TNE:
TNE started as a small group of players primarily located in O64 that broke off from NR. Early on, we only had about a dozen members, all of whom were very skilled players. Some early members included myself, asterking, AJ4J, gbg1, Leopard55, Boom Tyrant, Syorm, BC1995, Maratto, Lucius Pollo, and our original leader, Maleficient80.
Mal wrote a brief synopsis describing our group soon after our formation which remains in our forum and was our original credo:
"The majority of us have had the experience of running top alliances in other worlds, some of us did it together in other worlds. None of us really want to deal with all else that goes along with running a major alliance. We've been there, done it, and came to this world to just have fun killing. We joined IWW to accomplish that, for the most part ran independently of the main alliance while Athlete was active. When that was no longer possible, we left IWW. We held the majority of IWW's power, and when things in IWW changed we left and joined an alliance that would give our group the free reign we wanted to continue running as we had been. As with any Utopianesque society, it only works with small numbers, where membership is so small, members do not have the luxury of anonymity in numbers. NR got too big too fast, and it no longer worked for us. While NR as a whole claims to have no leadership, we did not adopt that philosophy. We have run the same way from day one, regardless of which alliance banner we flew, and are continuing to do so....that there is a "leader" for O64, began to not work well under the NR umbrella.
We are a very tight, close knit group of players. While none of us have the time or desire to run a major alliance, we also have a winning formula that works well within our group that we all want to maintain without outside interference.
So the experiment....how well can a small group of players such as ourselves do in a world? We know it wouldn't work in a non-WW world. But the WW's change the game. Just as nothing about how our group ran changed when we joined IWW, and it didn't change when we joined NR, we don't expect it to change either with this transition, and us being independent of a large alliance and being on our own, will put an end to the freaking alliance jumping we've been doing to maintain our way of game play. I've never been in so many alliances in one world, and it's reached the point of being redonculous."
While this was our original premise, things have obviously changed over several months. Players have come and gone, and TNE has evolved. After our original departure from NR we were primarily located in O64. Originally, we were fighting Kitten Smashers who would later become part of MI, Victories, ISIS, Angels of Death (if you call that fighting). We all grew stronger and we added a few new members, but remained a relatively small alliance with only about 15-20 players.
Around late October when a large coalition of alliances had banded together to fight NR, we left TNE and rejoined NR. This helped both groups as we were able to beat back many of the alliances that had some early success attacking us. All was well in NR for a few months, but just after Christmas, many of the original TNE members left NR to reform TNE. The reformed TNE continued to be on good terms with NR while fighting MI in the North, ISIS in the South, and the newly formed The Elite to the East. The Elite were beaten badly and a small group broke off and formed Rim Rogues who were pacted with TNE. Many Rim Rogues players would later join TNE, including steve2568 who is a current TNE leader. Sadly, along the way we lost our original leader, Maleficent80. She was truly a great person to play with. With The Elite disposed of we pretty much controlled O64 and O74 and were moving into O65 in the South where we were fighting ISIS and O63 and O53 in the North where we were fighting MI. The wars with MI and ISIS continued until the mass ISIS ghosting and the end of MI. Several strong MI players then joined TNE, including dodge149 who is one of our current leaders. Soon after, NR and TNE ended their long-standing peace and have been at war since. We have also been fighting KA and GP.
Looking back, I'm not sure the original experiment was really given a chance to be completed. The idea was to keep a very small group of players together throughout the extent of the world. Obviously, things change and players come and go. While many of our original members remain, we have expanded our membership as alliances have collapsed around us. This has been necessary in order to fight multiple enemies and has been really enjoyable getting to know lots of new people. I for one have enjoyed adding new players over time and feel that despite a few recent mishaps, we are as strong as ever.