Back in 2017, I woke up and found out I was promoted to guild leader of the Alliance guild on Xbox. I only joined them not even 1 week ago. I politely asked the guild to step down and pass it to someone who has been here since day 1. Nobody wanted it and I got stuck as GM. The Alliance had the second most trophies in leaderboard, right behind Guild of Thieves. Everybody was fighting for trophies back then. I convinced the group trophies don’t prove anything. Anyone can grind mindlessly for trophies. Something called Guild wars came out and so to prove you were the best, it was guild wars.
And so a rivalry was created between the guild of thieves and the alliance. They always came first and we came in second, because we had 3-4 players who weren’t good or didn’t understand the rules. There were a few close calls, that we almost took first place.
News spread around about me as the new guild leader. My idea was a guild is a place where a group of people have the same goals and work together to achieve those goals. You don’t force a player to follow rules. The players decide together what the rules are and work towards those goals. Back then, there were trophy, gold, and level requirements. And with guild wars being very competitive, having kingdoms maxed out for stats and owning almost all troops was a big deal.
I had over 50 players wanting to join my guild, so I worked with 3 lower level guilds and put them in there with trusted friends to help them develop into better players.
Then one Guild wars day, one player didn’t play all week and we were decimated and almost took third place. I discovered the missing player was terminal and didn’t have much time to live. I had to make a choice between being competitive or a human being. I contacted the player, who was from Germany, and encouraged him to stay with us. He was grateful and it empowered him to want to play guild wars and do his best. Guild wars was weekly back then and some weeks, he played a few days and other times, he was off for a couple of weeks. Our score dropped and we were borderline second or third place. This decision caused a rift with our very competitive players and some wanted to leave. I had 50 players for back up, so it wasn’t a big deal. I contacted the developers back then and asked if they could set up guild wars to be the best scores for 27 of the 30 players.
And then it happened. Not hearing from him for 3-4 weeks, one of his friends saw my message on Xbox and replied he passed. I spoke with his friend with our Xbox headset and with tears, he thanked me. He said guild wars was very exciting and it made his friend feel alive. It was a gift knowing he forgot he was terminal and how important it was to him to be part something fun.
A year later, I stepped down from the Alliance and moved into one of my friend’s guild. They actually beat Thieves a few times and they wanted my knowledge. Unfortunately, the guild leader did something stupid and was permanently banned from the game. A new leader took over and players weren’t happy. So, I was invited into the Thieves guild and shared and learned a lot of amazing jaw dropping team combos. One of my friends was invited as well, and within a few months, he copied our teams, quit, and went back to his guild. They started to stream and dominated guild wars for a short while. Back then Unforgiven took over the second highest trophy and eventually took the first spot. However, they were always coming in second behind the thieves guild in guild wars. And then suddenly Dragon Army was in first. Unforgiven started to stream as well and thieves dropped to third place. While Thieves had the talent, the two teams that were on top were either Unforgiven and Dragon Army.
Some of the Unforgiven players joined us, but it turned out they were there looking to steal players like myself. So, since Unforgiven took the number 1 spot and were on a streak, I decided to make an interesting move by jumping to Dragon Army. I collaborated with their players and we talked about how the AI on defense thinks and tested a lot of stuff. The one thing I shared with them is how the scoring actually works. Through testing, they saw certain troops scored higher than others and with my explanation, it seems sense. Then our score skyrocketed waaay beyond Unforgiven for a few months. The last year of guild wars, Dragon Army won 7 of 12 matches and is the defending champion for Xbox this year.
One of my friends had an Xbox account and a PC/mobile account. He was in the guild with that guy that was streaming Gems of War teams on Youtube. I forgot his name, but his guild was in tier 1 for guild wars on pc/mobile. My friend was their paragon and he asked for my help with defenses. I had a lot of dangerous combinations that I never used, because I didn’t want other players to copy them and then I would have to face them in future battles. I gave him a book defense with 2 empower troops and Webspinner on top. And then another book with 2 empower troops. Back then, there weren’t as many empowered troops and books weren’t as effective. He told me on those 2 colors with book defenses, it dominated and they crushed those 2 guilds who had to face them. Suddenly, everyone on pc/mobile started to come up with book teams and 1-2 months later, I was facing them here in Xbox. I was grateful, because I had defenses far worse than books teams, but as long as we were winning and taking first place, I didn’t care too much about defense. There were many players who were just copying the same defenses, and we already had counters for all of them and had 10+ players per week scoring perfect runs.
Yesterday, was the first day of the new guild wars. I decided to recreate some of those ugly teams and used them this weekend. Because of trophies, we start at rank 5 and our first team was rank 10. I saw in global they were complaining in German about my defenses. We stopped them at 20,000, because they couldn’t take all of our buildings to get the bonus points. Broken Spire has a broken troop, too powerful that we use and win our battles in 2 turns or less. We went 147-0, since 1 player didn’t do 3 battles and another player accidentally attacked the gate 5 times. WE scored over 49k points with bonus 9 times and kept our competition down to 20k. I arranged the teams in which after the gate, you will face an easy team or an annoying team, which will loop you to death. Once you take the path of the easy team, your next choice is a dangerous team that can wipe you in a few turns or another easy team in the middle. The problem with the easy team is that the looper starts at 50%, can’t be frozen, and in testing, has actually defeated my team on turn 1. I saw in global the German team was complaining about that. And then if you happen to beat the dangerous team or the looping team, you come across 2 teams specifically designed to beat Broken spire troops, which they couldn’t beat. IF however, after the gate, you went up against the annoying team, you had a choice to go on the one side, which had troops designed to slow you down and prevent getting you those precious extra points, and another team, which will kill 1-2 troops instantly before turn 3. And that’s how they got to the palace and faced my personal defense.
Today, we faced a guild that only has 5-7 members. 5 of the 9 buildings had no defenses. NO challenge. I hope we get to face any of the 4 guilds above us in the leaderboards before the weekend is up.
I hope you enjoyed my stories. I plan to add the first story in my book, to remind people the importance of choosing being human above everything else. And for the 1% of players who love guild wars, see you on the battlefield.
The first guild to take out Thieves was The Unforgiven. Winning 7 of 12 is not dominating. The Unforgiven won the other 5. The year before The Unforgiven likely won 8 of 12. A lot of what you are saying is true but since you are not in The Unforgiven some of it is not. When The Unforgiven first won no one streamed. We just added I think 4 good GW players from True Achievement Elite. This was the first time any guild on any platform went 150/0 on a given day. I almost lost that day lol. The top guild that did not win actually accused us of cheating because we had another guild. Problem was that guild was in B 2 lol. We did not face them. Later the reason The Unforgiven became so dominate is because we took over 1st in trophies which made guild leader happy then we concentrated on wars. We every wars would have to move so many players around it would make folks heads spin. We had very little streaming. We just had lockdown players. Later we lost some players due to it being a 10 yr old game. It happens. They may have streamed when they won 5/12 but before that they did not need to. There are alot of stories in this game and The Unforgiven used to be a feeder guild for the alliance. alliance used to be birch guild and The Unforgiven was Birch Bis. The guild your friend GM I think was Heavens Gate. Not sure why someone changed that name and not sure it still exists.
“knowledge is power”
Thank you for the feedback. When I became the leader of the Alliance, I wasn’t aware at the time Unfogiven’s influence over the guild. I was invited into a guild called Darkhaven, which at the time was number 1 in trophies. I had no clue what was happening, but a guild called thieves was approaching them. Eventually, players left Dark haven and joined other top guilds. The guild leader of the Alliance talked to me and said she had a spot for me. No clue, I took the offer without knowing any history. I found out later I took her spot, because she was leaving for the Thieves guild. All this bouncing around happened in under 1 month. Then not even a week later, I found myself as guild leader, clueless of why I am here. I appreciate the background info. But when my friend stole the team ideas from Guild of Thieves and shared them with his guild, they started to stream and worked themselves up to first place. The Thieves guild leader told me it was bound to happen that someone would do that eventually and they would lose their top spot. He was content and said he didn’t care about trophy count. He was on his way out and pushed either me or the other guy to take over as GM. When I wrote this in the forum, my original intention was to talk about the guy who passed away and use that as a life lesson. But then, I wanted some closure and to listen to the perspective of other players of what happened. Playing this game for 10 years, it becomes a part of your life. So, I decided to write the other stuff afterwards. I am glad you stepped up and shared your perspective. I learned History is always written in different perspectives and I want to talk about how my mother’s kindness touched a lot of people in my book. But I never written anything like that before and so doing something like this in a forum becomes a learning experience for me. I recognize sometimes I talk in a bold manner that may seem arrogant at times, but in reality, I am very lucky I had many opportunities like this to help me develop and change my personality. I took a course once by a teacher by the name of Brene Brown, who taught me you have to go out and grind in life. You will make mistakes but you need to constantly grind and push to become a better person. My teacher worked with this German company that was failing, because the CEO was the type that wanted things done his way or the highway. One day, after working with Brene, he approached his staff, apologized, and asked for their help in order to help the company grow. And from that day on the company became very successful. I don’t remember the details, but it became one of the top companies in Fortune 500. If I play video games and don’t learn to interact with people and to make these mistakes, I won’t be as successful in promoting my mother’s story and touching as many individuals. I need people to remind me and so thank you once again and I will see you in competition. Today we are up against Beards of War. And as much as I enjoy Guild Wars, this game is almost dead and there isn’t as many players to compete against.
Nice to know others put their players first over a game…half of my guild is disabled some with terminal illnesses bearing down.Always real life first is my mantra…thanks for sharing
And thank you for the reply. And again I apologize for writing all of that extra unnecessary stuff afterwards
I like seeing how history of different guilds play out. I did not know much about Darkhaven until Ladyfae filled me in on it. Hevensgate was my first guild and it was pretty dead when I was there. i stopped playing for a few months then went to warframe I think it was called. Then leader of Gem Assassins recruited me. Then I had invites to Thieves, Alliance and Birch bis. I chose Birch because they were on the move and they were the ones that would take me immediately. Later we had a vote on name change and the rest is history. For a couple years the only guilds that existed was Thieves and The Unforgiven in the minds of those guilds I think. Lots of guilds including ours put their players first. We absolutely do not kick players that are ill even if the GM is getting flack from another player wondering why they missed mins. At the end of the day you are correct it is a game with a lot of history.
Havens Gate was a good part of my memories. When I was a member of Esprits du Temps we were fighting so hard to try reduce the points with Guild of Thieves. But to keep our 2nd place in guild war wasn’t easy with the pressure of Havens Gate with regularly in blue day very difficult.
When Havens Gate was punished, the consequences was catastrophic but beneficial for Esprits du Temps:
- No contestant for the second place, only concentrated on Guild of Thieves.
- Some recruitment from Havens Gate who probably gave us our first victory
Like a said before it’s a nice homage and it open a door on the past
Here is a little more history. I started to play some game called Neverwinter. I joined a guild and discovered their leader was some dude who was ranked top 10 in the world for another game, I think Warcraft?? They had players who tested every thing about that game with an attempt to break it. They were successful, creating builds that 1 shot killed bosses. The guild farmed for good items and sold them for real $$, which they used to pay the players who concentrated on testing the game. I was close friend with their leader and I learned from him. I got him and a few of those players addicted to gems of War. I had one placed in Heaven gate and the rest went to Strange Magic. The guild leader of Strange magic was a former Thieves, who got angry with them. He went on vacation for 1 week, so he did double the reqs the week before to cover for 2 weeks. When he got back, he was kicked. He wanted to surpass Thieves, so he did an insane amount of trophies with his brother and wife and they had a ton of gold. So, those players benefit. The leader of Neverwinter was top 10 in pvp a lot, when he played for Strange Magic.
So, we had the same players try to break this game. We studied how the AI, thinks. For example, a popular meta team was Thrall, hero, zuul, and a 4th troop. The Ai defense would use Thrall over and over again, until it wasn’t full. So, the other 3 troops would be filled, but they wouldn’t fire off until Thrall wasn’t full, making the defenses almost useless. However, certain hero weapons prioritize over Thrall. So, we tested a whole bunch of stuff. I shared this knowledge with Ted, the former leader of Heaven gate. I remember Candy, the leader of Gem assassins, listening in to our conversation. Also, you had CJ, who worked with Ted to build up Dragon Army. Ironically, those 2 guilds as well as Unforgiven were able to beat Thieves guild a few times in Guild Wars.
When CJ came over to the thieves guild and copied their team builds, they put them in their discord page, as well information on how the AI works. They did this behind my back. Eventually, CJ had to quit playing gems and passed his guilds to multiple people. The one that took over Dragon Army was TD. Something happened and TD took the discord page away from them and went to Unforgiven. I don’t know the whole story, but that was the time frame when Unforgiven had a huge win streak in guild wars. Eventually, I joined Dragon Army and saw the new data the compiled on how the AI works and I helped them with the details. What I noticed was they didn’t have any data on how scoring works on Guild Wars. The discord page TD took from them didn’t have any of that information as well. Our guild leader tested Stellarix on a GW offense team, had a perfect run, but only scored 9400. I asked him how much skull damage did he do vs. how much he received. He said 0. I said, you tied with defenses and that’s why your score was low. So, we created new teams that used both skulls and spell damage,. Before we win a battle, we made sure we took 1 extra turn or 2 and hit them with skulls. Our scores all jumped to 9700 and one player actually scored 9800 once. So when we went up by 200 points per player, times 27 per day times 6 days, our scores skyrocketed. At the same time, Unforgiven lost some players and sometimes weren’t scoring as high as they normally do. If they didn’t remove GW when they did, there is a good possibility we could have kept a long streak until they tweaked or made changes to keep up with us.
Now that I found out the Alliance was a former Unforgiven guild, I can’t make jokes about them being my favorite number 2 guild. But at least I can joke now that I was one of their officers.