So there's a lot of speculation and rumors going around about the downfall of LS. I decided I'd make an official statement to set the record straight.
Big Bad and I had played together previously and when we saw the settings for this world we contacted each other on skype almost simultaneously about starting up on it. We'd both been in alliances previously where 8 or 9 people acted as the backbone for 80 other players so we decided that we would start an alliance and only invite those backbone players to join us.
We started on thebes with 8 players and picked up 4 or 5 more before protection ended. We stayed at about 12 players for the first month or so of the server and were highly successful. 12 players capable of handling themselves without alliance support literally decimated an entire ocean. The downside to our extreme agressiveness is that many players in our area walked away from the server before their cities even hit 3k points, as a result we ignored many of these small abandoned cities in favor of taking larger cities and expanding our borders. This left us spread thin over a large area.
After about a month we merged with an alliance on the southern border of 44 and took in oliver, halfenbred, thebageldeli, and several other players who were great additions to the team. With these new players we spread even further across 44, however the majority of our power ran in a right angle down the border of 44/54 an then 44/45 with very few cities in the center of 44.
By this point we were sitting at about 20 members, we were the #1 in abp, #1 overall fighters, and #3 rank behind DT and Butter (who both had full rosters leaving us #1 in points per member).
Butter declared war on SoD, we spent a few days building troops on our eastern front before blitzing across the border. We all know butter collapsed too easily, and from the outside it may seem like we didn't deserve the win but anyone in our joint war room at the time or on the butter side of the battle can tell you it wouldn't have taken much longer if they had fought it out. We opened up with extremely well prepared and coordinated attacks, smashed the majority of their offense, completely drained the majority of their caves and we were already landing CS faster than they could respond to them. It was a brilliant little war and LS/SoD definitely deserve the credit for breaking Butter - we had several players who took the day off of school/work in order to remain online and fighting for the first 24 hours of the conflict - that is serious dedication.
We then absorbed some butter players, most of which turned out to be good additions, however this is when the first wave of VM hit us as well. A few of our guys entered VM which was ok because we had a temporary ceasefire with LoD/Ateam. By the time the LoD/Ateam ceasefire expired we had something like 8 players in VM, then one of them pops out of VM, launches everything he has at LoD/Ateam while the majority of us are asleep, and announces in the forum that he's leaving the game (the original Indox account holder).
War starts with LoD/Ateam despite the fact that we'd just asked everyone to hold their fire until more folks come out of VM. That original Indox dude me off royally with that move... The rest is history. people left VM, entered VM, At no point since the LoD/Ateam war started have I had a full 20 members playing. At one point I noticed that my top 4 players had the point equivilent of the #9 ranked alliance, but 4 out of my top 5 were in VM, at another point 7 of my top 10 were all in VM. When the LoD/Ateam fight started we also had a huge membership turnover, Indox, Arzaac, jason pflug, turtleacus all switched account holders, Sanjames was hospitalized and left, LiM caught dengue fever and left, Norfolk left... we took in the top of another small alliance from north 44 in hopes they could support the southern front but that didn't work out very well for us.
To say that LS had "internal problems" gives the wrong idea, we didn't. I don't think a group of players has ever gotten along better or had more fun playing with each other than we LSers. One of the things that made us strongest was also our undoing: we're all a bunch of successful old timers. Not just in the game but in real life, during the few months this server was open we had 3 players have children, countless got better jobs or promotions, and the troop speed + conquest became more than some could handle with so many life changes going on. Again I don't blame anyone for this, I'm happy for each and every one of the players who had to leave or take extended VM because of real world personal growth.
I stayed active and out of VM but I felt the strain on my life too with school, work, and kids to deal with on top of playing grepo 20 hours a day. Personally I plan on continuing to play grepo and I'm waiting for a no moral revolt world to open up so that I can plan and still get my sleep at night. If anyone out there is reading this and nodding their head realizing that they can't play grepo like they did in college anymore feel free to PM me, would love to have some more reliable old timers come join us on a nice revolt world
So there's a lil insight into LS. Remember the names of the players who played there and when you see them on another server do your best to recruit them. Top notch players and all around great guys.
Special thanks and acknowledgement to swali - who contrary to popular belief does NOT kill his own troops for BP, the man is just a beast, to Makodemus - you couldn't find a more genuine guy out there, he really gives his all to the alliance, to frank, wooly, turtle, jake, oliver, halfy, the original smine, don, mako303, rob, ryan, and everyone else who kept our skype chat so active and alive and whose work put our alliance at the top of the food chain. Everyone, recognize the Big Bad for the pimp-monster-grepo-master he is, just don't give him your cell number. Natty, ingrid, dawson, and everyone else we dragged over to take accounts, thanks for trying to keep the dream alive.
