The situation with Pirate Software in Ashes of Creation

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

UPDATE WITH STATEMENT FROM APEX ORDER: forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/62946/apex-order-statement-of-events-regarding-actual-pirates-11-2-24/p1?new=1 "As the Team Lead of Apex Order, a guild that doesn't have a million person captive audience, we are using this medium to share our experience with Pirate Software. These events are the result of a misunderstanding with unfortunate timing. They are further littered with false accusations, baseless claims, and what we see as a gross overreaction that violates the spirit of the testing environment. Earlier in the afternoon of 11.2.24 a group of Apex Order members were farming inside the Ursin Cave on the top level. A group from Actual Pirates came in the cave several times as they were farming the mobs on the lower level. Both parties passed each other and cleared bears together for an extended time without hostilities. At one point the group from Actual Pirates stopped where our group was sitting. Actual Pirates immediately flagged and engaged killing our group's cleric and several others. Our group was surprise attacked and defeated, it's part of the game. Our group revived and moved to a different location to avoid further conflict. We moved to a location outside of Ursin Caves on the south side of that mountain farming bears. Later that evening our group was still pulling bears from all over the hill side. One of our pullers heard combat and went to have a look. A group of Actual Pirates was farming bears right over the hill from us on the north side. Members that were in our group were also in the group that was killed earlier by the group from AP. Our group then gathered to engage in pvp with AP as a continuation of the earlier engagement over Ursin Caves. We had no previous knowledge that the streamer known as Pirate Software was in the group we were about to engage. We had no way of knowing that he was writing a bug report. All of that information we found out after the fact. When we engaged the group of Actual Pirates we did not even see Pirate Software whose character is 'Maldavious' until he emerged from behind the group. He was only then engaged in combat. I am a 44 year old. I do not and have not ever watched streamers, nor do I have the desire to. I did not know who Pirate Software was. In the group were my daughter, and my 13 year old son. We were testing a game that we love and engaged in pvp for fun. It was not a group of hardcore pvpers it was a family group. We did not travel across the map to find him or stream snipe Pirate Software. We merely happened upon the Actual Pirate group because we were in the same area killing bears just over the hill from them. We had absolutely no idea Pirate Software was writing a bug report at the time. When we later learned he was in the middle of a bug report we issued an apology. If we had that knowledge previously we would not have attacked the Actual Pirates group. There was no way for us to know this. It was unfortunate timing. We had planned to not loot any Actual Pirates, as was said to them by one of our members. Even in pvp we can have respect for one another. GG Actual Pirates got a group of us, Apex Order got a group of them. This type of pvp is in the spirit of the game design. The Apex Order group was heading to town to log for the night. We did not plan to come back and prolong a conflict. We left the area, with the intent of letting the Actual Pirate group get back to enjoying/testing the game. Again this started as a misunderstanding. The events that followed... An Apex Order recruit had died and respawned at the shrine outside of Ursin Caves. He spawned into a group of Actual Pirates that were also at the shrine. The Actual Pirates group including Pirate Software then killed this Apex recruit. As he tried to respawn they continued to kill him up to four times, camping him at the shrine. After repeated deaths, speaking from frustration the Apex recruit said he was going to report Actual Pirates for shrine camping. Moments after being made aware what was said, Apex Order leadership counseled this recruit. This was merely a heated exchange after pvp. No reports were made by this recruit nor any of our members. This was then blown out of proportion by Pirate Software claiming on stream our entire team was going to mass report him. This was yet another baseless accusation. The following day as some of our Apex members began to log in. Our members were attacked in town by Actual Pirates, while at the vendor, storage and crafting tables. There were multiple instances of these attacks in town by Actual Pirates across several nodes. After killing the Apex member in town, Actual Pirates would then run to the shrine to kill the player again as they spawned at the shrine. Sometimes this would go on for upwards of several deaths to the same player. Actual Pirates players would never go corrupted despite attacking unflagged players that were not fighting back. Sometimes killing them while they were still in the loading screen from the previous death. While still in development the corruption system and town guards do not (as of yet) offer any protection to non combatant players in Alpha 2, Phase 1 testing. Some members from Actual Pirates are taking advantage of this by locking down town nodes. Attacking any of our members that are seen within the nodes. Because of Actual Pirates massive membership they can easily lock our members out of every node, denying them access to test any content within the node itself. We believe this is outside the scope of Steven's vision for pvp risk vs reward. This style of game play only hurts player's experience and their ability to actively test systems for Intrepid Studios. In Steven's own words "Now the question is, when risk becomes something that doesn't stop other players from impacting your gameplay in a negative and harassing and repetitive manner. The motivation to do that action is less about their personal advancement and more about impacting your gameplay, because when they elicit the response of anger or rage from the player, they feel a sense of accomplishment. That in my opinion is what griefing is. It is outside of the expectation of the gameplay behavior that is communicated in the design philosophy." - Steven Sharif Apex Order members follow a strict set of Rules Of Engagement during the Alpha 2 testing. These rules include 1. No pvp combat within the town nodes 2. No spawn shrine camping. We hold our members to a higher standard, even if other guilds do not. We believe in the vision and development of Ashes of Creation and wish to give other testers the respect they deserve. In conclusion.... Pirate Software's stated intent on his stream, is to harass an entire guild, until they leave the server, during the Alpha testing phase of a game. Apex Order was falsely accused of a stream snipe by Pirate Software. From the time the Apex Order group attacked the Actual Pirate group it took Pirate Software less than a minute to falsely accuse us of a streamer snipe as shown on his twitch stream. Apex Order was falsely accused of knowingly attacking while Pirate Software was writing a bug report. We had no way of knowing this. Apex Order was falsely accused of mass reporting in an attempt to get a ban on Pirate Software. As detailed in our statement, no reports of any kind by any of our members were ever made. Go ask customer service, we'll wait. Apex Order leadership has reached out to Pirate Software in private correspondence explaining the misunderstanding and seeking a retraction of his false accusations to no avail. All of the false accusations are a result of Pirate Software being pvped in a PvX game. Are streamers untouchable in pvp? If you do kill a streamer what is stopping them from accusing you of a stream snipe? They can accuse you without limit or evidence. The attacks on Apex Order membership and content gating are the result of a massive streamer zerg guild mentality on a smaller guild. Team Lead Apex Order - AoC -Bromel"

[@MercurialDecree]

Lmfaoooo look how much he wrote 😂 he must be really angry

[@typoko]

I would really hate it if the Actual Pirates gets completely muddied with stream sniping accusations and actions that are derived from those accusations. That said, while this is the other side of the coin, the statement leaves out some bits such as the person who said that they will not loot mentioned that he loves PS. While he might not know who PS is, clearly some people in the group knew what they were doing.

[@jamieapps6566]

@@typoko there we wont loot you has no direct comment to being aimed at PS vs actual pirates in general, there is the possibility that was a poorly worded attempt at where 'GG' would been said in other games as part of a pvp engagement between rivals which this could have been left at

[@typoko]

@@jamieapps6566 like 3 seconds after the "We won't loot" follows with "Love you" or something like that.

[@eldiablosatanis]

​@@typoko Yeah as that coul been to pirates as a whole not Thor, I get his ego has swollen in this situation and yes his 20 guilds are to make everything his way and how he wants but not everything is a personal thing to him m, he ain't the only ashes player

[@FroisonControl]

it was just a "fuck you for killing us while reporting bugs" thing, but as soon as they started to mass report, they crossed lines. that guild does not deserve to be a guild. their players that engaged in mass reporting should be banned.

[@soldiersPL]

If they just done PVP, maybe even bit of stream sniping it would've been fine, maybe bit of PVP, maybe bit of diplomacy, maybe bit of politicking, in the end it would result in both guilds declaring peace and maybe even become allies over some good old murder But involving GMs over part of the game like that is like a child running to his parents and complaining when you fight back, all gloves are off and no quarter will be given

[@ZapatosVibes]

Not even 7 days in the game and we already have guild drama. This game delivering alredy xD

[@spipro6337]

playing mmos since 1998 saw many guild/clan drama there are 2 options for this.. if you dont like kos then you can /leave Guild ;) OR create bigger alliance to take down the other guild this is how pvpve mmos work

[@FaDezZ_]

xD love it

[@TheToledoTrumpton]

​@@spipro6337 This will give them a chance to test how/if zergs affect the player experience, and if necessary put in mechanics to moderate them. That is what we are doing here after all. But I wouldn't describe this as a "Zerg", more like mutually consensual PvP, and this will happen. 300-500 players in this game isn't even a zerg, it is a well-populated node. I also think that player collision will make large groups less effective, particularly when there are choke points, and raid teams get better organized. Once a zerg or large group, stops moving, or gets strung out, it gets very vulnerable to well co-ordinated 40 player attacks Particularly if you avoid the leadership group. However there are goin to be a lot of salty tears before max level and nodes get organized and fully populated..

[@spipro6337]

@@TheToledoTrumpton unfortunately most guilds in many games nowadays are not what it used to be. Perfect example is most guilds in Albion online which is a hardcore pvp game (and a good one for those who love this kind of game.) People hop on and off from guilds and guilds from alliances. Back in the days guild was a family , alliance was Sagrada familia and there was "hate" and vengeance upon enemies. We used to remember names and not only guild tags! This drama is good!! This is how big wars started. There will be zergs and another zerg to counter them . Aoc is not faction locked so if someone gets big someone else will get bigger 😜 there is always balance. As long as no Chinese guilds are allowed to non asian servers. No offence to Chinese players but it is true.

[@TheToledoTrumpton]

@@spipro6337 I think Ashes is going to offer an alternative/rival to Guilds. Node membership will automatically put you in a "faction" of 300-500 players with a common purpose of node advancement. So an alliance of small guilds can work together effectively to deal with a zerg guild.

[@PirateSoftware]

Love the video! We will always fight back against anyone who wants to fight us. Diplomacy is a normal part of the game and would happen in other situations. Trying to get me banned removed the possibility of diplomacy. If you want to parley then don't try to get players banned for advantage. See you all in Verra.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Thank you for the interview! ~for everyone else thanks for joining. hopefully this is the start of a great thing covering Ashes. Let me know what other News you want covered and what feedback you have for the overall channel and presentation.

[@igorpniak8308]

Fighting back and farming people with specific guild tag because one guy did an asshole thing are two different things. Even tho the other guys are asses, such behavior creates more toxicity then they ever did,

[@wagnus1923]

​@igorpniak8308 this is just cultural whiplash from prep le who don't know how the mmo genre became popular to begin with 😂 this is EXACTLY what ashes was hoping for with their old school approach to MMOs, 1 of 3 things will happen, 1 they will change servers to avoid the guild battle in the future 2 they will come to a truce eventually 3 this server will have a permanent faction war once the game officially releases

[@eldiablosatanis]

@@PirateSoftware I think maybe the ego needs be out aside a little, if your willing to back your points then I welcome a discussion. I'll get the the central point of this topic, may you please explain where the 'mass' of the report situation was and where they claimed the report was for advantage

[@igorpniak8308]

@@wagnus1923 Are you calling me out in the beggining of your comment? I don't really understand what "prep" means and who are you addressing with that

[@chiepah2]

Thor want to severely punish the behavior of using false reports as a weapon, and I, for one, whole heartedly agree with the sentiment and agree with his response.

[@Br0therjames55]

“You tanked us while reporting a bug? Alright. Go get all the violence.” Is such a great way to start that retaliation.

[@NullRageGaming]

As a 20+ year veteran of the MMORPG genre across many different titles, I 100% agree with Pirate Software and Actual Pirate's response to this situation...or rather, at the very least, their right to respond to the situation in ANY way they see fit WITHIN THE GAME and rules thereof. Simultaneously, situations such as this are why I have rarely enjoyed and will likely never enjoy again, any "Social Sandbox" MMOs. My condolences to Apex Order. Good luck dissolving your guild, hope nobody took a roster screenshot. RIP Forever. Also, good luck to Ashes of Creation, The best game I'll never play.

[@CEOofMistugoshi]

"how can smaller groups take back power from larger zerg guilds?" well, rather simply, going back to the wow cata/mop days of wpvp and zerg guilds on wpvp servers, a small group of skilled individuals can completely disrupt an entire zerg guild by using hit and run tactics and guerrilla warfare, drop in and target and kill the raid leader and the rest crumbles.

[@boochaca7957]

they could literally form a stream sniper guild and it'd probably be massive in a game like this

[@marioharrer9999]

they can even fully engage them, so far from what i've seen on Thors streams they are big yeah but mostly filled with very very bad players, seems like their 1st mmo ever.

[@corrupt425]

@@boochaca7957why are you so worried about streamers lmao? Play on a server without any of the big ones

[@boochaca7957]

@@corrupt425 not worried about it, just stating what people could do to balance this out since most people would rather whine about it.

[@AgentOracle]

You can also establish alliances with other small guilds until you have an advantage against the zerg, then present a unified front against them. However, because the stream snipers started this, it is going to be extremely difficult to form alliances with other small guilds who the pirate software guild has not personally wronged.

[@Bribzy]

If large guilds are as problematic as people make them out to be, then allegiances between small guilds and skirmish attacks on those members are a logical conclusion.

[@Mythicalgoon]

until large guilds just ally to combat that...

[@miriamweller812]

Not how it works. The best way to ruin a game is to think that all the shir players are doing will somehow work out. Reality proves that this is not the case.

[@Oridian22]

Big guilds are not a problem in any game... Season 1 of atlas had thousands of Chinese players that banded together to dominate the server... we formed a guild, that grew into a massive alliance and we fought them tooth and nail... it was one of the best gaming experiences ive had the pleasure to take part in. This just repeats in every game like this, and in almost every game you can make the big guild bleed in some way or another, even the spiteful solo player can grief large clans if they have the drive to do so. People who complain about zerg groups are just not thinking it through and want a quick easy win.

[@Thailerr]

Steven put it perfectly. "You may continue your player driven politcal engagements." Welcome to Ashes boys. All's fair in Love and War!

[@xythiera7255]

Easy to say if you are PiratSoftware who basicly cant ever lose with the insane amount of peopl around him .

[@amarog_stone]

@@xythiera7255I don’t find that a problem tho

[@_Diktator]

@@amarog_stone Okay, so when you are denied access to most content in game because of a guild like that, you also won't have a problem? Imagine not being able to do world bosses, open-world dungeons, caravans, etc. because that zerg is controlling everything on the server.

[@nikolailorentzen]

@@_Diktator then maybe choose a different server then. nobody forcing you to play with him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@amarog_stone]

@@_Diktator then just join the Zerg? Or naturally a guild that can rival the Zerg? AoC is meant to be this way with its own ecosystem of politics and just like in real life or you join the big dogs or join a rival force

[@magebear7]

8:40 sorry, but this is clearly inaccurate. PS has clearly stated that the streamsnipe attack wasn't the impetus for "holding a grudge in perpetuity," the misuse of the ban system was.

[@Mr.Nubtastic]

KOS from guild to guild is absolutely valid and appropriate. The KOS wasn't initially forever. It became that way because of the response from Apex in chat and discord with their pathetic attempts to get someone banned. You stream snipe someone (which is absolutely fair play) and then expect the streamer to not use their numbers to kill you in response? Screw that noise. Apex did something legit than cried like bishes when they paid the response that absolutely was within expectations. It's baseless drama and I'm loving watching it lol. Just keep it in game kids. Trying to ban people is not an in game response. That's an IRL response that is uncalled for and reflects poorly on the snowflakes.

[@zamboughnuts]

Also, Pirate is a seasoned EVE player. And his guild in EVE got fucked over by the *devs* of EVE (and he's got receipts). That's not who you want to try this shit with. They fully knew what they were doing stream sniping him. Whether that's fair or not (I'd argue it's not entirely fair because it relies on out-of-game information to gain an advantage) is up for debate. But then mass reporting him and his clan to get them banned when you got your ass kicked? Nah.

[@shadowfan115]

​@@zamboughnutsit's 100% unfair plus them freaking out about having a KOS with a enemy guild in a PVPVE game to the point they try to false ban him is so dumb they technically can be banned for misuse of the report feature

[@heragon58]

i don't thing it is that complicated. They fucked around and found out. Not neccesairly because of the streamsnipe during bug report (which is btw the most productive thing to do for an alpha test), but because they decided to resolve their dispute of Thor's team retaliating, by mass reporting. They showed their colors not once but twice and each time worse then the other. KOS is warranted and they are lucky if other guilds will not jump into the dispute and fuck 'em up even more.

[@Riecheck]

That's why it's good to get the picture from both sides instead of just believing the first person you hear it from. Read the Apex Order response of this on the forums. Also linked in the video's top comment

[@jamieapps6566]

@@Riecheck people dont care to hear both sides and form an opinion , theres a psychology principle know as first impression bias, thors words was the first this person has heard and thus is their first impression of the situation so first impression bias will now evolve into confirmation bias where human brain will seek evidence that supports their point and cling to that while ignoring any evidence that may oppose their view

[@deltazero7012]

They made a bad decision, and then a worse one. Guilt by association exists. Now their guild must pay the consequences until a resolution is found. My suggestion would be to form a new guild that doesn't include the guilty party. Also, stream sniping is scummy. I can't fault Thor for handling it the way he did. They are crying that he's doing exactly what they did to him. They came after him for conduct of other people in his guild by their own admission, an action he has promised to return in kind.

[@Riecheck]

@@jamieapps6566 Right, thats why I said what I said to attempt to help them realize how ignorant they sound

[@everlonggaming1966]

Could you imagine if an entire server joined forces to go after Pirates? It would start Thors evil mastermind ark.

[@JlRyer]

Nah even done that. You start fun drama

[@plannindorf]

I had this EXACT idea for a yt channel. But I have no time to do all the work. Bless you sir

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Ong it’s been plannindorf! Thanks 🤩 ❤️

[@barrywhite1770]

Actually finished watching the whole thing... He knows what hes talking about, fair points. People can use any reasons to declare war against others, stream sniping is as good enough reason as any. These games aren't fun when there is no competition. Players will split off from the main group for the sole reason of keeping the game interesting. Better than quitting out of boredom.

[@Medowokha-bp5lq]

I mean if his (piratesoftware) eve reputation is anything to go off of he'll force people to split by being an egomaniac with no ability to lead anything before they get bored. So there's that at least.

[@barrywhite1770]

@ yeah he does come across as douchey for sure.

[@garsux6065]

The biggest issue I see is the mass reporting. I wouldn't want a New World scenario to take place and if I had it my way fake reporting would be a banable offense. Besides in a game where "might is right" you'll just have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

[@Nevario1]

It's almost like this guy, the reporter wasn't even listening to why it was turned into a permanent KoS.

[@Awsomeman328]

I have to say, I dislike the part of the narrative that holds the part of Apex attacking Pirates during a bug report as an important detail, as without further comment, context, or evidence, I am unable to deduce whether the stream snipers were bring "opportunistic" and their attack timing was purposefully when they were distracted, or if they were going to attach them anyway and it just so happened that Thor was writing up a bug report at the time. Either way, that part of the context really doesn't matter as at the end of the day they were confirmed to be stream sniping and tracked down & attack the streamer's group who is the head leader of their guild. 8:36 I just want to make a correction to this statement as Thor stated, even in this very video when you asked for a statement, that the indefinite-ness of the KoS order was because of Apex trying to report Thor to the GMs, and that before then it was not stated to be permanent. If Apex decided to not take this form of response, it may have been possible for their guild or its leadership to parley & negotiate terms to end the KoS order. But now, b/c of the decisions they have made, they have doomed that guild name to a KoS order for as long as the game continues. Whether the decision to attempt mass reporting Thor was made by just certain members of the guild not in charge or if it was a decision made by the leadership doesn't matter to Thor, as he holds the guild responsible for all of their member's actions and for letting a group of their members perform this action against them. THAT'S the part, the decision in leadership style, that Thor & his community should be reflected and judged upon. - As for your question about if a large zerq-guild could control the entire map, I think IN THEORY it is possible for one to completely lock down a single Node on the map, BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT for the entire map! The world map for this game is HUGE! Just in the current Alpha-2 with 5 nodes it can take up to 30-60 minutes on a mount to get from one side of the available map to the other, and there is a planned 85 nodes! Plus an additional 15 special nodes! And unlike Eve where players can create choke points on their warp gates to block unwanted traffic, nodes in AoC have entire land & borders to guard. The current specs of each server is about 50,000 players total with only about 10,000 able to be online at the same time (though it is possible for these specs to improve in the future, possibly double or more by launch). As of the last weekend, there were a total of 9 Actual Pirates Guilds, most of whom were full to max capacity of 50 each. Even rounding up to 500 total Pirates and assuming they're all online at the same time, that's only 5% of all possible online players. Even taking into account the numbers on their guild discord server, of which I can see a number of about 2,500 users (whom I'm not 100% sure are all in the guild, they are just registered as being in the discord, plus after double checking this number might only include online users and not offline ones, but we'll take it as a starting point for now), if we assume they all join Pirates on AoC, that could potentially be 25% of active players on the server if no server upgrades are made, which would be a lot, but outside of special events they're not all going to be online at the same time and they're not all going to a part of the force actively seeking out PvP, like the players focused on crafting. I can totally see them being able to carve out a sizeable part of the map for themselves, possibly multiple nodes' worth, or they could take just 1 node for themselves for no one else to enter w/o permission. That's fine, take the 1 node, there's about 80 others not even neighbors to that node for everyone else. No one else will really care about that scenario. And if they expand to more than just 1 node, the more they do that the more spread out they'll be and the less defensible they'll be to their aggressors. Sure, in a pure numbers game without other guilds alliancing together to beat them they'll likely outnumber every other guild individually, making direct PvP a bad option for most guilds. However, there are more ways than just direct conflict and PvP to attack a guild. You can also attempt to swipe their gatherables right from under their noses & starve them that way. You can perform plenty of guerilla warfare hit-and-run tactics to poke at them to unsettle them, possibly baiting a lot of them to one direction while another team goes in from behind after the true objective. There will definitely be ways to fight the big guild, especially if the whole rest of the server turns against them. I'm not saying it'll be easy, and like a lot of people are saying, we don't fully know what this game will 100% be like upon release, so there's plenty of time for the devs to actually use the Pirates as a testing bed for trying to deal with types of guilds if they become problematic!

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

thanks for writing in! this is some great discussion and i fully encourage this! good talk, some really solid points in here about map and guild sizes. Geo politics are going to get wild!

[@theanthem195]

kos is justified. you see a sleeping tiger, you dont poke it to wake it up

[@jo1italianstyle]

Eve online has tought me. To fight the enlcaves, ruin their fun. Just don't fight them and they'll get bored

[@cheeseex4322]

As someone who had a SIGNIFICANT amount of time in new world I have ZERO sympathy for anyone or group that uses the report system as a weapon. The amount of times I saw a company in new world have to fill slots because strong players or even the war leader got temp banned due to mass reports was insane. The report system isn’t a game mechanic. Anyone that treats it as such deserves whatever consequences they have coming.

[@Valerianqelbri]

This is gold. Waiting for hot heated discussion and debates, dramatic war correspondents and funny in depth character and guild segments.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

its coming!

[@Raiv-sama]

dude love the idea of this channel, you did amazing with the details and commentary! hope you and this channel is around for a long time

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Appreciate that, thanks for the support!

[@ejpro11]

Great stuff, edit turned out great!

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Thank! I love the set! hopefully a new camera in the future!

[@HardDrumStep]

you need better lightning, if i assume correctly :)

[@Khaltazar-2024]

What I view the game is going for is realistic conflict. People unite around people with the most charisma naturally in real life and form groups. Those groups form into towns, then cities, then regions, then nations. Many nations in the course of our world have tried to take over everything by force lead by a charismatic leader with ambitions. This hurts for people outside of the "nation" or in this case guild, but it is fun for those in the guild. You can argue it won't be fun if one guild owns a server forcing players to join if they want to play comfortably and I can see that being a problem, especially if the game is always FFA even if you're a solo player just trying to have some fun after work. You don't want to be camped for hours until you either quit the server, quit the game, or join the guild. I don't think it is something the GMs should step in for unless it is clearly harmful for the game in general. An example of harmful content would be one guild preventing anyone outside of the guild from gathering say level 1 wood meaning they can never level gathering or woodworking professions to the point where the guild is so massive it wouldn't matter if the other players on the server join up as a 2nd guild they cannot hope to compete.

[@isaac15752]

zerg guilds are a problem, but so far, nothing has shown that ppl arent able to just band together and out zerg the zergs, also spawn camping should def not be a thing, i believe low level areas should not allow for high level individuals to PVP, that kills the vibe for ppl trying to learn the game, and kills the immersion

[@AubDenashi]

Yeah, us goblins of Thor actually do want at least one or two guilds to rival us. Like yeah we’re kinda excessive but we can’t really help that due to the communities size, but we legitimately do want competition, else we’d also be losing out on fun

[@jamieapps6566]

@@AubDenashi more oppsition would prob be a thing is you made rivialries not declare mass extinction on overembroiled facts then rivialries may actually happen

[@_Diktator]

​@@AubDenashi They need to flesh out the alliance system, and to limit the number of players each guild can have. It's important to limit zerging as much as possible. Because it's not fun when you end up playing on a server with a 1k+ player zerg, and they control access to all the content like world bosses, open-world dungeons, etc. It's also not fun when you have 2-3 mega zergs competing, because you still get no content, unless you are a part of one of those zergs. Throne and Liberty is a somewhat similar game, and those servers that have 1 guild running the show are the most unfun experience I've ever had in a game, because you simply don't have a chance to compete with them, unless you also are a party of a zerg that has 300+ players.

[@TheCopiumClinic]

Bro you’re killing it.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Thanks! Appreciate the support! 🙏 YOU'RE ALSO KILLING IT 💪

[@Dannnneh]

Doctor's verdict.

[@machinech183]

One of the many outcomes of weapons grade butthurt as a direct result of suffering the consequences of one's own actions. Never ceases to amuse me when you see people thinking they are entitled to a lack of consequences for their behavior online. They thought it'd be funny to stream snipe someone but only so long as they don't get killed in return for it. Absolutely pathetic. Pirate's response to the entire thing is absolutely on point.

[@SagridTV]

Man I hope this continues so we can tune into the news that matters

[@definitelynotadam]

Breaking News: "Old grumpy man hunts down local gang who destroyed his lawn".

[@nomad6174]

He's played Eve before; probably leaning into it because he knows that's where content comes from lol

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

I don’t think that headline would’ve worked as nicely 😔

[@CatalinGeorgeMarin]

@@nomad6174 i mean everyone which play pvp games which they will always will not take an insult like killin a player during a bug report

[@solido888]

....and local gang cries about it.

[@Chickymasala]

@@nomad6174 Correction to OP: Breaking News: "local gang destroys old grumpy man's lawn. Old grumpy man turns out to be Pablo Escobar". if you're ever in an MMO, just...don't pick a fight with Eve crossovers unless you're really to literally break some laws.

[@NikuaRanger]

this is amazing man, great channel. This is going to be chaos we need someone to organize all the tasty drama

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

my brain already hurts 😆

[@Neeko90]

Dude what a brilliant concept of a channel xD subbed

[@magetsalive5162]

"I did a dumb thing, but it was funny." -> "Oh shoot, the consequences of my own actions are about to come down on my head, maybe I can fix this by saying 'sorry'?" -> "I can't fix this and now everyone in my guild is going to suffer the consequences of my actions... well, maybe I can escape the consequences by _whining to the game masters_ and _trying to get them banned by arguing that PvP ruins the 'experience'."_ -> "oh god now it's permanent how did this happen trying to get them banned was totally a legitimate tactic tho"

[@thanks86]

The only situation is the part trying to get him banned, which is silly and Intrepid would never allow it. Other than that, it was just a gank and revenge. Standard PvP open world shenaningans. The way you deal with zergs is you make an alliance with another guild, then another guild, until you match the zerg's size and then you have a beeeaaauuuutiful war. That's what the game is about. Of course if you're 10 different random groups fighting each other and then 1 giant group joins the fight, you'll get spanked. Be smart, talk to each other, join forces, beat the zerg. This is the way. It's incredibly easy to find people to fight zergs.

[@DireProlly]

Literally the exact same as, “We destroyed three boats, they dropped the sun on us TWICE!”

[@catshadowdragon]

It seems pretty straightforward to me. There is definitely merit to the argument that an enormous guild can abuse their size to mess with the game by doing things that are not directly intended or designed for. It remains to be seen how Thor's guild will handle that power. But at the moment, the people making the complaint did exactly what they are accusing Thor of: attempting to break the game by using their size to try to do things that are not directly intended or designed for. In this case, they are doing that by mass reporting him. Mass reporting is an abuse of the reporting system where a group of people make multiple reports to artificially increase the perceived severity of the issue they are reporting on. A guild is abusing their size to do this as a system-abusing weapon against Thor, so he is using his size as a weapon within the system to attack that guild. The fact that the smaller guild failed in their game-breaking abuse does not change their intentions. And Thor has made it clear that he is targeting the guild, not the players. So the players can still enjoy the game if they leave that particular guild or if that guild puts in the effort to move elsewhere if they feel that strongly about it.

[@austin8313]

This channel is a testament to the concept of the pvx experience! So cool. Sub

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Appreciate that! 😎 someone let Steven know 👀

[@SideQuestAbroad]

I just found this guys stream last weekend and subscribed. I like his don’t gaf attitude

[@AnthonyDavis33w]

Please continue this work. This is amazing. I would pay for patreon for this to grow.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Thanks, appreciate the support! 🙏 may turn on youtube memberships when i become monetized.

[@AnthonyDavis33w]

@VerraNewsNetwork ill be watching for it.

[@nestasaurus]

Awesome Chanell! I was looking for something like this since i dont like to watch streams but like this kind of drama

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Glad I can fill that need! 🙏

[@Ottohagop]

Nice video. It reminds me of the Eve Online Scope news reporting system style.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Glad you enjoy the format 🤩 never played or was apart of EVE myself

[@cleamarshall]

Another factor here is: This is ALPHA, the point of ALPHA is that you find and report bugs, when someone notes that a bug report is going in, then ganks that person, hindering that bug report from going in, with full logs, they are actively going against the reason they are there, in the first place. People with no intention to log bugs and for that matter, preventing bug reports from being lodged, have no business being in ANY form of testing. They can gank to their hearts content, within the rules, at release.

[@neutrino2211_]

This is amazing and the possibility these sorts of happenings is exactly what almost made me fork over 40% of my salary to join the game. Can't wait to join the world and spectate wild things like these as a local business owner or a travelling merchant

[@luba8777]

Hello nice video. It was good to follow nice build up and nice question asks. But I think you got one (for me at least) important thing a little wrong. On 7:53 the more important and grudge was not for the stream snipe (the kill on sight order was a war declaration for the Kill Snipe, but I believe at this point it was still mendable and with an apology and evt. some small peace talks to turn around). What did make it impossible was, the try to get thor banned. Something I really see no one talk about. Keep up the good work i really like the video. You get an abo from me and a like. And sry for my not so good english xD. Small edit: (11:16) Ah I realized they are in talk with Pirates, so maybe it is still manageable to get peace. I would recommend to add in voiced: "They are still discussions ongoing behind the scene."

[@kuyo-blackstone]

Yep thats correct thor said it him self if it had only been stream snipe that guild would be fine a lil fuck around and find out🪦 befor they cool off but when they tryed to get thor banned 🚫 wellll i dont know about you but i find that irrideamable and i think thor dose too

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

VNN will differ all feelings towards the individual statements from each side.

[@oybeutu]

He said. "kill on sight for the rest of the game" during the snipe.

[@luba8777]

​@@oybeutu yes you are right sry. Personally, I think this one was more anger and annoyance than something he will follow up to the bitter end. The try to ban was just not ok for Thor.

[@oybeutu]

@@luba8777 Trying to ban made it worse. I wouldn't want a ban for a bad reason.

[@josephcroeniangamer3727]

yeah, i am pretty sure he would have had some mercy if not for the attempt at reporting to ban him

[@davebaldwin3220]

VNN Keep up the content. The more participation in all aspects, the better for this game.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

[@sy-ky_buddy4603]

I Man Steven and Co really is creating a special game for the pvp drama being so juicy on week 3 of testing. I love it

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

😁

[@blktauna]

Are you the Trent the GM slapped on Narc's stream? Mad props to you sir for getting into that area.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

haha, Steven teleported Trent there after he answered a riddle correctly

[@Microdot2003]

Cool channel, subscribing and look forward to more news!

[@moosewithguns1134]

I played in a big guild in Mortal Online 2 and had very similar stuff happen to a 10x more toxic level. They called us a "Zerg guild" but when we fought the guilds that were whining on even terms, they always lost. Only by resorting to trickery or abusing system mechanics were they able to gain the upper hand most of the time, and we, in turn, would send raiding parties every day multiple times a day to keep them in check. Their only response was raiding our territory and building strongholds to hide in/stock equipment during player downtimes when our best fighters were offline lol

[@TacticalGoldfishy]

man, this drama is making me want to put the popcorn down and join in.

[@thecreeker1917]

I can't wait for drama and/or big events happens on different servers.

[@Roarrior]

It's decided. This is how I get my news now. Keep em coming 🤣

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Yoooo thanks Roarrior 🦁 🙏

[@ozijak]

+1 Sub man great content hahaha, I see you as an early version of the town cryer. Keep it up ^_^

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

I'm like, a town cryer with a mic and UE5 set 😭

[@copanda354]

Great Content man keep it up!

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Appreciate it! More coming soon.

[@PsychoCha1n]

I cant wait to play all this drama is gold , long live Ashes!!!

[@LaNinja1]

I tried to unite the server against a guild in TnL. TLDR; it doesn't work. I, the #2 guild on a server, worked weeks and in the end the egos from each leader could not be set aside to work together. Thus allowing the superpower guild to persevere. Then, when things were finally on the upswing, one of the larger groups in the alliance jumped on the opportunity to join the oppressors for "more loot" cementing the outcome of the entire thing. Many people would rather take the easy road and swap servers/quit then lose over and over to a group.

[@voxtrium]

I love the news style. I think that summarizing the comments instead of the quickly talking bot would be better for the listener overall. Additionally I love the news style however I would love to see a more holistic news cycle as well, I am going to subscribe! I hope to see this continue to develop!

[@Makerizms]

Amazing content, keep it up!

[@cio1789]

I wonder if those ppl know they can leave the guild

[@IzNebula]

After the statement by Apex Order, the main issue/concern I have with this whole thing is the fact they camped them at shrine and locked them out of doing anything Node related simply b/c they were part of the guild. Steven said recently on Pirate Software's stream that streamers don't have special treatment and that they will ban people who do stuff like what is supposedly being claimed by Apex Order. If it's true what happened and several of their members were indeed camped at a shrine and NOTHING was done by Steven. Where is the warning Steven? Is it because he is a streamer and he leads this group that no warning is issued? This is already quite telling specially from Steven's reply on the reddit post with "You may continue your player driven political engagements." So there is really no way for the average player to report issues of griefing and camping like what occured with Asmongold. Asmongold has a big platform and is a streamer so everything that was happening got up to Steven immediately and after the warnings the banning occured (which is fine). Now the question is, "How will this go for the average player? As far as I know there isn't a report function. Griefing HAS happened and WILL continue to happen in this way. There is a particular player who consistently griefs low lvl players in the starting area, it has been reported on discord and in global chat but nothing has happened for 2 weekends in a row. I have killed him many times, but that isn't stopping him, he comes back after I leave and continues to do the same thing. I never agree with banning someone for meaningful pvp and guild war declaration. However if what is stated in Apex Order's statement is true and they were just killing their members infinitely at shrines and locking them out of Node systems, that 100% deserves a ban.

[@R173Y]

Subbed, this channel is gonna be lit!

[@MonticueGaming]

The sad thing is their reddit post was good and probably would have gotten them a much smaller punishment but I agree with Thor. If your gonna try and get someone banned for doing nothing wrong you deserve whatever you get

[@TFTrickster]

Bottom line Apex stream-sniped attacked during bug reports... They fucked around and found out

[@bendover748]

Bottom line Thor could have clipped it and send in the bug report after they were done OR finished what everyone had already started and do the bug report later. instead he does it in the middle of absolute chaos knowing full well hes going to get killed then continues to write the report and gets killed AND then gets mad and cancels the report to ask his minions to kill everyone because the world didnt stop at his leisure when he could have just finished the bug report like he set out to do knowing full well the consequences. dude has a huge ego problem.

[@oneilprovost2287]

Isn't 'stream-sniping' when you watch someone on their stream to find out where they are and what they're doing and attack.... is there any evidence they were watching Pirate's stream?

[@oneilprovost2287]

And are bug reports an off limits time? Not sure what they have to do with anything but Pirate seems to make it a big deal.

[@khiobi1687]

@@oneilprovost2287 Yeah if you watch the vod it's pretty obvious that they were stream sniping, their members were also in the stream chat, and the member that left because they didn't agree with what apex was doing confirmed it was well. Attacking during a bug report is more of a slimy move than "off limits", and as such Pirates guild retaliated and attacked Apex. It was Apex crying to the GM's via mass report that led to the KOS order, which is very much deserved. They attacked, then cried when they got attacked back and tried to get piratesoftware banned for it.

[@oneilprovost2287]

@@khiobi1687 well.... they screwed up then. best thing to do is relocate to a new server and start over, they're so cooked on that one.

[@Krystalchan2009]

My only issue with the N+1 for large scale, one thing I would like to see AoC look into is Albion's Disarray system. For context Disarray is a debuff a guild/alliance takes when they have too many people on a tile. Starting at 21 players for Disarray 1 and capping at 445 players for Disarray 67. This debuff lowers healing, damage and CC against those with less of a disarray debuff. So if both sides have about 40 people on tile, they suffer a disarray of 17 on each side. Against Randoms they will deal 17% less, but against each other it would be considers null since their disarrays cancel out. If a 40 man with disarray 17 fights a 30 man with disarray of 10; The 40 man suffers a 7% penalty and the 30 man no debuff in their fight. But as I said before, the 30 man would have 10% debuff vs non-affiliated.

[@baneblackguard584]

alpha 2 is small enough that a group like this could absolutely keep any particular group from accomplishing anything, if they wanted to. that could potentially become a problem in terms of testing, and i'm sure the devs would be watching that pretty closely. once the game is released I just don't see how this kind of omnipresent interference would be possible, much less practical.

[@bludelflink]

Will be walking into Verra tomorrow with a bucket of popcorn 🍿😂🎉

[@jaxirraywhisper741]

I mean, if you cant handle big guild declaring war on you, do not kill their people. And especially not by using cheap tactics like stream sniping. The fact that sore losers tried to abuse report system after is just icing on a cake made by a dumbass.

[@simonl7784]

wow well done. Will be following ! subbed

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Thanks! Hope we can deliver at VNN! 🙏

[@sasharak5621]

09:55 w8 what? Am i geting it right? you said eve online has 3000 current players right now? Tranquility has 28007 players at the3 moment. Lets assume half of them are multiboxed account(which is lower for sure) it is still 14k of players right now playing on the single server on single map

[@ThunderChanter]

idk about the making peace assessment at the @4:22 mark. It sounds more like they started a fight they saw they werent winning and tried to shift guilt "You attacked us first, we never meant to stream snipe during a bug report" even tho their guild members were laughing about sniping him during a bug report, Also as far as your question, can players unite to break a guild, sure. We've seen it in Ark:SE. A large guild, known for having cheaters, was unbanned after owner ship of the game changed hands, and across multiple servers all players on each individual server fought to make sure the cheating clan was never able to establish a foot hold. If enough players/guilds are tired of the influence of one, they will take steps to unite together and fight back. But you have to be able to convince others to join your side, and when its a "We said they said" argument, with Apex making claims against whats said on stream by PS, its not likely to convince anyone. Especially when the claims against you are "You tried to mass report me" and the dev chiming in with "there seems to be issues with auto-modding" it doesnt paint a pretty picture

[@3n7r0p4]

this is a brilliant idea to start now

[@dagzgaming213]

I really want to play this but i dont have the money. This reminds me so much back in the day with Archeage! (I know its inspired by archeage) but i just miss that game so much pre-P2W

[@AubyAutumn]

the KOS in perpetuity order makes sense. mass reporting for the KOS before it was in perpetuity should be punished as KOS is part of the diplomacy of the game. Had the mass reporting aspect not happened I would have a different opinion but it's also clear it would not have escalated to thispoint

[@NikuaRanger]

To be fair Thor is saying that pvp is normal and the intended design IS pvp but gets absolutely butthurt and cries about being killed, during a bug report yes, but as himself says, pvp. A Streamer crying for getting streamsniped is such an amateur feeling, this will happen A LOT more and Thor knows it, is he going to declare war on all the server guilds? If you are a streamer, protect your stream from it, like in ANY real-time pvp game. That said, nothing is an excuse to cry to GMs, mass report like a baby and whine on reddit because you're now also getting killed as consequence. Anyway, keep the drama coming. Also, Steven was top notch

[@kristoferb2496]

Hello, I thoroughly enjoyed the content and will definitely be keeping an eye out for more. The story was well-researched and presented in a clear, organized manner. However, one point of feedback I have is regarding the "news room" segment. Unfortunately, I found the viewing experience in that part of the video somewhat unpleasant, which caused me to look away during that portion. Thank you for your work, and I look forward to seeing more.

[@hokagenaruto3986]

riiiiiigggggggggggt so the response is "yo no trust me bro we didn't do this.. no in fact i don't even watch streams bro... we totally never stream sniped and mass reported whaaaat? "

[@HellDuke-]

Honestly, for streamsniping a kill on sight sounds like a completely proportional response regardless of relative guild sizes until the attacking guild tries to reach an agreement (e.g. payment or kicking infringing members). As for the attempts to mass report I would say an appropriate course of action is as follows: 1. All members that engage in mass reporting on false pretenses are reported to the guild leader 2. All members engaging in mass reporting receive a temporary suspension from the game (let's say 1 month) That would be a proportional response, the guild leader gets to chose whether to kick out the infringing players or not, but that would be a reflection on the guild. Ideally people who are joining the guild would get a notification that the guild kept members around during a breach of ethics temporary suspension to give them an idea what sort of guild they are joining.

[@Oddytwin]

I do not play this game at this point, but looking at this situation, I have a thought about your commentary: You say the response of PS and his guild is undue, but you seem to disregard the fact that the perm KoS was ONLY decided after they attempted to use out of game means (gm influence/moderation) to try and put a stop to the in game conflict. If you pick a fight with a much larger group, it's going to cause this. If you're going to stream snipe a streamer for advantage and clout, be prepared for him, his guild, and his viewers to come back on you

[@GamingKinda]

They escalated it to wanting him banned rather than letting it play out. The idea you want to attack someone and they want to attack you isn’t a reason for that.

[@Dannnneh]

Leave the text on screen for much longer.

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

heard o7

[@theroleplayingame]

LOVE IT, PVP Drama in a ALPHA! This game is for me 100%

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Plenty More coming 👀

[@TheCorgies]

idk man, that's kinda weird. Are you saying that a guy waiting for this streamer to doing a bug report and when jump on him? evidence?

[@pizzapunt3960]

Will you be covering the node wars this weekend?

[@sheanstanks]

All the guild had to do was ban those guys and apologize right? Am i missing something?

[@WoodooChill]

For balancing this, How about a "guild karma"... if anyone from guild keeps engaging in a lot of PVP killing, lets put a % increase on the members players karma. In other words when your guild mate kills someone 10times, they will go red, but this might increase the percantage for other guild members, that for them, only 5 kills will be enough to go red. (The numbers are of course just example).

[@neonoir7549]

The awnser to this situation is impossible like all resolutions in actual war, if both sides just fucks off now, the problem disappears. No more fighting, no more discussion. If they just stop, everyone is happy. Both clans can continue with what they want, both dont have to bother eachother anymore. But then again why would people ever be kind to eachother and show forgiveness.

[@bulldozer8950]

So it seems like the only time it became a permanent grunge is when the mass reporting stuff started happening, which I think is completely fair because that’s something that certainly should be discouraged and a game like this is better off running the types of players who try to pull mass reporting as a tactic out of the community than letting them stay. As for big guilds being an issue, I don’t see this being a major permanent issue. In the short term obviously this is a big guild, but it’s unlikely to stay a big guild like this once the game gets more released. There’s far larger streamers who’d I’d suspect would play it. On top of that, the size only matters as long as most of the players care- even if it’s a big guild that’s got monopolistic power, if they stop caring about an incident after a week (even if they claim it’s kos permanently) it’s not really an issue. Finally, to reiterate, the kos being permanent only came from the mass reporting. The initial response was just “they killed us let’s go kill them” which is fine, even if they are way more powerful. Fuck around and find out. But when they turned it into a permanent thing when they took it to mass reporting, which is good. You want the community to be intolerant to unacceptable behavior. If people are afraid of trying to mass report to get back at someone because major guilds will all kill them onsight so they can’t play the game because of that, that’s a good thing. You should be intolerant to people who do intolerable things. It is a good thing for the community to be toxic to players who are bad.

[@Hs-qu3bw]

- so you dont want to be on the KOS list? Well what is it worth to your guild? a half a mil in resources? Love to see how those dynamic "issues" develop during the games life.

[@Jayeeyee]

I am not an AoC player but if member(s) of my guild pulled some shady shxt on another player/guild, I would kick/ban that player on site provided that the evidence shows without a benefit of the doubt that they were the perpetrators.

[@lolf4c3m4n]

I played ark on xbox and there two things that happened when tribe members start stuff when you're away. Either abandon the tribe and go solo or kick the members and make amends with the other tribe. Guild leader could of done a better of asking for forgiveness and make a form of payment.

[@jeanjacqueswidmaier7794]

You completely ignored the fact that they tried to group report him to get pirate software banned. This is a troll Move to get people to engage with your content.

[@jamieapps6566]

if you look at all the information given the mass report thing is over exaggerated (again feeding the interactions) and thus makes rest the 'drama' of the situation not needed and if not trolled would have just been another pvp engagement in a pvp game

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

Hi, Thanks for writing. It’s not upto VNN to choose sides. We believe that the context given in the “context section” and that statements from Thor directly provided enough discussion and commentary on the matter.

[@Fuz2yman]

In an open world pvp game it is only natural for domination to occur, especially if 1 guild/alliance can effectively close down rewarding content to others. That usually just escalates and creates a group of crazy gear people who can pretty much gear check others in combat and that means any additional combat will be pointless... Imo it all depends on what options to gear up you will have... If you can effectively deny others from gearing up by hoarding bosses etc, then the game will be 1 org per server with 0 competition...

[@samchaleau]

The bees are definitely going to turn up in AoC.

[@austinnutt6013]

Absolutely love the presentation, and Im not even an AoC player lol

[@nuclearsupernova8072]

If they don’t like getting murdered constantly the solution is simple disband the guild and reform under a different banner. The kill on site applies to the guild tag and not individual players.

[@synapsesboom]

Are you supposed to be immune while doing a bug report or something? I mean, if your on a pvp server or flaged as pvp then it's fair game regardless of what ur doing lol. I don't understand what the issue is tbh.

[@Vsg45]

He stream sniped him. Knowing he was doing a bug report

[@nauri290]

when did they say they were supposed to be immune, they just fought back

[@Vsg45]

@nauri290 ok they fought back.... then why are the stream snipers butt hurt when they got wrecked by the entire guild then?

[@nauri290]

@@Vsg45 idk I was responding to op

[@adamion1993]

INCREASE THE VOLUME!!! I am watching from mobile and can't hear rainbow, I've put my earbuds in and I can almost hear it... (yes, I have mild hearing damage) Please make rhe videos louder, ppl can always lower the volume but we can't increase it more. Thank you and have a good day!

[@VerraNewsNetwork]

will do! thanks for the feedback

[@andreipotato3828]

The game is alpha 2 and will have 84 nods with some other game drama. Gona love it