We took like a 6 month break because Pearl Abyss shot itself in the foot and made it impossible for baby/novice focused guilds to participate

Requiring 100 DEATHS/KILLS to get even participation rewards.

Sir. If we are having a bad day, do you think I'm going to sit and count the number of times I got stabbed?

wtf wow

lol YA IT WAS BAD

BUT NOW, praise sensibility, they have lowered the requirement to "survive 10 min"

EASY.

Although a fort today did go down in 3 min

So you can still get shafted out of rewards, but you'd have to be ... uniquely having a bad time to pull that off

BUT WE ARE HERE FOR THE DRAMATEA

DramaTEAc?

We had a Ceasefire with an alliance called, I shit you not, MissUbb

Love that for them.

And an extended ceasefire with an alliance called ORCA

So we looking for a fight. There's FUCKINGGGGGGGGGGGGG 11 FORTS.

So it's not HARD to find a fight. It's more like making diplomatic decisions VERY quickly to ensure a zerg doesn't come about

One key aspect I should mention is today's fight was in the desert

This is important because while you are in the desert, you can't "ping" or "pin" locations. You have NO MAP.

IF YOU GET LOST, you basically need to pray you find a 6 fingered man's hideout in a forest to find your way kinda lost

It bad.

oh jeez i think i'd die

i get lost in FFXIV with a map

NO Map, No directional cues. AND lol Only 1 horse functions with sprint. All other horses are slow af and don't run well in the desert. Pegasus can't fly. Doom who zooms with fire can't zoom. ONLY THE UNICORN who shits grass is immune to desert effects

LOL YA THIS IS

This is content that makes new players quit

Because the main quest basically holds your hand to an oasis and then says "Well, the city is east so................ good luck!"

Oasis is in the middle of the desert so ... uh. Unideal

BUT THEY HAVE IMPROVED IT SO you get a compass in the main quest, which while it does not give you mini map assistance. You can open your world map and know WHERE you are

In Node War you can use a compass as well! But they are hot commodities and not everyone has a bunch lying around

ANYWAY THE WAR lmao

WE NARROW DOWN OUR FIGHT to Blazing who are a Thai guild

Remember, SEA recently merged with Thai and the assumption is that we are at each others throats, IT'S NOT WHOLLY FALSE

So ORCA, MissUbb and a third guild I will mention later are all SEA server originals. We know each other

Which is partly why making a ceasefire is 1 2 3 done so easily

We have this long winded hour long back and forth, tug of war with Blazing

We knock them down 10%, they hit us 5%

Back and forth, one hour

Then MissUbb member shows up KNOCKS DOWN A BARRICADE

And I'm like We still have ceasefire right? I basically watched him break our house's front door

And he goes OMG SORRY I THOUGHT IT WAS Blazing I SORRY

He was cute, did a kowtow and I told him to scram before someone kills him lmao

BUT THEN I REALIZE

Wait, they are attacking Blazing. We're attacking Blazing. Fuck, it's gonna be a zerg

Now, zergs are. Cowardly.

We typically request ceasefire so that we don't get caught up with a zerg and it narrows down our opponents evenly to keep things mildly orderly

MissUbb did not contact us

Did not mention

And had our front door not been LITERALLY busted down by the small brain biggest class in the game (APTLY NAMED Berserker) I would have not known this was occurring

So Blazing goes down

We are coordinating who to hit next. We think at first, Okay, ORCA goes for MissUbb we go for EAYC (the guild I said I'd mention)

ORCA guy knocks on the front door (I repaired it lmao) and says "Hey, so actually. We just downed EAYC you're welcome. Wanna team up and fight MissUbb?"

So you're saying it's we zerg them or you zerg us

I see your underlying meaning sir and I request a good time

We agreed

MissUbb SLAMS us. And then I get a pop up

Blazing requests a DECLARATION OF WAR

I'm trying to not die and there's a pop up on my screen lmao

I died. It wasn't poetic. 20 sec respawn for me to figure out the dec

SO I MENTIONED BEFORE

Guild war decs are now MUTUAL both parties must AGREE to the war. Because this shit is prone to happen

Where you have someone pissy or sore losers and they dec to make you miserable for days because you made them sad for 1 hour

So I tell my peoples We have a dec from Blazing. Check World Chat (FLAMING AWFUL RANT CHAT) every MMO has one, you love to popcorn them, don't lie to me

One of my officers does and

They. Like I'm actually chuckling

They weren't upset because of the zerg or that they lost

They were upset because they tried to call us out in World Chat, no one responded because I taught my kids well. lmao. And someone else who knows us goes: "The Glade's a Life-Skill guild, bro. You lost to them??"

Awwwwwwwwwwww shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyt

I'm kindly guessing that they dec'd BECAUSE they wanted to prove they are true PvPers to our Life Skill-centric group but

Nah mate we just don't care

Now, we aren't ... pushovers. We have so many ex-PvP heavy members who manage 75 kills in 90 min!

Two of ours did 75 or so kills today.

Another 5 did 50+

And another 7 did 20+

LMAO I played support so I got 0 kills............. um. But I'd like to believe at least 5 of those 75s were from my heals and buffs....

You're all... welcome lol

My point is. We are mildly misleading in our advertisements of "CUTE uwu LIFE SKILL ONLY OwO"

AND USUALLY it does not garner us butt hurt enemies but Thai be sassy I guess

Or at least Blazing are

To wrap this up in a neat bow. We downed MissUbb, then 1v1 ORCA, we lost that

But a testament to our Life Skilling Nature

We literally had our fort at 1% HP

One thing about repairs is they are actually based on your total life skilling levels!

Repairs take 90 seconds. But with GOOD life skill levels it can get down to 60 seconds

AND ALL OF US LIKE LOCUSTS Cover the fort REPAIRING AS FAST AS WE CAN lmao

We got it back to 10%, had 10 more min of a fight before we finally went down

BUT THE ENTIRE TIME

"Blazing has requested a DECLARATION of WAR on you, do you accept?"

No.

"Blazing has requested a DECLARATION of WAR on you, do you accept?"

NO.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

At one point I just left the pop up sitting there and just key smashed like a blind healing crazy person

It was just annoying. But it doesn't impact any other member, just yours truly so it was a sacrifice I was willing to bear

There really should be a cooldown once you’ve refused X number of times, how irritating

I AGREE. It was genuinely exhausting

i'm so amused they were so butthurt they lost to the crafters they tried to dec you

Lol yeah, I think the guild as a whole got a massive kick out of it. Especially because we are known as crafters, not as pvpers and someone totally random had to explain it to them

them being Blazing ^

I have a feeling they are going to be Node War rivals from here on out but... we are oddly a good match for each other? We were super even

Would I like our rivals to be more polite? Sure. But I hope they love-hate us with time

maybe some day they'll calm down a bit and you can be fun rivals instead of whatever the hell they have going on now

Lol high hopes, very unlikely

My issue is the language barrier. SEA is very English heavy in how people communicate outside of guilds. It's just the culture that's been built. Some guilds are certain languages, but the "common tongue" is English

Thai hasn't had that. It's just Thai. Always Thai. So this is probably frustrating for them and very different and uncomfortable

So I can see some frustrations and miscommunications turning into conflicts simply because talking it out is too annoying and dec'ing and fighting is universal

oof

Yeah, if you aren't interested in another language, never wanted to be bothered with it and are just shoved into it while you are playing a game you usually can just brain off relax with

It's understandable they are gonna be idk. More testy or just err easily triggered I guess?

Anyway. War was interesting lmao

Can't wait to see next week's trash fire

yeah that kind of sucks... that they can't easily communicate with you or you with them, i mean

Some certainly can, but there are definitely growing pains you can easily see with others