Ok...we all know that there are always at least two sides to every story.
First off, Jasper says in the beginning of his post that he will "stick to the facts", then turns right around in the same sentence and admits that some of it may be personal opinions. We've found this kind of double-talk to be very typical of Jasper, and it's largely why this war has escalated to the point...or more directly...the duration that it has.
That said -
Our members
do know why we are at war...at least those who pay attention to that sort of thing. Not all do, as in most large towns. We've never held anything back from them...there's been no need to do that. I've had members of Jaspers town ask me why we're fighting, too.
One of their members hit one of our members (me), and lost. This fighter and I had a friendly chat about it, then went on about our business. I hadn't paid City of Lost Angels much attention 'til that time. Of course, I'm not the only one in our towns who are finding themselves lacking in an abundance of local dueling targets, so posting the results of my duel put City of Lost Angels on our radar. 'Til this point, Jaspers comments are pretty accurate.
Not two weeks later, as Jasper claims...it was one week exactly...and one of our councilors noticed that our allies, El Paso and one of their towns, El Guapo, had both been nearly entirely ko'd. Upon asking me what happened to them, I took a look to see who was paying them a visit and found members of City of Lost Angels and the Gutshot Gulch towns camped out. El Paso did not need to ask us to come to their aid and they didn't. We saw they were in trouble and offered.
We started trickling in at City of Lost Angels and the Gutshot Gulch towns about a day later. While we were preparing to fight these
five towns plus whatever allies they had at their disposal (not just one town...I'll touch on that again in a minute), we started taking hits from a few City of Lost Angels members...which was soon followed by the following mail from Jasper Stone, to our diplomat. Note the bolded and underlined portions...this was the deciding factor in -WU- stepping it up a couple notches.
"I see you're allies of El Paso. Since your listed on your towns diplomatic page, and I'm the Sherriff of Lost Angels, I figured I'd give you one opportunity. You may not be aware how this conflict started and not know what you're getting into. It started when El Paso showed up with several members and Ko'd a few of our workers (they hit some of our fighters too, but were creamed) we then returned the favor. As you can see by looking at their towns they're pretty much all KO'd. Since you may not be aware how this started I'm going to try to give you a chance to think about it. Please do not interpret this as fear in any way, I always try to use diplomacy first before KO'ing everyone. We are a town of fighters and if you choose to aid those trying to attack us we will treat all your towns the same way. We have many, many towns, we simply do not list them on our flag as theirs no reason to advertise our towns to those who are not members."
So here we are, coming to the aid of one of our allies, and Jasper has the nerve to threaten us and tell us to basically "stay out of it or die". Sorry, but that doesn't fly with us. We don't leave allies hanging just because someone threatens us. Any ally who did back down to such a threat would not be worth being an ally in the first place.
But lets go back to all these other towns. I'm hearing an awful lot these days about how there are x amount of towns fighting one town. It wasn't one town when it started. We'd already confirmed that among these "many, many towns" were the Gutshot Gulch towns who indeed had many strong fighters. However, by the time we had sunk our teeth firmly into City of Lost Angels and were moving over to the Gutshot towns, [removed for content]. Well, so much for "many, many towns". Even the allies they threatened us with have shown up only in the most minimal numbers.
After thrashing them repeatedly, their strongest fighters have gone into hiding mode so that has slowed us down a little. We do still catch them just not as often. We built the
very tongue-in-cheek town, Hotel Inspectors, after one of their fighter/builders built a town right outside one of ours. Many of them had complained that we were all so spread out, so we figured we could fight a little fire with fire while making it more convenient for them at the same time. We gave this town a mix of strong fighters, mid level fighters/adventurers, and a small handful of builders...not "all of our best fighters" as claimed. They did try camping our new town out for about a week but it did not go too well for them, so they've reverted to hitting our adventurers and lower level fighters back at our main town.
We're at the point now where they hide while they are not dueling and are pinned down to only one task, while we go on about our games working, making money, dueling other towns here and there...by not having to hide we're still actively progressing. I don't see what they feel they are gaining from this, but they persist so we do, too. It's more like kicking away ankle-biting dogs than it is a war.
Honestly, the whole thing is really very silly and I try to treat it as such. I've conversed with a couple of their members aside from the leadership types over there, and these folks have had a pretty good sense of humor about it all. Why their leaders chooses to continue to beat a dead horse, I can't answer. A pride thing? Grudges from some old w2 business that barely relates to us on w5? I don't know. Their leaders take it all
so seriously...I just have fun with it. It is a game, after all.
Our official diplomats have discussed terms of withdrawing but they insist that we surrender Hotel Inspectors before they will consider peace. That's not something that we are willing to do, and if peace is reached what does it matter where we have a town? We've been threatened, insulted, accused of cheating and had our ethics put in question...and we're supposed to give up a town and surrender after knocking the snot out of them for almost a month?
I don't think so. :laugh:
Hope that helps clear the hazy air for you, sdjx22 (and anyone else who might for whatever reason care). Although, you could have mailed your founder and found out. Our diplomat has remained in contact with and sent a detailed memo to the leaders of all our allies.
)