SNN Special: OGame History of RoLUE

A STUPIDLY LONG ATTEMPT AT PRESERVING HISTORY MOST PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYMORE

Yes, from 2004 to modern day! (though there will be a lot more earlier stuff than modern stuff, for the exact reasons you're probably assuming...no, not THOSE reasons, the OTHER reasons)

The first thing I want to say is that I'm happy for this to be a collaborative effort. As in, don't feel like you can't share relevant info about your own alliance just because this is titled a RoLUE history. The second thing I want to say is that the first three of the posts I'll be making for this series (after this one) are going to involve a lot of information dumping to acknowledge all of the people I could manage to find, and from that point forward things will become more story oriented (on the whole). The first official post will be next week (I wanted to do it this week but ran into a snag) and all posts will be contained to this topic so you'll just have to check back here for updates.

This concept started years ago as a way to capture the history of RoLUE on the long dead alliance board but I never finished it. A RoLUE history is still what this is but I've tried to expand it out a bit, when possible, based on information I've found and general memories. This is bound to feel very incomplete in many ways due to this, particularly regarding events from outside of RoLUE. That's why I'm perfectly fine with you adding your own memories. All I ask is to try to wait for the relevant period of history in the story to pop up to try to maintain some degree of cohesiveness for those trying to read along (but general comments or information that doesn't belong in any particular place is welcome any time, or if you have info about an earlier period already talked about, etc).

I found myself having to re-imagine sections of this story numerous times based on new information that threw my initial understanding of events all out of whack. Don't worry if you have information that is contrary to what I've shared, that's actually all the more reason to share it. Set me straight about events! If I miss out on an event you found significant from a time period, even if it is completely unrelated to RoLUE, toss it in here too. If any arguments start to break out, we may need to make a separate discussion thread, but we'll play that by ear.

So much OGame history has been lost, so many players have left, and what made me finally push myself to finish this was the idea of creating a time capsule. Something that anyone, from any point in Universe 1, can come back to and feel like "oh yeah, I remember that"; something to remember this ridiculous united effort of pretend we've all been engaged in from the perspective of how it felt rather than how it really was. Big fleets, legendary heroes, wars and interpersonal conflicts, game changing traps and betrayals, all of that stuff that has kept us coming back for more (beyond the clicking). Community included.

I've done my best to represent events as they were rather than just having post after post of "RoLUE was so great OMG!" RoLUE wasn't always so great, as it turns out, but that is part of what gave the whole group character. There will be a lot of unsung heroes but I hope my attempts to acknowledge those I've managed to include will at least do some justice to the efforts they put into the game.

I won't make this introduction any longer because, trust me, this is already going to be insanely long enough, but I just wanted to:

1) Let everyone know this is coming.

2) Make it clear that if you have a desire to add something as the story goes on, please do! Feel free to remember those accomplishments made in your own part of the OGame community, that player that time has forgotten, that event that changed things in ways no one else realized, those moments you enjoyed and the people you miss. It doesn't matter how big or small your alliance was, how important or unimportant you felt like you've been, everyone and everything is welcome in this effort of assembling what is left of Universe 1's history.

3) tree

D) stab

Special thanks to Cillidan, Death32, Lord42, Skull, and Wraith02 (plus all the people whose posts I pillaged information from on the OGame board who are too numerous to mention) for what may have seemed like small contributions on their parts but ended up being significant in how my understanding of history was shaped from the opposite end of things, especially specific details I'd have never found otherwise.

ROUGH SCHEDULE: When there are SNN interviews being posted, I'll only post once a week here to make sure there is enough space for the interviews to get the attention they deserve. When there aren't interviews, I'm going to try to make three posts a week. I know that may be a bit much but part of this is getting this stuff out of my head as much as anything else and I don't want to drag it out forever. Appreciate your understanding on that end. Let the anticipation begin!

PART ONE

I was reminded that walls of text have been a staple of my OGame career since I was young.

Urquan Vs. RoLUE

Now, I didn't post one in that thread, but it's safe to assume the other topic that gets referred to most certainly did have one

So in honor of walls of text, RoLUE, and the ancient spirits of Universe 1 past...LET'S DO IT!

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OGAME BEGINS, URQUAN RISES, AND BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

It all began on October 3rd, 2002 when a text based interplanetary war simulator called OGame officially launched its first German server. To get an idea of the video game landscape around OGame's first launch, Runescape was the prevailing MMORPG at the time and an internet connection fast enough to run even a rudimentary 3D online gaming experience was a luxury. OGame mixed together ideas in a way that heavily appealed to people into sci-fi, world building, and destruction without eating up a lot of internet data. The fact OGame remains in existence over 20 years after its initial launch, after the numerous changes to its system and its player base, is a testament to the way OGame has been able to pull from these different backgrounds to keep people invested in making that next click; because it isn't just a click, it's a tactical move to improve your empire while outproducing your rivals.

Of course, the story truly began when Alexander Rösner, who would go by the username Legor, developed OGame over the course of two months after playing a similar browser-based game and being disappointed by it. As a release from an individual developer, the mechanics of OGame were impressive but the game was not without its problems. Death Stars, for example, were introduced into the game as defensive structures and could not be moved. The game breaking bugs, unintended mechanical uses, and fleet screen lag would have been off the charts as well. The first year of OGame inevitably involved a lot of playtesting and working out the worst issues, but this process was slowly building up to something much bigger.

In 2003, Rösner would meet Klaas Kersting, who also had experience with browser games as well as a background in business, and the two would agree to join together to form a new company called GameForge. Over the next twenty years, this joint venture would branch out to create even more browser games, pivot into client-sided online games, and eventually add mobile games to their catalog as well. As of this writing in 2023, GameForge makes approximately 82.3 million dollars in revenue per year and just won a Best Place To Work award for being one of the Best Employers in their region. The very game we have been playing for years, in some cases nearly two decades, a game that started as a passion project of a regular guy not too dissimilar from the rest of us, has gone on to be the most successful company in its field by a wide margin.

That "something bigger" mentioned before was Legor taking OGame from a German only play experience to a global play experience. This global server, most commonly referred to as .org, would launch on September 13th, 2004. This means OGame.org predated the launch of World of Warcraft by two months. No, I don't mean a WoW expansion, I mean the release of the original game! If this doesn't help you visualize a specific place and time, I don't know what will.

The .org server was based in the English language but was meant to be worldwide so long as a person was willing to attempt to speak English; that is unless your country of origin was Germany. Legor and his team worried German players, who had already gotten used to the system, would have such an experiential advantage that it would discourage anyone else from playing. In fact, this concern would soon be validated when a player with experience on the German servers, named Slyngel, would initially dominate the .org Universe 1 launch.

Slyngel, perhaps better known as Death32 and the original leader of UrQuan, would realize the issues his dominance was causing, switching from being an in-game player to become the first OGame.org admin, passing leadership of UrQuan to Ilwrath. Contrary to popular belief, the original members of UrQuan did not come together due to their love of Star Control but rather they originated from Ultima Online. With the sci-fi setting of OGame not really meshing with the fantasy setting of Ultima, the group decided that Star Control II was a better source of inspiration for LARPing and so UrQuan was born.

As feared, UrQuan dominated the early game thanks to their experience advantage leading Death32 to speak to Ilwrath, the overall #1 at the time, and suggest he break off from UrQuan. The conversation between the two would lead to the creation of KohrAh, the first super alliance in OGame history, which many of UrQuan's top fleeters would join, leaving UrQuan in the leadership of Xorm. KohrAh briefly went to war with UrQuan, until the two sides had weakened each other enough for the rest of the universe to catch up, after which UrQuan/KohrAh would again work together and the history of Universe 1 .org properly began. As for Slyngel, his "creativity" on the administrative side proved to be too excessive and he would pass the position to Burg, who took a more straightforward approach and became the original longterm "go to" person for the .org server.

The Marauders (MARA), DIM, and .TC were the most prominent early contenders to the UrQuan throne. The UrQuan conglomerate had many well known fleeters at the time, including Destruction, Terminator, Darkovan, Volrath, Deadeye, Death47, Death23, Lord42, and - of course - Ilwrath who would have been dominating any early Top Ten hits lists. Other notable UrQuan names included Baalphegor, Burg, Xorm, Tonk4, and Lye. As if these alliances alone weren't creating enough drama, OGame also became the raid target of a semi-infamous troll group who sought to take over Universe 1 for the 'lulz'.

You see, the Republic of LUE wasn't always a Republic, it started as the acronym "LUE" which means Life, the Universe, and Everything (named after the third book in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" series). There was an old gaming website, GameFAQs, which had a message board and the LUE board was the most lightly moderated section of the site; spawning a lot of very maladjusted youths in the process. This mass of youths had stormed onto the internet looking for game cheats and walkthroughs back when such things were revolutionary. The previous best options for learning about video games had been buying a strategy guide, hoping a friend knew, or bashing your head against the problem until either it broke or you did. The ability to access tips and tricks for any game imaginable instantly and FOR FREE was life changing! But that's enough of that type of nostalgia for now.

When LUE first joined Universe 1, their goal was to get the alliance up to 402 members and they achieved that goal. Eventually those numbers started to fall as the rush of excitement from the initial trolling died down, but there were still over two hundred players that originated from that flood who were giving the game more of an effort. Some of the most serious of these players felt burdened by the lackluster performance of the majority of LUE members, who didn't seem to care about in-game success, and felt most of them would be more useful as farms. It was in LUE's nature to not take things seriously so when these views were expressed it caused a huge backlash within the LUE community.

A group of LUE's most competent players would break off and form a separate alliance called FOXHOUND (of Metal Gear Solid fame). The members of this rebel alliance included HydroChocobo, Uber d00d (Reishiro), Solidus Snake, Blazedestin, House of Fish, SeymourGuodo, and Maddogg218. Annoyed by this disloyalty, the top ranked remaining LUEsers who refused to abandon their brethren and sistren created their own splinter group known as RoLUE for the purpose of battling FOXHOUND. A few players remained in the LUE group to keep the name alive but they mostly went inactive, becoming the very farms that FOXHOUND desired (until their resources ran out, inactive status used to mean resource production turned off as it was seen as an unfair advantage for those around inactive players otherwise).

The tensions between FOXHOUND and RoLUE led to more of a divorce with terms than a clean break as the FOXHOUND members agreed not to target RoLUE's top four players Dark Terror, Kyrosiris, Fighter Fei, and Mystalic (the original leader of RoLUE) so that RoLUE could maintain the ability to be competitive against the other top Universe 1 threats. However, these were only temporary terms, and the RoLUE/FOXHOUND tensions only grew in the midst of the greater atmosphere of UrQuan related wars. Not everyone was going to survive in this increasingly hostile universe, with tensions in game occasionally spilling over into real life, and every top player wondering when their time might come.

Oh, and for the record keepers among you, the Republic of LUE (RoLUE) was founded on October 12th, 2004.

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SOURCES FOR THE OGAME HISTORY:

https://ogame.fandom.com/wiki/History_Of_OGame

https://getlatka.com/companies/gameforge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameforge

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A History of Rolue

oh joy of joys

You'll be in it eventually, don't you worry

PART TWO

A lot of people were in RoLUE, at least 500 unique individuals passed through our ranks over the years and that is likely a very low estimate; it could be as many as a thousand. This second entry is light on story and heavy on data. I can fully understand if most want to take a pass on this one, but if you played way back in the day then you might remember some of these names and if you have any stories of your own regarding them, please feel free to share. We're still in the 2004 period here, with some overlap into the beginning of 2005, and this will probably be the longest entry of them all due to the amount of acknowledgements to be made. Here goes nothing!

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FOXHOUND FALLS, PLAYER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, AND THE STRUCTURE OF A MASS ALLIANCE

FOXHOUND initially enjoyed their battle with RoLUE, targeting all of the smaller members they already knew were vulnerable and reveling in their new independence. However, this would be shortlived as they did not consider the longterm strategic disadvantage they had placed themselves in. FOXHOUND was still enemies with all the same alliances RoLUE was enemies with but had now added the largest mass alliance in the universe (that still had well over 100 members) to that list of rivals. Sure, a lot of the RoLUE players were low ranked and of questionable skill, but they were also motivated by revenge.

There are no remaining records I can find of the RoLUE/FOXHOUND conflict and if I've learned anything recently it's that it is easy to jumble together related information from past times into a slightly inaccurate mess. So, with that said, what I remember of the posts I saw in regards to that war is that FOXHOUND got the better of the conflict with RoLUE initially, RoLUE had one or two large retaliations, and FOXHOUND was mostly dismantled by the other alliances in the universe (with UrQuan standing out in my mind in regards to that, so maybe they took out FOXHOUND's top fleeter). In the end, FOXHOUND would fall apart and RoLUE would remain, which still served as a victory for RoLUE in that conflict.

Now, because this is a history of RoLUE, I will list all of the usernames I saved of players who predated my time in the alliance and who I know nothing about other than their names. Some of these may have also been contemporaries with me but are people who I cannot recall specifics about other than the occasional chatting. It's also possible I have misattributed one or two of these as former RoLUE members, but they retroactively get to be claimed as such because they were part of our boards and evidently chatted with us at some point:

Aley, bhaalspawn, diabloman, Endless, EnterTheMatrix, Flamora, Frieveta, Grey, ICTOAN, Id Hyren, Ilendil, JorgeMacD, Kilrathi, LimeLueshi, MarxMothma, Mastergamecuber, MatNeo27, Megistos, monkeybrigade, morbius900, mrburn, Mystic, Necarion, Nightcrwlercubed, NightNinja7, Nihility (TheSwordsMaster), Odwolda, Phantasm, Piao, Ragnarokxxx, Raynor, RedXevious, Reishiro (may have rejoined RoLUE after FOXHOUND dissolved?), Selphin, shaldengeki, Shocker, SmackAddict, Sniper Shot, some user, SOYMILK, supersaiyajincody, typhon, Wyrm-Lord Dracus

Why list a bunch of people who I barely (or don't) remember all these years later? Well, maybe someone else will remember them or maybe one of them will have that moment of 'oh, hey, I remember I used to play that game with the pictures of planets', search their old username + OGame and be brought to this topic of nostaglia. Back in those days I'd have given anything to be noticed or acknowledged so what better way to give that to these players than by mentioning their part in the RoLUE legacy nearly two decades after the fact?

The next players to be mentioned are those who I either met but have forgotten details about or who retired before or around the time I joined RoLUE but were fondly remembered by others. Biscanton and FireWhale (such an awesome name) had the Former Tier rank on our boards which meant they were strong players and contributors to the team during the LUE split. It's a bit strange in retrospect but someone who'd only played OGame for half a year, during that critial split from LUE time period, would be welcomed back onto our boards for many years after the fact with full access to most of our secrets based solely on their contributions from then. LUE members had notoriously short attention spans but an intense loyalty for anything or anyone they liked.

Speaking of Tiers, RoLUE had so many members that they had to develop a Tier system in order to keep any degree of order. These tiers also gave recognition to the most vital members of the alliance while giving the noobs something to aspire to. Tier 1 (colored red) denoted the overall leader, who was originally Mystalic (I believe he was the leader of the LUE alliance, though it may have been a shared role due to the player numbers), then TI92Calculator would become the de facto leader of RoLUE, and by the time I joined the alliance TI92 was already in the process of handing over the reigns to the most recognizable RoLUE leader, Talonic. It was a stressful position at the best of times and Mystalic, at the very least, clearly grew tired of worrying about it all. He was done with the fleetsaving and he was done tending to the edgelords within the RoLUE community. Mystalic was perfectly content to sit back and chat with the few players who he'd bonded with while otherwise fading into history. I presume it was similar for TI92. The alliance was a madhouse when I joined, I can only imagine how much worse it was with hundreds of extra people.

The Tier 2s (colored blue) were the players who did the bulk of the work in the alliance. They were generally highly ranked in game and also actively involved in the community; moderating messages, answering questions, and getting overidolized by people with limited social skills. Honestly, for as much work as it was for them, they all seemed to enjoy it. I think Tier 2 was the best balance between authority and general playing because these players had already reached peak levels of respect while also being able to toss all the difficult decisions up to the Tier 1. The Tier 2 players I can recall included HangTen, Cosmic Debris (Cosmik? been too long to be certain), Badger Man, Tennisman, Blue Monday, Sicopath (who I was surprised got the position given his love of trolling), Sionow, and Waveblade.

The final level of RoLUE leadership was Tier 3 (colored green). Tier 3s tended to either be significant in-game players who didn't want to deal with the community as much, successful fleeters who the team wanted to honor, or players who were growing in prominence while waiting for a Tier 2 position to open. To be promoted to a Tier 3 or higher involved a vote. For Tier 3 the entire alliance voted, for Tier 2 it was a vote by other Tiers (unless there wasn't a clear person who deserved it over another at which point it would be opened up to the alliance), but Tier 1 was chosen by the previous Tier 1 (with any voting being more an informal show of confidence by the other Tiers). There were rare occasions where players would be denied an upgrade they felt they deserved and lose all interest in playing as a result, but mostly people were pretty happy with their place and the responsibilities expected of them in their own Tier.

The Tier 3s included Rice Merchant, Fighter Fei (also T2 for a short time), Celes, Gibson, Xenos, KillerTree, Viper5D, Shavedfish, Snake in a box, RunsWithScissors, Isthian (eventually T2), me9342, f21987, Cast2022 (may have become T2 eventually), vegso (was T1 briefly after Talonic retired), shaggy123, and Tciddados. Shavedfish and Snake in a box were both very active in the community, I can remember joking around and trolling other players with them. A few wild, crazy but immensely fun guys. Rice Merchant, KillerTree, Gibson and Tciddados somehow felt like ancient figures and grizzled war veterans when I joined even though the game had only been out for a few months before then. I do recall that Rice Merchant was one of our most respected overall players and when he chose to retire it was treated as a really big deal.

Then there are the players who had prominent positions, or who were treated as prominent people, but whose Tier positions I can't remember. Baron Von Pimpalot may have been Tier 2, Jeeves The Mole and Juanamichi were at least Tier 3, Gram was a former strong fleeter who may have been Tier 3, Thrall was a strong fleeter and I believe was Tier 3 briefly, and Captain PLanet was one of our top fleeters during the FOXHOUND war who I think was Tier 2 (he was the person I remember feeling was the most mythological RoLUEser along with Dark Terror).

PhQ was idolized at a similar level to Mystalic so I believe he played a critical role in the LUE exodus and was a prominent Tier when RoLUE first formed. There was someone named Mog from this time period that was significant in some way, but I knew very little about the player beyond the name. STDClown and Airhead had titles but I can't remember what they were. Ilwrath also had an honorary role after he briefly joined RoLUE, but that was only after he'd lost his fleet and most of his desire to continue.

Then there are the RAWK members who we were allied with for the longhaul early on. The players whose names I was able to find were ThePatrician, justin-case, accessgranter, ghost sgt (Slash), Tetz, Coolhand, muffington (diplomat? leader?), Kichimoo, Elminster, Talos, Tayol, and ethanol. I am missing so many names, sorry guys. They were their own distinct entity from us, with a smaller but still considerably sized number of players, who shared in our joy of havoc making.

*takes a deep breath* Ok, that was a lot, and I know I've inevitably missed out on some people. This may not have been the most exciting section to read but, since this effort is to capture what is left of RoLUE history, it was a necessary one. While this acknowledgement section has been gratuitously long, there are some players I remember well enough that I'd like to highlight them in more detail and that is what we'll have coming up next.

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PART THREE

Part Two involved listing a lot of people with minimal details, Part Three focuses on a few of the players who really stood out in the RoLUE group when I was first there and going into a bit more of what they added to the team. Good, bad, or otherwise, these are the people who helped define RoLUE as it was during one of the hottest periods not just in Universe 1 history but OGame history overall.

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THE FLEETERS, THE LEADERS, AND THE LUESERS

To start talking about the best players of RoLUE feels very unLUEser like so instead we will start with the biggest LUEser of them all: peaben. There are players who build their mines evenly, who build defense to protect their daily resources, and who save their fleets to avoid them getting crashed. Then there are players like peaben. The biggest example of how RoLUE differed from so many other alliances is that it didn't matter how many times peaben got farmed, how many times peaben got his ill conceived fleet builds crashed, or how many times he blatantly ignored the paragraphs of advice people took the time to give him: peaben was not a very good player; but he was OUR not very good player.

Thankfully (or perhaps not) we had a Tier 3 whose job (or whose self proclaimed job) was whipping n00bs into shape. With his battlecry of "FLEETSAVE MFer, DO YOU USE IT!?", Xenos would post in any combat report where a new RoLUEser had been hit. If the hit was made and he knew about it and there was no thread to post in about it, he would still find a way to track the person down and yell at them for their lapse in video game competency like a drill sergeant with roid rage. I'm certain I was yelled at by Xenos when I was new, I'm also certain that when I got into a position of significance I dressed him down for his behavior because he was causing players to quit for no damn reason other than he had a bad temper. Xenos would retire not long after (likely unrelated). He was apparently really good at crashing fleets and helping others crash fleets though, so there was that.

I'll briefly mention Gram, who I didn't personally know beyond a short conversation where he graciously gave me his account that had once been well into the top 50 but had recently been fleetcrashed. I planned to mine anyway, so that worked out. I blew up his tiny planets and moved most of the account out to Galaxy 8 where literally no one was. My alliance mates were not super pleased by this but I did turtle the account into the top 100 and had some of the highest mine levels in the entire alliance (I'm quite certain it was me growing so efficiently with mines alone that started to get our fleeters - who literally only built fleet and never mines - to, ya know, BUILD MINES!)

Speaking of mining, Viper5D was the top turtle/miner in our alliance and it became my personal goal to pass him by mining more efficiently than him. The problem was that I was way behind to begin with and, even though I did reach the point where I started gaining on him, it was going to be years before I could ever pass him. When I returned to the game a while back it was Viper5D's account that I inherited so it really felt like coming full circle. I'm not gonna lie, he kept some of the tiniest planets I think I've ever seen in my life and his mine builds were very lopsided, but even with his questionable design choices he still put me and most other mining style players to shame, so cheers to him!

And speaking of fleeters who never built mines, ever: STDClown. Already, from the name, you can get a good idea of this guys personality and he was, in fact, a laugh riot. He also had some of the best fleetcrashes RoLUE had to its name at the time. But he also also had the most fleets recycled by our enemies because he would let his fleet sit because he would run out of deut because he NEVER BUILT ANY MINES ON HIS ACCOUNTS! Oh sure, he'd build them to a specific point, somewhere in the low 20s, but then he would say "they are not cost efficient" beyond that point, and his account would grow beyond my own in the ranking as our allies pulled him into the top 100, and then within a few weeks he would be rank 600 something. Can you imagine a top 100 player in the modern day losing their fleet and dropping over 500 ranks? It would be beyond absurd. But I don't have to imagine this, I experienced it, and I have STDClown and his not building mines to thank for that.

Now I'm going to lump some players with similar qualities together. Cosmic Debris, BadgerMan, and Fighter Fei were our upper echelon of fleeters along with Winney1907 from the 313 alliance (who would eventually join RoLUE prior to his retirement because our alliances were allied the entire time anyway). It is hard to say who was the best of that bunch because I think most would agree, even our most stubborn of enemies who thought RoLUE was entirely made up of incompetence and only reached rank #1 because we had way too many people in our alliance, that these guys are some of the best to ever play. In a time when you could not buy resources to rebuild and if you lost your fleet then it was completely gone, these guys were legendary. Extra acknowledgement to HangTen whose main fleeting accomplishments happened before I joined the game but who was also very giving with his knowledge, helping myself and many others massively overachieve. He also built mines and that was very endearing.

The real core of guys who were on the boards, in the chatrooms, hanging out, having a laugh, causing the occasional trouble, facepalming at others behavior, and so on were Talonic, Isthian, Celes, me9342, Cast2022, f21987, RunsWithScissors, vegso, and shaggy123. Add in STDClown, Airhead, Fighter Fei, Sicopath, and Shavedfish on occasion to demonstrate the amount of diversity and yet insane fun that could be had by writing text on a screen and smashing fictional ships into other fictional ships without so much as an explosion graphic for the achievement.

Celes was the OMG Girl of the group, surrounded by people who proclaimed girls did not exist on the internet because most of them never talked to them (online or in real life). She handled it with as much class as a girl who would willingly put themself in that situation could. Isthian had many drug related adventures, often while in the middle of chatting with other RoLUEsers, and how he kept his fleet alive as long as he did is still a mystery. I have to give extra props to Isthian however, as he was the person who went out of his way to be friendly with me and help me fit into the alliance when I was literally one of the last of the "original crew" to join (so late did I join that there were people saying players starting on new accounts my size should be kicked for being too small...this did lead to me being given a better account, however, so I couldn't complain too much). Also, Sicopath was a rather sick guy and very realistically may have been a psychopath so he had the most appropriate name of any player ever.

Airhead. Where does a person start to describe Airhead. I'll just pick a spot. Here you had a player that went to Universe 2 and kept up with the CURSED players who were dominating everything. When of sound mind, Airhead was possibly the most focused, dedicated, and lethal fleeter OGame has ever known. But Airhead lives with a mind of constant extremes. Things are either the best they have ever been or things are on a pathway to becoming the first player banned OGame wide from every universe, every message board, and every chatroom connected to the game. More than once I have found myself relating with Airhead, being friendly with Airhead, sometimes weeks would go by where I would have nothing but a renewed respect for Airhead, only for the bad day to arrive where everything was terrible, I was terrible, and nothing mattered. Utter chaos would ensue, other people would start freaking out as a result, and I'd be left completely baffled by everything. I'm not sure I have ever been so personally affected by another individual I have only known online as I have been by Airhead and certainly the OGame staff will never forget Airhead's historic contributions.

And last, but certainly not least, of those from the early days: Talonic. On some level I'm sad that I've forgotten nearly every Talonic story there ever was to tell, but on some other level I'm glad that they were moments I got to experience and that have faded through time as most consistently good memories do. Talonic was a deviant like the rest of us but he also had the amazing ability to present himself as a butterfly in public. He was articulate, never saw an argument he couldn't win, and was friendly with even our most hated of allies (such as CaDoR, the leader of Mara). He could simultaneously be navigating a tense fleetcrash with our top players while chastizing any of the many troublemakers in our chatroom while handing down warnings to people he didn't know as a member of the OGame staff. He was a rare individual, someone who gave a lot to the RoLUE community and never possibily could have received nearly as much back in return. His retirement from the game was one of the saddest days for any old timers who remained.

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PART FOUR

I wasn't sure how to handle sharing my own experiences within RoLUE. Randomly interlacing my experiences in with other players who were more successful at the game didn't seem appropriate, I didn't want to make my participation seem more significant than it really was, so I threw this together on a whim. This is a greatly abridged version, from beginning to end, of my OGame existence, plus plenty of allusions to later events that will eventually be gone into with more detail. Everything from this point forward will be strictly chronological so, for any wondering what my mostly very minimal role was in OGame history, here it is!

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THE VIEW FROM THE BOTTOM AND THE RISE TO THE TOP (SPIDEY STORY)

When I joined RoLUE I was aimless, both in the alliance and in real life. I wasn't very good at the game, I built defense and hid my planets in distant systems to cover up how not very good I was. Eventually, through attrition, I grew in ranks but I knew I would never be as big a miner as Viper5D, I had no hope of being a fleeter like Cosmic or Fei or Badger or Winney, and I didn't see any way I would ever be a respected member of the alliance. I would never be accepted into a Tier position, I wasn't good at anything those guys were good at. What got me a little notoriety was being a troll that caused the occasional trouble, it wasn't necessarily helpful but at least it was something someone might remember me for.

More times than I can possibly count I thought about never logging back into OGame and giving up, as far back as my first month in. What was I thinking trying to compete in a game like this? It was fun for the first little while, building up a planet, building some ships, trying to crash that player of a similar rank next to me only to get crashed by them a few weeks later because I didn't check that they'd been growing their fleet, but that felt like the best I could do. If I hadn't been part of a team then this goofy, go nowhere style of play wouldn't have mattered and I wouldn't have thought anything of it. I'd have sucked at the game and quit, just like I'd quit most everything else when it got hard.

But I was part of a team. Sure, I didn't really know any of these people, I'd never interacted with any of them prior to playing OGame, but on some greater communal level we shared a common connection and that mattered to me during a time when I didn't feel much connection anywhere else in life. I wanted to impress these people, I wanted the chance to pretend to be a hero for a while, but I could see no way it would ever happen. I didn't understand what made these other people successful and, even when I did learn, I didn't want to put the time into achieving those things. So why was I even bothering if I was never going to be any good?

It was around the time when this internal crisis was reaching its peak that I was offered a new account. It was the Gram account and it had been crashed. There was nothing left, not even defense, but it wouldn't take long for it to be significantly better than the mess I'd been creating on my own. Alright, I thought, I couldn't ruin an account with nothing on it that no one was using and no one wanted, so why not? I didn't have to worry about doing something to make the account worse and the first thing I built on it would immediately make it better. Why not keep trying?

So I stayed and, while I still didn't do much in the game, I did my best to be part of the community. In doing so I would pick up small tips and tricks here and there about how social interactions worked, something I wasn't very good at in real life. The way Talonic talked with people, the way he handled diplomatic matters in an unassuming but decisive way, absolutely blew my mind. As I became more intrigued about figuring out how these interactions worked, I finally started to understand how Talonic became our leader even though he didn't have the biggest fleet or highest mines. He could take a mess and make it not a mess. That was something.

Talonic wasn't great in game either. His account was decently ranked, sure, in the 50 to 60 range, but it wasn't super impressive. He'd even say as such when asked. It occurred to me that maybe I couldn't do any of the things that those people who earned Tier positions could and maybe the war part of the war game wasn't really my thing, but maybe, just maybe I could do what Talonic was doing. It was a long shot but it was the best pathway I could see.

Occasionally I'd be in a chatroom as Talonic dealt one on one with a person and I started really trying to pay attention to these interactions, often not understanding how either side was approaching the conversation or how they had managed to adequately resolve anything. And yet things were being managed and things would get resolved. Clearly I wasn't missing just a slice of what was happening, I was missing most of the pie.

Recognizing I might have an even bigger social understanding gap than I thought, I started to pay attention to how every person who seemed to be an effective communicator interacted with others. I started reading books about war to better understand the motivations of our allies and enemies within the game. I furthered my pre-existing fascination with psychology and changed my posting style from barely veiled cries for attention to trying to defuse arguments, trying to pick apart the complexities of difficult issues that would arise, and trying to find resolutions. I often wrote way more words than necessary, as I wasn't confident about getting my opinions across any other way, but it was a start.

One day I would log in to the RoLUE forum to find I'd been given a completely new rank, one that was created specifically for me: RoLUE Information Minister. When the team would come to a decision about some political matter they needed to present in public, they would come to me to write it. I managed to find an old thread, started by BadgerMan, about the dissolution of RoLUE's alliance with our longstanding ally RAWK and was surprised to see the words written there were mine. The full circle significance (or really insignificance) of this association will become clear later. Then one day I logged on to find that I had all of the powers of a Tier 1 on the message boards. There was no election, I hadn't suddenly become a good player in-game, but I had completely bypassed the entire Tier system and the only messages I saw were people surprised I didn't have access to all the secret boards in the first place.

Not long after that, I would have all the powers of an alliance leader in-game as well, despite Talonic still being the boss. Considering the version of me that joined RoLUE would have abused those powers just for a laugh, I was astonished I'd been given this sort of trust. I was put into a position where most people had no idea I had such powers, where I suddenly had more authority than any of the established fleeters and miners that I had looked up to, and those who did know just told me to keep it to myself. No one needed to know, just keep on doing as I was doing.

The true significance of this wouldn't hit me until many years later, when my position sitting in the wings, quietly doing little things to keep the peace and provide what stability to the team I could, was shattered like someone hitting the glass in case of an emergency. Our leader at the time left and an entirely new team of strangers with far stronger accounts than anyone remaining in RoLUE came in. There was no one else to fill the role of leader, and even though I felt like I had done nothing to deserve the position or authority, I made it work as best I could. I would be leader during the period when all of our top fleets left due to issues that preexisted my authority, and I would feel like crap because of it. I saw the very sorts of players the younger me idolized leaving our remaining team high and dry. In many ways it felt like the end of RoLUE and it certainly was an end to our many, many years of prominence and eventual dominance; all under my brief tenure as leader. All while filling that impossible goal of Tier 1 that I had secretly craved but also never truly wanted.

It was only at this point when I realized that, in the entire time I'd been trying to learn to be like Talonic, Talonic had been not so passively preparing me to be a leader. No one ever told me that but they probably figured they didn't need to. The reason there wasn't some obvious passing of the torch, the reason no one questioned how much power I had, the reason these giants among OGame left me in the position I was in without complaint, wasn't due to some oversight or a sympathy promotion. They wanted me in those positions, they thought I belonged there, and I seemed to be the only one who didn't realize it.

It took that moment many years later, when I was being supported by people who I barely knew and had barely interacted with in my own alliance (because they'd joined to play with our former leader who'd just left), while everything fell apart around us and the future of the alliance was completely uncertain, when I started to understand. Someone else was always the big fleeter, someone else was the best trading partner, someone else was getting the attention and the accolades while I was just a guy who chatted on occasion and quietly grew my account. I didn't think my efforts mattered, but others did. I hadn't been given all of the power just because it was convenient, the people who I thought were better than me thought I'd earned it. And I still struggle with that because it all happened very differently than I ever imagined it would, yet here I am. While this is just a stupid game about stupid fake space stuff, I've learned many things that made me see my in-game self differently...and that made me see my real life self differently too.

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PART FIVE

The year 2005 wasn't necessarily peak RoLUE but it was one of the most noteworthy periods in the history of the alliance. There were many viable alliances with differing loyalties all still fighting it out and RoLUE was deep in the mix. A famous mistake and a famous betrayal defined this year, heating things up even more for the year to come.

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GREATEST ENEMIES MERGE, WAR DECLARED, ARAL HIGHS AND LOWS, NEW BATTLELINES FORM

My notes about early MARA are spotty at best, I'm pretty sure this list is from the pre-merge with DIM, but would need confirmation. The names I have include CaDoR (their leader), twiZzLe, swirl, SP, doa, Wurth, the Vets (VetCrew, VetRaptor, VetLaz, VetKFG [KungFuGrip]), musashi and TheMasterChief. The majority of these names were regarded as the best fleeters in Universe 1, acting as the primary instigators in the downfall of UrQuan, with doa being the most feared by other top fleeters and the SP/swirl combination terrifying everyone else. They also had their own super alliance, with many of the above players in it, called RD (but I don't remember what the acronym stood for and I'm pretty sure they weren't avid Reader's Digest fans).

When MARA merged with DIM it was the first time I felt something unfair to the universe as a whole had happened. Sure, the two alliances had been working together against UrQuan and KohrAh anyway, but there was always that small glimmer of hope that perhaps they might turn on each other some day. With the merge, a significant number of the top 25 were now flying the same tag and the rest of Universe 1 was suddenly on notice: there was only one alliance that mattered and, no matter the past relationship, if you weren't in Mara.DIM then you were a target.

On June 28th, 2005, Mara.DIM and RoLUE officially went to war (though this had been an off and on affair since the beginning of Universe 1, with RoLUE technically winning the first war due to the MARA name change, YA RLY). This thread led to a record number of warnings being handed out and many laughs being had. The great owl vs. kangaroo war was at full tilt (while also not being much different than it had been pre-war declaration). There was a great mixture of personalities involved in the conflict which helped take everything to another level; people not taking things seriously, people roleplaying, people being a bit too serious, and everything in between. This wasn't an issue just between two alliances either, sides were clearly being defined throughout the universe and RoLUE went from being known only as the rather annoying people who spammed all the time to a legitimate underdog being rooted for by the many smaller players Mara.DIM harassed in-game.

On September 3rd, 2005, UrQuan would openly end the period of peace that had been negotiated with Mara.DIM months prior. While MARA and DIM had been in opposition to UrQuan in the past, they had chosen to hide in their shadow at times as well, using the ceasefire to build up their accounts in wars against RoLUE and the top members of a variety of other alliances. With Mara.DIM now being the force that eclipsed all others, their alliance with UrQuan was no longer of benefit to them and UrQuan saw the writing on the wall.

September 13th, 2005 would go down in history as the day the war between Mara.DIM and UrQuan became official, with doa making the announcement on behalf of Mara.DIM. The war declaration created a situation where UrQuan was at war with RoLUE/Mara.DIM, Mara.DIM was at war with UrQuan/RoLUE, and RoLUE was at war with Mara.DIM/UrQuan. UrQuan had the continued support of JeB but still found themselves largely overmatched in both conflicts as many of their top players had either stopped playing or switched to other alliances (such as Darkovan, a fleeter who established himself in UrQuan, becoming a top member of RoLUE).

Also somewhere in this time period, a guy named ant aka Glass Joe aka Monkeypr0n aka Raptor Jesus (mostly this last one) would take over an account that RoLUE had pulled out of obscurity to become the #1 ranked fleet in the universe. This was not without its controversy, as the fleet was largely built by higher ranked players sending res to the account (an account with an abysmal mine setup) and only partly grown through fleetcrashing (which was the primary way most other players had built their own large fleets). The even greater controversy was that while Raptor Jesus had the top fleet rank, he didn't have the strongest fleet.

With the union of Mara.DIM came the rise of a new #1 player in Universe 1, that being Aral. Aral established himself as the best all around player in OGame history at the time and the most aggressive fleeter that there was. If anyone had doubted his worthiness as a top player, he shut them up by becoming the person to finally eliminate Ilwrath. During his time at the very top, however, there was a slight slip up that is probably, to this day, the most infamous mistake in the history of OGame.

Aral, no doubt multitasking like a mad man, had his fleet sat on a moon. He was preparing for what was certain to be another of his classic sneak attack attempts on some unsuspecting legendary fleeter. Aral was a beast and utilized every advantage that existed to grow to and maintain his position of dominance in Universe 1. This included having one, if not two, mobile colonies. Mobile colonies gave fleeters the best freedom of movement back then, allowing a fleeter to appear in any system at any time and target an unsuspecting enemy. To utilize a mobile colony meant blowing up one of your own planets and colonizing a new planet close to your target. It was a process that could easily be carried out within a typical 8 hour period of sleep and most top hits during this time period involved this strategy.

The intended target Aral was after has been lost to history, at least as far as available records are concerned, but the mistake would send shockwaves through the entirety of OGame. Different universes, even different servers, would be talking with disbelief about it. On this particular day, Aral switched to his mobile colony and prepared to move in on his new target. He selected the delete option, typed in his password, and deleted it. Aral then went to prepare his fleet for the attack when he received the shock of a lifetime. Aral had not selected his mobile colony to delete as he had originally thought, he had deleted the moon with his main fleet on it instead! The memes were many, but what was perhaps even more insane than the sudden, self imposed loss of his own fleet was how quickly he recovered. Between his own raiding efforts and the Mara.DIM alliance helping to pull his account, Aral was back at the top of the universe within weeks and more hungry than ever.

This also did not stop Aral on his rise to reaching #1 in fleet ranking either, acting only as a (rather large) bump in the road. Everyone in Universe 1 remained a viable target for attack and the true power of Aral wasn't really known due to how fleet ranks were calculated at the time. Back in 2005, fleet score was based on number of ships, so someone could have the top ranking fleet by building, say, a ton of espionage probes (which is what KISSFAN, a player lovingly referred to as the supercomputer and the longterm #1 overall before Aral, had done). Even though Raptor Jesus's fleet score was higher in the rankings, Aral's fleet was believed to be capable of profiting off of it.

While Raptor Jesus wasn't the Mara.DIM kryptonite some wished he would be, what Raptor Jesus did offer the universe was a viable fleet that could return crash Aral after a hit. Top players who found themselves being hunted would call on Raptor Jesus to mobile into their area in the hopes Aral, or another top Mara.DIM player, would target them so Raptor Jesus could catch them on the way back. In a time before ACS, this was peak level teamwork taking place. It wasn't necessarily all sunshine and rainbows lugging around the #1 fleet in the universe however, especially when it was the only one realistically capable of contending with many of RoLUE's biggest enemies. Getting the necessary deuterium to move the fleet into position, or to even fleetsave it at times, was a nightmare. I can remember numerous behind the scenes chats where Raptor Jesus would mention the fleet was sitting longterm and that he didn't have the deut to move it. This burden led to multiple players trading off playing the account (I believe Winney1907 being among them) and leading to a lot of concerns about the fleet's safety.

This was an all-in strategy on the part of RoLUE and many of their smaller fleeters suffered as this massive fleet took precedence over their deut needs. Thankfully, the power of diplomacy would lead to arguably the most famous betrayal of the time when a player named Sni was given the SP account and soon after jumped to RoLUE. Sni had been unhappy with the centralized and undemocratic way in which a few players in Mara.DIM controlled all of the major decision making (mainly doa), so he waited for his opportunity to cause as much harm to that elite crew as he could and made enemies for life in the process. Almost immediately, RoLUE went from a "one fleet alliance" scrambling to survive to a viable contender with not only a new large fleet but an even more invaluable strategic mind in Sni.

Prior to the Mara.DIM merge, RoLUE would have been the #1 ranked alliance through membership alone. RoLUE had over a hundred members compared to the ~30 that was typical of other top alliances. After Mara.DIM merged, the late 2005 rankings looked like this:

#1. Mara.DIM

#2. RoLUE

#3. CBC (Chosen By Courage)

#4. RAWK

#5. UrQuan

At this point, RoLUE/RAWK were allied so they were by far the strongest force in opposition of the Mara.DIM super alliance and still had a considerable numbers advantage players wise. RoLUE's membership had fallen into the 90s but was still the highest in the universe, RAWK was in the high 50s with UrQuan maintaining in the high 50s as well. I don't remember much about CBC, I think they were friendly with UrQuan and had some quality players who mostly kept their business in-game. Mara.DIM, in their hybrid form, had risen to over 70 total members, placing them well above RoLUE in total alliance points.

The battlelines had become quite clear but a winner was far from certain yet.

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PART SIX

With OGame .org Universe 1 crossing the one year threshold, a lot of the early game dynamics were growing more complex. Players hopping from one alliance to another, old friends beginning to question their value to one another, and surprising merges. As 2005 changed to 2006, a lot of new faces emerged to carry the flags of their alliances into the future, some having already proven themselves in one of the many newer universes that had opened after Universe 1 and wanting the chance to establish themselves in the original where the most activity and top level competition continued to be.

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ROLUE GAINS NEW BLOOD, KIA KAHA MAKES A STATEMENT, ARAL DESTROYS HIS ENEMIES

Although I joined RoLUE towards the end of what I would consider the "first wave", when the original founders were still semi-active on the alliance boards even if they were no longer playing, I fell in more with the "second wave" of players who would start to fill in the gaps that previous RoLUE legends had left in their early retirements. Some notable RoLUE names from this time period (not mentioned before) include PlinG, Archain, Heat, ShadowGldtr, Kuru Seed, Frosted Poptart, FutureParadox, TempesT Rage, Combatace, Trench, Sla5her, Phoenix of Light, DragonSpawn, cubemaniac, neokid029 (lol), and, I guess, me. Of these players, Phoenix of Light, DragonSpawn, Archain, Sla5her, Heat and Trench would provide significant fleeting accomplishments to increase the glory of RoLUE. PlinG would become one of the most infamous RoLUEsers in history, both because of his active, quirky personality and his proficiency with IPMs (that tormented many an enemy into fits of genuine rage). Adding FizbanTheFabulous to that group (formerly known as Sni) led to a rather powerful bunch.

Also noteworthy is that the great history of (non)accomplishments set by peaben would be carried on by neokid until neokid surpassed him and became the greatest noob to ever noob (because he never stopped being one). Long live neokid029!

On October 11th, 2005, a thread about the top hits in all of .org was posted and it highlights the early success RoLUE had in the war against Mara.DIM and some other highlights of this war torn period. Darkovan of UrQuan (returning after his stint in RoLUE) would be crashed by doa of Mara.DIM, creating the #1 hit .org wide. The #2 hit, however, was Badger Man of RoLUE crashing JunkBoX of Mara.DIM, an absolutely crazy motivating event for RoLUE when it happened and may well have been #1 for a short time. The #3 hit, oddly enough, was Destruction of UrQuan smashing doa of Mara.DIM. I'm not sure whether the number 1 hit was a revenge hit or if this was the revenge hit, but it is clear UrQuan was still powerful at this point. The #6 .org wide hit was The Patrician of RAWK hitting Tak of Urquan, another big smash for the 'good guys' as we saw it. The last Universe 1 hit in the top 10 .org list was Richter Muskatnuts (aka Raptor Jesus) smashing Straughnhold of Mara.DIM, meaning RoLUE had posted two huge hits against Mara.DIM and seemed to be gaining momentum.

Mara.DIM still had many of their classic top fleeters, but there were some new, previously unmentioned names that were rising to the top of the group such as Craftyseed, PenguinXP, DJ Delta, AngryMonkeySalad and Empress Primus. The first three would fill the gaps for the few monster fleeters Mara.DIM had lost and Empress Primus would become a primary source of deut for them. AngryMonkeySalad mostly trolled on the boards, being easily the most likeable member of Mara.DIM by RoLUE standards. Mara.DIM was beginning to gain momentum and a few impressive top 10s by RoLUE weren't going to be enough to stop it. This growing dominance by Mara.DIM gained the ire of a few top players outside of RoLUE that Mara.DIM had been targeting, leading to the formation of a new supergroup that would burst onto the Universe 1 scene.

On October 18, 2005, DanCake would announce the opening of a forum for a new group called Kia Kaha. This group was a small mixture of top names from Universe 1 and the CURSED alliance that had dominated Universe 2, including the aforementioned DanCake, Destruction, Lord42, Woosh and jake. Of no small significance was that the player on our top fleeter account, Raptor Jesus, was also connected to them.

Each player in Kia Kaha had one common trait, that being they were sick of Mara.DIM's crap, and while Kia Kaha was never formally allied with RoLUE, the two sides shared many common goals. Kia Kaha wasn't a mass alliance and therefore never made it into the top 5 ranked alliances, but they were quickly at the top of Mara.DIMs "to destroy" list because they posed the greatest threat to their own top fleeters. This would be easier hoped for than done.

The dynamics of previously lower ranked alliances began to shift as well, with Pirates slowly becoming a larger threat and posting a lot of CRs to the forums with big profits attached. A player named Godfather8769 of the Tempest alliance would also make himself a nuisance for everyone, hitting players indiscriminately and gaining a lot of attention from all of the top alliances. In even bigger news, UrQuan would join forces with CBC to create the TCH alliance, ending the reign of UrQuan as it was known and technically giving RoLUE another war victory. TCH would immediately request an end of hostilities with RoLUE, bringing an even clearer end to the year long animosity between the two sides.

This meaningful victory unfortunately would not slow the negative slide RoLUE would begin to take in their endless battle with Mara.DIM. RoLUE would lose two significantly sized fleets in a single week, leading RoLUE to request their longterm allies RAWK to join the war. RAWK would declare war on Mara.DIM, but were not happy about it. RAWK would privately demand to pull out of the war, with RoLUE publically asking them to withdraw to help RAWK save face. It was clear not all was well between the two seemingly inseperable sides. Behind the scenes, RAWK was beginning to wonder what good they were getting from their partnership with RoLUE and both sides were too busy fighting wars to focus much energy on repairing that matter. Between the lack of support and general apathy RoLUE perceived from RAWK, and that RAWK evidently perceived from RoLUE, a storm began brewing.

On November 26th, 2005, mere weeks after RAWK pulled out of the war with Mara.DIM, Badger Man posted a topic on behalf of RoLUE declaring an end to the alliance between RoLUE and RAWK. In it he would share the sentiments of RoLUE as told by their new Information Minister (me): "Here we have a group that doesn't really want to talk to us, that doesn't want to help war with us, and that gives the impression that their only concern is keeping themselves from being "targets". These are the reasons why our alliance with RAWK is no longer something we wish to retain." This sentiment sparked a lot of bad feelings among RAWK, who felt we were the ones being weak for not doing more against Mara.DIM. Even worse, the wildcard of the RAWK alliance, ghost sgt, hadn't been endearing himself to many within RoLUE either (or with anyone else, quite frankly).

Strangely, RAWK would continue to fight Mara.DIM for months after the thread absolving them of the need to do so. This gave the impression that whatever conflict existed between RoLUE and RAWK, the issues with Mara.DIM ran deeper. The amount of losses between Mara.DIM and RoLUE wasn't pretty...for RoLUE at least. Having had a few major fleets hit meant that, even though other numbers were similar, the overall war was favoring Mara.DIM. However, the surge of activity in Pirates saw them gain some headway in their own efforts against Mara.DIM and Kia Kaha was silently doing more damage than anyone else despite not even being at war!

Speaking of losses, on December 19th, 2005 an updated list of the .org wide Top 10 was listed. At slot #10 was Badger Man on the winning side once again, having smashed Gravel of Torment, which looked good for RoLUE, but it is the top of this list that shows the real shift in Universe 1. Mara.DIM had the top 5 hits in Universe 1 at this time, with only two hits by CURSED members Kannibal and Firestorm from Universe 2 splitting them up in the .org wide list. doa's hit on Darkovan was still on the list but he had outdone himself with a hit on Criticizer of Torment. It was Aral, however, who would make the real statements. He had three hits on the list, including a #1 against bbs of Dba and the #7 hit on Zork of TCH, but for the story of RoLUE it was the #2 hit that sent the bad kind of shockwaves. Aral had managed to crash Badger Man, who may not have been our biggest fleeter (that was still the Raptor Jesus account) but was certainly the most dangerous in terms of planning and skill.

On February 9th, 2006, another updated list was posted showing the continued dominance of Aral and his allies. Having already taken out Badger Man, the other top target on his list was The Patrician, and Aral would finally take him out as the new #1 in Universe 1. The top 10 .org wide standings at this point had either a Mara.DIM or CURSED player in each of them, with only Volrath of CURSED being on the losing side. Things aren't looking good for the RoLUE heroes of the universe, but can they turn things around in time?

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PART SEVEN

Much of the information for this part came directly from the board archives, the last period with a considerable amount of information related to Universe 1. From here on out, the information is more sparse, with combat reports being the only solid markers of what was going on. This is also the final period before pay to win mechanics became introduced into OGame, meaning Mara.DIM essentially 'won' the original game in the end by being the top alliance prior to the transition. The game wouldn't change too considerably after the change, but player morale certainly would.

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ROLUE GOES TO WAR WITH RAWK, OLD ENEMIES RETURN, ARAL'S DOMINANCE CONTINUES

With 2006 seeing a lot of stalemates between top alliances, there was a surge in wars being declared between mid-tier alliances. The entire universe was buzzing with renewed activity thanks to this. As another surprise, UrQuan became UrQuan again, and the peace between them and RoLUE ended. Mara.DIM was still on top, previously weaker alliances were becoming stronger, and RoLUE no longer had their closest long term ally on their side. Then the inevitable finally happened. RoLUE declared war on RAWK.

This was all a bit odd as the war thread wasn't exactly full of anger or vitriol, it just seemed like a bunch of people trying to have fun in a war game. I think its real purpose was to open up the gates and end any "should we attack them or not" discussions. A war declaration made it clear that everyone could have open season on one another. In fact, it seems RAWK was at war with basically everyone at this point, trying to recapture some of that glory of the prior year when so many of us had spent endless hours in-game, in chatrooms, on messages boards, and sending text messages to our suddenly online turned real life friends just to keep numbers on a computer screen from flipping.

Somewhere in here a guy named Fesman tries to consolidate all of the active wars into one thread. He somehow manages to omit the war between RoLUE/Mara.DIM and a post by me9342 remains in the archives so we will all remember this mistake forever. Sorry Fesman.

Fesman declares peace between Rolue and Mara.Dim

Then, coming completely out of left field, is a thread by a guy named Death 47 who declares war on RoLUE! Wait, that doesn't sound quite right, individual players aren't allowed to declare war. Wait a second...KohrAh! What!? They were out of the conversation, like, forever ago! But on March 8th, 2006, let it be remembered that KohrAh and RoLUE rekindled their war! You'd be forgiven for not remembering this happened, I didn't either, but after the early game tensions were beginning to cool off, people were trying their best to keep things interesting. KohrAh was trying to get themselves, as well as the recently reestablish Urquan, back in the drivers seat by making random war declarations similar to RAWK. I'm not sure how effective the mass war was at reestablishing UrQuan as a top threat, but it certainly caught my attention in retrospect!

Apparently Universe 8 started around this time as well. I know this because their archives were carelessly tossed into the same archive section as all the Universe 1 stuff on this very OGame board; adding hundreds of extra pages to have to click through unrelated to the information I was trying to find. Great! Oh no, is this going to be the case for every new universe that eventually merged into Universe 1? Ughhhh....

Finally, on April 1st, 2006, RoLUE destroyed itself. A new anti-RoLUE alliance called Ro-Ah was created and me9342, at the behest of shaggy123, crashed Talonic. Talonic had been oppressing everyone in the alliance for too long, keeping shaggy from earning his well deserved Tier 1 position, and people finally got sick of it. That, or this was all just a well crafted joke. You see, back then the highscore list only updated every 8 hours so there would be a long wait between something happening and the proof showing up on the rankings. It was a flaw just waiting for a clever trickster (or tricksters) to exploit and these mischievous RoLUEsers finally pulled the trigger.

While RoLUE was never considered the greatest fleeting alliance in the first few years, it was considered a fun place to be and a formidable foe nonetheless. The one and a half year period we have just gone in-depth into was packed with historic events. Then 2006 arrived, February turned to March, March turned to April, April turned to May, and the activity in Universe 1 began to dramatically drop. What happened? Everything was still fun, there was plenty of activity still but - basically - new universes happened.

As you may have gathered from there already being at least 8 universes by this point, all with the same settings, the talent pool was beginning to spread a bit thin. Why be a small fish in the biggest pond when you could be a big fish, or at least have the possibility of being a big fish, in a newly established pond? Why go through the hassle of being farmed to death and trying to find a way to survive when you could be the one doing the farming? What hurt OGame even worse was that the excitement of starting a new universe simply wasn't there in the way it had once been with so many new options. Players would join a new universe, hoping to become the dominant force there, and if that didn't happen then they would abandon that universe, hopping to the next new one hoping to do the same. Universe 2 was killed by CURSED so Universe 3 made sense, but soon Universe 3 would be dead as most of the players from there left for greener pastures. OGame was unintentionally cannibalizing its own user base.

On August 13th, 2006, the leader of RoLUE, Talonic, was now also a member of the OGame staff and would kindly update the list of top hits .org wide. Aral was still dominating, with the #1 hit being from him on Shippy of Kia Kaha, which was also the #1 fleet being smashed into the #2 fleet at the time. Aral had been incorporating a strategy of taking out top enemies even if there was no profit, knowing his alliance would help him recoup his losses. In this case, Aral came in with a mobile colony (not deleting his fleet on this occasion), changed his username to help avoid detection, and smashed into Shippy who hadn't bothered fleetsaving because he didn't expect anyone would be willing to hit him for a loss. Shippy's fleet score dropped from #2 to #544 while Aral went from #1 to #48 (with most of his losses being recovered within a week). Aral went from rank #3 to rank #7 while Shippy went from rank #7 to rank #351.

Pirates would strengthen their numbers with former UrQuan member Destruction as Destruction would take out No Cinqo De Mayo of Mara.DIM (sorry, I can't remember who was on the account at the time). Destruction would also take out Whitey of Mara.DIM. RoLUE would thankfully pop up on the positive end of hits again with Kezia (our top fleet account) smashing Fuse, which was a nice hit, but few were overly impressed because we were still struggling to do damage against Mara.DIM.

The last post about .org wide hits I could find was on January 13th, 2007, which shows only one major crash being added to the Universe 1 list, and it was another heavy blow to RoLUE. Aral would crash The Downward Spiral (I also can't remember now who was on that account) only compounding the issues of RoLUE in what was becoming an increasingly dire state in the war against Mara.DIM. Mara.DIM's coordination was stellar while RoLUE's was, well, lacking at best and this was being shown on the leaderboards time and time again.

This ends the classic era of Universe 1, when only skill and effort separated the best from the rest.

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PART EIGHT

In an effort to get ahead and to speed this all up a bit, there will be more posts this week and possibly next week as well. Why? Well, if things work out, you'll see soon enough. For better or worse, the years of 2007 and 2008 are largely lost to history, but thankfully I still had some old, old notes to help cobble together what happened. In some ways, this period was the groundwork that set things in place for the history most players do still remember, when a certain player with a RoLUE tag would terrorize the universe a half decade later.

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PROTESTS FAIL, OFFICERS ARRIVE, JAKE AND URZA REDEFINE THE META

In early 2007, GameForge took the first step that turned OGame from a free service with a "$5 to make certain actions easier" feature (the original Commander perk) into a pay-to-win model with the introduction of Officers. The recognizable mine boosting, espionage level increasing, fleet slot expanding perks were a huge red flag to the many players who had enjoyed OGame because it offered a balanced, even playing field. While the boosts weren't completely game destroying, because you still had to resource save and you still had to be active enough to put those extra fleet slots to use, it meant that the highscore ranking that everyone was comparing their own progress to stopped being an accurate assessment of decision making and skill. There was no longer as much to be proud of for playing well and getting ahead.

Someone such as myself, who had grown into the top 100 through mines alone, would be outpaced by lower ranked mining accounts who purchased these boosts. It created a situation where the new meta was "spending money to avoid getting overtaken in score by someone who had an extra advantage" and this heavily upset a large amount of the player base. Two players of equal skill could now be set apart by how much money one player was spending in comparison to the other, not because one outmaneuvered the other, and this was a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Anti-Officer alliances (such as ANTIOFF) and usernames became commonplace across the 25+ universes in existence (yes, 25 .org universes all going at the same time!). People were leaving their alliances to temporarily join these protest alliances. Enemies were briefly becoming friends. Representatives from most major alliances were joining in these protests to show the solidarity among the player base against the change. The OGame Players Board, that had been started a year prior in protest of over-moderation and censorship on the official OGame Boards, was buzzing with anger once again. It was as united as the entire OGame community had ever been against something (yes, even more so than the situation where we created an entirely new board out of disgust) but it was all for nothing. This was the end of the "Golden Era" that everyone still romanticizes and the start of the "Officers Era".

For my part, I had switched to a moonshot account quite some time before this. I'd given the Gram account I'd grown into the top 100 to FutureParadox who further grew it to the top 60. All through mine production. I had already been growing tired of certain elements of the OGame infrastructure and Officers felt like that final slap in the face. FutureParadox had also been rarely logging in and passed me the information to my old account around this same time. Left with the decision of whether to play my old account, give it to another player, or delete both my old account as well as the moonshot account out of protest, I did the latter. I had enjoyed my time playing OGame but all good things must come to an end.

On February 16th, 2007, Officers were officially implemented throughout all universes. On that same day, I said my final goodbyes and set both accounts for deletion. It was hard not to log back into my old account and just keep playing, but I convinced myself that my style of play had died with this new implementation and that conditions would never improve. It was better to leave with all of the good memories and stop working myself into a frenzy about a game. I'd hang around to chat with people on occasion but otherwise I was free of the stress of it all.

From this point forward, with the OGame archives having essentially ended and, since the old RoLUE board is also gone, information is spotty at best. The best I'll realistically be able to do is summarize 2007 and 2008, even if it will be lacking in a lot of meaningful details. The second wave of RoLUE would continue forward, gaining in prominence and having enough diversity that it would be one of the most well rounded line-ups in RoLUE history. We had strong fleeters, strong miners, promising up-and-comers, and while many of the original names would slowly fade out, the RoLUE name would arguably be stronger than it ever was.

Of these players, one would go from an independent, individually motivated raider who was flying up the ranks without an alliance and mainly only socializing for the rare trades, to one of the most famous figures in OGame history. This player, called urza, would be heavily recruited by RoLUE and there would be a clear shift within the alliance when he joined. We now had one of the biggest fleets (Raptor Jesus account), a significantly sized fleet with a great strategic mind in Fizban (Sni), and the strongest player to arguably ever play Universe 1 in urza.

Despite Aral still being on a tear, jake from Kia Kaha would overtake the #1 overall rank in the universe and do so by an unreal margin. Similar to urza, jake had been an independent player for a long time, silently working his way up the rankings before being heavily recruited by DanCake to join CURSED in Universe 2 before forming another DanCake connected supergroup in Universe 1 with Kia Kaha. It would have been one thing if jake had risen to #1 when the game died down and active players had fallen off, but Aral was still operating at mostly full force when jake surpassed him, doing so at such a pace that it was as if Aral's account was standing still. Considering Aral had been outpacing all others players for a long while, this put both jake and Aral well out of reach for pretty much everyone else in the game.

When urza was rising through the ranks, much like jake had but seemingly even faster than that, people could not understand what was going on. There was no "packing" in these days, no way outside of the Officer benefits to get any extra advantage. What urza had done was sit down, figure out all of the various factors that went into account growth, built fleet so he could raid with no losses, and moved his way around the universe to maximize his profits. He built mines, he built research, he crashed small fleets, and he raided like a man possessed. It seemed urza was on pace to take over the #1 position and the following salvaged data supports exactly that.

Data from September 30th, 2007 shows Mara.DIM had four of the top ten hits, three of which were by Aral, and one of which was a goodbye hit by Aral on doa who was his alliance mate (so really, probably shouldn't have counted but, ya know). RoLUE only had one top ten hit, ranked #10, which was the old hit by Kezia on Fuse. Unfortunately, three of these top tens would see RoLUE on the losing side. Oddly enough, only one of which was Mara.DIM against RoLUE, which was the same Aral vs. The Downward Spiral hit. Doubly unfortunate is that the #1 hit was also against a RoLUEser, with jake crashing Phoenix of Light (a great player in multiple universes who had simply gotten too busy to keep up with everything).

Then there is the third Top Ten with RoLUE on the losing end which was Ham on Marble Rye crashing Power Groove. What is significant about this is that the attacker was a RAWK member and this would be the time period when any friendship between RoLUE and RAWK was over. RAWK would begin to partner with Mara.DIM and there was no turning back from there. While a lot of damage was done to RAWK by RoLUE after this turn of events, there were members of RoLUE who were still working with members of RAWK like old times only to find out RAWK was passing that information on to Mara.DIM to help them make hits on us. This made RAWK every bit as hated as Mara.DIM ever was, maybe even more. Unfortunately for RoLUE history, no matter how much damage was done to RAWK overall by RoLUE, the Top Ten would highlight the one greatest loss and the biggest blow RAWK would strike against us.

It is in the Top 100 ranking where urza's sudden rise within the universe becomes clear. RoLUE had two of the Top 10 accounts in 2007 (urza {2} and Fizban The Fabulous {10}), five of the Top 20 (Sionow {12}, Malkhuth aka Viper5D {14}, and PlinG {19}), and around ten more in the Top 100. We would have also had at least another 10 in the Top 200. Other alliances still had more fleets spread across their members but, considering we were playing in a non-ACS environment, a few strong fleeters was more than enough to be in contention. The rise to first seemed inevitable for urza but there was an unexpected event that nearly changed the entire history of Universe 1.

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PART NINE

The continuation and conclusion of the 2007/2008 summary, a period of many rivalries that have been lost to time. Everything here is based on what must have happened during this time based on contextual clues from other events with solid time periods that definitely happened after. This is the extent of what I remember but does cover most of the standout moments (from the context of top Universe 1 events).

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FIRST SEEDS OF AN UNSTOPPABLE FUTURE, URZA PASSES JAKE, MARA.DIM DISBANDS

Based on the order of events, this event would have occurred around a half year prior to the previous Top 100 list rankings. The story goes like this. I did not want to play seriously anymore, but I was happy to do what I could to prepare otherwise abandoned accounts for players that did. Talonic found me an old account that had been crashed long before (coincidentally another account they'd been using for moonshots), ranked very lowly, and I started puttering along on it. Somewhere around a month later, I received a surprising message that they couldn't find a player for the Badger Man account (the one crashed by Aral toward the end of 2006) and they felt it would be better if I were playing on an account that was actually useful. I had quite liked playing on an account where nothing I did mattered but, realizing this was more of a "tell" than an "ask", I moved to the Badger Man account and began cleaning it up.

Around this same time, urza had taken a break from OGame and passed his account to a friend. This was the account urza had built from scratch, one with a decent raiding fleet that was worth quite a few points but before urza had considered fleetcrashing. Unfortunately urza's friend wasn't fleetsaving properly (or at all) and before urza could return, the main bulk of the ships he had built were gone. This hit never made it into the Top Ten (as far as I know) even though urza would have been into the Top 20 by that point, which shows you how much he emphasized building mines and other permanent structures (I remember knowing when he finished a research because his account would shoot up a crazy amount of points each time), but it was still a major blow.

The original urza account fell into the upper Top 200 while the Badger Man account I was freshly working on was in the Top 300. Imagine my surprise when I received a message from Talonic, at most two weeks after getting the account, that "urza wants the Badger Man account". What? Why? His account was already ranked much higher. The Badger Man account had numerous very tiny planets as well (it was a different time in the early days when no one realized 150 fields wouldn't get them very far). Talonic also mentioned they'd tried to give him other accounts that already had fleet but he turned them down. I actually fought back a little, partly because I didn't understand the value of the account I had and partly because I knew they didn't have another worthwhile account for me that didn't involve me having to mess around with a fleet (and I liked having mines high enough to, you know, actually be halfway useful to the alliance).

In retrospect, it makes sense. There was no "relocate" option back then for planets so if you had bad planet placements then you either had to blow up a significant number of points or just live with it. It seems because urza built his initial account from scratch, he wasn't particularly happy with his planet placement choices and felt the same about all of the other accounts that had fleets ready built on them. Badger Man, however, the brilliant player he was, had spaced out his planets in a way that maximized raiding potential and urza wasn't interested in starting over unless he had an optimally set-up account for doing so. As such, I graciously (stubbornly) handed over the account and within a month urza was back into the Top 100 and rising.

When urza passed jake, it was an insane moment because jake was still ranked way above the #2 account as urza was making his way up the ranks. When urza reached rank 2 any question that he was being pulled or in some other way benefiting from an extra advantage were silenced as he continued his rapid advance with no one else above him to help him do so. The moment urza reached #2, it was less an if and more a when. The specific details of when he passed jake are lost, but it was most certainly in late 2007. By that point, jake was already winding down after achieving all he'd hoped to achieve and moving on to greener pastures in life.

In 2008, RoLUE reached a very strong position, by far the strongest it had ever been in when compared to the rest of the universe. There were still plenty of other big players around opposed to us but we were reaching the point where our alliance was highly ranked due to the quality of players in it rather than the mass number of players giving us an artificial boost. Still, what we had in individual strength wasn't necessarily fully realized in terms of coordination. In fact, most of RoLUEs top fleeters tended to work with those outside of the alliance and not just due to the strategic advantage of having lesser known allies. We had moments of amazing coordination among our members and other moments of even more spectacular oversights.

I believe this is also the year that Mara.DIM officially disbanded. Objectively, Mara.DIM won the war with RoLUE in terms of damage dealt. It wasn't even close. Without Kia Kaha helping to balance out the dynamics of the universe, Mara.DIM would have reached Universe 2 CURSED level status (with the irony being that Kia Kaha had mostly CURSED members, they killed one universe but saved another). However, with the rules of war as they were, Mara.DIM disbanding meant that RoLUE was victorious! Sure, we didn't have nearly the level of hostility we once had toward each other and our war status was more a matter of tradition, but it still counted! RoLUE defeated Mara.DIM! Yay RoLUE! >_>

Also by 2008, alliance member numbers had balanced out considerably across Universe 1 and RoLUE was no longer the largest. RoLUE held around the mid 30s in membership and was ranked #2. AL.INC (who absorbed most of the Mara.DIM members who didn't retire) was in the mid to high 30s and was ranked #1. An alliance called HaRMoNY was growing in power as the #3 rank with membership around 30. Pirates were mid-30s and rank 4. Knights was at rank 5 with membership in the high 20s (and, for whatever reason, tended to be targeted a lot for raids and big crashes by the bigger alliances). RAWK held a strong mid-30s membership number at rank 6, UrQuan had the lowest membership of top alliances in the low 20s at rank 7, and a newly growing threat in WolfPack had the highest membership around 40 and had reached rank 8. WolfPack was actively warring with other alliances around their ranking while a vague division of RoLUE, Pirates, and Kia Kaha on one side continued their longterm fights with AL.INC and RAWK. No one was officially allied and this caused the occasional stir up but, in general, the big players were all aiming for the same enemies and keeping personal truces with their non-allied partners in war.

2008 showed that OGame would have legs long past the initial rush of excitement from that first year and a half with plenty of power shifts taking place. Pirates had gone from a mid-tier alliance to a real threat vying for the top. Alliances outside of the Top 10 were still actively fleeting, targeting one another while trying to evade the highest ranks. There was something for everyone to do, no matter their play style, and new legends were being born. And new historic moments would be made.

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PART TEN

Now focused in on 2009, RoLUE's place in Universe 1 would go from one of an eternal second best to being one of the strongest threats in OGame. Some names may have changed thanks to successful recruiting and the fall off of player numbers after the not-so-great Officerageddon, but for once these changes did not end up hurting RoLUE. Things are really starting to pick up as we enter the age where RoLUE was no longer courting the throne but aggressively preparing to take their place upon it.

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PEAK ROLUE POWER, A #1 HOF WIN AND A #1 HOF LOSS, MOLONY FLEET CRASH CONTROVERSY

Many players saw RoLUE as an alliance that didn't belong at the top of Universe 1. Sure, they enjoyed our entertainment value but they respected very few of our players. We occasionally did some impressive stuff, we could occasionally coordinate a mass pulling endeavor if the stars aligned correctly, our best players were generally very hard to catch, but mostly all of the truly "talented" players were elsewhere. It likely came as a great shock to many that by 2009 RoLUE would objectively be the most dominant alliance there was.

We'll begin with the Top 10 hits list from March 2009. RoLUE spent a long time having to see their LUEser brother, Phoenix of Light, on the losing end of the #1 overall Top Ten after he was hit by jake. Finally, fortunes would turn, and the RoLUE name would be attached to the #1 hit in Universe 1 when Lord42 hit Chuck Norris of ASBFH. As impressive as that was, the hit that really had the universe buzzing was Primus of RoLUE (our top fleet with its millionth rename, likely being controlled by Molony) crashing liandriminingcorp of Pirates for the #5 overall. It is unfortunate that so much history from this time period is gone because 2008 into 2009 really were the years of liandri terrorizing the universe and so many people had unsuccessful launches on him. Respect to liandri. It was rare for a player that strong and that active to be caught, but RoLUE finally showed a type of competency that was not as common for them in the past and also demonstrated the shift of RoLUE being the goofy guys with the occasional combat reports to RoLUE being recognized as a proper threat to everyone.

In the moment RoLUE may have been seeing unrivaled success, but the Hall of Fames still demonstrated how great a threat their enemies were. AL.INC was dominating the Top 10 at this point as JimmyN had the #2 and #6 hits, Craftyseed had the #4 and #7 hits, and doa held the #8. Kia.Kaha had the remaining three top 10s, with Jake's hit on phoenix of light at #3, Da Laz against AL.INC member Secret Squirrel at #10, and some obscure Kia.Kaha member named Deneb holding the #9 position with a crash on WC2 of PolishB. The divide here couldn't be clearer, AL.INC with 5 top 10s and RoLUE/Kia.Kaha with the other 5 top 10s between them.

But then we get to the April 25th state of Universe 1 which hammers home how different RoLUE looked at this time. urza #1, Lord42 #3, Delus #5, Fizban the Fabulous #7, and Sionow #9, put five RoLUE accounts in the top 10! Malkhuth #16 and Molony #18 (our massive fleet account), gave us seven top 20 accounts as well. RoLUE had cut its membership numbers down to the best 25 players with alliances like RAWK having fallen to rank #11 on the alliance list and UrQuan tumbling down to #17. AL.INC maintained their #1 point rank but individual player strength seemed to tell the tale the best. RoLUE's player quality was absolutely beastly, with tons of top fleeters and top miners among their ranks. It looked like we were essentially unstoppable with a resurgence of motivation and excitement to finally take out our remaining enemies once and for all. At least, that was what we were expecting at the time.

The name Molony didn't ring any bells with me when he joined, but such was the case for a mid-tier player such as myself who was uninvolved in fleeting activities, I never had any reason to. While there were complaints that Molony was being sloppy with our #1 fleet on occasion, these were common issues going back to Raptor Jesus as well. The account did not have the mine set-up necessary to support such a large fleet and we were putting a ton of effort into keeping that fleet alive at the expense of our own accounts. No doubt Molony and every other player who was on it felt this stress of expectation as well, which probably isn't very pleasant to have in a video game environment that is meant to be for fun. Molony certainly made better use of the account than most of its temporary occupants, but his efforts would eventually become infamous for very different reasons.

The combat report was posted on April 30th, 2009. Craftyseed of AL.INC (which turns out to be short for After Life Incursion) had spent months crafting a fleet specifically for the purpose of smashing it into Molony. He wasn't concerned about the profit, only the elimination of a threat, much as Aral who came before him. This was the first hit with over 1 million ships involved in .org history and Molony would go from the #1 fleet to the #472 fleet, dropping from rank 18 to rank 201. On one hand, it was a huge relief to a lot of RoLUEsers that they no longer had to worry about lugging that burden around, on the other hand our largest means of discouraging our enemies from picking off our other players was now no more.

There were many worthwhile elements of this hit. First being that players had been raiding Molony's overnight production to do their best to weaken the account's growth for a while. The account that Craftyseed used was the KISSFAN account that had been #1 in Universe 1 based mostly on mines years beforehand and it was crazy that account was still so powerful all these years later. Crafty would briefly bring that account back to #1 in his own period of dominance, being by far the scariest fleeter of the time, paralleling past feelings of Aral's run on top.

Finally, the method by which the hit occurred is unreal. In order to not raise suspicions, Crafty had an espionage report from three days earlier and launched on the planet without even knowing if the fleet was there. He only found out he was going to be successful when he probed 16 seconds before the hit landed to avoid anyone noticing activity on the planet. Sloppiness on Molony's part, for sure, but an insane risk by Crafty to pull it all off.

But this isn't even the worst of it. Craftyseed had moved a mobile colony into the area well ahead of time and urza had even probed the planet to see what was there. Our number 1 player saw a mobile colony near our #1 fleet but never said anything to Molony about it. This led Molony to espouse a conspiracy theory in the comments of the crash that urza wanted the fleet gone because he was sick of how much deut it was soaking up and wanted it for himself. Was this the bitter comments of a person who had spent many months of hard work taking care of an account only to realize its loss could have been avoided? Was it as simple as a communication failure? Or did urza truly mean to turn a blind eye to the destruction of one of his own allies? We may never know for sure.

Regardless of what happened, urza was now the backbone of RoLUE and he was joined by some other very capable players such as Delus, PIZZAWARLORD, Wrayo, (I'm going to toss in Pitbull and Pit Viper here because I can't remember when they were in RoLUE but they were very strong fleeters in their time too) and former enemy turned friend (a literal 'the enemy of your enemy is your friend' situation) Lord42, who was among the best fleeters in Universe 1 history. Lord42 would not stay in RoLUE for long but his story will still be the subject of the next section because an unparalleled hit, a hit that would make even Crafty's sacrifice seem small, was about to blow Universe 1 wide open.

[SIDE NOTE: On October 1st, 2009, ASSASSIN would form in Universe 25, making their rise to dominance there contemporary with most of the following events]

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PART ELEVEN

From the end of 2009 and well into 2010, there were a few events and decisions that shaped the course that Universe 1 would go down for years to come. As much of a high as RoLUE was riding, status in OGame is never as lasting as it seems in a given moment, and a large number of points doesn't mean a high level of morale. Numerous other alliances had disbanded, the names and alliances at the top of the universe were shifting, and there was a growing concern about whether RoLUE was only a nostalgia act waiting for its moment to be led out to pasture as well.

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LORD42 MAKES HISTORY, ROLUE'S FUTURE IN QUESTION, URZA SHIFTS HIS FOCUS

From the earliest days of .org Universe 1, Lord42 was at odds with an alliance called .TC. Lord42 was in UrQuan, the biggest alliance with the biggest accounts, and even when his allies were knocked down one by one, Lord42 continued on. This kept the Lord42 account at the top of the rankings, with other proven fleeters occasionally taking it on and causing havoc as well. One particular moment of note was when doa (a MARA legend of old) was taken out by Lord42 and an ally of his in a multi-suicidal attack which knocked doa out of the top ranks for a while (before he got his hands on another top fleet and kept his dominant play going).

If Lord42 wasn't already a feared name before that, it certainly was after (though the player on the account at that time was actually Destruction). As time went on, Lord42 kept on the friendly side of other strong players and punished all those he wasn't friendly with, causing no small amount of carnage within Universe 1. .TC, and whatever alliances they switched to, would be bitter rivals of Lord42 for years. Lord42 would crash, farm, and defense bash anyone connected with them. Considering Lord42 was typically much larger than the .TC alumni, the desire on their end to get big enough to get revenge for the years of mistreatment was as high as it could be.

On December 24th, 2009, the Lord42 account (under the command of DanCake) would crash flobalob of the Knights alliance for a new #1 Top Ten in Universe 1. The tag Lord42 flew at this stage was TeamEvil, an alliance Lord42 had started with one of the more controversial OGame figures, Zombie, to help improve the game of smaller fleeters he was friendly with. It was a powerhouse of an alliance, similar to Kia Kaha of the past with many legendary figures passing through, and their contribution to taking out enemies of RoLUE was commendable (we'll pretend they did it for us because it makes RoLUE appear more important that way).

Much of 2009 history has been lost, but circumstantial evidence would imply that Son of Thunder/Zebedee rose up to fill the "fleeting menace from Pirates" spot in place of liandri. AL.INC would disband (giving RoLUE another moral victory) and disperse throughout the rest of the universe. Aral would officially retire and only return to occasionally gawk at other people's massive crashes. This also would have been the time period when urza, after reaching rank 1, would be convinced that fleet crashing actually was more efficient than raiding alone, especially after realizing he could design a big fleet that would allow him to hit moderately sized fleeters for zero losses. RoLUE would have been #1 on the leaderboards again for at least part of the year with the dissolution of AL.INC but the brief period of dominance within the rankings ended with the Molony crash and Lord42 leaving our alliance. And then it would get worse.

On March 25th, 2010, two new Top Tens would be posted and both would be on the same player. JimmyN of INC (and formerly of .TC) would post first, with a new #1 that nearly tripled the previous #1 by Lord42. Then a new #2 followed from a player named Spart, also of INC (and formerly of .TC), with a total damage of over double the previous #1 hit by Lord42. How was this possible? It's because both players suicided into the Lord42 account (which was under the care of DanCake). And that wasn't all. A third hit by Exile of (you guessed it) INC would clean up the remainder of Lord42's main fleet, with a fourth player picking at the remaining scraps.

It would not be unreasonable to say this hit would belong on any "Top 10 Most Famous Hits In .ORG History" list and possibly be in contention for top billing. Many in the main thread mentioned how this hit was representative of the end of an era, the era of conflicts between UrQuan, MARA, DIM, .TC, RoLUE, RAWK, JeB, and so many others that had been carrying on since the beginning of Universe 1 .org. There were plenty of newer contenders, or older contenders that had risen to greater heights, but the heart of the conflicts that had defined the universe for so long has been given a powerful, definitive end.

I remember feeling that weight as well. All those years of being in and out of the game, largely on the sidelines as I turtled my way through life, and it felt like RoLUE was falling from prominence by proxy because so many of our top players soon lost the desire to continue on as well. The sparks that had driven so many people to fight had already been resolved in so many other conflicts and this was merely the final, shining monument on the hill of unresolved tensions being fulfilled. I couldn't think of a time when myself or RoLUE ever felt so vulnerable and uncertain as when our two biggest allied fleets were down. It had been a good run all things considered.

It may seem strange that say that RoLUE felt like it was done considering we still had the #1 player, urza, on our team but this is reflective of just how different things had become. Even though he had the top account in the universe, urza didn't want to do any serious fleeting and Delus, our other top account and strong fleeting threat, wasn't hunting very often. There was also the matter of neither of them having come up with RoLUE or having been intertwined with our veterans in quite the same way our previous top players had been. They were both flying the RoLUE flag and helping us continue to feel strong, but with so many of our original players gone it was like the spirit of the whole team was suddenly lost.

Then urza decided to build a fleet.

The special thing about urza was that he could recover from a setback, even a major setback (as shown when he lost his original account), and return to the top of the leaderboards in a short period of time. Got ninja'd? No big deal, just raid more. Missed a big fleet crash attempt? No problem, just need to use the remaining deuterium to fleetsave effectively and avoid a return attempt. His entire play style was about minimizing losses and that was a big part of why he had no interest in the spectacles that were fleetcrashes. What changed his mind were a few fleetcrashes where players had pulled in more profits from the debris fields than he made from a week of raiding, more than covering the costs of the lost ships and then some.

Even this new, fleet-willing version of urza was still hesitant about losses and built his fleetcrashing armada with minimal losses in mind. This shift in focus brought urza from only being the #1 overall in the universe (with the gap between him and the #2 rapidly increasing) to also having the #1 fleet in Universe 1 as well. So here you had a player with excellent mines, excellent planet placement, moons with jumpgates everywhere, well versed in using mobile colonies, who now also had a massive fleet that could crash all but one or two fleets in the universe for a massive profit. The new meta of Universe 1 began to become clear and it was everyone vs. urza.

The final highscore report I could find was from August 6th, 2010 and it showed that RoLUE, after taking so many significant losses, was somehow stronger than ever. Urza was #1, Delus was #3, and Sionow (the last top classic RoLUE veteran) was #6. Though I haven't said much about Sionow specifically throughout this history, I think his constant presence toward the top of Universe 1 says all that needs to be said. He had massive mines, was heavily involved both in-game and with the community, and was integral in nearly every major event that happened for the benefit of RoLUE. I did not have many occasions to speak with him directly, despite the length of time we spent allied together, but he was a great spirit, a great mind, and a great unwavering ally throughout some of the most tumultuous periods RoLUE went through.

Pirates would establish themselves as the clear #2 threat after years of growth, but urza's own growth would somewhat dwarf even that great accomplishment. The #2 ranked account in Universe 1 was Mouse from Pirates with 23 millions points, while urza was ranked #1 with 31 million points. It doesn't take a math major to recognize how massive that difference is, especially during a time when resources could only be gained from other players or from your own mine production. RoLUE was the #1 alliance with 215 million points, with HaRMoNY having risen to #2 with 173 million points. What was even crazier is that RoLUE had 23 members in comparison to HaRMoNY's 28 members, meaning the points per player were 9.3m vs. 6.2m. [Also, for more modern context, FGR (the Forgotten Realm) would appear around this time (2010) in Universe 7, formed by silent.killer, emoEwok and xXDRIFTERXx. The Universe 1 version of FGR would be founded on 12/06/2013.]

The conquering underdogs from the days of Mara.DIM had suddenly become the 'big bad' that even former allies of RoLUE began to turn against. We weren't invulnerable, however, as a new Top Ten would see a RoLUE member in it but on the losing side. DragonSpawn, one of the most consistent and talented members of the "second wave" of RoLUE, would be taken down by Dragoon of Pirates. This hit not only acted as a blow to the RoLUE community, as DragonSpawn would choose to retire after the hit, but it was a show of force that Pirates were the new major force to be reckoned with and they wouldn't be going down easily.

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