What does The Alliance mean to you?

[JohnLegend]

Pretty vague question -- intentionally.

I've been in 'The' for a while pushing a pro-alliance cause. There I learned lots of interesting/cool/sad/embarrassing/e-date-related/Linda's-nude-pics related information; I learned a lot; I learned a lot about us. I have a sentiment, strong, about The Alliance and over time I've heard a lot of... >_> other "opinions" of The Alliance.

Enough talk: what do The Alliance, Clan Jaguar, The Mighty Red Dragons, and 'The' mean to you? Interpret this how you like.

[Hess]

Means Cousins.

They are my cousins, Gladz are my brothers/sisters.

[Beeppuddogs]

Means Cousins.

They are my cousins, Gladz are my brothers/sisters.

To add on to this....

I have sex with cousins on occasion, but I wouldn't have sex with my brother.

So the alliance is someone i would e-bang while clan members are people who I would not e-bang.

[Shakazulu]

i think i argued with seike about this years ago on the last gladz board - i don't remember the words i used back then but went along lines of how it's apart of our identity and overall clan culture - having close relationship between our clans over many years we also shared many members as well - in the end we manage our individual clans how we each see fit but at the end of the day we're still family

as big family goes, our history is far from perfect, we had inner fighting/turmoil and betrayal biggest 2 examples would be BK and TDS, the latter being perhaps too distant of a memory for most here - myself included but i tried recently to summarize our grievances with tds on jagz board last year as that was kind of hard/foggy memory... luckily i got to copy paste many posts from our old forums prior to it being hacked/deleted

but for me personally - the alliance and specifically getting jagz into the alliance was durin my peak activity years in runescape/clan community period - since then i've come and gone but it was A LOT of fun - still think very fondly of joe, brandy (mystical25), alex (annasweat), and even though anne (yamataka) went crazy, i still look back fondly at her too cause there was a good side that i'd like to remember more

for a visual interpretation of what i said refer to the picture below:

Edited February 25, 2012 by Shakazulu

[Seike]

Sorry shak. here we are again.

Honestly, I've felt for some time that The Alliance has outgrown any real purpose in RuneScape. At this point it's a legacy of having a legacy. A tradition for only tradition's sake is not something I'm that fond of. I first joined Gladz to be part of TA when we were expecting to fight the so-called Golden Alliance back in 2004. I thought such a large war would be cool and TA as a concept of utility made a lot of sense to me. It never happened because the Golden Alliance fell apart and most of those clans went on to lead flourishing individual careers thereafter. Over the years, time has slowly turned me from being supportive to being skeptical of TA.

-I feel like our members have just as many or more friends in "enemy" clans. I feel like we've had plenty of cases of enemies in "allied" clans. I've always felt that the alliance friendships we've maintained are somewhat forced and that most members in TA care very little about the other members in other clans in it. The only reason no one actively scrutinizes TA is because there is too much resistance from people who don't even play RS anymore in the clans who see anti-TA talk as forsaking history instead of hearing any reasonable arguments that promote the dissolution of TA.

If we were to break apart TA, it wouldn't mean suddenly hating or abandoning all of your TA friends- personal relationships seem to cloud judgment when considering exclusively clan relationships.. I like guys like Shak and he would be no-less of a "clan friend" on our boards regardless of his RS clan. Similarly, we could hold each and every TA fun event that we currently do together as mutually-respecting clans instead of obligatory allies.

-Teaming in the wilderness (as clans, not just a PK unit) usually results in massive loss in organization compared to one clan, itself. For this reason more-organized single clans, despite being outnumbered, have on numerous occasions beaten a larger TA group. Shining examples to the contrary be damned, they are in the clear minority in my 8 years following TA.

The motivation is entirely on the side of the enemy when we outnumber them with our clans- it's like the movie 300. If they win, they're superheroes. If we win, well we had four clans what do you expect! These logics prevail to some degree regardless of actual advantages and disadvantages. It makes it a lose/no-gain for us to fight together in the wilderness. It's a win/win for opposing clans.

The resulting upsets feel haphazard and a waste of time rather than something I was proud to have endured. We have a hard time integrating the discipline Gladz strives for when joined by TA. A lack of discipline and competent oversight quickly turns my deaths into frustration, not loyalty. This lack of commitment is reflected in many others in TA, too, as I feel like returning drops off considerably more-quickly when we're with TA than when we're just Gladz.

-Even the label of "TA" means little to outsiders now. When we had Gladz, TMRD, and THE in the top 10, people knew The Alliance. Today, the name "The Alliance" is associated with historical relevance and current irrelevance. I'd go so far as to say a somewhat negative stigma is attached to the name. Clans in it aren't respected, they're considered struggling or community clans, at least when thought of as a collection. Each clan in it is a shadow of its former notoriety in the clan world.

-A positive relationship with an enemy clan is more-improving to our clan than a positive relationship with an allied clan. We are motivated to improve when competed against and having an alliance takes the positive, healthy sense of competition out of play. For this reason, BK has done more to help Gladz in leaving TA than any TA clan did in staying in it.

Just my opinion. I'm sure most others will reflect fondly on TA and more power to them.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Seike

[Shakazulu]

last time we talked i had fresher counter arguments, atm i'm honestly thinking about res grandfather

as far as purpose, it was to fight stronger opponents - BDK was the original public enemy number 1 followed up a year later with Rune Mob and eventually the Golden Alliance which culminated in a war - contrary to your post - evidence below:

a year later on april 1st, we renamed ourselves the golden alliance - much to the anger of those who passionately hated the alliance from the golden alliance - eventually it dawned on them it was april 1st lol

runefest provided an insight to the direction jagex is taking runescape - the alliance worked out well in the old game however as runescape itself evolved, our clans had to evolve on their own

if the alliance is holding back clans within the alliance, member clans can leave as did others like tds, lunar wolves, and bk - i dont wish upon any of the current members to leave, and would like to work to see grievances worked out - but it boils down to what purpose and benefit would leaving the alliance have? your summary of how BK left and how it has helped gladz in the long run turns a blind eye towards the feeling of all the members in gladz who felt betrayed when they left and declared war against you guys

he Gladiatorz vs. The Blacknights

by Acid Venom

The Gladiatorz vs. The Blacknights. The war of all wars thus far in the history of both clans. Where should this tale begin? A year ago this war would sound absurd, two years ago this war would sound absurd, three years ago this war would sound absurd. But now this war is inevitable. Let’s start a few years back before the break of the BDK war. The Blacknights at the time were the Gladiatorz only official allies due to the fact the Gladz felt they were strong enough to not have them, but couldn’t drop BK from their friendship. As soon as the BDK war ended, King CJ70 from ‘The’ Clan, Acid Venom from the Gladiatorz, and Mystical25 from the Blacknights met and officially decided to make an alliance then known as the ‘Unholy Syndicate’. This three clan alliance seemed unbreakable, eventually TDS was brought into the alliance, but after Yamataka was influenced by MK, they dropped out and were replaced by the Lunar Wolves. Lunar also eventually would leave on a happier note, but the three original alliance clans stood strong. The Empire came to rise, and at this time the Unholy Syndicate changed it’s name to ‘The’ Alliance. The two massive armies collided and the Empire was defeated. Eventually the Jagz and TMRD would join the alliance too. After a time of peace and nothing to do, BK, now led by Phunk, determined it was time for them to separate from their eternal brothers and leave the alliance. This came as a major shock even though there were signs of it coming, and soon after BK and ZF seemed to become closer, and much flaming insued. The Gladiatorz Elder members decided they would never declare war on BK, for they were our brothers. But eventually Phunk and some council members would influence BK to declare it on the Gladiatorz in turn.

Now for the war preparations and war. The Gladiatorz and BK seemed to both be pretty equal going into the war. Since the Gladz had not been able to recruit in a while do to a previous war, they decided to keep recruitment open til one week prior to the war. This may have shot the Gladiatorz in the foot because a massive wave of people flooded to BK, BK obviously welcomed all the help they could get with open arms. The Gladz would not lay down and die however, Joe Jenninz and Jerico brought back the Gladiatorz War Machine, which basically caused a tremendous hype for members to gain levels. Over 1,000 levels were gained in around a 3 week span. Kaopealii started a program to lend out whips which helped people train, many other things were done by members of the clan to bring a sense of unity.

Finally the day of the war arrived. The Gladiatorz came with a full head of steam ready to take down Phunk and the Blacknights. The strategy for this war was for Acid and Joe to stand further west than the rest of the clan and set up a fake place where the Gladiatorz would make their stand. This would cause BK members to rush at them, wasting energy and prayer and spreading them out as Joe and Acid rushed back to the guild. BK seemed already somewhat spread out and the plan did have success, but did not prove enough. After a good hour of battling, even though there were many speculations of cheating, the Gladiatorz were out numbered and outmuscled. They fought til the last man and the bitter end, but in the end, tasted defeat to their former brothers the Blacknights.

The defeat in this battle was not all in vain however, the Gladiatorz proved they do not have to hide behind The Alliance and that the Blacknights were rocked hard at the war. The Gladiatorz went into a war outnumbered and nearly out leveled but they rode to war regardless. BK use to be our brothers, we bled together, now we made each other bleed, but the Gladiatorz will stand tall to anyone or anything that dares challenge their greatness.

acid's own words speak for themselves

however the game now is so different now since we last had this conversation - and the direction the game is heading not sure which of our point of view will stand out - i'm sure to know yours and you know mine but in the end we're all in plato's cave with jagex being the puppet master, fire perhaps runescape, and puppet show would be our computer screens

way i see it, and this was first warned by lucca13 - i feel that jagex is trying to phase out clans like us and promote runescape board clans - while we sprung out of an era of 0 clan support, the game is changing and benefiting those who are use to jagex clan support

a generation is coming who will find it weird to register on forums to be apart of a clan when jagex is trying to promote clans to have everything available on their website - so while we have our independence and control of our forums, new members = new blood for our clans - may get harder to recruit - eventually we will have to adapt to changing attitudes of the next generation of gamers

like i said, in the end it's all up to what jagex has in plans - i'm still fairly confident whatever changes comes, we can all whether them

for what it matters, i don't count the sabers as the oldest standing clan - back in 2003 king sabre admitted that all they did was collect information on clans basically they were just spying not doing anything - that doesn't strike me as a clan when all you do is copy paste useless information - point proven to king sabre when he pulled up file of his spy in wild dawgs of meeturpker and i asked him what did your spy tell you of the wild dawgs / jagz-tmrd fun war? he didn't know what i was talking about and i showed him a kill picture of the fun war where i killed his spy - i flat out told him you don't do anything and what you say you're doing means nothing, he acknowledged and conceded to my points - later eiei0 yamataka and myself watched joe make fun of king sabre over msn lol

with that opinion i believe that 'the' is the oldest with gladz as 2nd oldest - jagz being 3rd oldest

our 3 clans alone are the longest lasting clans banded together through a formal alliance - we're the oldest crews who forged our clans without any clan support and adapted to the most amount of changes - that may not be enough to justify the continued use of TA in your eyes i understand

Edited February 25, 2012 by Shakazulu

[Seike]

It's possible that I perhaps joined for a "war" that GA cancelled despite having fought one prior, but I distinctly remember whatever the specific conflict I joined to fight was broken up before it happened. I thought when he actually played RS that Acid Venom was an attention whore. I barely have the patience to use his words to remind myself of a war I was a part of.

Jagex has never been more-tolerant of off-RS clans-

http://services.rune..._The_Gladiatorz

we and other notable off-RS clans have a wiki page on the RS website that we use to display images and stories of our clan and, though not explicitly link, explain how to find our private boards and apply to them.

The changes to clans more than anything have to do with what people use clans to do. Pvp clan vs clan fights aren't that enticing to most casual RS players- they feel like their wealth is compromised by us in the same way their dirtbag friend convinced them to try their hand at PKing one time and got them killed. And, really, it isn't far from the truth. But now there are so many more alternatives such as Soul Wars and Castle Wars and Fist of Guthix and Safe Clan Fighting that to experience the exhilaration of clan warfare you need not dump all your resources into a clan as we expect. When the only way to experience huge wars between sides was via clans in the wilderness, clans reigned supreme. People want clans to do PVM now, not PVP. PVM clans offer them the service of doing something they could not do on their own.

But regardless of the struggles to find new recruits, The Alliance is a completely separate topic.

Simply existing for a long time isn't a reason for TA.

In everything you provide as a defense of TA, you're really just reminiscing of your personal RuneScape experience. All of your points refer to some specific memory you treasure or relationship with another specific person whom you cite. I understand that TA has played an integral part to your history, but nearly every more-recent member of TA over the past 3-4 years has legends completely unique to them that you and I, I assume, scarcely have any knowledge of since we're less-involved. With each passing year, pulling out a name like Acid Venom becomes an attempt at treasuring our specific past, not the collective history of Gladiatorz or Jaguars with consideration to the current experience. Our histories, therefore, can't be the only justification for what present-day clans must decide for themselves. Additionally, I'm assuming shortly after I joined, let's say 2005 or so, The Alliance as an entity has not been the vehicle for these fond experiences as it's relevance to the people in its clans has waned. Most events with it are a forced attempts to recreate the past people like you and I hold dear, not the newer members. And It's also been their specific relationships in their specific clan they hold dear, not ours. And I really doubt that they value TA like you do and I did.

Sure, I love to reminisce, too, but let's talk of what The Alliance is today. It hasn't had meaning in ages. My above post cited several disadvantages of being in it and a few advantages to disengage from it from the perspective of what utility an alliance is in today's RS.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Seike

[Shakazulu]

first off, i apologize for citing acid's history from gladz main site to illustrate a different point of view of gladz when bk split off and fought you guys - i didn't realize you detested him and i don't have your recollection to go off of

i am old school and part of the old guard - to me rs wars meant more then simple sport and our clans meant more then a team clubhouse and forums more then a locker room - wars use to be against rivals out of some sort of drama so in that regard i believe i am truly out of touch

if my assumptions are correct then we can never convince each other otherwise - i hold our clans to have deeper value then that because with that logic, organized numbers would be the measuring stick on how good your clan is in comparison to others - then people will argue that their clan can return and keep fighting longer then your clan - to which fighting till 1 side gives up takes place as that was the old way clan wars were fought - however those were planned wars - now it's just random pk trips where a fight is to last hours upon hours on a nearly daily basis is considered a top clan

and what happens to your members if the feeling endures they're nothing more then a # in total options? they lose interest and move on or just burn out due to lack of desire to keep putting forth hours upon hours and to be treated only as a #

i hope you caught onto my logic by now - to talk of dissolving TA you have to degrade the concept of our clans to further reason why there is no use - if the view is widely accepted then push your point to dissolve TA by advancing a new perspective of clanning and distancing older versions of clanning - maybe we could push upon this in the intellectual forum on what do you define as a successful rs clan and what do you define as a successful rs alliance

Edited February 26, 2012 by Shakazulu

[Memphus]

Means Cousins.

They are my cousins, Gladz are my brothers/sisters.

To add on to this....

I have sex with cousins on occasion, but I wouldn't have sex with my brother.

So the alliance is someone i would e-bang while clan members are people who I would not e-bang.

You are aware that Gladz has people like Linda, Felicia, Krista, Gayle, etc. right?

I'd pay $18.99/minute to nude skype any one of them.

[Shakazulu]

you left out this 1

http://www.the-gladiatorz.com/forums/index.php?/user/115-sneaky-one/

i don't blame ya though, natasha is a sneaky one

Edited February 26, 2012 by Shakazulu

[Krista Dash]

Means Cousins.

They are my cousins, Gladz are my brothers/sisters.

Hi Hi Uncle Hess

[Wace555]

Bring back TA.

[Memphus]

you left out this 1

http://www.the-gladiatorz.com/forums/index.php?/user/115-sneaky-one/

i don't blame ya though, natasha is a sneaky one

She's one of the "etc."s

[Rafi]

The Alliance is our legacy to Runescape. In the old days we banded together to take on the big bad wolves of the clan world, and today, where old fashioned alliances don't have the same utility they once did, we grow old together as friends who have lived and fought with each other through more years than most people have played Runescape or known their real life friends, all the while having a lot of fun along the way!

[Mike]

We should resurge The Alliance. Here's a nice quote.

"Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless."

Adolf Hitler

Edited February 29, 2012 by Porsche 959

[Douglas]

The trick is to not grow old together, but to stay young together. Our clans may be the oldest in the game but our active memberbases are still young, fresh, and interested in the game. There are still big bad wolves out there that need shanking and scalping.

Perhaps TA just needs some new blood. A new clan involved, with a fresh perspective and a new crew to meet. Perhaps even someone we aren't too familiar with yet. An idea would be to pick a clan who is of medium levels, so that as their members level up they consider joining one of the four current TA members. Essentially, a self-running junior clan. What do we get out of the deal? A passageway to relatively easy recruiting, a close community of people who are viciously interested in the game, and someone to AC pures away from our returners at fights. What do they get out of it? Access to our fun events, pvm/other competitions, any pvp events they may be able to participate in with us, new friends, and the prestige of membership in the only true alliance left. Perhaps it is time that we all went shopping for friends.

Organization will never be great when fighting as TA. Winning versus a single clan would be a serious accomplishment because of the opponent's organization advantage. They're just simply used to their callers, their fi leaders' habits, the number of opts on the field, and everything else that goes into fighting a large scale pkri together, while we continually struggle to overcome this barrier every time we fight as TA. If we are going to continue to fight as TA then we need to come up with some original strategies for taking care of this problem.. because no one else has this problem.. because we are the last true alliance of significance.

Possible solutions:

1. Fight a LOT as TA to the point where it's a routine thing that we are all used to doing. A measuring bar for when we are fighting 'enough' together to fix this could possibly be when we are routinely listed at any rank by nearly everyone who posts on the rsc top 10/20/30 list even when we havent had a major fight together in about a week or so.

2. Occasionally switching officials for our solo clan fights. This lets our members get used to the habits of the fallin leaders and callers of the other clans' leaders. It also gives the replacement officials a better feel of how their allied clan members respond to them and how quick they are to the draw, etc.

3. While one big pile tends to get more kills than two or three smaller ones, it is a possibility that separating our clans during TA fights may be advantageous, especially if membership in our clans grow. It allows each clan to do what they do best in an environment that is 'normal' to them in terms of callers, fi leaders, and options. If we believe during a fight that we can split our clans up and still maintain KO power in each of the piles, then that is what we should do.

4. Change the 'old guard' attitude. This is a new era and there are new ways to fight. I love a good melee/binds no returning war, for instance, but that just is not going to happen on a routine basis any more. Older folks should not be poisoning the new way of thinking. The majority of our clans have decided that they still want to participate in wilderness fights on a regular basis using the dominant competition method known as PKRI, with victory determined by options at ending for matched, or last clan standing for uncapped. Our wilderness-active clans have all been doing this for many years now. It is time to let go of the ancient ways and embrace the fact that if we want to keep having fights from this point on, then competing in PKRIs is the only way, even if you don't agree that the victory conditions are accurate indicators.

5. Fight each other. The dissolution of TA is not necessary in order to arrange a battle with each other. We have monster hunting competitions, skilling competitions, but we have not had a warring competition. We may be able to have a healthy, friendly rivalry with each other even though we are allies. We are only limited by the rules that we impose on to ourselves. Are we strong enough to withstand planned fights against each other?

Also this topic could be better placed in a private forum instead of a public one

Edited March 1, 2012 by Doug Numbers

[Shakazulu]

point 5

that would be actually kind of fun to do

rafi can confirm that we've done numerous of inter-alliance fights long ago, we can bring those back maybe at least once a month in a each clan for themselves - runescape has a lot of different situations as you cited which we could switch it up month to month

i would personally embrace inter-clan fights again despite Jagz disadvantage in warring, it would be fun to do, especially in p2p ffa safe

[Ethan]

Honestly, it means absolutely nothing to me. The Alliance could dissolve and I might actually be happier.

At times, it's been a draw back to be apart of it. People on RSC see one person from 'THE' with our pile and all of a sudden it's TA vs X, not Gladz vs X. We lose and our clan + your clans look like shit.

The Alliance has caused so many troubles within all of our Leadership positions that it's caused major relationship problems.

I noticed more negative feedback with TA, rather than positive. Only a few members of Gladz try to be positive about it.

We all get sucked into these problems for what gain? I haven't seen anything beneficial come of The Alliance besides AC'ing for fights. We might as well just be friends.

I could have spent a lot of time on this post and pointed out the faults with more explanations and thought of solutions. If you're interested in that, let me know. But I doubt any of you care about what I said, so I just wanted to give my quick 2 cents.

Also, why didn't you get Allied Access and post this on a non-Public forum?

[Seike]

This post could be on RSC and I would reply no differently. What's the point in having public boards if we want any decent conversation on them swept into privacy?

Doug, I normally think you're a wonderful person and I should hope you know that by now but I hate all of your ideas regarding this topic. All of them.

1. If we group ourselves as TA, we lose our individual identity as Gladz and adopt an inflated TA identity that less-represents us as Gladz and that we have less control over managing in a way that we see fit. So obviously if we wanted to just merge together we'd eventually work all of our communication and organization issues out, but why? Why force that style when we're naturally inclined to be independent? Fighting as a group as explained in some of my above posts encumbers a clan as being seen by everyone else as less-powerful. It's a win-win for opponents and a lose-lose for us just based exclusively on the mentality of multiple-factions being seen as an advantage when it's usually a huge disadvantage.

2. I adamantly disapprove this idea. Our callers are constantly working to establish rapport with our own clan and we could honestly need every minute and more of our calling time developing new callers that we have in our clan. A rapport is crucial to success when calling and we need our callers to have more practice at handling our members, not try to learn a new system of operation in a separate clan. It's so completely unnecessary to mix clans and callers just for TA's sake. It's only going to cause frustration in the learning curve and squander opportunities we would otherwise have to improve.

3. Having separate piles moving around is a huge distraction as I notice whenever we have a too-friendly AC unit. Our piles would get considerably more KO's if we worked as a unit.

4. Uhh.

5. No one takes them seriously because there's nothing at stake and no real sense of competition. We've tried them before. This would only be feasible if we broke off from the alliance and regarded them as mutually-respecting rivals instead of friends who practice together. Our relationship with BK is proof that the former is effective. It also gets hairy if a sense of competition promotes negative attitudes towards our allies. For instance, say we have a sniper-allowed fight and a few of our mages get pissed-off because they're constantly being sniped. That might manifest itself as resentment toward the other clan or its members and might provoke flaming or bad blood in the future. Also, little issues like one person breaking a minor rule in a fight is usually an incentive to get more aggressive towards the enemies. When it's our allies who have a member breaking a minor rule, it's generally an incentive to regard the fight as bogus and stop trying as hard because the aggression doesn't make sense.

The alliance only works if we don't compare ourselves. Nobody wants to feel impotent and if we make our allies feel inferior to us, it's not good for them and we feel bad about it. Competition between us promotes comparisons and we will either shy away from trying our hardest or face the consequences of making a hierarchy of dominance amongst supposedly friendly clans.

What's the point in having an alliance if we're fighting allies? Why call it an alliance? If it's but a situational alliance, we could and DO do that with supposedly enemy clans on occasion when it makes sense to in any given wilderness skirmish. We have no need to permanently ally with them and we have no need to permanently ally with anyone.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Seike

[Douglas]

The point of putting this in a more discrete forum is that it's a topic regarding the workings of our clan/alliance. It's not about sweeping 'good' topics away from public - just this discussion to a more appropriate viewer level.

As far as a lot of 'fighting as TA makes us lose our identity as' our individual clans, no, no it doesn't. Self-identification as a Gladiator is not decreased by also identifying yourself as a TA member. We are both, not just one or the other. Not to mention, our individual clans have been taking up a lot of our attention for many years now, and TA has been on the back burner with only a couple of fights per year. It's natural to think of TA as a less-important entity when we are each so focused on our individual goals. TA feels stale and like it is gathering dust because we haven't used it in a long time.

We'll never get the point across that it's harder to fight together to the masses. It's a fact. But giving up and saying 'its not worth it' because of that is a premature judgement that calls into question our goals as TA. Is the goal of TA to compete in the top 1-3? Is it to compete in the top 15? Is it to mainly forego pvp and focus on skilling/pvm? Is it to do whatever we decide is 'fun' at the time? Winning at any cost may not be a requirement of achieving the goal we set.

We all know which clans in TA are the strongest. It doesn't have to be said, the hierarchy has been the same for years.

Don't forget that our 'relationship' with the old bk was sparked by negative attitudes, flaming, and bad blood. In such a sniper-allowed fight, the mages that are being sniped need to understand that if they're getting sniped they're sticking out too much - that it is their style that is the problem, not the sniper.

When is the last time the leaders of TA came together and had a chat?