Well. Now when I don't play I can lift the veil of secrecy and tell something. I don't actually read forums or talk to Mercs these days but still I would like to reveal some things if anybody cares here.
Speaking about Olwen's situation: Well, we had different opinions about Olwen and your faction in overall, pTx. To be honest, with all the previous experience I still kept believing that Mercs could have deals with Olwen (unlike the majority of other Mercs), it was mainly my initiative to recruit Olwen back from Greys to Mercs and it was my initiative to speak with Olwen and you pTx in that Dhirim area. Both times I made a mistake, I didn't listen to my clan and tried to regulate that situation. But then I've just realized (once again) that Olwen actually means what he says. What he does is not just trolling, it's just what he is. And what I clearly didn't like is that you tried to cover all of his words as just "trolling", that was completely wrong. I know it's not appropriate to compare this with real life, but you don't forgive those who do such things again and again knowing that it does hurt. I don't like speaking about my RL and I don't really think that anybody here needs to discuss it, it's just wrong.
You can believe me or not but it was my demand not to attack your faction. I barely could stop Ginger from doing it. All the other members were mad about the whole situtation. Also Muffin was mad because of all these Olwen's words about how shitty all the mercs are. All those Mercs in the Dhirim Area were looking forward to eliminate Olwen before others. What I also don't like about this situation is that you're trying to blame Mercs that we made a meatshield of you. We didn't offer Reindi Castle to you, we wanted to hold it because we knew that you won't be able to hold it against UIF and we told it to you like million times. I also personally suggested gear to you for your armies, you refused saying that you don't want to be dependant. Also you can't blame Mercs that we weren't offensive against UIF in Dhirim area. Dhirim area was a secondary territory and it was originally thought of being trading+defence zone just to support the North and hold forces in the centre of the map in case anti-UIF fails. Having Dhirim was completely my idea and majority of the clan didn't have as much of self-confidence as I had in that situation (like trading castles with Greys and things like that) as I only had Dhirim by the start of Strat. Mercs originally wanted to be in the North (mainly to stay with Nords and maybe Byzantium if they'd decided to play Strat). I skip the part when Olwen was threatening me with UIF, you won't believe me anyway that Olwen threatened me with Grey Order and in 5 minutes I was listening to Hetman in Greys' Teampseak who said that he has nothing common with Olwen and Olwen was actually one of the biggest mistakes of Grey Order.
And now the most important part about Olwen and Mercs. When I attacked Olwen he was armed and had like ~1.5k of army (IIRC), Mercs were actually discussing the problem of Olwen, I didn't ask anyone. I just took my army and sent it to attack Olwen. I wasn't neither in TS nor in Skype, I was completely unreachable and nobody could stop me, decision was made by me and only me. Initially Ginger was supposed to attack Olwen but nobody was sure about this as your faction still owed us 700 troops and most of your members supported us against UIF. I made it simple. Unluckily Olwen gave up before the fight and his signature "show them no fear" should be "show them some fear at least". He was so afraid of losing on the battlefield that he decided to have no fight at all, UIF didn't support him.
Speaking about Ginger. Well, even now I can't say for sure what I know about him. He was the one with whom I had the biggest amount of argues. He was actually one of the reasons why I left Mercs at some point (taking Strat too serious, I was trying to make a very different conception of what Mercs were and slightly different of what they are now). He is very straight and stubborn person, his ambitions are bigger than mostly anyone's in this community and this makes others think not as good as he deserves. Also about multiaccounting, I still don't know the whole Ginger-Kittiya-Tube story, I was very concerned about this and showed my discontent in Mercs' skype channel. I also admit that I used Team Viewer 2 times to have control of my friend (who was an active player and had hundreds of Strat ticks from the very beginning of Strat, he was the reason why I continued playing and joined Mercs back. I reported that to Meow months ago when I was still playing and I had a full knowledge of possible consequences, so don't consider me putting it out only after I stopped playing). 1st to fill the roster at night (as he wasn't in faction) and 2nd to move him away after that battle at night. There is no way to detect this in server logs as you simply control someone's display with his own PC running, it's just a remote control, you need your friend to have this program launched before he goes to sleep and after that you just connect and control his mouse/keyboard to do what you want. I still think that devs should make multiaccounting useless, there are lots of ways to bypass the security of Strat and great Meow. Lots of known multiaccounters didn't get banned which proves that anti-multiaccount system isn't perfect. Enough said.
Speaking about Hevi and his looms. Well, that character joined the clan before it was prohibited to use banned accounts in c-rpg website. And if you have ever seen Mercs' armoury you would understand why he was there unnoticed by most of the members (100+ of MW items of merc members excluding Hevi's, and there were shitloads of free unused masterworks), he got kicked from the ladder by Dolby IIRC after some time it was prohibited to use banned characters in the website. So when Meow found out this, that guy was kicked from the ladder like ages ago. If Mercs needed MW items I wouldn't give away my full MW set to random people (Also Meow personally had something from me a year ago or so, I don't remember what but I gave something loomed to him). Also I would not make +3 desert turbans and +3 leather jackets. There was no need in these masterworks.
I don't want to make angels out of Mercs. Mercs are not the fairest clan in crpg and never was. Also I don't like this cliché of Mercs as holy warriors of anti-cheating company. I hope noone of Mercs ever used auto-block (well, I got banned with the reason of using an auto-block but it was just a mistake, because some admins couldn't believe that it's possible to block like that when I was on my alt, I consider that as a complement and got unbanned instantly
), also I hope Mercs never duped anything or make anything outstanding that would break the game for everyone else. There is a barely visible line between cheating and abusing game mechanics. Some people just don't see this line at all considering it equal, others just don't see any abuse of game mechanics in their actions. So this all is just about your perception. Rule of common sense simply doesn't cover it as you could see banned cheaters complaining about their bans as they thought it's okay. Speaking about Russians (I'm half Russian myself and I speak/write better than majority of Russians, I'm not bluffing, it's just a way harder language than English and at least 70% of Russians can't write a text of 5 difficult sentences without mistakes) - it's a very different culture and sometimes they react different than other Euroes. It's not their fault, it's just the echo of bad era (which still exists actually). There is a joke in my mind which totally explains the reaction of Russian community about their bans:
One Russian has caught a goldfish and it said that it will make one of his wishes real, just any wish. But there was one condition: this Russian's neighbours would receive the double of what Russian wishes. Poor Russian was thinking over and over: "If I make a wish of a big house - my neighbours will have 2 of them; a million of rubles - they will have 2; a pretty woman - they will have 2..." and in the end he came with a decision and made a wish to goldfish: cut one of my eyes.
This simply describes why they didn't accept their bans. I just don't want people having wrong impressions. You shouldn't even try to consider anyone saint. Remember my ban because of construction sites? Yeah, it was damn harsh in the end for me: 1 month ban + 2 essays. IIRC I got reported by Druzhina_RXN but I wasn't mad at him and I never said a single bad word to him (Druzhina members can confirm that), because I clearly knew what I was doing: abusing game mechanics (they were broken so construction sites were indestructible for some certain time). Also I was doing it on Siege which I never liked (fuck you, koldborn, you'll never get admin rights there, you mad?). Also I got very upset when Union got their bans both in Strat and in crpg. I clearly believe that it was way too harsh and all the Strat punishments should be spread only in Strat. So what I wanted to say with all this large post is just: there is no black and white here. We tend to judge about something knowing nothing or only a few about it and it's wrong. Some people are just worse, some people are a little bit better, but in the end everyone's is the same with rare exceptions. I hope gameservers (and the community itself) will improve without me as many people hated me so much (I still believe that it requires a lot of hate to find my posts through search and give minuses to each of them like some Nords did or Zlisch who simply minused each of my post). I just found a moment when I didn't feel like playing and that's it, there is no particular reason, no bye-bye threads and so on. I'll try to keep an eye on these forums from time to time. Keep calm and carry on having good time playing crpg and Strat, this is just a game and it's not worth of your nerves, sleepless nights and so on
