Ryzom

I don't see the Karavan as some all powerful force. I see them as marines, stuck here, cut off from their world, refugees, just like us. They do their best to follow and interpret orders given long ago. I don't see them as infallible. I have never heard them say they were. I have no idea about their overall goals/plans for Atys but it is apparent to me that aiding Homins is a part of it. I don't hear the fanaticism of certainty in their words. I hear the voice of a protectors and teachers as they point out dangers and consequences. The Karavan see Homins as individuals, each with a soul and each has value to them.

The Kami are only interested in the Kami. They want to control every aspect of Atys, including the individuality of every Homin. Their goal is the transfiguration of all life into something that is completely harmonious to Atys. Since Homins are not native to Atys, we must be transformed or destroyed because we create imbalance. The Kami are more interested in resources then individual Homins. I fail to understand why we need to preserve the obviously abundant resources of Atys when we are just three generations removed from being cave dwellers. Our cities are small, our numbers are small, our impact on the environment is small. Yet according to the Kami we take to much. (Interestingly enough, the two healthiest ecosystems are controlled by the Karavan) The Kami are a part of Ma-Duk, they are a collective. Their tolerance for harvesting has greatly increased since the temple event. Without the threat of losing followers to the Karavan the Kami would still be blasting Homins for taking a few sacks of materials.

And of course there are the ever present fence sitters. They think that the truth always has to lie in the middle. One side says "I want to help you become self sufficient and masters of your world" and another side says, "I want to control Atys's resources as I transform your mind until your body becomes my puppet." Yes, there is middle ground where the neutral Homin can hide, only so long as the Kami do not win.

Pero

Of course, any conversation about the merits of the opposing factions needs to consider the following points:

The Kami kill PC homins. The Karavan never do unless they are attacked.

During the temple wars, the Kami ordered thier followers to kill the followers of Jena, where the Karavan simply wanted to collect materials to build the temple.

Also during the temple wars, the Kami were no longer concerned with protecting Atys, prefering edfices to the vanity of Ma-Duk over thier falsely professed love for Atys. (They turned off Kami Tolerance for the contested areas).

The Kami increased thier obviously artificial tolerance for the whole of Atys when faced with the prospect of loosing followers.

Summary of the current Kami v. Karavan situation, lore and history aside: The Kami need you. The Karavan do not.


More flammable details: The current Kami/Karavan situation is not simply a Kami/Karavan situation. The situation might be better understood as involving three broad camps:

1) The so called "Karavan alliance," AKA the "KA," which is a formidable coalition of Karavan guilds. They control the lion's share of OPs. They do not include or represent all Karavanists.

2) The camp which openly opposes KA expansionism. This camp includes a coalition of Kami and some non-KA Karavan, and often some neutrals.

3) The rest, which would include various flavors of true neutral guilds, non-KA Karavan Tyrker/Matis/Mixed guilds, non-PvP Kami guilds, mercenaries, and anyone else not falling into camp 1 or camp 2.

Extra thimbleful of gasoline: If you are person who roots for the underdog, join camp 2. If you are a person who would hit a man already down, camp 1 has space for you.

pyrrhon wrote:Extra thimbleful of gasoline: If you are person who roots for the underdog, join camp 2. If you are a person who would hit a man already down, camp 1 has space for you.

*Gets out fire extinguisher* Of course the fact that numbers at the recent "big" op battle were equal is completely besides the point

sprite wrote:*Gets out fire extinguisher* Of course the fact that numbers at the recent "big" op battle were equal is completely besides the point

shhhh

cba getting into this one tho,

numbers are equal at 7pm bst and very unequal at 3am bst, time zones are the problem it seems for us.

sprite wrote:*Gets out fire extinguisher* Of course the fact that numbers at the recent "big" op battle were equal is completely besides the point

That's not the whole story. There's also relative strengths to consider and given the feedback loop of extra high level crystals... well.

One must also consider that in order to get even numbers requires the following...

1. A Kami advantageous and Karavan disadvantageous timeslot.
2. Karavan 'traitors' joining the Kami side.
3. The Kami hiring the mercenaries.
4. The Tryker independence movement backing up the Kami.

So... yeah.

sprite wrote:the fact that numbers at the recent "big" op battle were equal is completely besides the point

the lovely Sehraci wrote:If people are looking for a challenge, then fighting on the defending side in OP battles often isnt it.

Musmus wrote:The Kami need you. The Karavan do not.

[size=-2]< Neutral player (whimsical) in a guild that happily accepts Karavaneers, but tries to encourage people to rebuild civilization [/size]

sprite wrote:*Gets out fire extinguisher* Of course the fact that numbers at the recent "big" op battle were equal is completely besides the point

It is actually. If you have too much time on your hands examine the /who list and work out the relative age of kami and kara players.

why am i posting here? who knows, i am actually bored of the retoric on both sides, starting to dislike it as much as i dislike politics

rushin wrote:It is actually. If you have too much time on your hands examine the /who list and work out the relative age of kami and kara players.

You mean player age or character age?

I don't see much impact of player age, but if you meant char age (which I assume you do) then tbh I'd much rather have 1 AoD backed up by 7 Priests than 1 AoD and 1CG *Shrug*

I'm pretty tired of the rhetoric too... and I think the whole "we have so much fewer people come join us and save the day !" is the worse of the two... It just gets a little tiring when all of my friends have given up defending their position because they get slammed all day by people who are rapidly coming to the position where they could take all the outposts on Atys with ease, thus causing more new players to join the so-called underdogs, and giving the anti-ka players even more strength.

Put simply, the "KA" has by and large given up on defending itself on these forums because we get slammed all the time by people who distort the truth for their own benefit (or just plain don't know any better because they believe the propaganda) Because of this all the new players see is the calls to arms by the more vocal members of one side and get a very distorted version of the truth. This post is me trying to get the record closer to the truth. The whole topic is far too complicated to be explained simply in a thread without experiencing it, but heck I got fed up (again) of watching my friends and allies getting badmouthed (Either directly or indirectly).

The top and bottom of it is that the "evil empire KA" has mostly NA players, with a bunch of loyal EU players too. The majority of the kamists and other anti-KA players are EU players, with a few notable exceptions. In the past for whatever reasons, the KA rose to ascendency over the OPs on Atys and so their opponents (understandably) use whatever methods they can to try and fight back.

These have included:
- making virtually every attack on themselves extremely public and playing the victim - "help help! the evil empire is coming to get us! fight for freedom!" while not publicising their attacks on the KA. The fact that the alliance make a point of not publicising any OP battles outside compounds this situation as people who don't know any better think that the KA are the only people attacking. This one works but is the root of my annoyance.

- attacking at 9amUK (or other rediculous times). Knowing that they have far more EU players than the alliance, the theory goes that they'll have the advantage. Due to whatever reasons, this hasn't worked yet. An extra note for everyone here is that OPs have two phases for a reason. The attackers sets the times of the attack phase to suit them, and the defender sets the defence phase to suit them. This is what makes it fair Usually a smart person will set times to suit both its EU and NA allies wherever possible so obviously will be able to bring more people to the fight than if it was one or the other, but this is balanced by the fact that the enemy has the same advantage, both in that phase and in that they can pick when to set the defence if one is necessary. This has never resulted in a lost outpost.

- attacking multiple outposts at once. The theory goes that the alliance will have to split its forces to defend all of them, or pick which to keep and which to lose. This has never resulted in a lost outpost, but came close once.

- getting advanced intelligence on when at attack is going to take place, and getting an ally to declare on the target OP to keep it safe.

- declaring with alt guilds and having no intention of turning up, while making the alliance waste its time sitting around waiting.

Now I'm not saying these are inherently "bad" things to do; while they may be annoying as heck, people can do what they like within the confines of the CoC and I'm not saying they should or should not stop - I can't tell anyone how to play the game. It should be noted that the last one is technically an exploit (I think?) so yeah I am kind of telling you not to do that one Now the alliance may or may not have done similar/identical/just as bad things before as well; if you believe what you've heard then what I say probably isn't going to convince you anyway... If you wanna know what we've done then ask someone, this is just to get the other side across a little.

My advice would be to actually get ingame and try to find things out by yourself. Believing anything you see on the forums is always going to carry the risk of being fooled by propaganda, and a discussion thread is unlikely to get anywhere near the truth anyway because everyone has their own slant on things and there's no way both sides will agree on what each other are like. I'll try and give you a few opinions about what I think would be the best thing to do. These are not orders or me telling you to do anything, it's just my honest opinions of what would be best for the respective sides.

If you're a Kamist, listen to your "elders & betters" - there's a bunch of 'em who know what they're talking about and they could win you this war if you listen to them.

If you're a Karavaneer, get involved with other guilds and stick together; losing the faith could mean we fall from grace and end up in the gutter with a legacy of hate left behind by a lot of embittered kamists (Note the "could" in there... not saying that would happen, just that it could)

If you're a true neutral - keep at it, True Neutral is the hardest path to tread with some big downsides but some huge plusses as well. Very few guilds have managed this imo.

And well, to be honest, the less I say about my opinions about trykers the better