Community Project : Unsung Heroes

Hello everyone, my name is Erminas. For those that don't know me, I come from Serbia. I was born in my country's capital Belgrade (White City if translated to English) and I still live in this ancient metropolis.




 



I bought Warband from TW's official site way back in May of 2010. A few days later I was already a member of the NC team that consisted of ex-YU players. That summer of 2010 and its Nations Cup was the first time I played in an organized multiplayer tournament in any game.
NC has always been on top of my priorities when it comes to Warband. And I am proud to say that I have played in it on more than 3 occasions (2012, 2013 and 2015). I would have played in the 2011 edition as well, but at that time I was living in Montenegro (without internet...).

As for 2014, that is a long story. Some NW boys wanted to try playing in the Native Nations Cup after some success they apparently had in the NW edition of NC.
They didn't see it fit to even contact me, so I decided to stay on the sideline and let them play. As all teams regiments that venture into Native learn very fast, they were nowhere near ready or prepared for it. I think they left the competition after a few defeats...

Definitely the best moment I had in any NC was being captain of the Yugoslavia team back in 2012. We lost a lot of matches, but the camaraderie of all the members of that team was really touching and very positive. That's why we kept on going, even after losing, just to play with one another.

Another important date of 2010 was the 27th of May. That was the day I joined what would be my first and only clan in Warband: The Defenders of Faith.
God only knows what made me choose a clan that was mostly made of North American players. And what was even more important back then was that the clan only played in NA scrims (late at night in European time). But hey I am still here after all the obstacles and rough times we had during those five years, so I guess that choice was the correct one.









I guess that in my case these two aspects are intertwined. I enjoy the competitive scene and participating in tournaments, but I would never play in any competition if I wasn't enjoying playing Warband with friends. And I am lucky that I have been surrounded by friends that have a similar point of view to me. That is probably the main reason why I am still playing it. The rush you feel after you win against great opponent.
The hype and positive atmosphere that’s present in TS during these moments is always good enough motivation to never stop playing this wonderful game.

I also like meeting and playing with new people; that is one of the main reasons why we have been hosting fun public events for years.








I would describe my clan as bunch of friends who enjoy spending free time with each other.
DoF has this core of some 10 or so members that have been in clan for years and that will never ever leave us. That stability is something that separates us from other teams.
God knows we have gone through so many changes in the past. However, the clan never was in real danger of disbanding just due to the pure fact that these core members I am talking about have absolutely no intention of ending relationships we have made with each other. Looking back at our clan's history, we really went through some tough situations in the past. Coincidence or not, all the problems we had in the past happened in our NA division. Loyalty and honesty is something we value very highly and sadly that is not what some of our ex NA members could understand. It never was easy to recover from situations where we had over a dozen or so players leaving clan to make their own teams. But we always came out stronger.
Of course it was all very stressful on a personal level. When you lose someone whom you have been nothing but helpful and friendly to for a long time and they leave you for no apparent reason, then that makes you question whether or not you were doing something wrong.

Onto brighter themes: The WNL!

Oh, how I enjoy playing in EU. Organizing/participating in EU tournaments is never an issue for me because most of the time, everything is so well prepared.

After success in the ECS, we are really looking forward to this edition of the WNL. Our roster we had for the ECS will mostly remain the same and with a few additions, this team can achieve a lot. I am not going to hide our goal and that is to be in the top 8. I know that we can achieve this if we keep on bringing the best players to the matches. WNL V will be another interesting journey to take and I personally can't wait for it to start. 








Every beginning is hard. If you don't have confidence in yourself and the project you have to offer then it is bound to fail. Lack of one or both of these is sadly the reason we don't see more people taking initiative and hosting their own tournaments.
My personal experiences with being admin of the WWC are mixed. It’s highly positive in EU, where one small tournament became something important. With the help of community that backed it up and has been supporting it since the start, we became a Sponsored tournament that is approachable to all kind of clans, from the very best to brand new. Some teams flourished by playing in the WWC and when I feel like we have contributed to the making of even one single great team then it has been all worth it.

WWC is an amazing concept if I may say it myself. It's small and fun whilst at same time being competitive. That mix is the winning combination which seven seasons is a testimony to. Every story has its bad side as well and in this case it was the North American version of the Weekend Cups where, especially in the last 2 seasons, we didn't feel like our work was even slightly appreciated.

Warband Masters Tour:

After the 4th season of the EU 5 aside WWC I wanted to try something new and fresh, and that's how WMT was born.
It was another venture into the unknown but in my opinion WMT has been quite a success so far. We managed to get 15 teams and if you have in mind the time when the tournament started (Summer) it was quite an achievement.
We’ve had some amazing matches and moments in the WMT so far, but I feel like the best is yet to come with the "Masters" Single Elimination stage that has started this week.

To conclude the story about tournaments, I can tell you for sure that I plan on hosting both the WWC and the WMT in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord . 








My opinion is that I would love to see that happen and the potential for it is present both within the community and the game itself.
However for that to happen we will need some changes; from the way the game is presented to having a wider audience, to the way members interact with each other within the community.

Trolls, dramas and conflicts are not going to attract sponsors to invest into one game. And without sponsors you can't really have an E-Sport type of game. So if we, as community, can improve in that aspect as well as with the full support of TaleWorlds, then I believe getting closer to an E-Sport is not as fictional as some think.

We have already seen some sponsors being interested in Warband, so when Bannerlord arrives it will be very important to just build upon this positive momentum.









Big shout-out to all the members of the 2012 NC Yugoslavia Team.
Those members were:

Also a shout-out to all the DoFs and friendly folk I met during my Warband career and a huge thanks for inviting me to this interview and to everyone involved within this entertaining project.

Hello! I'm IG's Oliveran. I'm currently the leader of IG's Warband clan. I'm from Sweden, close to Stockholm, and I'm 21 years old. I currently work half-time, study full-time and I'm trying to live a 'student life' while keeping up with my hobbies (Karate, tennis and, of course, gaming - especially Warband).

I started -Warband- back in the summer of 2010, though I played the old M&B from beta (don't remember exactly, but something like 0.687) back in roughly 2006 I think.

I joined The Kingdom of Swadia (TKoS) with one of my IRL friends, Hubbel (most remember him as either BD_Hubbel or IG_Hubbel, a good dueler) during late 2010, and then later in June 2011 we both applied for Guard of Istiniar - also known as IG. Ever since, I've been in IG, and since around mid 2012, I've been one of the staple infantries in IG. I've played in all tournaments for IG ever since. (All from "Harman's Tournament" to the first ENL, the ENL cycles, all WNL's, both ECS's, and also this WPL ofcourse and Nations' Cup since 2011 - I've been the team leader and commander of the NC team since 2011 too - despite not actually being registered as the leader). Only missing out on one because of a half-year hospitalization due to disease (ehec; for those of you who wants to know). That also changed a lot of things for me, overcoming problems I've personally struggled with - close-to-death experiences do change people on the inside sometimes! 






An everyday-time thing for me in IG is to talk to most of our members - even if it's just a few sentences. I try to keep up contact and activity of all members (at least socially). Also, I keep a very active watch on the forums, and manage things like ban appeals, server issues, discussions and changes in the clan. It's not always been easy, and with all ups and downs it's been a lot of extra work. Every time we lose a sequence of players, it's lots of extra things to manage. All from getting new players, to make sure others can feel like they still want to stay even though some of their friends left!

I ran the team, to a pretty big extent, alone during the first ECS and WNL4. It's often been taxing, and taking critique when doing things alone can be especially hard. I do think that the effort I put in back then, is showing now - IG's still alive, and got a team to play for the next tournament - and a good team at that! I'm happy with everyone in the team right now, and feel at home in IG. It's the members that have kept me running through the ups and downs (special mentions go to Kekn, Triari and Crazyboy).






My personal opinion is that people - generally - don't understand what makes a team good and bad. For me, it's four *simple* things:
1) Game knowledge ('can I survive this or not?', 'Should I be aggressive or passive?', 'Looking at my teams class setup, how should I play?', 'What weapon is the best to have up right now?')
2) Communication (being non-negative [note: doesn't mean being positive], making good calls, not talking over each other, knowing when to say something and not ['kill the archer on left' can result in very horrible deaths, since most people blindly and trustingly go for the call, and can lose a round in an instant])
3) Skill (not losing 0-7 to New_Player ...)
4) Awareness and map awareness (awareness = spotting enemies before they get you, so you're never taken by surprise... map awareness = your understanding of reports and how you put the puzzle of enemy positions and the locations together - to form a picture of where there's crossfires, where you should fight and so on)

In IG; we've had an unlucky mix of players who often lacks two of the four (instead of, for example just one - skill can be replaced by the other 3, and awareness can be replaced by good communication [warnings etc.] and so on). As we've lost most of our players through time, those key players who's had all four (a few mentions so you can relate to the skill and experience of the lost members: Harman, Nedsat, LeRoux, Razer, Toi, CristoTheVicious, SpheRe, Bauglir... The list goes on) at one point or another (or still currently has them) it’s made the team lack that extra 'umph'. Comparing old IG with the current is unfair, because first of all most of the current top players have been in IG for at least half a year, and gotten tons of experience, skill and understanding of team play from IG before leaving. Secondly we've had constant roster changes. Just compare the first ECS roster (Corey, Rempica, SpheRe, Triari, Sifon, Kekn) to our current roster (Kiano, Dreaon, Emir, Kiron, XerXesJesus, Mynes, Pepa16 - these are not full rosters, just examples of how many good players we've swapped for other good players over the past year.

All-in-all:
If you compare old IG to the new IG, the only correct thing you can say is that the team's different. Saying that the team performs bad compared to the old IG, and you look at it subjectively, you'll realize that we've performed way above what should be expected considering the players, the activity of the players and the skill of the players at that current time. I.e. don't compare teams now from then unless they got pretty much the same roster.






It's a lot about trying to be active. We're constantly trying out changes, giving them time to be tested (and possibly, open up a wound and let it mend - a good example of this is the 10-second cavalry change, which I will probably put back soon). It requires awareness as a person (lots of admins don't read chat, miss out on situations that makes rage-polls and angry team kills), and patience ("OMG I only said these 15 curses because he team killed me by accident, it's not my fault, I want an unban now OMG I'm so unreasonable please unban me!"), and on top of that, a bit of empathy (understanding why others get mad, and to judge when it's okay to make a bad decision as a player and when not to). An admin without empathy, patience or awareness will always end up making a bad decision at one point or another.






Keeping skill is a trivial matter once you have the 'four basics' down to a decent enough level (remember - knowledge, communication, skill, awareness). It's about being able to keep your mental aspects up (awareness, communication, knowledge), more than the physical aspects (skill - muscle memory).

I think people are very result-blind and role-blind. First of all, if you look at my score from a viewpoint of that I'm first of all a commander, secondly a player that plays all three classes, thirdly that I'm affected heavily by my emotionally mental state when I play, and fourthly that I'm in one of the teams that struggles against the top 3 teams in the community, and then look at my results, you're going to change your mind. For an example, in WNL4, I had one of the best K/D rations (at 1.5) considering the amount of rounds I played, and the teams we faced. In ECS2 I got into the top 20 players who killed the most enemies (44 kills in 4 matches, 60 rounds gives 44/60 = ~0.73 kills/round. Compare this to another player who plays mostly infantry, like Scar with 58 kills; 5 matches * 16 rounds = 80. 58 kills, so 58/80 = ~0.725 kill/round, compared to my 0.73 - and we lost two matches badly vs AE and F!), and was the only one to do so who was not in one of the top 3 teams, and I even played all three classes during the tournament to boot. Though kills are neither a fair nor good way of measuring game-impact, it's a very, very general measurement of impact for the team.

While I will not say that I'm necessarily underestimated (nor will I say that I'm either a top player nor commander), I want people to consider my versatility (can play all 3 classes at a quite high level), my impact as a team mate (communication, awareness, help in making decisions when I'm not commanding) and the way I try to affect groups when I play (if you ask any IG, IR, ex-RF [disbanded] or Castellan members [teams I've scrimmed with at least more than once], you'll know that I never let the TeamSpeak I'm on have a negative atmosphere) before they judge me (as a player and/or leader). Basically, the reasons why I think people might underestimate me are because they've not grasped the idea of how a competitive player should be to truly be the back-bone of a team he/she joins.

Of course I think my experience and knowledge helps IG - it's kept IG alive and going at a good competitive level, and I'm always striving towards improving the team!






Well yes! Of course I can say that I'm trying to improve IG; but that'd be nothing without every single one of my lovely team mates. Big shout-out to the actual clan IG <3
Special mentions also go to people I talk with every day (that also lets me take out the very little anger I actually do have about Warband), that keeps me in this game - a few names are CristoTheVicious, Aeronwen, Boris, Piccolo and la/le baguettes (a few of the RNGD's - you guys know who you are!), Waurio - there's more, but the list would be too long.


Also, I thought that, well, this is the place to show a few of my videos. Feel free to watch them!  Especially the merc-videos.


Thanks for allowing me in this interview!

~ Oliveran

Hello community, my name is Jeroen, mostly known as Arch3r. I am from the Netherlands, currently residing in Amsterdam for my studies. I am one of the older members of the Warband community, as I was highly active during the early beta of Warband.

During the beta times I spent a lot time (too much time, perhaps) on the forums, posting suggestions and trying to help shape the game. Additionally, I founded the first Warband clan, along with Ibanez. This clan was then called the Court of Rapists. Small trivia in my defence: Ibanez insisted on the rapist part. Looking back, it may have been a bit creepy. And yet, this name did also give a clear view of what we wanted to stand for: a community or clan where being not-so-serious and laid back was a central part of our identity. As such, we became a clan which attracted a diverse group of people, a lot of them well-known (then, or now). To give a few examples: We have/had Goker, Kleidophoros, Archonsod, MaHuD, Captain lust (well-known TW admins), veterans like Kazzan, Inox_ionizer, Hethwill, Swordmaster; Far too many to name. With CoR, we had the first ever recorded Warband match, among other firsts that a first Warband clan gets to have.

I am also known to some as the first creator of a Warband mod. This mod didn't really have a name back then, but we generally referred to it as an invasion gamemode. The mod was made before the actual mod tools were out, so it was just limited to editting the .txt files of troops. To be more specific: the AI troops. I already organised events where a group of players would fight against a large group of Warband bots. Usually these AI bots would be the Rhodok team, as they had no cavalry units on their AI roster back then. However, these units were the native units, so it wouldn't become a real first mod until I edited the Warband AI bots to be stronger.

Having seen the amount of fun people had playing against an overwhelming number of bots; I decided to turn it into an actual mod once the module system came out. People of the beta may remember the unfairness of the unkillable 'Juggernaut' bots, with their Banded Armour, Winged Great Helmets and Board shields. It was simple but fun, usually taking place on standard maps such as Field by the River (because it was so open, bots didn't have difficulty navigating it).

This eventually shaped into the Full Invasion mod, probably the first mod to feature a whole new gamemode, which eventually lead to the Full Invasion 2 mod (of which I'm not a developer) which is still being played and developed by many players today. Another small trivia: did you know that Wolfpack was founded as a Full Invasion mod clan? Back then, I also joined Wolfpack and I never left nor got kicked, so unofficially, I could be still be seen as a (forgotten) Wolfpack member! Oh and why the name 'Full Invasion' sounds like half-arsed English? Invasion turned into a full version so Full Invasion seemed like a logical choice. Plus my English was not all that good back then, I guess.


CoR had initially been an outlet for me. A way to escape some of the troubles of real life and as such, I always valued fun over efficiency. Our policy has always been: We try to win matches, but we try to let everyone play, especially if they've shown efforts to improve. As such, we would not always field our best team or best players all the time. Generally, this was accepted by most players, they found it only fair that skill didn't come in favour of fun or equality.

As such, I guess our best period was the time when we had a relatively small active player base, of which all were contending for the best of their roles. This was the time that we still had (but haven't had for a while) Relax, Captain Lust, Gurnisson, Corsair, Varadin. As all the players were frequent players, we would play together with the same players a lot, get used to each other, and improve steadily and so we pretty much always fielded a good team. This was also the case when we won the cup, due to higher points when we drew in the final against 22nd. Small flavour text: That match was the best Warband match I've played in; it was very much equal and tense during the entire game, had good laughs as Varadin headshot the same person 4 rounds in a row as first kill and showed me how enjoyable Warband can be when the teams are truly a good match for one another.

After the 'best period' in terms of strength, came a period where I truly learned to know the people of CoR. When Captain Lust left and took along a few members with him, came a period that was almost the death of CoR. But we pulled through (shout out to Gurnisson, whose loyalty made him return when we needed him most) and once against managed to build a decent team (as we liked to say, too good for group B but not quite enough to compete in group A). A lot of people in CoR are now good friends of me, whom I've also met in real life.

However, I also still think at least as fondly of the older (beta) times, where Kazzan, Mahud, Hethwill, Modus, Inox, Fredelios, Swordmaster, etc. would play in highly unorganised matches, where teamspeak was unheard of and people still did shieldwalls as a valid tactic. Good times.


It's hardly surprising that the Warband community is a lot more organised now, than then. When I hosted the first Nations Cup, I had the idea from a game I played before that. Playing with people you didn't normally play with (usually you play with just your clan) as well as in your own language is just incredibly fun to do. Add some nationalism to that and suddenly you got a lot of highly motivated teams. Back then however, there were no standards for tournaments, no preset rules. It wasn't yet decided upon if matches should be 5v5, 8v8 or 10v10. Nor how the game should be played: swap, no swap, choose maps, preset maps, count rounds, count maps.

Back then, it was actually pretty standard to have each team choose a map, on which they would play only the faction of their choice on one side of the map. Especially with the old Village map, this would be really unbalanced. Later this changed to swap sides as well, but not factions. Remember this was when duplicate factions were not possible, so a team could choose to play the undisputed kings of the open map Vaegirs on Field by the River, while the enemy would have to do with the worse Swadia. Seeing Nords vs Rhodoks on Village was really common. With the Nations Cup, I aimed to make the standard rules a bit fairer: Swap everything, including factions. Plus the maps were preset by the tournament, rather than chosen. This would mean a lot more diversity, rather than Village and Field by the River most of the time. Now, this wasn't entirely without its problems either, as Ruined Fort f.e. wasn't the most balanced of maps, but due to the fact that teams swapped positions, every unbalanced map would become balanced.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,117206.0.html

I hosted the cup mainly because I would love to play in such a tournament, there were of course some issues regarding the admin playing in their own tournament and this being unfair. As such, I decided for a democratic decision making regarding issues, with all the team captains. Luckily, this wasn't really needed, but did make way for a new standard of tournaments: For instance there were multiple admins from multiple teams (or didn't play themselves at all) to remove bias.

Additionally, the 8v8 format, which has been a standard format alongside 5v5 for a long time now, wasn't the standard back then. Back then 10 versus 10 was the most common amount of players, but I could foresee it giving issues, especially for smaller countries that would like to participate; which might have lead to 8 versus 8 becoming the standard. Same for friendly fire actually. Friendly fire was disabled on a lot of servers and spamming attacks reigned supreme. Teamfights involved a lot of swinging people, which changed into people actually minding teammates once Friendly Fire on allies became the standard. Would friendly fire become the standard without the Nations Cup 2010? Probably, but it was fun seeing the game change, as well as the playerbase. In a lot of ways however, this first tournament may have decided on how the game is played today: 8v8, 5 rounds with full swap for 20 rounds total, preset maps, normal game speed, friendly fire on allies (not self). None of these were the standard back then, but got introduced by the Nations Cup and stayed.

On a final note, you can see there are some rules regarding haysharking to be invisible, hiding in corners with the shield up and such things. This tournament was hosted before there was a system in place to deal with draws. The 5 minute (300s) matches that we have as default now were not even a good option back then, as most rounds ended in a draw. Now there's a guaranteed MotF when there's a short time left, but back then it was possible to suicide one member of your team every minute while having the others run to all corners of the map, to keep the MotF from ever spawning. Enforce the MotF by not killing the 'suicide' person? Not an option, simply being close to the enemy was enough for the suicider. Some teams actually abused this, which lead to MotF dynamics being changed as well as these rules. Oh and trickjumping: it used to be possible to reach all kinds of fun places, not excluding being inside a building, shooting enemies while being invulnerable yourself. That was banned too.



I think that Reveran Village is still a good map actually. I did try to get a new version into play, as the first version had some bugs and room for abuse, but this new version never really got in the rotation. My aim for the map was to provide a little something for all classes, as opposed to having primarily open maps (Field by the River, Ruins) and closed maps (Village, Port Assault, Nord Town) I sort of aimed for a new category here: Mixed. There are hills, fences, a river, cover and shooting positions. But there's also a lot of open terrain surrounding it, which provides cavalry with the ability to play a large role in the map, as they can access the entire map just like in open maps. But unlike other open maps, this map offers a lot more buildings and places where infantry can reign, places that archers can safely shoot from and MotF flags that are all centred. It was aimed to give both teams different starting locations but still be balanced.

It turned out that the majority of players enjoyed the map and its design and it seemed to me that it required a lot of coordination between all the classes, which gave it some unique gameplay and a wide variety of strategies. We saw the famous strategy of Nubijuki, with 4 infantry and 4 cavalry on Nords, rushing the enemy without using a single archer. We've seen people play with a majority of archers, setting up crossfires across the entire map and we've seen strategies that involve the classic mix of many archers and many cavalry that you typically see on open maps. Ironically however, CoR has never really been good on the map named after the clan and made by me, leader of CoR.


Yesssss, Flust better give CoR some beta keys, because we'll surely come back for Bannerlord. I very much plan to play it (although not as actively as Warband) and I know a lot of the CoR people feel the same.


I would like to thank the CoR members, especially the ones who stayed loyal for such a long long time, for all the great times. I am sorry for the times where I fell short as a leader and lost motivation, but grateful for the moments where the community of CoR supported me and made me enjoy this great game. Also thanks for the Warband community, which is great in a lot of ways and provided a lot of awesome moments. Warband made me venture into Game design as a career I might be pursuing now, thanks to the interest in modding as well as shaping that I discovered while playing and modding Warband.

Here's a few special shoutouts:
- MaHuD : for becoming a real-life friend, that I talk to every day
- Kazzan: also a real-life friend now, which I also still speak to every day
- Fredelios: my modding buddy for life
- Inox: always willing to party and telling the greatest of stories
- Blacktide: never on my own, since he's Luking out for me
- Gurnisson: even when having left CoR, his loyalty brought him back and saved CoR from being potentially disbanded
- Modus: despite popular belief, he does actually care
- Goker: <3 ... nothing else to say
- Stubbey: Where's that BoP at
- Shoxi: you managed to get the last bit of motivation to play this game out of me, you always returned to play a match when we needed you, despite not being willing. Thank you, but I do feel sorry that you only joined as we became less and less active.
- Kain: take good care of archie <3
- Pandemona: ololol
- Swordie: merhaba kardeş
- Turambar: fek dis guy, ga weg

It already feels like way too many shout-outs, but I could go on for a while.

Oh and on a final-final modding-related note: Fredelios and I are working on something secret, and it will be good if ever done. #hype





A huge thanks to Archer for the interview.