RRF/Malton Herald & Sun/Text/Text0310right

On Strike

• Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself

The strike was something that had been percolating as an idea for a while. Barcoded of the Pwotters had gone so far as to enter a suggestion into the wiki to the effect of 'Just get rid of zombies', both as a protest of how the game was going and for the trenchie-mindset of a lot of voters at the wiki. It had been months since we'd gotten an update, while survivors had gotten various buffs and tweaks, all the while our population numbers declined. The revive search buff at Caiger was the final nail in the coffin, and proved how deceptive our October campaign had been- while we were beating everyone we met in the field, we were facing an enemy with both qualitiative and quantitative superiority, and it was only by virtue of local superiority that we were winning fights.

And then came the update. While we admitted at the time that it was better than XP headshot, it was, at the time, it was the difference between getting kicked in the teeth and getting kicked in the nuts. The fact was that survivors were built with force multipliers designed for fighting against foes that outnumbered them. When they were given the numerical edge, those force multipliers were killers. Toss in the supply crates, and it was the final straw. The IRC essentially mutinied, and the die was cast.

The concept I had for the strike was two-fold. One, it was not to be in any way an attempt to 'force' Kevan Davis to do anything. His game, his choices. However, it was our feeling at the time that he was not aware of just how unhappy a significant portion of his player base was. (In a zombie 'apocalypse' game, no zombies equals no apocalypse, and that was the state we were heading for.)

Secondly, it was to have as little acrimony as possible, by drawing on as much goodwill as we had earned from our mutual respect garnered at Caiger. The result was a goodly number of survivor players who joined us in calling for some form of enhancements to gameplay.

The strike itself is kind of hazy for me. I was about to go to bed when the news came in, and spent the next thirty-odd hours overseeing the creation of the strike, the various debates about the strike, and finally what I'd hoped was the resolution of the strike, when Kevan answered us directly on the On Strike wiki page. With that, the RRF officially withdrew from striking, though several prominent members (including Grim) stayed with it.

As I took my leave of the strike, I did say that if Kevan didn't follow through with his promise of enhancements for zombie play, we were going to leave the game (something we'd agreed on in the War Council.) The plan from there was to take as many people as would follow us, and rebuild the RRF in some other game. With that in mind, as the strike went on, we began coming up with what might be our final war plan, one last huzzah to wave goodbye to Malton.

What came of that was March to the Sea, as well as operations Field Trip and Dinner out, which were recently paid off on by EXCURSION, while the Group 2 portion of March to the Sea is culminating in our latest strike on Calvert.

Because hey, the RRF always keeps its promises.

Paddy's Memories of the Strike

• Taken from an account by Paddy Fitzgerald

Ah the Strike. I still treasure that one. Ah whole lot of zombies and harmans alike came to Whetcombe Park [53, 50] to show their support and even with so many enemies combined the deathtoll kept to a minimum. As a side effect the Strike also led to an unexpected change in the game.

With hundreds of zombies and humans, standing in one single square and having a lot of xp with nothing to do, deathrattle and speeches ran rampant. At that time every word spoken would be passed on to every single person present and standing. There were songs, jokes, poems, cries of joy and protest. It was too much for the server and the game was slowing down for everyone playing. This wasn't exactly a new thing, but I don't believe it happened that bad before. We actually had to ask people to stop chattering and to spread out over the bordering squares to prevent the server from dying for everyone because we didn't want to ruin the game for those not supporting us in such a way.

On December21th we received a new update, that still affects everyone today.

21st December 2005 The unprecedented and conversational gathering in Whetcombe Park has thrown up some serious server load issues we've never met before; this is why the game's been lagging so badly over the past day or so. There are now a couple of restrictions if you're in a block with more than fifty citizens - you won't see all of their names (or be able to interact with them all) without clicking "list names" first, and if you speak, your words will only be audible to the "nearest" fifty players, meaning the fifty most recently active ones.

Petro's Memories of the Strike

• Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself

One of the things that the Whetcombe strike reinforced was just how quirky and historical events the RRF are involved in tend to be. Seriously, getting over two hundred survivors and four hundred zombies to stand together out in the open in a park singing protest songs- I seriously doubt the game will ever see one like that again.

Oh, and one other tidbit from that period, for those who weren't there- Whetcombe Park is now considered sacred ground by the RRF, and as a policy we do not hunt survivors there.

(Of course, the Pwotters are free to do so, as are the gazillion ferals in the area, but we leave it be.)

Hungerer's Memories of the Strike

• Taken from an account by Hungerer

I joined the RRF with Doog only a short while before the strike. I don't recall what I was doing at the time. When the news of the strike came in, I was immediately challenged. I objected to the reasons for the strike: in my mind the change to headshot was the best thing since sliced brainz for zombies. I think, however, that in spite of the eventual effect on the zombie side, it was the change that broke the zombies' back. Living under the headshot-for-XP period had beaten the zombie player's spirits so badly that the only thing that would have satisfied everyone was headshot's total removal, or an equivalent game mod in favour of the zombies.

With the change, headshot's effect on all zombies was nerfed from crippling to the young and ignorable to the old to inconvenient for everyone. I thought this was a totally fair trade off. But when it came down to it, it was just no where near enough for the community at large.

My objection stemmed from the fact that the change was actually a significant improvement for zombies, with a 'meh' change for humans. The strike seemed disproportionate in response to this. I stated my objection to the strike openly on Desenz, and received a response that is my main reason for my ongoing alignment with the RRF: Petro said it wasn't even an issue; that as it always had been, the RRF was not about making its members do anything, and I could do whatever I thought was right. No pressure in any direction.

That rocked.

I never went on strike. I happily continued to slaughter things willy nilly over the strike period, far from the strike location, but out of respect for the position of the poeple on strike I backed off from posting while the show went on. I was glad to see it resolved so quickly, with Kevan's response.

The other changes that week were meh changes. Where I think Kevan held to his promise of making life better for zombies was in a change that most people at first thought was a minor adjustment, but from the get-go I recognised as the best thing to happen to zombies since Droggog's brain-cookery menu: Feeding Groan. I mark the turn around in the fun quotient of playing a zombie to this change.

I recall that I was running with Group 1 in december/january: and there was the rollicking run to the Sea party... that was a barrel of laughs, and the first time I traveled with a horde.

Nervie's Memories of the Strike

Although I had enjoyed hunting terrorists in Ridleybank, I was feeling pretty damned burnt out on UD by the time of the strike, I had idled out pretty much everyone of my characters and was considering idling out the rest for the last time. I didn't want to, Christ no. But things were getting to the stage where I could muster little enthusiasm for the game.

To be totally honest, I was initially against the strike. However, the RRF were the only reason I hadn't stopped playing when I maxed out Anders in late September, so, doubts or no, I felt obliged to show up.

You don't need me to tell you that Stanstock was a bizarrely entertaining experiance, but, hell, I just did. There was singing, joking and more death rattling than I had seen in a long time, but I still had my doubts.

However, when Petro responded to Kevan's own response, by declaring the RRF's withdrawl from the strike, I realised that he understood things better than most, and saw his intentions behind the strike.

Some saw the strike as an attempt to force or threaten Kevan, which, to me would be an excersise in futility. Ontop of this, to remain on strike once Kevan had responded, iwell that would demonstrate nothing but hosility and ill temper. Of course, I was still worried, we had shot our load, so to speak, and if things were not to improve, and we didn't leave the game, well, we'd be nothing more than a bunch of fucking whiners, an accusation that many a trenchie had been quick to make.

Thankfully, we never needed to leave UD, and we continued on with the battle for Ridleybank, easily crushing the terrorists. (Although, that said, we had quite clearly been winning since we destroyed the Gingerbrains, a story that I feel deserves it's own recounting here) Ironically, despite my initial doubts, the Strike actually served to assure my confidence in our leadership, and boosted my enthusiasm for the RRF. However, the latter was helped somewhat by the fact that shortly after these events, I joined the ranks of the Barhah Brigade. (at which point, many of my RRF anecadotes become classified)

Formation of the BARHAH Brigade

• Taken from an account by Jorm

The origins of the Barhah Brigade starts at Caiger and the strike teams that were defined. Towards the end of the Caiger seige, things were very grim back in the homeland - the trenchies had moved in en masse and our younglings were getting slaughtered to the man.

I came up with the idea of sending a small group of hand picked people - a solid "strike team" back to the 'bank to help cleanse it and provide some solid aid to the zombies there. But something like this had to be done on the sly: we couldn't announce that we were sending help from Caiger, because it would have the effect of demoralizing those left at the mall while at the same time proving that the "Trench Effect" was working in the 'bank.

So Petro and I talked and set up the basics, and I sent out PMs to a couple singular, trusted people, asking them to join. And then I went to bed.

...And when I woke up, Petro had called the retreat at Caiger.

So this put plans in a different perspective. The idea of the Brigade was a sound one, so we kept with it. I went about handpicking people at first (we later moved into a vote/veto system).

I had intended for some "dry run" missions - crack known safehouses and see how we operated - but we got thrown into the grinder feet first, without a training mission: Crack Nichols mall (which had, by that time, become a fortress) and assassinate some specific individuals (and, uh, Saromu was on the list, but I don't think we got him at the time).

It was bloody brilliant. Our first mission, our first hit-and-fade, and the confusion it threw up on the desensitized boards was a joy to behold. This one mission became the blueprint for many future operations: crack a mall, kill a specific, singular person, and leave without ever being noticed.

Of course, our *big* win during this time was the discovery of the Gingerbread HQ. And not once, but *twice*: the first time we found them inside Ridleybank and crushed them (the second time, we found them in Stanbury after they were regrouping and we decided to leave them be).