCK has always attempted play the game with a degree of honour and in consideration of the game as a whole. ROCK regularly suffered at the hands of the larger blocks that became prevalent in later rounds because they sided with the underdogs in an attempt to level the playing field. This rarely worked and was the cause of much contention within the alliance membership.

Shrinking Player-base and Long-term friendships

Continuing as a very big player in the political affairs of the Planetarion Universe, membership levels dropped when Planetarion changed its revenue method from advertising to being subscription based. This pattern could be seen in many alliances around this time however and not just in ROCK. The knock on effect of requiring players to pay for full accounts meant that only the truly dedicated players stayed and ROCK's recruitment and training wing began to decline and wane by the end of Round 9. Around this time ROCK also began playing other games, such as Starsphere and Planetia. It has been debated whether this led to further decline to an already partly discontent alliance or if it helped keep ROCK together. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

To limit the effect of a declining membership, ROCK joined forces with a number of like minded alliances, sharing their defence networks and participating in a number of high profile retaliation attacks. TFD and Vengeance are of particular note, and ROCK maintained a firm friendship with both alliances for a number of rounds, eventually enveloping TFD into its ranks when TFD disbanded at the end of round 11.

A Brief History of Rounds 12-20

ROCK (led by Jeltje) again in round 12 joined forces with another like-minded alliance, DEADLY (led by Hellish). ROCK and DEADLY merged and created the new tag of DEADLYROCK for the remainder of R12. At the end of R12 DEADLY decided to remain with ROCK and stay for the long haul & today many of the DEADLY faithful still reside within ROCK.

Around R15 saw the rise of the Timeline & Hellish partnership, sometimes controversial - but still good fun and kept ROCK "in shape". R15 also had the fun of a war with xVx (which ROCK won) whilst dealing with VGN incommings, this saw some fine displays DC'ing most memorable of which was lilboi.

Rounds 15-18 were solid enjoyable performances by ROCK. At the end of Round 18 ROCK decided to change it's command structure. Before ROCK was led by CEO's who were in charge of the ROCK community and all the games that she played. With ROCK now only playing one game they felt a change was needed to reflect this. So they (Judder & Lastride) stepped down and the CEO position was abolished; thus the game command become more self determining as it was now led by an HHC (Hellish). Any CEO community responsibilities were transferred to ROCK's High Council.

Round 19 was admittedly not one of ROCK's best "performing" rounds due to increasing real life pressures of the long serving command staff and the retiring of a number of core players. This fragility continued into Round 20 as ROCK lacked new fresh command staff to pick up the slack. With a shrinking PA member-base and less fresh blood coming into the game ROCK was on the edge of leaving PA after almost 7 years of existence.

Recent History: Round 21-22

At the end of Round 20 the high-council was able to step back from directly running the alliance and instead now acts as a kind of House of Lords over the PA HC team. Originally the role of H-HC was offered to Med-Ion for Round21, who willingly took on the role until real-life issues started to take over. Hellkicker took over from M-I early on and his no-nonsense attitude towards member activity and politics soon had ROCK heading down a new and exciting path.

Round 21 saw ROCK finish 16th in the alliance ranking, but with a average member score that was only bettered by two other alliances. Buoyed by this success and with the eyes of the rest of the PA community on us ROCK recruited heavily between Round 21 and 22 with the aim of breaking into the top10 after several rounds absense. A lot can be said about ROCKs approach to politics during Round 22, siding against our long-term friends VGN and the new kids on the block Jenova; themselves home to many ex-ROCKers. Whatever is said however is easily overshadowed by ROCKs final position: 4th. The highest ever position achieved in our long history in PA.

Round 25 was a strange round for ROCK after being p-targeted by the current no 1 alliance (xVx) which included spamming their Def bot on irc the HC decided that they would target xVx until the end of the rd to try stop them from winning after what ROCK felt was unfair tactics , this galvanised the ROCK members who sacrificed personal ranks to try to achieve this , with some help from both CT and Newdawn on the 1st couple of nights Rock continued to pound away at xVx who finished 4th, there was also some very funny gal banners created by both Lastride and Magicmaniac to encourage the members in their actions

ROCK's current and future aim is that it's members have priority every step of the way. ROCK's Command Team is there to support, serve and aid the needs and wishes of her members and the community in any way possible. They are our life, our blood, the very makeup of ROCK. So we continue to strive to ensure that they get as much as enjoyment and success out of the game as possible; whilst never forgetting that FUN is what this is all about.