SNN Special: OGame History of RoLUE

Quote from Skull

DragonSpawn and Pitbull do a lot of damage in that time, kill a lot of fleets. Also, both quit RoLUE in that time and join Sagitta to help us in the war against Al.Inc members.

I had completely forgotten about that, I feel like I joined another alliance temporarily around that time too, though it's been way too long to remember which one. It was so rare for people to hop alliances like that, I think everyone was looking to try out something new and shake things up at that point.

PART TWELVE

Getting into 2011, the end of another era would take place as this was the last period before the first merger. A lot of people didn't believe it, thinking GameForge wouldn't put in the effort to make it happen, and it was speculated on for so long that it did begin to feel like a baseless rumor. Things continued on as they had been, new rivalries intensified, and bad blood between universe members would lead to a lack of unity when the rumor finally turned out to be true.

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PIRATES STAND TALL, URZA'S NEW AMBITION, UNIVERSES UNITE

Whispers of a merger between universes began to make their way through the community in 2011. Some didn't take it seriously, some hated the idea, and others felt it was the only way to save the various universes that were all but dead. Universe 1 had strong activity in comparison to many others, but even it was slowing down year to year. No specific date was given so everyone continued to operate as if there would be no merge, but keeping the possibility in the back of their minds. Besides, there was still a good amount of drama to be had, even if much of it was about the imbalance urza had created within the universe.

Most top players would reach number 1, get a slight lead, and then coast for a long time. That wasn't urza's style. Reaching #1 was only a stepping stone on a map of personal goals urza kept for himself, meaning he wasn't about to slow down and, if anything, his new fleeting efforts were about to help him speed up. People had never seen fleets being crashed without a single loss the size that urza was crashing. In fact, it was rare to see a zero loss fleet crash worth posting under any condition. Most posts had at least some fodder being sacrificed in the name of greater gains, urza was getting the gains and casting aside the sacrifices in a way that had many players feeling like they may as well quit.

Not everyone was discouraged, however, and Pirates weren't about to let a growing point gap impose on their own strong statements within the universe. In late June 2011, Son of Thunder (of Pirates) would post a new Top Ten Hall of Fame crash on uzunhac. While this wasn't the takedown of some massive fleet threat, it was part of a new trend to crash through the defenses of turtled up planets, particularly if there were Deathstars behind them. This zealous activity wouldn't be limited to Pirates either, as only a few days later Afterkill from TeamEvil would get revenge on Exile (INC, but renamed WDC), the final player to finish off Lord42, by putting him on the losing end of a Hall of Fame. Then, in what would come as an unexpected flashback in August, spart of INC (renamed WDC) would take on the name of doa and crash Gray Adept of UrQuan for yet another new Hall of Fame.

Then the sleeping fleet giant would awaken. ASBFH (Angry Softbunnies From Hell) was the newest form of the Mara.DIM/AL.INC dissolutions, taking on many of RoLUE's longest term enemies. In the past they may have gotten the better of us, but it was a new day in Universe 1 and these weren't the same trolls they'd been beating on in the past. On September 13th, 2011, urza would post a new Top Ten hit on reborn of ASBFH, just shy of a billion total profit. From a post on October 14th, 2011, another hit on a similarly named alliance ASBFM (but these guys were from Mars?) would become the first billion point profit in Universe 1 .org history as urza took out elvirgilio; with a surprisingly small deut cost to boot.

Soon, whispers of a merge turned more into frenzied discussions and grumbles as more information began to leak through the pipeline. If a merge did, in fact, take place, it would be the first time that a large number of top players who had made their names separately would find themselves competing together in the same universe. For years players like Candlemass/Graf Zahl (the dominant force from when German's had first been allowed to play in .org) and Eddie, a player that many claimed was even better than urza, had been building their own empires independently of one another, dominating their separate corners of the multiverse. Adding in other monster fleeters like no 88, pinky, Cyyoung, mika del siro, Geromoto, and Vulture promised to turn Universe 1 from a one man show into an absolute spectacle of inevitable record breaking smashes. It also meant a wider variety of top accounts for old veterans to potentially pop back onto the scene with.

Universe 1 wouldn't enter the merge quietly, however, as Pirates had one more statement to make. One that would only heighten the animosity between themselves and RoLUE. Son of Thunder would capture the new #1 combat report by smashing Migel77 of MeracoM into pieces. What was not anticipated in this record breaking affair was that urza would notice the movements going on, bringing in his own mobile colony and stealing 100k recyclers worth of debris after staying awake for over 24 hours straight. Even more troubling was that urza could have return crashed Son of Thunder had he found additional recycler support but settled on stealing a considerable portion of the debris instead.

Son of Thunder proclaimed the #1 hit would be his retirement as he did not wish to rebuild all of what he lost but, as those who know the future will already know, this retirement did not stick. He would be waiting, along with all of the other remaining Universe 1 veterans, for the auspicious day to arrive. That day would finally be confirmed as March 5th, 2012 when Universes 2 through 17 would each have one week to switch their accounts over to the Universe 1 server. To go into the histories of each of those universes would be beyond the scope of this effort but, suffice to say, the merge was chaotic.

Because players couldn't occupy the same planet positions, those merging into Universe 1 would receive some rather unfavorable slots as the game attempted to place them as close to their original positions as possible (within 30 solar systems which was quite the range). To deal with complaints regarding this, the planet relocation system (called "resettlement" at the time) that had been introduced in late August 2010 would be called upon and merging players would get (7? 9?) free relocations and, after considerable complaints from those already in Universe 1 (me very much being one of them) we also received free relocations (I think it was 3, which was still annoying but better than nothing). As much as merging in with a bad planet slot was going to suck, finding yourself in system with a bunch of enemies who hadn't been there before was also going to suck depending on your play style.

The merge was as messy as expected but exciting because the titans of OGame were finally all together. However, it quickly became clear that not all universes had been created equally and some top dogs in the less active universes were instantly towered over in a way they were not accustomed to. Safety truly was not guaranteed for anyone. What was most surprising, especially considering the activity of urza and Eddie during the merge, was how the player no 88 would shoot up the rankings to the #1 overall spot just to prove he could. It was clear that anyone who assumed they knew who would reign supreme in the new meta of giant accounts was likely in for a lot of surprises.

What was also unknown at the time was that urza and pinky would become friends, both in-game and in real life, with their working relationship going largely under the radar. They would share information, plan hits together, and watch out for abnormal activity on each others accounts. They flew different tags, were from different universes (pinky joined from Universe 8), and were careful not to interact in obvious ways where other players might notice. Some people still had suspicions but it would be a long time before there would be any confirmation. Naturally everyone was trying to find their place among the giants and the speed at which they did so would prove to be very significant; perhaps it would be better to say: universe defining.

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PART THIRTEEN

The year 2012 would bring the excitement back to Universe 1 thanks to the merger and so many worthwhile moments with it. Thankfully the archives are far more complete for these years so let's dive into it!

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URZA CLAIMS THE HALL OF FAME, #1 PLAYERS EVERYWHERE, A LOOK AT THE COMPETITION

It would have been very challenging for the seventeen #1 players in their respective universes to find themselves not being the definitive top dogs after the merge. Especially as it came to matters of deut accessibility. In the case of urza, there were concerns within RoLUE about whether his motivation would drop now that he would have to put even more time into the game to maintain his spot as he'd already spoken of increasing time commitment conflicts from running the account. These worries would be unfounded, however, as this is when the longterm gameplan of urza's growth really became clear. Players were recommending a merge long before actual plans were carried out to implement one and urza hadn't just been keeping track of what was going on in Universe 1, he was making sure he was as equivalent as he could get to the top names of all the other universes as well.

It wasn't that long before the merge that urza was still the underdog, cutting his way through other Universe 1 legends who aggressively hunted him. While the post-merge universe would require a lot more care regarding targets chosen and evasive maneuvering, this was actually well within urza's wheelhouse. There were a lot of other players urza had been compared to, particularly the dominance of Candlemass (Graf Zahl) in Universe 6 being cited as a way to downplay anything urza had accomplished. In terms of greatest alliances of all time, CURSED and wayne (Candlemass's alliance) were generally the two being debated for the top position, with Mara.DIM or TBL being listed as potential thirds and any suggestions of RoLUE being among the best getting laughed at. I'm unsure if such comparisons were ever taken into account by urza as he set about smashing the newcomers to Universe 1 or if his only focus was on how much more cost efficient farming the new massive accounts that had moved into his neighborhood would be.

And smash he did. By March 25th, 2012, urza was already posting a large crash he'd done on M_G of TBL11, a new arrival to Universe 1 who would immediately announce his retirement, and the very next day urza posted another huge crash on Dr. Zeus, each with considerable profits. The Dr. Zeus crash would be even more noteworthy because Graf Zahl was in the process of trying to crash the same player, with urza getting there first. While the player who was hit had likely not been very active, the statement of being able to outplay Graf Zahl in that instant was clear. The time for speculation was over, now it was put up or shut up.

Unfortunately Universe 1 would not settle the Graf Zahl/urza debate as definitively as most would have hoped. Graf Zahl had grown accustomed to dominating his universe from an untouchable position and the motivation that had previously driven him to claim Universe 6 was no longer there. Real life concerns began to outweigh in game power moves and urza's demonstration was only one of many reasons that led Graf Zahl to eventually go largely inactive. This clash of the titans would end more with a whimper than with a bang, but fortunately there were plenty of others of similar quality more than willing to battle it out.

Proving that even urza had a sense of humor, he would post a new #1 fleetcrash on April 1st, taking down another U1 newcomer, timma. This would be responded to by no 88 on April 16th in a more personal way as he took down Xenjin of RoLUE for his own Hall of Fame contribution. It was clear that no 88 was aiming for #1 and even urza was going to have a hard time stopping him. Not much set the two players apart in terms of style, other than no 88 could not be convinced to join an alliance (it cut down on potential targets) and he hardly ever posted his hits, with the HoF post being a rare exception.

Meanwhile, to combine their powers for the incoming invaders, ASBFH and INC would unite into Bunny.INC. Another alliance with some U1 vets, IVI IVI, would similarly come out swinging. Then there was Eddie's alliance, TBL11 (I assume he added the 11 to honor his Universe 11 origins), with their hungry fleeter Beyonder who would merge into Universe 1 on a tear. According to a post by Eddie, U11 was the smallest universe numbers wise to merge into Universe 1, but U11 was also proudly "turtle free". The merge would additionally bring a reinvigorated player known as Robinhood (flying the TPR tag) back to Universe 1, who I'm sure won't cause any problems at all.

In all this madness, TheGang, with pinky at the helm, would make their case as the best of the best with a string of crash reports. Not to be outdone, Pirates would try to demonstrate the supremacy of Universe 1 by making some smashes on new invaders themselves. The fleet parties would continue with Cyyoung of LEGEND, former #1 of Universe 16, making a very profitable opening hit in his new universe. And remember that hit on Dr. Zeus urza stole from Graf Zahl? Well, it seems Dr. Zeus still had some RIPs laying around and Graf kindly relieved him of them as a consolation prize.

AMOTION of IVI IVI, mika del siro of Others, and Pidge of DarkMyst each made claims as forces to watch out for in the new, extra dangerous climate. Son of Thunder would rejoin the universe under the BunnyINC tag, Zombie of Universe 2 CURSED fame would return, Ying, barsie, Harvester, the big names were seemingly endless. RaZmAn (also of IVI IVI) would make one of the biggest claims to fame by ninjaing a destroyer fleet of urza's mere days after urza's stunt with Graf Zahl. Even Oldskool, always being an alliance to look out for, was doing their best to turn the newcomers into their personal farms. What a time this was to be active in Universe 1.

HogarStashni of SERBIA.E would even grace Universe 1 with his presence, perhaps because of all the female Hollywood celebrities that were around such as Selena Gomez, Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, and...nastynate!?!? Something seems a little off there. Similarly revered fleeter, Sorcerer (of DarkMyst) would slowly begin picking away at the weaker fleeters of the universe. Then that AMOTION fellow, fresh off his in-game gender reassignment surgery, would take out a cocky young fleeter called NoSkillz who'd been putting up some pretty solid numbers since the merge (though NoSkillz would quickly rebound). Some new RoLUE members would also end up on the wrong end of CRs, separating the wheat from the chaff.

An active two month period of some of the most intense OGaming in history would eventually lead into the events that would start to separate the strong from the strongest. Speaking of which, no 88 would drop his own HoF crash on cfree of PAX during this period, just to make certain he wasn't being underestimated anymore. The challenge had once again been made, would urza be able to answer?

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PART FOURTEEN

Deeper into 2012 we go with the transition that most have likely been anticipating. The day when the original urza gave way for a new fleeter to menace Universe 1.

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NEW FACES OF ROLUE, TOP TEN EXTRAVAGANZA, RAZMAN HAS HIS DAY

If memory serves, TBL11 was the #1 alliance after the merge which happened between March 5th and March 9th, 2012. RoLUE got knocked down a rank or two but was still hanging in there strong, especially after picking up a few new players (most of whom wouldn't last long, but this was true of many after the merge as the big got bigger and the midtier struggled to avoid the sheer number of new predators flying around). Eddie would strike a blow to Bunny.INC's Mars, after some misunderstandings and a multitude of IPMs being tossed at Eddie's allies. Beyond this, Eddie was a rather popular figure in Universe 1 and this popularity would help to insulate him because he had plenty of people to trade him fuel. For others, this same issue would prove to be significant because their lack of fuel would limit their opportunities to fleet and leave them in the unpleasant situation of either quitting or waiting for their own fleet to get recycled.

As a special mention, Sorcerer of DarkMyst slapping the massive cargo fleet of NikeJoshua was the stuff of legends at this point in time. Many had tried, many had failed, and Sorcerer thread the needle just tightly enough to catch the one mistake Nike did make. Many top players popped in to talk about how they had missed that very same fleet for over a year and congratulating Sorcerer on this once in a lifetime achievement.

Now, back to RoLUE. For a very short time, a now well known A R E S would be in RoLUE while his account was still growing. We would also pick up Svar0g, a longterm mid-tier but active fleeter, and hosn_it, who was still developing as a player but very promising. To show them how things were done, in a CR posted on May 5th, 2012, urza would crash Captain Fizz with a pure destroyer fleet, which was quickly growing into the top fleeter meta of the time. Considering how particular urza was about losses, the deut loss was clearly minimal compared to the ships that were spared as part of such a strong combined force.

But urza was far from done. On June 8th, 2012, a new #1 was posted with urza hitting crwdog from Others and knocking out the first of the truly upper echelon accounts that merged into Universe 1. It was a moon pop, one where when the moon was blown up there was still two days left on a long fleetsave. Despite the wait time and the giant target created by the destroyed moon, urza managed to get the fleet and all of the debris; "dirty all" as he put it. And this would officially be the end of the urza era.

In a surprisingly quiet retirement, urza handed his account to another player, after earning his #1 rank back and getting the top crash in the universe. When urza came in, it was silently and playing for his own purposes so perhaps it is fitting that he left in the same way. He handed the account away on July 22nd, 2012. While urza no longer wished to play the account, he would still take control on occasion to give the new player a break. And who was that new player? A player that began in Universe 5, dabbled in some other universes, even hung about in Kia Kaha for a while! I guess this mystery isn't really a mystery to most these days as that player was Deneb, also known as cimbi31.

It seemed a lot of people were not familiar with Deneb when he took over the urza account and many expected him to fail with it. Honestly, people within RoLUE expected much the same. We had seen all manner of other players hand off their accounts only for them to get crashed within weeks, maybe months, sometimes even days! But there was one difference that made Deneb a better fit for urza's account in the state urza left it in than urza was: Deneb liked to fleet.

Deneb would test out his new toy on various midsized players, getting used to the new demands and layout before reintroducing himself to Universe 1 in a spectacular way with a CR on August 5th, 2012. Deneb would hit PaPpa of Oldskool for the #1 hit .org wide (meaning the biggest debris field of any .org universe that wasn't a speed universe - though I remember very little about the speed universes or when they started beyond that War Machine guy wrecking stuff, so this may have been the biggest with those included too). What urza built for minimal losses, Deneb used for maximum gains, and if Universe 1 wasn't impressed by this one, then they were about to be.

As if the Others hadn't already suffered enough, Deneb would claim another Top Ten off of them by taking down ThE DiO. As a teaser to lead up to that post, Deneb would also post a hit where he took down T-Rex of TLI, which would unfortunately get completely overshadowed in the stir of the greater smash. Then, because these still weren't enough there was yet another Top Ten on linrong of GHA and a week later he would take down Yonnie of LEGEND. These were all massive hits and yet they were still only an appetizer for what was to come.

The first meal would be posted on August 31st, 2012 when Deneb had changed his alliance to RancoR (a classic alliance name from the early days) and would take down the most infamous troll, that was also a top level player, RaZmAn of IVI IVI (at this time, he was repping the Big Bird name). It was only the #2 hit at the time but probably felt better than any #1 hit ever had. That destroyer ninja RaZmAn had skillfully managed on urza would be avenged 100 fold as RaZmAn both lost his main fleet and also had all of the taunting he had given to everyone else over the years returned to him in kind. This was still the time when Deneb was seen as a conquering hero, fighting the good fight for Universe 1 against all of the elite players from the sixteen other universes, and his efforts were roundly praised (though Deneb was more hostile at players attempting to troll in the CR thread than he was toward RaZmAn himself).

The next day would bring another big crash on ghigo68 of bombers, but nothing was going to get the attention of the RaZmAn hit and ghigo68 would quietly fade into history. Then on September 23rd, 2012, Deneb would land another definitive hit on a well known fleeter as he took down Cyyoung of LEGEND, the former #1 of Universe 16. Everything was going Deneb's way, he wasn't merely surviving but thriving in this universe of the greatest to ever play, and there was no denying that the Top Ten was becoming overwhelmed by his presence there. There were a lot of top players still vying for dominance but soon one of those names would be no more.

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PART FIFTEEN

The most well know/infamous period of RoLUE is in full swing. An internal passage of the torch makes a strong player even stronger politically and one of the best know crashes takes place creating an extraordinary debris field.

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DENEB/EDDIE MAKE HISTORY, TALONIC SAYS FAREWELL

Everyone watched the Highscore rankings in disbelief. The top two fleets in the universe had both lost a significant sum and their accounts had fallen from their lofty, seemingly untouchable positions at the top of Universe 1. It was obvious what had happened, but how?

October 21st, 2012, everyone would have their answer. Months earlier, Eddie from TBL11 had messaged PlinG of RoLUE for deut trading and, after PlinG refused, Eddie made a show a strength by sending a massive ball of deathstars at him. This was an interesting choice considering PlinG shared an alliance with Deneb, but showed that Eddie felt he was in the superior alliance and was the superior player so had nothing to be concerned about. A number of Hall of Fame crashes later and Deneb found himself with a considerably stronger fleet than Eddie, despite Eddie utilizing a lot of tactics to keep himself as strong as he could.

The idea of Deneb catching Eddie or Eddie catching Deneb had always been a pyrrhic victory for either side, a meeting that was certain to devastate both accounts. There was a brief time where Eddie was likely to come out on the better end of a such a conflict, but Deneb was nothing if not persistent and goal oriented. While the crash on RaZmAn may have been more for the sake of personal achievement, the rest had been a means to an end. The only way to get ahead and stay ahead of other players was going to require pulling in massive resources that mining and raiding alone would never be enough to surmount. Eddie had made some solid crashes, but nothing of the size or profit Deneb had churned out in the same timeframe.

Eddie would be the one to post the result of the two accounts finally smashing together and admitted he was expecting his time to come eventually. Eddie had, once again, sent his RIPs after PlinG following PlinG successfully ninjaing RIPS from previous urza account victim M_G. Eddie would do a lot of damage to PlinG but it was all a way to bait Eddie into attacking with his RIP fleet again. These were the days before ACS so as long as you had the bigger numbers, you were certain to win. Deneb carefully timed when the RIPs would hit and when they would return, sending his entire fleet after them.

Eddie had a choice to make, either allowing Deneb to heavily profit off of his RIPs or moving his own full fleet into the line of fire, causing massive losses for them both. Likely knowing that his fleet would be even more at risk without the RIPs as a part of it, Eddie decided to sacrifice it all and create a hit so large that it would be a year and a half before anyone would have fleets big enough again to create a smash of a similar size. When it happened, many people thought no one would manage to built two fleets of that size again to ever surpass that crash, it was that far ahead of every other Hall of Fame.

There were whispers of betrayal, that Eddie and Deneb had been working together on other hits, but when you see the story, it is hard to see how there could have been any other outcome. TBL11 was trying to assert itself as the untouchable alliance of Universe 1 and RoLUE was fully behind their only hope to prevent that. Deneb would take a loss of over 3.5 billion by the time debris was scooped up, by no means a small amount of points to lose, but Eddie would lose over 30 billion, an unrecoverable blow that would dethrone TBL11 as the top alliance of Universe 1 and leave their remaining players to be targeted until this once great empire became a large force of miners and deut suppliers just trying to survive like everyone else they had previously stomped upon had been.

Some call this the definitive hit of Universe 1 and certainly it deserved that title, at the very least in terms of pre-ACS Universe 1. A few hits would end up being bigger but none would ever be as astronomical when compared to the state of the rest of Universe 1. The power of nanites would see Deneb back at the top of the scoreboards within a day's time and those hoping to catch him while he was down would be out of luck. Five days later, Deneb would post a hit on Gemipotato of FRST that would recoup over half his losses from Eddie in one shot.

I wanted to tell the rise and climax of the initial Deneb dominance all in one go, but another significant event that would change the face of RoLUE forever occurred during Deneb's skyrocket to the top. Talonic would retire from OGame in mid-2012, somewhere in the realm of July/August. As the person who did much of the wheeling and dealing for the alliance, who had all the contacts and worked closely with all our top members, he was irreplaceable. In-game most would have hardly noticed when his account was vacation moded and fell into obscurity, he was a reliable Top 50 account that got pushed down significantly by the merge and I think it was clear to him at that point that his time had come. But outside the game itself, he was one of the greatest contributors to OGame that there ever was.

Talonic would pass on leadership to vegso, who actually had a significantly larger set of diplomatic skills than I had ever realized when I was playing with him. I knew he was articulate and well liked, but the degree to which he had the loyalty and respect of players outside of RoLUE had been completely lost on me until I did this deep dive into history. It was unfortunate for RoLUE that vegso had also been planning to retire around the same time as Talonic and only held on longer to be able to help RoLUE stay together after the loss of such a significant figure. It was a matter of months before leadership would be shuffled around, until it landed in the obvious hands of Deneb.

If there were a Mount Rushmore of contributors to RoLUE, Talonic would have the most prominent place on it. Clearly Deneb would be there as well; you don't dominate a universe so entirely and not earn your place there. Beyond that it would really be a matter of who is making the list. Do you emphasize TI92Calculator's early contributions to the alliance? Do you highlight Sionow's longterm run as the most consistently highest ranked member? Do you include Badger Man for his direct and indirect longterm impact on the history of RoLUE? Do you honor PlinG for his overall contributions during his time playing and the sheer magnitude of the love people had for him; as well as his role in numerous of Deneb's largest accomplishments? What about Skull, who was working with RoLUEsers long before he became a member of RoLUE all the way back in the days of Fizban, Wrayo, PlinG, Heat, Sionow and beyond, then also worked with Deneb, and who has additionally been one of the longest term members of the current RoLUE team?

In many ways it doesn't matter because it has always been the team as a united whole that has made it strong. Pushing each other in the good times and supporting each other in the bad, it was a community quite unlike any other with so many clashing personalities all united by this overarching sense of not taking life too seriously. The spirit of the original crew was gone with the retirement of Talonic and vegso soon after, but the re-imagined RoLUE would become something no one could have dreamed of before it was happening in real time in front of the entire universe; and the sudden shift from heroes to villains that this story would take.

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Quote from cimbi31

Spidey you are doing a fairly good job at getting an accurate account of stuff but there are huge gaps in the run up to the Eddie crash. First off, the hit took place on October 31st and PlinG was playing in disguise, under a random alias and in a 1 member alliance of his own.

After crashing Razman I needed a break because the drive, greed and ambition had taken its toll and I was overwhelmed by the intensity. Towards the end of September '12 - early October I handed the account back to urza and went back to the support account I was supplying fuel to the big account.

By this time me and Eddie had developed a relationship based on the maxim "keep your enemies closer", knowing well in advance that our fleets would meet head on at some point in the future. However, we were both careful in avoiding our respective alliances at every level because it would initiate hostility at alliance level and take us both out of our comfort zones.

At this point urza was very busy with work and stuff which made the shift in activity pattern very obvious. Eddie had become suspicious about the change and would both PM urza ingame and ask me random questions on MSN looking for hints and I would evade him with short answers. On 27th October, he must have felt sure enough about the change of owner that he unleashed one of his minions on the account to test the waters.

Guido[TBL11] -vs- urza[RoLUE] ~(TD: 65,50 M) p1

Guido[TBL11] -vs- urza[RoLUE] ~(TD: 62,74 M) p2

These two hits were not simple farming, they were executed at Eddie's directive and probably part of his containment strategy until he built more fleet to take it down. I sent an email to urza asking if he fancies handing over the account and he gladly accepted my offer citing his workload. This account exchange also marked urza's unofficial retirement. He never made the switch to the support account, but sticked around for a little longer as a spectator on the sidelines.

My final conversation with Eddie would take place on 28th October or something, in which he tried to talk me into crashing Geromoto's 2.2k rips sitting behind a huge turtle where I would make loses to the tune of 10b. This reinforced my belief that Eddie had sinister plans regarding the account and made me prioritize the demolition of the #1 competition in the universe. At that point I had no idea on how to pull off such a big hit or clean it, for all I knew I had to keep smashing fleets and get bigger to at least break even and clean the mess all by myself.

But pieces had started falling together. Upon conversing with PlinG I found out that Eddie was pounding his turtle where we all three were close, and Spart from AL.INC had returned from a long retirement and I could use his help to scramble just about enough recyclers in case of a full fleet confrontation.

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Wow, Spart was doing much more than I ever realized back then. Thanks for the insight, since I wasn't a fleeter I never knew most of the intricacies, I only saw the aftermath. Most of the recent posts have been cobbled together from past threads, no way I'd remember even half of those details otherwise @_@

PART SIXTEEN

Making our way to the end of 2012, the good vibes that had been revived when RoLUE went from an unstoppable force to just one among many other similarly powerful alliances once again died out. Universe 1 was more than holding its own, to the point that the strange bedfellows waving the banner of the original .org universe no longer balanced out their usefulness compared to their potential for threat. There were none who could oppose the fleet Deneb had crafted one on one, but history had already shown the lengths some would go to for their chance at glory, and one of the most likely to lead such a coup would make a grave error in judgment.

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UNIVERSE VS. UNIVERSE, SON OF THUNDER BETRAYAL, PINKY BECOMES SUSPECT

The date was November 11th, 2012. As much as everyone was fighting for the existence of their own alliances, with so many having had prolonged histories within their own original universes, there was also an additional level of Own Universe vs. All Other Universes prevalent. People would praise the hits of former enemies just because they had all entered this larger landscape together and were all fighting to validate the place their own universe had in the greater OGame landscape. Universe 1 originals were particularly like this as it was their universe all the others were entering and to lose their own universe to an outsider would have only validated all of the comments that had downplayed Universe 1 players in favor of the comparatively newer giants within the other universes.

Every time Deneb destroyed a legendary figure from another universe, it was like an additional proof that Universe 1 had always been unfairly underestimated and had always been the place with the hardest competition. This unity was mostly an illusion, especially for fleeters, but people who never would have worked together pre-merge were still suddenly working together post-merge with this as an underlying reason. Plus, each universe only had so many big accounts and there were a lot more profitable targets from other universes than there were from your own original just based on percentages; why not work with the devil you know than the devil you don't?

This would be what brought Deneb and Son of Thunder, representatives of RoLUE and Pirates who had been very hostile prior to the merge, together despite that past history. Son of Thunder would speak to Deneb about a desire to crash the RIPs of schlofos, a player who has otherwise been lost to history but will forever be immortalized by this event. Deneb agrees to help, they both make attempts and things don't go as planned as Deneb ends up one second ahead of schlofos' ships instead of one second behind. Son of Thunder claims he tried to send espionage probes to lag the attack, at Deneb's request, but Deneb then asked him to stop to avoid being banned. True or not, this indicates Son of Thunder's incredible openness to assisting Deneb who he believed would assist him in return.

Son of Thunder runs into a further issue when he realizes the recyclers he had sent to recycle the hit on schlofos were being timed back by pinky of TheGang. Son of Thunder even asked Deneb to try to crash them himself to prevent pinky from getting the profits. Deneb managed to mess up the timing, potentially intentionally, and pinky would get the recycler hit. In another failed attempt to hit schlofos, Son of Thunder's own RIPs were returning when he saw an attack pop up immediately behind them. Son of Thunder's first thought was that pinky had managed to time back his RIPs as well and messaged Deneb for help. But that isn't what was happening.

As Son of Thunder explained, clearly still running off the adrenaline of what happened, he realized that Deneb was the owner of the fleet timing him back. Deneb, the person who he had told his flight times to in order to coordinate the attack on schlofos. Son of Thunder had been betrayed and was about to lose his RIPs. Much like Eddie before him, Son of Thunder knew his fleet would be far more profitable if he lost the RIPs and so went for scorched earth, sending his entire fleet to meet Deneb's, hoping to cause Deneb an overall loss similar to what had occurred with Eddie.

By the time all of the deut costs of the day were taken into account, Deneb likely broke even at best but Son of Thunder would face 25.7 billion in losses. It was very likely that Deneb's plan the entire time was to eliminate Son of Thunder and the potential for additional profits were the only reason he even bothered with the schlofos effort to begin with. Son of Thunder was one of the most high profile targets remaining, especially because Son of Thunder entered the merge with the #1 Top Ten crash, overshadowing the original urza's efforts. It wasn't a direct slight, but it was enough to make Son of Thunder's fleet a clear obstacle and a desired feather in the cap.

In the course of a few hours, Universe 1 had a brand new #2 overall hit and Deneb had turned into the biggest villain at the time, and possibly the biggest villain of all time. People who had previously praised Deneb and opposed Son of Thunder were immediately flipping to voice their displeasure for Deneb and show their sympathies for Son of Thunder. Many calls to stop trading Deneb deuterium were made and many new lifelong enemies to RoLUE were born. As lesser members of RoLUE, myself and others had no real control over what was happening other than to play our part and support our fleeter, but the event did cause concern even within our ranks. Deneb was bringing glory to RoLUE, but to what end?

This was also the first time that a connection between Deneb and pinky began to be seriously suspected. Why didn't Deneb take the opportunity to capitalize on the larger threat? Sure, Son of Thunder was a longterm antagonist but pinky was the closest thing to a genuine threat that remained for Deneb. This was only further highlighted when pinky made another Top Ten on Laz the next month, briefly creating a situation where all of the Top Ten crashes were done either by Deneb/urza or pinky. It was a complete wash and questions over why Deneb hadn't seemed to go after pinky yet began to lead into further contemplations of other hits where people recalled pinky being in the area.

To end this particular run, Deneb puts off a potential retirement to return and smash AMOTION (going by Oscar The Grouch) of IVI IVI, a player forever connected to RaZmAn (proudly so, I'm sure) and another aggressive fleeter/troll that people would have been happy to see go down...if it hadn't been done by Deneb. The joyous revelry from the RaZmAn hit no longer existed beyond those in RoLUE battling it out with those decrying the hit, speaking of the death of Universe 1. People had clearly become disheartened by how large Deneb's account had become, making claims of various shady practices and being angry at staff members for allowing Deneb to "get away" with "everything". Which is interesting considering the name Deneb was once joked by vegso to be a play on the word "banned" from back when people were making similar claims in the past.

Was Universe 1 truly dead? Maybe...maybe not.

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PART SEVENTEEN

This will be the last post in this topic for a short while because there is something new and special for the Christmas season in the works. The next project to be unveiled will be quite different from this or any of the previous interviews that have been done, with quite a few people putting in a lot of work to make it happen. What will it be? You'll see very soon!

As for this entry, it is unique from the rest because it is mostly a list of hits. I was torn between saying "Deneb and pinky crashed a lot of players" and actually finding a way to acknowledge those players. This was the medium I arrived at, posting them all but keeping the details minimal. Enjoy!...?!?

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NOTEWORTHY FLEETERS, DENEB DESTROYS IT ALL, A WILD MANREAD APPEARS

It would be untrue to say all the dramatics of Universe 1 existed between only the top fleets. Merchant of Death (of BunnyInc fame) was a non-stop prober, voraciously seeking out profits to seize them with malicious intent. He was making numerous respectably sized hits and gaining a lot of attention in the process for his aggressive, persistent play. It was difficult to navigate a universe of giants but not impossible.

Merchant of Death was not alone in this either. Harvester (of Pirates) was also aggressive, making hits indiscriminantly, and keeping the dynasty that was Pirates as alive and relevant as ever. Then there was esio trot (of TPR) who was very actively fleeting, catching anyone who wasn't careful, and becoming quite a force in his own right. And for RoLUE in particular, HateChoir (of PAWNZ) would become a constant terror, even getting a solid cargo slap on a briefly returning Lord42 who was again under the RoLUE tag (though I question if it was really him in hindsight).

Now, I don't want to minimize the importance of any particular hit because any player who has a fleet big enough that is considered worth posting on the board generally has some level of history and has put some good effort into the game. That said, Deneb (and the various people who played the account on occasion) had a lot of hits and if I go in-depth with all of them then you'll go insane and I'll go even more insane, so we're going to get bite sized versions of most of these. Let's go!

January 17th, 2013: Deneb (account) crashes Heli [TBL] (Heli had previously raided some of Deneb's planets, Deneb was not pleased by this. Destruction posted the hit and was playing on the account to dish out that particular revenge.)

January 29th, 2013: Denebstruction crashes chlorofluorocarb0n [TNG] (big deut haul)

February 3rd, 2013: Denebstruction crashes waxapple [TNG] (seems Destruction was drawn to this alliance and their sitting fleets)

February 26th, 2013: pinky crashes OgUzBoYu (turtle crack)

March 3rd, 2013: Deneb crashes slick [KotD] (Deneb returns, fairly simple fly with Deneb saving on deut costs by including a recycler in his fleet)

March 17th, 2013: Deneb crashes Hot Soup [TNG] (Deneb implies urza made this hit, hard to know for sure, poor TNG)

-In this section a bunch of Pirates posted hits to spam the board but in between them were billion debris field hits by pinky that dwarfed them all-

March 31st, 2013: pinky crashes Blackmax [UCM] (billion res profit, defender did his best to save as many resources and get as much debris as he could)

April 13th, 2013: Deneb crashes Vulture (pretty sure he was a U7 legend, was one of the hits I was most surprised to see happen)

April 23rd, 2013: pinky crashes supertrainer [Vagabond] (been hunting him for months, two billion res profit)

April 28th, 2013: Deneb crashes fuecas [MeracoM] (fuecas had been bothering fellow RoLUEser BeautifulDay [WE MISS YOU BD], Deneb would handle it while also making a shoutout to Lucky Loser of RancoR, an alliance said player had founded with Deneb/DanCake in Universe 5)

-A new player named manread of META (an alliance he founded) was taking the CR section by storm, going from barely having a crash big enough to post to getting to a proper lower mid-range fleet that was doing some real damage-

May 26th, 2013: Deneb crashes VengeanceRising [Pirates] (another U1 on U1 hit between rivals, apparently SYN was at war with Pirates and Deneb was doing his part to even the odds)

June 1st, 2013: Son of Thunder [Pirates] crashes Airhead (a legendary RoLUEser who returned for a short time giving Son of Thunder a taste of revenge)

-Somewhere around this time swift of A.W.V. was posting some small hits and would eventually be recruited to RoLUE, becoming a longterm member of the team-

There were plenty of other players posting combat reports but since my posts are RoLUE centric, I've focused on the events that impacted us directly. If you weren't around during this period of Universe 1 then I hope that demonstrated how insanely overpowered Deneb had become, from a fleet relatively equivalent with the rest of the biggest fleeters who merged into Universe 1 to a fleet so big that even a multi-account suicide like the one that took down Lord42 wouldn't have been feasible. The only major threat left was pinky but why would Deneb go to war with his biggest ally?

The battle for supremacy was over and some clear winners had emerged, but how long could this possibly last?

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PART EIGHTEEN

A happy new year to everyone and a fresh start on the thread that will never end (but it will end, we're over halfway!). While extreme power seems like the ultimate goal in games, there reaches a point of diminishing returns that makes such dominance far less enjoyable. The RoLUE empire had reached such a level, Deneb in particular, as the scramble for the top had ended. Everyone who ever stood a chance was recycled and only Deneb with his closest ally pinky remained. Such a gaming environment demanded change and that change would come, as players were no longer vying for the top spot, they were vying to make that spot as miserable as possible to possess.

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SPIDEY INTERVIEWS, ZOMBIE HATES DENEB, ROLUE'S FUTURE IS BUILT

We'll start this time with pinky finishing off the remaining remnants of IVI IVI, knocking out The Count on June 20th, 2013. Those reading this are probably under the impression that IVI IVI wasn't a particularly great alliance considering each of their members has ended up on the wrong side of a combat report but that would be incorrect. The reason each of these hits has been mentioned is because IVI IVI was realistically one of the alliances vying for top position in Universe 1 when the huge scramble of legends began and each time one of them went down the universe became a little bit safer for RoLUE-kind. Oldskool (a similarly talented group) would also face another setback, as Greatleo would become another victim of Deneb related punishments on July 2nd.

Then, on July 5th, a series of interviews appeared on the boards inspired by the first GNN interview by vegso (of RoLUE) with jake (of Kia Kaha). Getting an interview with jake back then was huge because he was a player many wondered about but few really knew. At that time, I happened to be in a chatroom with another figure that many found mysterious: pinky (of TheGang). Sure, pinky posted a lot of hits, but he stayed out of the Deneb related drama on the boards which meant most people still perceived him as the last hope that someone could eventually match Deneb in size and skill. I asked him if he'd be interested in doing an interview, explaining my concept for Spidey News Network as well as the genuine interest I thought people would have in hearing from him, and he surprisingly agreed. Without pinky, none of the rest ever would have occurred. This created a platform for the ultimate deep dive interview with Cass and a highlight on rising star manread.

In-game, on August 11th, former top fleeter Melo of TNT would become another glorified farming mission for the one billion res profit that would be earned. It seemed that some of Melo's heavy ships were missing or the profits may not have been quite as nice considering Deneb had sent pure destroyers for the hit. Then the #1 account would go mostly silent in terms of publicly posted combats. But there were troubles in his absence. A rascally BunnyInc player, which was the newest iteration of the longterm RoLUE enemies, successfully targeted numerous RoLUEsers while the big cat was away. This character was a smart opportunist for sure and a difficult target to catch as many had tried and many had failed. And the antagonistic efforts did not go unnoticed. For whatever people want to say about Deneb as a player or as a person; he watched out for his allies.

September 17th, 2013, Deneb returned with one of his most shocking hits as he took down Merchant of Death (of BunnyInc). This was one of his most surprising accomplishments because it is rare for a fleeter as active as MoD was to get caught unaware. Similar to the Melo hit, Merchant of Death was clearly missing some of his heavy ships but the bulk of his fleet would go down in flames. MoD was gracious in defeat and vowed to continue on despite the setback, a rare situation after a Deneb freedom offering smack. This also shows the considerable shift that had occurred in Universe 1, with Deneb having taken out most of the large legacy accounts leaving only moderately sized fleeters (in comparison) with easier to rebuild ship counts still fighting the good fight.

Following this, a controversial figure of OGame past and longterm friend of Deneb would return to the game. Zombie, the person once named by DanCake as the best fleeter to ever play the game, was back with a vengeance and he had a lot to say. Zombie felt that Deneb had betrayed many of his own friends and abused his position in-game, feeling that the account Deneb was on deserved to be banned more than it deserved to be #1 ranked. Originally Zombie returned on his own account, one that was well behind in the rankings, but soon after he would gain access to the Graf Zahl account, one of the few remaining fleets capable of giving Universe 1 some real problems; Deneb included.

On October 6th, 2013, the last of the original run of SNN interviews took place with Zombie, and he would open his heart about his time playing OGame. It was a sort of calm within the storm, with responses so genuine that even modern day enemies came together to share in the unity of their past battles together. It would be easy to become fooled into believing Zombie and Deneb would regain common ground after this trip into nostalgia; but that wouldn't come to be.

Deneb began to consolidate his allies by asking them to join RoLUE. The UDA alliance that had started in Universe 7, including Soong, PRiNCE PERSiA, and xces, would merge into RoLUE on October 2nd, 2013. BeautifulDay, Meki, and Ivalice would merge into RoLUE around the same time, being veterans of Universe 44 (from an alliance with a name lost to time). Melos was a Universe 8 veteran who was a part of Angels of War, Imperial Angels, and finally Fusion before joining RoLUE. Lynz was also a Universe 8 veteran (with a brief run in Universe 5), being a member of New Zealand ( aka nz 8 ) before joining Fusion with Melos, the two both working with and eventually merging into RoLUE as well.

In honor of his new allies (or completely by coincidence) Deneb bashes a turtle called ghigo68 of bombers with a massive 200k destroyer fleet on October 18th. Most comments are people complaining about the overkill, a common complaint in reference to the insane amount of heavy ships Deneb managed to amass. On October 24th, PlinG would start a thread congratulating Deneb for being the first .org player to reach 100,000,000 points. I don't remember when but it was no doubt around this same time that Deneb's account became the #1 account in the world (not just in .org, but even larger than any account in .de that had started many years prior). The celebration would be brought to an abrupt halt however.

Zombie would enter the thread, accusing Deneb of selling online times of his RoLUE allies (such as Delus) and further claiming that Deneb had asked him to probe pinky with the intention of gaining intelligence so Deneb could crash him. This would lead another former ally of Deneb, Shinzon, to appear. Shinzon inherited the Fizban the Fabulous account (formerly in RoLUE) and was claiming to be one of the people who had passed information to Deneb in the past, specifically information that allowed Deneb to steal the debris from a crash Son of Thunder had made on miguel27. Shinzon also felt Deneb had betrayed the trust of his friends and joined in on the mounting anti-Deneb campaign.

Former RoLUE top fleeter Molony would also return to Universe 1 in opposition of his one time friends, crashing PRiNCE PERSiA on November 4th, 2013, with Zombie making a second hit on the same day. Molony had joined Pirates and was clearly intending to join in the war against Deneb. A Sesame Street themed series of enemies would emerge once again, all with the intention of damaging RoLUE, farming their smaller players and hitting all of Deneb's planets. Zombie and Molony were the primary names involved in this resurgence. A resurgence that would be short lived for one of them.

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PART NINETEEN

I'll spread out posts more next week, but have an idea of when this project should be finished by and trying to fit everything into that time frame. That said, this section takes us from the end of 2013 and into mid-2014. Universe 1 was beginning to adjust to the new situation of there being two massive sized accounts and a bunch of much smaller accounts begging for ACS to be introduced but doing their best to survive in the meantime. ACS would still be plenty far away but an old enemy with renewed persistence (and financial prowess) would make himself known once again, reigniting the ire of RoLUE, with people struggling to support either side of the conflict as both sides were widely disliked within the community.

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DENEB SQUASHES A REVOLT, ROBINHOOD FALLS AND FALLS AGAIN, PINKY HAS HIS CHANCE

November 7th, 2013, Deneb posts a crash on Molony's main fleet, ending his brief return from retirement. Deneb felt that Zombie had turned Molony against him, despite Deneb/Molony having been close friends in the past. Deneb seemed to take no pleasure in the crash and did it more as a matter of business. In the meantime, pinky was taking out all manner of other random fleets, cleaning out more of the top players that remained. Craftyseed would also return very briefly as part of a 2B1B alliance, along with Exile, that had been harassing RoLUEsers. After getting a solid smash on Nosad of RoLUE, Craftyseed would return to his retirement.

The player swift would take over the Lanfear account in RoLUE and post a hit on ericfrench2 of FGR. This was back when FGR were still comparative babies and swift was the same. It seems ericfrench2 had taunted the newly dubbed Lanfear about past misses and this one million or so resources in profit was a moral revenge. A player named chronosland would pop up on the boards as a member of the STARS alliance posting a hit on KegDemon. The hit is not the important part here. More on this later.

December 28th, 2013, Racer130 of KotD catches the resource hauling fleet of long term RoLUE vet PlinG. A variety of factors, including burnout and a disappointment with how restrictive moderation on the boards had become, leads PlinG to announce his retirement from OGame. Not since Talonic leaving had someone so critical to the community of RoLUE for so many years announced their exit from the game (not downplaying anyone else in this statement, PlinG was basically the last hold out of a former time and his leaving was the end of another era as much as it was an end to his career).

In a similar moment that would have been very meaningful for the enemies of RoLUE, NikeJoshua announced his retirement on March 31st, 2014. He had been a storied player who started in AL.INC, making the transfer to ASBFH before finally ending his career in BunnyINC. While NikeJoshua wasn't highlighted in this history before this, he was connected to all manner of top hits and expert strategies, with a lot of people being sad when he left. Also, this is where Skull outs himself as a Bunny lover in a shocking twist of history. How could someone like both the Bunnies and RoLUE!? It's further revealed that PlinG and NikeJoshua were behind much of the Universe 1 vs. ALL propaganda that was dashed when Deneb hit Son of Thunder.

Speaking of Deneb, he would pass his account to a Universe 44 legend called Requiem at this time. Was it real this time or just another fake out? Requiem would claim to make his first statement in Universe 1 on February 3rd, 2014, crashing Bebetto of PreDatoR. For most it was brushed off as business like usual. A big account making an insanely big profit. Hardly any interest at all. Then the next event would happen.

Deneb (posted by Requiem) creates a new #1 smash with the help of a momentarily unretiring PlinG who sent record breaking IPM volleys in preparation for this record breaking combat. Geromoto (named after the historical figures Geronimo and Mayamoto Musashi) was flying around with a massive fleet of RIPs, 3525 to be exact, and a fleet to go with them. Deneb's fleet was #1, Geromoto's was #3 (meaning pinky's was #2). Deneb had 110,371,405 points before the hit as the #1 rank in Universe 1. Geromoto had 56,971,463 points as the #4 overall rank. The Glorious OverlorD would be knocked just below 100kk points while Geromoto would be knocked to rank 255 with a smidgen over 15kk points remaining. This would also knock the original urza's former #1 hit on crwdog out of the Top Ten.

It had been thought that the #1 account in all of OGame (ignoring speed universes that weren't taken particularly seriously at the time other than gawking at the occasional ridiculous numbers people could grow their accounts to and the fleet smashes of similar spectacle) had gone idle, allowing others the opportunity to catch up, but it would still awaken when the opportunity presented itself. The raiding and crashing of smaller players may not have been as active, but keeping track of online times hadn't slowed at all. The fun of beating up players who were helpless to do anything had passed but that didn't mean there weren't still some desired targets left to eliminate.

A further controversy, long building, would also be brought to light as Deneb had gotten himself banned from the OGame boards. There had been a long string of warnings because Deneb loved nothing more than to engage with those trolling his topics or otherwise speaking badly about himself or other players he considered to be great. The only reason the Geromoto hit was allowed to count toward the Top Ten was because Geromoto was gracious enough to re-post it himself, after other posts by veteran RoLUEsers (vegso/PlinG) posting for Deneb were rejected. As much as Deneb was respectful in the crash reports he posted, he had a vicious streak of a verbal nature that was another part of why many players had eventually turned from loving Deneb to hating the very ground he walked upon.

On May 29th, 2014, Requiem would post a hit on behalf of Deneb that would have been a new #5 on the Hall of Fame, except it wouldn't be accepted because Deneb was banned on the board and the person who was hit certainly wasn't going to post it for him. This was the original "retirement" hit of Deneb on long term RoLUE enemy RobinHood of BunnyINC. RobinHood was notorious both from his time in Universe 1 as well as his time in Universe 44, with RobinHood having lost his fleet in U44 only a few months before this U1 devastation. Deneb would gain over 3 billion in resources from this hit. A lot of people would be happy to see RobinHood down as he was the newest in a line of constant probers and aggressive fleeters, but the few sentiments that made it into the thread prior to its closing were not those of celebration.

People had complained about the amount of dark matter Deneb had been using to make his hits and the way he used dark matter in the hit against RobinHood was seen as the final straw in a string of money based advantages. People argued that rather than having to use a mobile colony, get a moon on it, spend the time setting up a jump gate and so on, Deneb was able to move a fully built planet with moon to wherever in the universe he wanted (though this was rarely how he did it). The thing was, a relocation would create a notice that someone was moving a planet to its final destination for the full 24 hours before its eventual transfer. Being caught by a relocation wasn't all that different from getting caught by a mobile colony, potential deut costs aside, and it was potentially even worse because of having such a long warning that an attacker might be moving close by. Did dark matter use truly invalidate all of Deneb's Top Ten accomplishments as other players were trying to claim? Deneb's money certainly hadn't prevented his hit on RobinHood from being banished from the official records.

As annoyed as people were with Deneb about his purported dark matter usage, there was now an even greater outrage regarding accusations that RobinHood had been purchasing accounts in order to crash them and build his fleet more quickly. A "legal push" if you will. Everyone who had been spending their time working hard to grow their accounts, or rebuilding their accounts after being hit, disliked that a player was seemingly manipulating their way to the top. Within two weeks, RobinHood was even bigger than he had been before the crash and it didn't seem to be based on skill. His alliance claimed they pulled him, perhaps they did, perhaps it was a mixture of the two. The main issue RoLUE had was that we felt we had gotten rid of this bothersome character and here he was, popping back up again, causing all manner of issues once more.

What was particularly more peculiar is that Deneb would believe he had RobinHood dead to rights on more than one occasion, but RobinHood would magically avoid the attempts. Deneb was not pleased to be losing deut in the efforts and he was less pleased that RobinHood was clearly doing something sketchy to avoid these crashes. But what? So Deneb cut out the middle man and launched on RobinHood without mentioning it to any of his usual co-conspirators. Low and behold, the hit would go through, and on June 16th, 2014, Deneb would have a new #9 Top Ten hit. Of even more historical significance, this would push the final hit of the original urza out of the Top Ten, a moment Deneb made sure to memorialize and show appreciation of. Also, Deneb would controversially be unbanned from the boards in order to post this hit, so this time it would be allowed and it would count.

In many ways this was the slightly imperfect but fitting ending for the reign of Deneb and the long wished for dominance RoLUE had desired all those years earlier when they couldn't quite match up to the powers of UrQuan and Mara.DIM. In many people's eyes, Universe 1 was basically dead and it was only seeing the #1 account in vacation mode that gave anyone hope that things could ever turn around. While Deneb and urza's combined legacies fell into inactivity, pinky took his well deserved place as the new independently dominant force of Universe 1, slowly growing his way to a size where he could potentially match Deneb's progress. And maybe even surpass it.

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PART TWENTY

This is the first and only edition likely to have a bonus section, but it's only appropriate given there are few, if any, events that compare to it in the rest of Universe 1's history. What is all the more incredible is that it is also an event that actually has three sides of the story preserved on these boards that I was able to take from. Are you ready?

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SKULL JOINS ROLUE, THE GREATEST CONTROVERSY IN UNIVERSE 1 HISTORY HAPPENS

After years of loyal service to RoLUE from outside the alliance, Skull leaves the SAGITTA alliance he helped make a name for and officially joins RoLUE on July 1st, 2014. Skull would fill the role of the "new PlinG" and help keep the other fleeters in RoLUE motivated in the absence of Deneb. The former #1 in Universe 18 who had come to Universe 1 in the Oldskool alliance, barsie (rank #19 at the time), would officially join RoLUE as well. The concerns that RoLUE would stop being competitive simply because the #1 fleet was no longer flying around would quickly be dashed, though the fleets RoLUE was now flying were those that other alliances could more realistically be competitive with.

Around the same time, a player named chronosland (formerly Night Slayer) would also join RoLUE, having been another of those from outside RoLUE that had been part of Deneb's inner circle. This player would be so trusted for his past assistance that he would be gifted PlinG's account. Many would vouch for him and he would snugly fit himself into the background of the alliance. In every chat, on every board; community and classified.

Skull and Lanfear would make sure the RoLUE name wasn't being forgotten by posting numerous hits on the board. TheGang would also continue their consistent posts, with Lucky Strike and pinky posting some profits (though pinky's were much, MUCH bigger). OldFart of PAWNZ would also take the opportunity to storm the board with combat reports. The universe was trying to reorient itself in the absence of the #1 account and the mice were all coming out to play.

Speaking of which, pinky would post one of his largest crashes on August 5th, 2014. The hit was on Deathshead of LEGEND, a player who had been in Universe 5 with pinky but who had never offered an opportunity for attack before. It was clear pinky was pleased with the chance to take down someone he'd been hunting from well before the merge and the two billion res in profits didn't hurt either. Surprisingly, pinky was getting closer to the numbers Deneb had been putting up during his rise to #1 and pinky's fleet was beginning to look like far more of a threat as well. In fact, pinky had been moving around res for the purpose of making one huge jump that would put him more equivalent with the original urza account. The urza/Deneb/pinky friendship had lasted the entirety of the merge and it is hard to imagine another player Deneb would have wished to see thrive in his absence.

August 9th, 2014. The day that lives in an invisible infamy. Everyone logs in like any other day, knowing possibilities always exist but some are just too unfeasible to even bother anticipating. A message pops up to check a particular solar system. I click on it. HOLY S***! Why? This doesn't even make sense.

A record setting debris field is hanging over one of pinky's planets with only one fleet that could have possibly created it. The betrayal Zombie had foreshadowed came true. Deneb hit pinky. Or did he? It was certainly his account, pinky was the only player even close to him in rank. Within a month, with another big crash or two, pinky likely would have been dead even. A clear hit by an opportunist that didn't want to be surpassed most surmised.

People waited for the hit to be posted. This was massive. It dwarfed the Eddie and Geromoto hits. There is no way Deneb could have profited off of it, the question was how big of a loss he took. As was common after hits like this, and after the debris field had dispersed, pinky went into vacation mode. What wasn't as common was that Deneb did the same. Every other time Deneb would at least rebuild his losses first before anyone could formulate a plan to take him down while he was weakened. Everyone was waiting with baited breath for the hit, for the story.

And they waited. And waited. But it wouldn't come.

"It was a big push, pinky intentionally moved a bunch of resources to the moon" would be a common conspiracy. It was strange that pinky had been holding onto so many resources, but it isn't as uncommon for someone who has the biggest fleet, one that is untouchable by anyone other than their allies. You can move around all the resources you want if no one is capable of taking them from you. Was this really a push? Was there even any profit? For reference, if this hit had been posted as an official Top Ten, it wouldn't have fallen out of the Hall of Fame until 2022. Yes, it literally would have taken close to eight years for this hit to be fully surpassed by modern players. The glory was there, and if that was what was desired then where was it? If there was nothing shady going on, why wasn't it posted?

Requiem had been said to be in control of the account before and when Deneb lost the will to play, Requiem would be in control again. Deneb claimed it was made clear to Requiem that everyone was fair game in Universe 1, everyone other than pinky. Requiem claimed that Deneb had spoken of plans to hit pinky and believed he was certain to do so himself in the future so took the opportunity before pinky was too big to take out. From a post by pinky over a month later (September 18th to be exact), he clarified he moved most of the resources he had and used what remained to build all the ships he could to make the attack as unprofitable as he could. Not exactly the actions of someone willingly pushing, especially since the scrapyard existed by this point and pushing would have been far easier in other ways if that had been the intent.

Did Deneb seriously consider crashing pinky? Probably. You have the top fleet, the second rank fleet is your friend but not in your alliance, do you take the risk that he gets bigger and he's the one to change his mind about the friendship? At the same time, ACS existed in other universes and, while Universe 1 members were always told "ACS will never come here", in retrospect we know that was untrue and there was good reason even then to be doubtful. If Deneb had really cared about keeping his spot, he was far enough ahead of pinky still that he could have just kept going for the biggest fleets he could find and kept a lead pinky couldn't have caught. The spectacle of the big numbers, in this instance, didn't seem to justify the event that happened.

Deneb and pinky had worked together to dominate the universe, it would not be unreasonable to say that they probably wouldn't have survived the initial skirmish without relying on each other. The two also would have been each other's greatest allies in an ACS situation that would have had them as the #1 targets. Deneb respected urza and pinky by proxy. There is much to dislike about some of Deneb's past actions, but many of the warnings he got on the board were defending players he respected who were being insulted by others. It is not out of the norm for Deneb to backstab someone in-game, but this would have been the first time he backstabbed someone he had a long working relationship with. There is always the possibility for any given first, but only Deneb knows for certain.

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BONUS

The following combat report is being posted for the first time on the official OGame boards, a lost piece of history recovered. I had to run this through an old converter which should make you thankful for how nice modern converters make everything look

(Courtesy of cimbi31)

Quote

Part 1

At these space, as it came to a battle:

Attacker urza

(X:XXX:XX)

Weapons: XXX% Shields: XXX% Armour: XXX%

Type: S.Cargo L.Fighter H.Fighter Cruiser Battleship Dest. Battlecr.

Total: 602.533 2.806.943 937 492.445 80.663 455.924 26.059

Defender pinky

(X:XXX:XX)

Weapons: XXX% Shields: XXX% Armour: XXX%

Type: S.Cargo L.Cargo L.Fighter H.Fighter Cruiser Battleship Col.Ship Recy. Esp.Probe Bomber Dest. Deathstar Battlecr. R.Launcher H.Laser Gauss Plasma

Total: 256.119 36.548 2.017.667 204.812 417.879 194.760 3 387.577 74.889 260 89.121 1.027 97.726 210 57 20 10

After battle...

Attacker urza

(X:XXX:XX)

Type: S.Cargo L.Fighter H.Fighter Cruiser Battleship Dest. Battlecr.

Total: 84.322 391.692 249 269.778 66.188 428.809 23.551

Defender pinky

(X:XXX:XX)

Type: S.Cargo L.Cargo L.Fighter H.Fighter Cruiser Battleship Recy. Bomber Dest. Deathstar Battlecr. Plasma

Total: 15 16 117 106 1.656 6.726 335 31 17.485 1.027 7.348 1

He captured

- metal, - crystal and - deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 22.669.126.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 58.637.958.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 15.235.450.200 metal and 7.676.754.000 crystal.

The chance for a moon to be created is 0 %.

-- Created by Takana's CR Converter v1.955 beta - Dragon Takana --

----------------------------------------

Part Two

At these space, as it came to a battle:

Attacker urza

(X:XXX:XX)

Weapons: XXX% Shields: XXX% Armour: XXX%

Type: Dest.

Total: 428.809

Defender pinky

(X:XXX:XX)

Weapons: XXX% Shields: XXX% Armour: XXX%

Type: S.Cargo L.Cargo L.Fighter H.Fighter Cruiser Battleship Recy. Bomber Dest. Deathstar Battlecr. R.Launcher H.Laser Gauss Plasma

Total: 15 16 117 106 1.656 6.726 335 31 17.485 1.027 7.348 187 45 16 9

After battle...

Attacker urza

(X:XXX:XX)

Type: Dest.

Total: 418.548

Defender pinky

(X:XXX:XX)

destroyed!

He captured

279.031.999 metal, 48.837.513 crystal and 509.226.487 deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 1.282.625.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 13.544.885.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 2.208.600.900 metal and 1.771.546.200 crystal.

The chance for a moon to be created is 0 %.

Follow Ups:

The attacker has won the battle! He captured 640.207.024 metal, 24.418.757 crystal and 660.376.794 deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 528.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 2.393.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 79.200 metal and 79.200 crystal.

The attacker has won the battle! He captured 320.103.512 metal, 12.209.378 crystal and 330.188.397 deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 408.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 2.074.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 61.200 metal and 61.200 crystal.

The attacker has won the battle! He captured 160.051.756 metal, 6.104.689 crystal and 165.094.199 deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 408.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 1.697.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 61.200 metal and 61.200 crystal.

The attacker has won the battle! He captured 80.025.878 metal, 3.052.345 crystal and 82.547.099 deuterium.

The attacker lost a total of 160.000 units.

The defender lost a total of 1.486.000 units.

At these space coordinates now float 24.000 metal and 24.000 crystal.

-- Created by Takana's CR Converter v1.955 beta - Dragon Takana --

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PART TWENTY ONE

Taking us all the way through to the end of 2015, the RoLUE that had risen to near untouchable dominance was beginning to show more and more cracks. Some new blood would help patch up some of them but the negativity toward RoLUE had never been higher and the poison was beginning to set in from within.

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PINKY TAKES OVER, ROLUE GROWS AGAIN, WRAITH02 WTF, #1 ACCOUNT BANNED!

More conspiracy theories abounded as pinky was gifted the urza account by Deneb, though most were convinced that pinky was an innocent party in it all; it was either Requiem, Deneb, or both who deserved the scorn. For the glory of RoLUE, one he certainly did not have to respect after recent events, pinky would continue posting 1 billion+ debris field hits as regularly as he had on his own account. At the same time, barsie would post hits that weren't quite as big, but were big in relation to what the rest of Universe 1 was accomplishing. An impressive number of them being with zero losses. It was an uneasy time but everyone in RoLUE loved pinky and were excited he was sticking around. The alliance was weathering the controversy and was arguably as strong as it had ever been.

Then a rare occurrence of someone outside of RoLUE grabbing a billion+ res profit as Merchant of Death managed to slap the cargoes of Finch, two highly respected players in their own right coming together to show life still existed in Universe 1. The R E V O and CrazyCF alliances would lead this activity, including esio trot of CrazyCF ninjaing Lanfear of RoLUE for his first advanced combat report. This esio trot character was the little engine that could back in these days and posted consistent combats for a solid two years straight. Even Wraith02 of JeB, after playing with barely a combat ship built since the days of the dinosaur, would offer up a cargo slap against Deepblou1 of PAX. Down was up, up was down, and Universe 1 was finding a new balance without all the massive fleet crashes.

WarDawG, who inherited the mika del siro account, and this sprite little cherub named AGFS would both join RoLUE in March of 2015. WarDawg had been a Deneb ally and AGFS was everything anyone could want in a newer player to the universe and seemed to have a promising future. A future that promised to not be long in RoLUE, but a future all the same. WarDawG, on the other hand, would hunker down and begin smacking all he could find to be smacked, making sure no one forgot that RoLUE was still strong even with their biggest fleet being slightly less big. Amraam, who had the largest crash .org wide in 2007 while in Universe 2 (hitting the #1 player with the #3 fleet with his #3 account with the #1 fleet), joined RoLUE on March 23rd, 2015. Helios12 and kriton joined from the Krakken alliance as well.

A fellow awfully similar to Deneb, called SirPipsALot, would takeover the urza account and begin posting hits half as big as had been posted a mere few months before. Perhaps there truly were no other large fleets left. To deal with this, on April 13th, 2015, RoLUE would declare war on disposal, R E V O, BunnyInc, Frst, TNT, KotD, and JeB. A lot of players were getting complacent and it was time to shake things up. It wouldn't take long for the smaller members of RoLUE to get targeted, including by an increasingly larger enemy to RoLUE.

On April 22nd, 2015, RobinHood "Jr" of BunnyINC would attack AGFS, but AGFS would show his quality by ninjaing this attack, causing a combined total damage of over 1 billion. AGFS treated it as no big deal, but nothing was insignificant as it came to causing damage to RobinHood. He hadn't been particularly liked the first time Deneb crashed him and he had not gotten any more popular, at least not among RoLUEsers. The war would see a bunch of posturing but nothing particularly substantial on either side that wasn't already happening anyway, but a bit of fun for players like nastynate who posted every successful farming venture on a RoLUE member he achieved, no matter how small.

In the end SirPipsALot, who was totally not Deneb, managed to churn out sixteen crashes that I counted before pinky took back over. During this period, the most noteworthy hits were on ToeFuNinja of Toe, zhog of R E V O, and pintches of 1977. In pinky's brief run, he hit cht13er of Frst on May 11th, then brought the pain again to pintches on May 24th. But the most exciting event would involve the most unlikely of players.

Here Wraith02 pops up again on the combat report listing, repping the JeB tag on the losing end of a battle with barsie of RoLUE. Except, wait a second, does that say ninja!? After being RIP bashed one too many times, Wraith02 set about dedicating his OGame life to revenge, leading barsie in to bash him again but this time as a trap, taking down 495 out of 500 deathstars as a result. Wraith02 even managed to make a small profit while barsie lost nearly 5 billion units of res. A hard lesson learned for barsie who didn't even dare to show his face in the thread.

AGFS continued holding down the offensive victories for RoLUE but seemed rather lonely. During this same period I would notice a new player that was quite unlike the others, posting good profits with well set up planets and fleet composition. I would learn that this player, named GIR, was an experienced player from Rigel who had similar enemies to us. It was a match made in heaven and GIR would begin picking up the slack, adding yet another face to the victories of RoLUE.

In the midst of all this, chronosland would curiously post a hit for Deneb on RobinHood "Jr" on August 24th, 2015, which was said to be a revenge for RHJ's harassment of other RoLUEsers (after having, yet again, pulled his fleet back to a large size). Very interesting. A few months later, chronosland would announce his intention to retire from the game but would renege on this claim upon the news of an upcoming change to Universe 1.

Deneb would then crash Ghostwolf of the newly formed Revolutionary Bunnies alliance on September 4th (an alliance that would also have former RoLUEser turned enemy A r e s) simply for the sake of the damage. The R-B alliance would quickly become the new "big bad" of Universe 1, making headway against the RoLUE dominance that no others had managed (the Wraith02 ninja was actually one of the biggest hits RoLUE would suffer in years).

However, it would be RobinHood "Jr" (also of the newly introduced R-B) who would have the last laugh. On December 27th, 2015, RHJ would post a crash on Belgraeme of RoLUE, making about 1.2 billion profit from the endeavor, by far the most profitable smash on RoLUE in recent memory; potentially ever. Around the same time, Deneb's #1 account would end up banned in game for the exact same pushing allegation that had been made against RHJ; with many players claiming this was far from the first time. Would this be the end of RoLUE and the beginning of a new age in Universe 1? It certainly wasn't looking good...

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PART TWENTY TWO

We have reached the period of the second merge where some famous (infamous?) names joined Universe 1 and the entire fleeting landscape changed forever. No longer could the number 1 fleet safely sit unfleetsaved and untouchable, no more could a massive turtle defense make itself unprofitable to the #1 fleet and survive on that alone. The end of turtling and the beginning of more advanced level fleeting is about to commence.

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EVERYTHING CHANGES, RFAIL ARRIVES, R-B HAS THEIR FUN, REVENGE REVENGE

A new dynamic would certainly form in Universe 1 and its name was the Alliance Combat System (ACS). This would be implemented on March 25th, 2016. But that wasn't all. A new merge was on its way too, beginning on March 29th, 2016, but this merge worked a bit differently than the last. This time Universe 1 would be one of three choices that exodus universe members could choose, the others being Rigel and Wasat. The universes that could potentially merge were Universes 20, 44, Andromeda, Orion, Pegasus, Sirius, Yakini, and Antares. There were a lot of big players that could go anywhere they wanted and there was no way to know which of them we would get.

In the end, it seemed RoLUE would actually benefit quite greatly from the merge as many of the new players would be friendly with them, particularly because the urza account would attain a new owner during this period: Sir Raven. This Sir Raven was connected to a group known as RFAIL, whose members included heisenberg (Dean), bricks123 (kirito), jaugernaught2, and Omega among others. They would be joining after having spent time with ASSASSIN in Universe 44 and after hearing ASSASSIN would be choosing the Rigel server. RFAIL felt it was inevitable there would be another merge in the future where ASSASSIN would come to Universe 1 and they wanted to get a head start in Universe 1 to prepare for their arrival.

Deneb had been RoLUE's defacto leader for years and now he was gone, his account taken over by a player we were hearing rumblings about in regards to not being all that experienced with fleeting. Thankfully, control of the alliance had been passed to me but I wasn't exactly active in the game. Even so, every other member was relatively new and I was the closest thing to a RoLUE leader that remained so it was my time to step up, whether I wanted to or not.

When the friends of Sir Raven joined Universe 1, it was as part of their own alliance, RFAIL. This meant that all of the more veteran RoLUEsers were waiting for the inevitable moment when Raven would take our top account and join his friends. Other than the urza/Deneb account, we had a few mid-level fleeters, the few left over after many others had retired, while RFAIL had all manner of higher level fleets, including the heisenberg account which was pretty beefy by Universe 1 standards. The fleeters of RoLUE could not compare.

Before the RFAIL team could join Universe 1, ACS had already started and Raven took over his new account prior to their arrival in order to get his legs beneath him. And evidently a good night's sleep as well. March 26th, 2016 was the day of the Raven, as RobinHood "Jr", A r e s, nastynate, and AMOTION, all of the newly formed R-B alliance, would raid around 3 billion resources from Raven by attacking all the cargo fleets that were landing on his different moons, with about a third of their plunder being large quantities of deuterium. This was a MASSIVE amount of losses by the standards of the time. Even pinky, who had stepped away from OGame, would stop in to chastise Raven's haphazard handling of such a legendary account. That there was suspicious activity on Raven's moon that made people question if Raven was scripting in the middle of this demolition didn't spell good things either.

Only mildly daunted, Raven would go after RobinHood "Jr" but his efforts were telegraphed and failed. An attack on Blackmax of UCN, however, would prove more successful. Raven would make back about 15% of the deuterium he'd lost with this hit, which was at least a start. As RobinHood "Jr" was also part of the ASSASSIN alliance that had officially settled into the Rigel server, most of the RFAIL members were battling him both in Universe 1 and in Rigel. It was largely a mutual dislike of RHJ that bonded the members of RoLUE and RFAIL together, making the newly formed allies stronger than just the alliance tag attached to the #1 account. What was certain is that R-B had become the top opposition of RoLUE and ACS was going to change the former dynamics of Universe 1 forever.

Elsewhere, Skull was doing his best to keep RoLUE on the winning side of things but R-B was beginning to appear unstoppable. RobinHood "Jr" would crash Jack Sparrow of RFAIL on April 12, 2016, immediately taking out one of the new fleeters playing in opposition of R-B. Adding in the deut damage done to the Sir Raven account, things were already off to a rough start. Even pinky would give the new universe dynamics a try, returning on his original account with the fleet he had tossed into his nanites prior to being crashed (somehow still making bigger hits than most everyone else). The new world of "insta-building" would rob pinky of many debris fields, however, as those he attacked would dump their resources into building recyclers to grab as much as they could of the potential profits. It was bad enough most of pinky's desire to play had already been knocked out of him, this likely only added to the seeming pointlessness of it all.

Then that damn Wraith02 was at it again, getting the first ACS ninja of Universe 1 by teaming up with martin (a player who passed away and whose account Wraith02 stayed attentive to, occasionally returning people who attacked him) and AMOTION (who was apparently in JeB at this point) on March 28th, 2016. The unlucky attacker was DarkWolf of RoLUE who had been RIP bashing martin's account (it had been inactive for a long time) and Wraith02 decided to seize the day! 236 RoLUE RIPs down and further misfortune for the once nearly untouchable alliance. Wraith02 would even have a successful ACS attack a few days later!

On April 4th, 2016, the first show of power would occur. Two members of RFAIL, heisenberg and kirito, would team up with baal of BAAL to crash TrustNoOne. The BAAL alliance had already torn through the turtle defenses of TrustNoOne during a previous hit and this was a finishing blow to take out the RIPs that had been hiding behind them too. It turned out that baal was friendly the RFAIL alliance coming into U1 and, by proxy, RoLUE but baal was not the biggest fan of Raven, with Raven having a similar dislike of baal. It was hard to know where this would go, but as the leader of RoLUE at the time, I did my best to mediate the situation to keep everything solid but I could only do so much.

From my position I knew nothing of these new players that had instantly become vital to the survival of RoLUE and figuring out the dynamics between them was no easy task. On one hand the RFAIL and BAAL alliances had been friendly for a long time, on the other hand there were threats of BAAL turning on RoLUE/RFAIL, with such threats being made frequently enough during the early days of the merge that they were hard to ignore. There was a period where RFAIL and RoLUE both took these claims very seriously, specifically because the hostilities between baal and Sir Raven became so heated that it seemed there might be no remedying the situation. I had no idea how deeply these tensions between BAAL and RFAIL went, but it became clear that, if this was serious, things may result in needing to take out baal before he could align with those who could take out one of us. No one wanted this to happen, however, and the hope was that by floating around the idea of being willing to make the first strike, if necessary, BAAL would be forced to either decide to follow through on the threats being made, joining with our enemies, or to work out whatever issues were going on to put all of this in the past.

It eventually became clear that the mounting tensions were not actually between the BAAL alliance and the RFAIL alliance as a whole, but rather between baal and Sir Raven specifically. Sir Raven's abilities and personality did not sit well with baal, who felt Sir Raven did not belong in the position he was in, and Sir Raven did nothing to help the situation by instigating baal every chance he got. While I played some part in trying to calm tensions at times, it was ultimately RFAIL and BAAL who came together to work out their issues, moving forward as they always had previously, making for a very powerful union.

More tragedy would strike on April 19th, 2016, as AMOTION of R-B (he may have only joined JeB temporarily for the last hit) and A r e s / RobinHood "Jr" of R-B with Pidge / Wraith02 of JeB would land the definitive blow to longterm Wraith02 nemesis barsie of RoLUE. The ACS would be the biggest Universe 1 had seen so far and would knock down one of the strongest accounts RoLUE had coming into the merge. Naturally, barsie was not happy this happened but, at the same time, his interest in the game had already been waning so this outcome had increasingly become an inevitability. It seemed R-B and Wraith02 had the right combination necessary to cause damage to RoLUE in ways no one else had done since urza gained control of the universe.

The string of woes for RoLUE wouldn't last forever, however, as the ultimate revenge would be coming again and this time there was a familiar issue. RobinHood "Jr" would be evading attacks in a suspicious manner, forcing those conspiring against him to close themselves off from much of the RoLUE team due to the belief there was a spy. Everyone in high security rooms within RoLUE had all been trusted members of Deneb's team, so this didn't make any sense to me or any of the others who had been in RoLUE prior to the merge. Who could possibly be passing on information?

Taking things out of the RoLUE channels allowed for another massive event on April 22nd, 2016 when RobinHood "Jr" would become the victim of the original #1 ACS crash in Universe 1, a hit orchestrated by jaugernaught2 of RFAIL, joined by kirito and heisenberg also of RFAIL, Karasu of RoLUE, and Bibas of TBH. There had even been an intention for baal to join as well but plans fell through. This was a joining of most of the top accounts who had joined Universe 1 during the recent merge who were again taking down the biggest problem they saw in the OGame environment. How many times would RHJ's allies help him rebuild and how many accounts could be "crashed" to help him rebuild before his allies ran out of patience and the other accounts ran out of availability?

It was hoped this would be the definitive blow, but even if this account of RHJ did fall into ruin, RHJ still had another massive account in Rigel that he would be able to merge over. The reason R-B became such a target of RFAIL and their allies was because it was believed R-B would join ASSASSIN when they merged into Universe 1, so it was important to eliminate as many of R-B as possible before that happened. On the same day as the RHJ hit, WarDawG would remind people he had been hunting successfully and consistently by posting a hit in honor of the efforts of those who took out RHJ. For many of RoLUE's enemies, WarDawG was the equivalent of a Merchant of Death or liandriminingcorp type of character, someone so persistently active and effective that their enemies really wished they would be crashed but those wishing to do so were hard pressed to succeed.

Hostilities were picking up and once RFAIL showed they were more competent than people had at first believed, it became clear the early victories of R-B had been short term gains. Other new arrivals to Universe 1 were getting picked apart, with Skull and GIR of RoLUE being on a feeding frenzy (GIR especially), and it seemed that the "good guys", from our perspective, were winning definitively once again. The plan to dominate Universe 1 in preparation of the arrival of ASSASSIN was, overall, going as planned and the concerns about RoLUE falling from grace seemed unwarranted...for now.

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PART TWENTY THREE

The second merge in 2016 brought many changes and much of what was known of the historic RoLUE was gone. It was a new age, a complete changing of the guard, with all the growing pains that come with it. The year brought activity and dramatics that rivaled any other period in the history of the alliance, for better or worse. Some would choose to ride the wave, others preferred to go out with the tide.

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UNBALANCED DIPLOMACY, AIRHEAD STIRS AGAIN, GIR MAKES HIS MARK

As the defacto leader of RoLUE I had nothing to stand on other than the relative stability of the alliance, the unknown ties between RFAIL and Deneb, and a long history to pull from. Would Raven leave for RFAIL? It still felt inevitable, but somehow the very opposite would occur. After a lot of negotiations, where those representing RFAIL were far more open than I expected them to be, an unimaginable result was reached. In mid-May of 2016, RFAIL would merge into RoLUE to join Raven and the rest of RoLUE's fleeters. Another super alliance was born, on the surface at least.

To say this was a mess would be an understatement. RoLUE struggled at times to keep the #1 fleet going when it was our only big fleet to feed and now we had all manner of other fleeters as well. Luckily RFAIL was also allied with THORNS, who provided them with deut, but often that still wasn't enough and complaints about not having deut coverage became common place. When RFAIL was getting the deut they needed, the original RoLUE fleeters were not, and soon there was a dynamic where I wanted to support my original team but felt like I had no further leverage to work with. We couldn't afford to have RFAIL turn hostile against us so we had to ride the wave.

The main casualty of this situation for us was WarDawG, who would feel so disrespected by all of the events that he would leave the alliance to form his own group called Orion. He would remain on relatively friendly terms, but it was clear the joy of the game had been taken out of him by all of the new political messes that had been introduced. GIR would also grow annoyed by the lack of access to deut, similarly feeling as if the alliance he had been working so hard for was not providing that support back to him. GIR would hang on quite a bit longer than WarDawG did, but the effects from the upheaval would be long reaching.

GIR and the former RFAIL members were posting 1 billion+ total damage hits consistently, completely overwhelming the OGame boards with them. Within a month, however, Omega had already left RoLUE and reformed RFAIL. The accusation was spies and a general dissatisfaction with being in a mass alliance compared to the tight knit community RFAIL had joined with. The original RoLUEsers felt offended that accusations were being cast at them when it was just as possible someone in RFAIL had been passing on information. We had barely known each other for a month or two, anything seemed possible either way.

MVP of RoLUE would get crushed by Firestorm of R-B on June 1st, starting off the month on a bad foot for RoLUE. However, GIR would more than make up for those losses in terms of his own overall output being made public so it was still a small setback in an ocean of overwhelming forces still within RoLUE. While Omega preferred to fly solo, the rest of RFAIL would stay with RoLUE and continue churning out successes for the alliance, but the powers of RoLUE/RFAIL/TBH/BAAL/THORNS in combination had clearly unbalanced Universe 1 in a way that led a lot of other players to find the conditions even worse than when Deneb had been smashing everyone alone (well, with pinky, but alone in terms of the majority of the hatred he generated and where the blame was placed).

A true show of unity would finally occur as GIR and heisenberg (played by Omega) would team up to pounce on GateCrusher of LTL. It wasn't a massive hit but still enough to count as a Top Ten in this newly implemented ACS universe. It was also a long deserved recognition of GIR's skill as he finally landed a slot on the Hall of Fame board.

Another element that helped the transition from Deneb to RFAIL was the return of Airhead, an unpredictable force but one loyal to RoLUE. Airhead had good relations with Deneb and Deneb had respect for Airhead considering the great efforts it took CURSED in Universe 2 to take Airhead down. From what I could perceive, Airhead seemed to know the RFAIL members better than I did as well. There was no question Airhead was a strong player, and in the absence of anyone else actively playing with that sort of history in the group, I handed leadership of RoLUE to Airhead. I hadn't really wanted the role from the beginning and maybe the years passing had changed Airhead for the better.

Everything had been fine in terms of our conversations, Airhead seemed motivated and happy to represent RoLUE from a stronger in-game position than I could. Was Airhead an ideal leader? Probably not, but with the other options at the time being to either hand the entirety of RoLUE to RFAIL or to place it in the hands of new arrivals without any great attachment to the name, Airhead was objectively the best option. But it wouldn't be long before Airhead would begin to lose patience, acting in ways that made me concerned for what would happen to the alliance and butting heads with various members who immediately expressed concern to me about the decision to allow Airhead to be in charge. I had known it was a risk but I did not expect everything to implode so quickly.

One day, during a heated argument over who knows what, Airhead would flip out. I expected Airhead to dissolve RoLUE out of spite and create turmoil with RFAIL. I tried to get ahead of this by speaking to the RFAIL members and from this I learned they really had no ties with Airhead beyond Airhead having been connected to Deneb. It made no difference to them what Airhead said or did, they wouldn't take it seriously. Then, at the height of tensions with Airhead...leadership of RoLUE was given back to me. Airhead went from aggressively insulting me back to levelheaded, mentioning it was clear there was a difference of opinion that was not going to resolve and chose to leave rather than have things escalate any further. And that was that, or so I thought.

Next thing we knew, Airhead's account had been taken out of RoLUE and handed to Firestorm of R-B, a player that had been blatantly aggressive toward us in a group full of our biggest enemies. The behind the scenes reason was likely that Firestorm was a Universe 2 veteran who Airhead was friendly with and he was no doubt happy to have the upgraded account, but considering the account that was being passed on had been one of the few strong RoLUE accounts that RFAIL wasn't in possession of, it was a strong blow that many members of RoLUE took personally. PRiNCE PERSiA demonstrated this venom by posting a hit against Firestorm on June 23rd, 2016, part of a much larger effort to obliterate that account until it was unusable. It would not be surprising if Firestorm took this rather personally at the time despite our making it clear that the attacks were simply a matter of circumstance and what had felt like a betrayal by Airhead; but what was done was done.

Another blow, in a sense, came when GIR acquired the pinky account, leaving RoLUE to take on the moniker of TheBrain as part of TheGang. In truth, nothing had changed other than the tag, but it represented another strong player within RoLUE not attached to RFAIL who was no longer in RoLUE. It was hard not to feel like the remaining core of the group had weakened to a troubling degree. The fleeting power of RoLUE was now essentially all RFAIL based and it didn't take a genius like TheBrain to figure out this was not going to be sustainable forever. RoLUE continued to carry on as strong as ever, but also as weak as ever.

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PART TWENTY FOUR

Deeper into 2016 we go, a year of many happenings and a year that began with a bang but was on track to end with more of a whimper. It can be fun to try to become all powerful, for many it is the ultimate goal of any game, but once you reach that untouchable state you find the fun that was had getting there slowly starts to grind away into nothing. The goal is achieved, the excitement has passed, and there is no longer the joy in stabbing downward that there was in fighting upward. The meaning in everything becomes increasingly lost until there is so little that the effort no longer seems worth it anymore.

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GIR LEAVES, OMEGA RETURNS, SUSPICIONS GROW, APATHY REIGNS

GIR outside of RoLUE, on an even stronger account than he'd been given before, was even more of a presence within Universe 1; posting hits of over 1 billion total damage even more consistently because he had a bigger fleet more capable of accomplishing that. The remaining players within RoLUE itself would be largely quiet, with the occasional harassment of the usual targets but little that broke new ground. That is until the group entered August of 2016 and the battle against R-B would really pick up.

The difficulty of playing the #1 account would become clearer as it changes hands again to bfist (aka bricks123) who would take the reigns for a short while, causing a 10 billion damage hit at the expense of Corenor, a member of R-B. Evidently I did the rare useful thing in this effort, tossing some RIPs at a moon, meaning Corenor must have been really, really offline for this. The results spoke for themselves and glory was again brought to RoLUE. Animosity between baal and RFAIL would again be demonstrated, despite their having worked well together in the past, as baal openly criticized bfist for his account hopping.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to briefly cover the complexities of the various allied groups who had joined Universe 1. RFAIL was the fleeting powerhouse of those who merged but wasn't necessarily where most loyalties existed. BAAL and TBH were the most strongly bonded, which was part of what made threats of BAAL turning on RFAIL so diplomatically messy, with THORNS largely giving deut support to whoever in the greater collective needed it. Bibas was the #2 account in the universe, both overall points and fleet wise, but he was also a sleeping giant, rarely using his fleet unless invited into an ACS. A valuable ally with a history of strong play without a doubt, but his motivation to dominate was long lost in the past. Bibas also merged with what would be the #1 alliance by far in Universe 1 full of his own exclusive deut traders, meaning TBH was essentially self sustaining, leaving THORNS mostly trading with BAAL and RFAIL. As long as everyone got along there were so many strong accounts all working together that even if one or two went down it still wouldn't have been enough to topple the dominance of the group.

On August 3rd, 2016, heisenberg of RoLUE and Slevin of THORNS would team together to hit flobalob of JeB, somewhat avenging the hit involving JeB that had taken down barsie. There was still more to come in order to balance that loss out but it was clear the new faces of RoLUE weren't going to give up in the face of some setbacks. RFAIL was carrying the RoLUE flag as seriously as I ever could have hoped and it began to feel like they may make RoLUE their home after all. Even as some unresolved problems continued to go on.

The player chronosland of RoLUE, who I'd noticed had been doing practically nothing for our alliance long before I took power in RoLUE, would get hit numerous times by Nagisa of JeB. This only furthered my desire to kick him, despite what he had supposedly done for RoLUE in the past under Deneb. I had plenty of pleasant conversations with him in the past as well, but something wasn't right about him being a part of our inner circle and contributing nothing. I wanted him gone. Other players who had been part of some of the planning sessions chronosland had been involved with in the past assured me he was a strong ally and his inactivity was probably only temporary. I was further concerned that kicking him without support might destabilize what remained of the pre-RFAIL RoLUEsers and, since I was a miner who wasn't involved in any fleeting matters, I could do little other than sit back and hope I was wrong.

After a good run, making strong hits and avoiding some very capable fleeters, GIR decided to throw in the towel. It was a heartbreak on multiple levels, as it meant we were losing a strong ally, friend, and again losing the spirit of pinky attached to his account. By no means could we be upset though, because he didn't start in Universe 1 with any intention to join RoLUE but had given all he could to do well by us once he did. One of my regrets is that we found ourselves in a situation with so many fleeters that we didn't have the means to support him in the way he deserved. If you're still out there GIR, we all wish you the best.

On August 21st, 2016, glory was not brought to RoLUE when heisenberg was ninja'd by Pidge of R-B during a failed moon destruction and then further attacked by Pidge in retaliation, getting his deut fleet harassed. This would lead to a rather complex set of events which ended in heisenberg sending a fake attack at Pidge, hoping he would ask nastynate (also of R-B) for assistance; which is exactly what would happen. The fleet of nastynate would arrive in the area well past his usual bedtime and heisenberg would crash it for a new Top Ten (though how this specific part happened remains a mystery). After a long period of not much going on, this turned out to be an exciting day. Further revenge wouldn't be far behind either as heisenberg (now under control of Omega) would smash Gleakin of R-B on September 3rd, doing nearly 20x the damage to Gleakin that Pidge had done to heisenberg.

On September 6th, 2013, another large ACS crash took place as heisenberg and Karasu (formerly Sir Raven) of RoLUE would team with baal of BAAL to take down Silarious of FrSt. With just under 30 billion in damage, a new #2 ACS had been created. It was a high risk, moderate reward attack as Silarious had a 5,000,000 fodder defense, but the mass concentration of heavy ships was too much for it to handle. And over a billion res in profit wasn't all bad, even split three ways. Plus, for those collecting Top Tens, it was another nice feather in the cap.

Karasu and heisenberg would pair up again on September 10th, 2016, this time to take down longtime antagonist nastynate of R-B again with over 8 billion in total damage. An impressive hit on an impressive enemy, possibly the person with the most combat reports posted on RoLUE in recent memory. The excitement of the hit would be somewhat dampened though when both Karasu and heisenberg would be banned for a payment related issue. People called for the Hall of Fame hit to not count, but as the issue was eventually clarified, everything stayed official.

Note, it's possible during the prior events that Dean (the original player on heisenberg) had switched to the #1 account (then called Karasu) with Omega exclusively playing on the heisenberg account. If there was any additional account shifting during this period beyond that, I can't remember. It seemed that part of RFAIL's strategy at the time was to cause this confusion about who was on what account and they were rather successful in doing so. Needless to say, the account hopping baal criticized was very real.

For the next month or so not much of note would happen, though Augustus of THORNS would be putting in the work to build his empire and sharing that progress on the boards. Speaking of THORNS, RoLUE had officially become allies with them following the merge with RFAIL and they were a good bunch. Slevin and a few others (it has been long enough that I don't remember with certainty who was or wasn't in THORNS and I didn't have the foresight to copy such info down either) would be around for the occasional chat while canadaehhhhh (I have no idea how many h's there were) would capture the hearts of many despite otherwise playing quite casually. For being rather unwillingly thrust into a entirely new culture of people within my own alliance, things had mostly turned out well. The RFAIL players were respectful of the RoLUE players they merged with, despite the considerable account size differences, and it seemed like everything was on a good roll for whenever ASSASSIN might merge.

The battle with R-B was still heated in-game and there were the occasional antagonizings, but something of the passion that had once been running through so many alliances to push them to try their best seemed to be fading. Crashes were largely respectful, with the occasional potshot that never seemed to go anywhere. For example, Omega (using the heisenberg account) would obliterate Deepblou of R-B, making a huge deut profit and calling out Ghostwolf. The response from Ghostwolf was one of confusion and the greatest controversy was whether Omega had sent too many follow-ups or not. A hit on an enemy the caliber of R-B was a great accomplishment, as far as any OGame accomplishment goes, but the spark simply wasn't there and it wasn't there in many other hits being posted either. Perhaps we had all been spoiled by so much past drama that we forgot what the game had been like before, or perhaps the effort of playing was simply beginning to drag for everyone at once.

Omega was doing her best to antagonize however, as she would post another massive cargo slap with the heisenberg account, this time on Thorshammer of R-B. Mid-October was proving to be a nightmare for R-B but the same month was about to be a nightmare for Omega for different reasons. During an attempted moon destruction of FarfetchD of JeB, probably the biggest antagonist remaining with the fleet size to back it up in opposition of RoLUE, the heisenberg account would again be banned. This led to a free ninja for FarfetchD and allowed an additional attack he had launched on Omega to also go through. FarfetchD found it to be karma since he thought Omega's actions were only meant to annoy and provoke rather than do damage anyway.

That Augustus player that had been spamming the boards as a member of THORNS had left their alliance, citing unhappiness. He would then join RoLUE and commence with the combat spam again, but this time filling the board with RoLUE victories, just as we liked to see. Omega would again deal with a ban issue and be back in short order on October 29th, getting a smack on former RoLUEser A r e s of R-B, though not a particularly consequential one. The Karasu account would follow suit the very next day with a mildly profitable turtle bash on Ghostwolf; the leader of R-B. At this point, there was some degree of tit for tat, but largely it was a one sided landslide as RoLUE continued to steamroll the rest of Universe 1 out of existence.

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