On April the 19th 2012 something happened. A multiplayer Napoleonic FPS was released. Well, to be more accurate it was a DLC piggy backing off an interesting indie sandbox RPG known simply as Mount And Blade Warband. It was unique. Very rarely do multiplayer games ever venture into history happy to stay in the bounds of more modern era fantasy gun play, a pattern that is changing thankfully fast these days with Vikings and late Medival Knights finally getitng the chance to roam the battlefields. I must warn you to whomever is reading this blog I am pretty much passionate about the Napoleonic gaming scene and gaming in general so this is going to be a long ride.
But back on track, this was a pretty big event as my favourite era of history (late 18th century to mid 19th century) was getting another chance. I hadn't been pumped since Napoleon Total War appeared. It was quite a big gaming event not just for me, but for my clan mates too. You see before this DLC was official news we had been playing the beta mod version for Warband Mount And Musket a multiplayer mod in which over 200 players could reinact battles of the Napoleonic Wars with not only the elements of Infantry but playable artillery and cavalry in a last man standing game mode. Around this mod a small multiplayer community had germinated and through the week several events had hundreds of gamers reinacting their own personal Waterloo with their clan mates.
Said community sadly in retrospect for this promising new genre was more of a curse for it than a blessing as we will find out later in this article. But let us press on. People in said community first thought this DLC was a wry joke with the trailer being released on the 1st of April of all days (a first of many ill judged mistakes by the DLC development team) and when the ballon went up the news was met with mostly joy as people had written the mod off as finished with the final release of MMRussia due to no updates for over an entire year. Now it was obvious with the DLC developers had gone quiet. The late mod community for Mount And Musket was small and slightly closed off but hardly malicious and cruel. People knew each other as they usually do in tight knit spin off gaming communities. Most of the 'official' events even had volunteers willing to lead lines and cavalry squadrons of players without clans to show them the fun of the game.
There was even quite an active and organised tournament system based around 'duels' between players using nothing but bayonets or the hanger sabers provided that was popular enough to spin off and grow heavily in the coming DLC despite the melee changes it brought. There was also an experimental siege events but very few as most sceners were working on single player Warband projects at the time but it showed promise. All in all, It wasn't that bad. There were so bad apples of course who'd show their true colours later because if they couldn't have fun nobody else would but most of these people were the long suffering and understanding heart and soul of the community who just really wanted to have fun. Sadly, they couldn't shout the loudest or had the most numbers/skill in melee so they were simply ignored in the general scheme of things.
Me and my clan mates were mostly positive with the news of the DLC aside from a few old grumblers who didn't really want to pay TaleWorlds money for the thing even with the new coat of paint, bells and whistles and what not now. But this was good news for us, as we didn't really bother intregating with the TaleWorlds community happy to more or less reside in comfort in the SA forums. Due to our forums reputation with multiplayer games and partly for laziness of course it was quite hard to try and get into some of the more closed off events of the mod but thankfully this DLC would bring in new blood and bring the interesting concept of these big numbered battles to light.
And new blood it did bring in, and surprisingly on release the NW numbers soared pass the ragged 100 casually playing/300-400 players briefly online around weekends for organised events to around the 800-900 mark in April 2012. A lot of gaming websites and YouTube bloggers were impressed with the setting and general features of the DLC with the cannon, musket and bayonet gameplay but sadly only a few of them tapped into the organised multiplayer potential. Not surprisingly many of them bemoaned a lack of single player campaign as well. Hundreds of new regiments (clans) former over night the single TeamSpeak that was used for most events being abandoned for hundreds of new TeamSpeak servers for the huge explosion of organised events. You know your DLC is quite a hit when there are several dedicated clans from Asia turning up and playing in the community events.
With any other game really things could really go up from here right? Sadly, this didn't seem to be the case. This glory will only be short lived and in a few weeks the first ugly cracks in the crumbling structure that was the newly minted NW community would appear. Strap yourself in if you are still reading and prepare yourself for the madness and petty actions that are to come.
Of course like all first releases the DLC came with bugs and issues, some of which would constantly haunt it to this day in one form or another. The most infamous bug being the interesting buff system that gave the in game era military musicians purpose caused minor latency issues. The DLC developers of course at once made squashing this a prioriety as coding anything new in the Warband engine is a long, tearful process and to have such a thing happen to them must have really hurt. Of course while the three and half man team (Their fourth the graphics designer and artist was ill at the time) slogged to fix things post release working with TaleWorlds and STEAM the ugly side of the NW community in the TaleWorlds section emerged at once.
Like always with games, especially multiplayer gaming it seemed everything was broken or betrayed the original vision of the mod to some of the NW community in the TaleWorlds forum. Some of these gamers were upset that the melee system had been changed to be a little more player friendly the speed being dialed back and the removal of an incredibly awkward looking overhead animation with the musket with knock back being the biggest bone of contention.
The developers of course had seem this happening and included several versions of melee speed for server owners to pick and had given the other weapons of the infantry knock back and their own overhead attacks like the old musket but like always these features were ignored because nobody bothered to bring them up and sadly like always THOSE WHO SHOUTED THE MOST AND LONGEST WERE OBVIOUSLY RIGHT. From what I recall from reading several of those painfully embarassing threads which are still around today the developer team went from god to the devil over a handful of issues in the eyes of their long time fans who simply did not have the capacity for patience. It was quite hard for the development team to correct or even communicate with these angry people and the sheep that took the hard line with them as they were busy coding to a deadline.
To this day in the surviving organised events in both the European and American time zones some regiments that host said events still think the buff lag bug is still present and refuse to enable said feature in the server settings wasting a sadly fun and very useful feature. In this case the pipes are not calling and the drums shall never drum. There was also the odd eyebrow raising backlash against adding a crosshair to artilery pieces making them easier to use and the addition of a new system with the muskets that added a variable of randomness to shooting these smoothbore pieces. I personally saw some horrible treatment to the newer people posting in the TaleWorlds forums by several infamous and thankfully long exiled players I usually associate with snippy old ladies sewing circles. But with more cussing and smug VIDEO GAMER attitude of course.
Sadly in this weird twist of irony the NW developers fixing the DLC which was a product of their sweat, love and toil they earned needless aggression and hatred from the very community they spent a year quietly toiling to please with the best version of the mod they loved. It is no wonder the same developers sadly became distant and eventually buried themselves into a new project in a few weeks down the road. But we'll get back to that later. Sadly balance issues with the clunky floaty melee with the cobbled together Warband engine with some of the NW community never seemed to go away and said community split into two opposing parties. One wanted an improved version of the new melee which was being tweaked back and forth for the other party who wanted a carbon clone of the faster floaty melee system of the Mount And Musket mod.
Both sides sadly would never reach a compromise and with the few updates the DLC received the melee system for the DLC was tweaked back and forth by the now fed up developers trying to please both parties but which each release seeming to just piss some portion of the community off. It was as if almost a huge majority of the community had unrealistic expectations when it came to their ideal melee system. The saddest part of this fiasco was simply the waste of development time. What limited time the developers could spend on the DLC in either making it modding friendly or actually adding new content in the form of a new army or a few more in game regiments was wasted in pursuit of the philosphers stone that was the bayonet combat of this DLC.
The first month passes, patches are released and the numbers of the community slowly begin to drop. Outside organised events the novelty of casual play with the DLC event with the new CTF/Conqest and Siege game modes gets old a no doubt many players stop playing NW forever ignorant of how fun organised gameplay could be. Some would no doubt trickle back eventually lured in by a friend or YouTube video but for most normal gamer types out there this is where their part in the story of the NW DLC ended.
I myself decided to get my hands dirty. Me and my clan weren't exactly satisifed with the rules of some of the events we attended so we got together and with a little bit of monetary support from a certain SA forum goon launched a line battle event for the US players that lasted from August 2012 to November 2013. That was a lot of my early morning mornings occupied being an event admin for this DLC. I had a lot of fun with the good peope who made playing NW so damn fun. I enjoyed perma banning many a rascist or general asshole. Good times.
But for the dedicated or players in the know this would be the golden age of the events for this DLC. Both time zones had at least 2-3 events on the same day hundreds of players eager to get in on the line infantry. Whilst some events weren't exactly managed the best most still thrieved on passion to play and good attendence some of the regiments hosting these events learning how to balance, moderate and over see a good game of NW. Some of the smaller regiments from release sadly disbanded or fragmented but it didn't matter as the bigger ones or even Reddit were happy to take them on board.
My own clan of course was doing great, with good numbers for both time zone events. I personally admit I had the most fun in this time. Organised gameplay is most fun with around 8-11 other players with you due to the nature of the half innacuate guns and bayonet charges that is the bread and butter of line infantry gameplay in the DLC. With these numbers you could also have a fully prepared artillery crew or a flexible lethal cavalry squadron on the field. It was a time where if you were new you didn't mind dying as almost everyone was and with the numbers the few older veterans could still get overwhelmed and surprised by the new blood one way or another. My personal apathy over the faction of Austria and the random map tile of desert had yet to personify.
Deep down I admit I still ache and pine for those few months as they were the most fun I had playing the DLC with my clan. Sure we lost around 20% of our new sign up's either due to IRL or just not finding the DLC to their interest but we still had plenty of fun with both our new and old guys kicking back and shooting/riding down/charging dudes with big silly Napoleonic hats and making jokes about Duke Dickbutt. If I hadn't experinced any of that I wouldn't have hung on and dedicated so much time to said clan and the NW community at large. I would have gone and played some MMO instead or something. This golden age sadly peaked just as the 2nd infamous STEAM Summer sale happened and everyone more or less took a week or two off to play their cheaply bought new game prizes.
But sadly, all good times must come to an end. Said end is slow, midlly unpleasant and still has yet to happen if we fast forward to the posting of this blog and article. NW is sort of like a beloved cat or dog you have spent years with but you can now clearly see the poor thing suffering but you don't have the heart to take it to the vet. Not yet. But the same grim realisation that things will never change or get better. Said pet will not grow young and retain the same boundless energy and happiness you once associated with it. Dammit I'm getting lost in this now, lets continue and talk about why I am bitter about a video game instead.
Several months after release some people of course were getting slightly bored. The less dedicated types simply took a break for few weeks and did something else before coming back. The more dedicated types howver wanted a change of setting and pretty much began to not only tweak around and start experimenting with modding what they could client side but also started the usual pattern of DEMANDING something from the oddly distracted busy development team working on pushing out yet another minor patch to fix/break the dumb bayonet combat. The poor developers agreed as they did make promises of enabling modding post release having not foreseen the amount of pointless contention over melee balance and a month or two later they released an update enabling modding for the DLC at last.
Modding is the bread and butter of the Mount And Blade product now. Without Mods for it, I wouldn't have spent around 1000 hours playing this DLC or even caring about the single player unless I was in the mood for faux fantasy peasant bashing. The problem with modding Warband though as it is quite painful. There is no official easy to use SDK, you have to do eveything yourself and learn from the mistakes. What guides out there are out of date or simply not detailed enough. I admire anyone who is willing to gird up to scene, model, skin or code with this engine. You have the patience of many saints. My personal modding experince with the DLC was simply trying to give all officers biconered hats for easier identification. I remember a lot of cussing, booting up Warband and more cussing.
In the end I gave permisions to the community to do whatever they wanted with said mod after the last update broke it by adding a new style hat to the item pool. Yay. The first mod itself, based on the early stages of the American Civil War was surprisingly thrown together quite fast. No doubt many assets from the previous Warband mods and the enthusiam of the community in the golden age alongside several people could code helped it thrieve and showed what potential the modded DLC could bring. North And South to this day is still one of my personal favourite of these mods next to Blood And Iron and has quite a few events still going. It was a nice distraction for those getting bored now of the same Napoleonic setting and convinced some people to get the DLC alone. Me and my clan mates enjoyed it and were saddened after a few months to see the decline of numbers and quality events for said Mod. A disturbing pattern associated with all mods yet to come with the DLC.
It seems the NW community, with the now much bigger American population brought in by the DLC really was just as eager to play Lee or Sherman as much as they enjoyed playing Napoleon or Wellingtonton. Due to the surprising hit of the DLC for the development team behind it was eager at once to spread their wings with a sequal. So on the 11th of November Battlecry Of Freedom was announced to the world and TaleWorlds forums. It was to span the whole civil war and of course be set on an entirely new engine. It also turned out that the development team for the DLC had spent the last few months working on the first build whilst attending to the DLC on the side.
Like always this news was met with 50% appreciation and 50% apprehension by the NW community, and during the next few days a rather confusing thing happened. Miscommunication between TaleWorlds and NW development staff led to a sticked thread stating that the TaleWorlds NW DLC sub-forum was to be deleted urging the NW community to transfer everything over to the FSE forums which was to be home of all their developed products. Needless to say it was a confusing and regretable time for the NW community as a split was formed at once. Half the community without hestiation jumped over or made accounts just in case with the other half refusing to care about said forums or the new usurper product. Usual accusations of the developers/TaleWorld being in league with the devil. Bans and mutes for the needlessly angriest types etc.
Needless to say the miscommunication between players, TaleWorlds and NW Developers caused a lot of pointless drama simply over matters alone of miscommunication and the effort of registering on a different forum. Of course nobody really wanted to address this whole concept or bring it up even long after the raw wounds had healed and a split was born between the NW community and TaleWorlds forums that sadly lasts to this day with both community heads of either community not making any real effort to fix it due to personal issues with each other. With the developers no longer posting in the TaleWorlds forum a slow but steady migration of clans and players happened in the next few months, people who returned were now bitter self or justly banned exiles from the FSE forums with nothing but bitter bile in their hearts or gleefully added to the split or simply just did not care anymore.
For the most part this community split and balls up thankfully didn't really effect the gameplay or events of the DLC. Though now during this time the smaller weaker regiments and events had now been disbanded and cancelled the players moving on or joining other events/clans to play things were going pretty steady. No matter what happened in the forums for now most of the community was pretty much happy still to just hang out and shoot each other in the face with muskets. But dark clouds began to appear in the distance just as most of the NW community was getting used to that new forum smell. More dumb video game controversy was about to break and make everyone look really damn stupid in retrospect.
For some reason, regiment (clan) names are really important. Some NW players are obsessed with top trumping and 'reserving' infamous or famous regiments of military history and once they reserve said name by some weird unknown authority nobody else can 'claim' it. This system was cute and nobody questioned it back when the DLC was a multiplayer mod for some old indie name but when things got big with the DLC this became quite a problem. It seems playing soldiers is serious business sadly with the NW community right down to the name. This became evident when the old clan the 51st pretty much got together and decided to disband and go play another game instead.
Said clan had been with the mod/DLC since the beginning and for some the sadness of e-prestige was too much and almost at once the number was seized by some other dudes. Or they attempted to seize it but said dudes had previously built up a rather negative reputation in this tiny community and of course the NW hate/counter hate machine revved up once more over the invisible rights of claiming public domain regiments on the internet and what to do with people who void those rights. Needless to say, people said hurtful embarassing things over a video game and there was mutes/bans from the FSE forums and bitterness all around. In the end months later somebody else was allowed the 51st regiment and that was that.
The question really of what to do with the whole clan system was answered when I become a moderator for the FSE forums by one of the developers. It was pretty much simple and what I knew all along. You can't really do anything about it. It is the internet. The mind truly boggles when thinking back to this one act of drama. The pointless mistrust at the FSE forum staff for handling something with no proper solution they themselves couldn't really do makes me want to just have a long drink and stare at the wall.
We're now in the year 2013. Things have clearly changed with the DLC. People were still playing in good numbers (though the quality of some EU events sadly was beginning to stagnate due lazy clan admins for said events) but things were still pretty fun. I was still running my own American time zoned event and we pretty much had at least one event every day of the week so nobody at least with my clan was going to miss out on this rare occurance of big ass Napoleonic mans battle simulator. On the community level things however sadly seemed to be changing for the worse. Players and clans were now starting the shameful tradition of bringing their personal and other beefs off the battlefield and into the forums. The Drama Llama was donning a taco hat and it demanded blood.
Certain players and posters on the FSE forum (who shall remain nameless) coasting on some weird fumes of being kids, posting on Reddit and the ever accused cancer that is video game consumer self entitlement pretty much demanded, spammed and harass the FSE forum moderators for a system of equal represensation as they felt that the DLC developers were not listening to them (!!!).
This was dumbly called a 'revolution'. It certainly has the pointless bloody fallout and needless suffering associated with real world events like that from what I recall. But really it was a series of needless and REALLY LOUD pointless demands for things that are usually dismissed right away in any other online community. So the few moderators for the FSE forums and the developers themselves tired of being whined at by 15 year old gamers decided to compromise. And so the Community Representive program was born and another chapter of DLC based forum drama begun.
It of course like everything really with the NW community started with good intentions. Players stepped forward, and using the FSE forum poll system the community could pick a handful of players to be the go between community and developers as well as the overseers and minor moderators of the FSE forum themselves. Sadly not much thought was put into the polling state part of the process as we remember this gaming community has clans that sometimes number up to active 40 people or more. And with said clans favourtism and bias runs amock. Some of the elected community representives too sadly tainted themselves getting involved in clan beefs in game or on the board or abused their powers and soon the community ironically themselves turned against their 'Reps'. Sadly the system that shouldn't have even existed at all was a failure and a waste of time for all those involved.
And during this time if that was not enough two other incidents occured. One of which I consider eye rollingly immature and have had personal experince dealing with as a moderator for this community. I have this to say those involved. Go outside. Quit getting mad at video games and quit being creepers and dumping peoples real personal details all over the forum. It is creeply and possibly illegal too. The DLC Developers personally fund several Official NW servers for both time zones to always assure some from of casual or organised gameplay of the DLC. These servers were maintained and managed by a small group of people close trusted friends who looked after this community on the most basic level. Some of which had been there since the start of the mod.
Of course when the DLC's popularity waned and numbers dropped the need for so many cooks in the kitchen was not required and some of these people were removed from their position. They of course did not take kindly to an act despite the fact the developers were in their rights having to pay for and associate themselves with these official servers and several players with their clans used this excuse to launch a pointless never ending childish petty jihad that included not only disrupting events and causing drama on the community but spreading damaging rumours of the developers and leaking personal information.
This is a community where people line up and shoot at each other with Napoleonic guns. Just a brief reminder for those still reading. A sanity check if you will. This drama persists to this day as I write these words. I will never unstand how people can get so angry over a video game they dedicate two years of their life to petty hate. At least I have good intentions to enjoy myself and have fun with my needless time wasted with this thing.
The other dramatic event being a long time player and head of a clan that was around since the start of the community as a mod was charging people to 'apply' and 'serve' in his clan as well as usage of his own servers running the product. Needless to say this was pretty shitty but not a surprise as said player is infamous for his insane political views, attitude and general relationship with the rest of the community. In short, he is a horrible horrible man who scalps money from literal children.
It was also pretty clear at this point that the forums themselves did not have enough moderators and the few that did have the power were constantly being tied down by other issues in real life. By the coming Summer of 2013 and the 1st birthday of the DLC the last of the content was also being worked on. A so called Naval update that would add Marines to two factions, some community custom maps and a few more regiments to the game was in the works. Due to delays and minor issues though the last real content update didn't arrive until around September.
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