QUOTE (darkmaverick @ Aug 4 2016, 08:54 PM)
The beginnings of the Barbarian and Chongun rivalries was pretty thrilling. As best I can remember it started out about the same time the Barbarians picked up their 'townie' gimmick (based on something the Sonhi soldiers in KaMing's Encampment used to say) when some Barbarians picked on some Chonguns in the Vale, with the Barbarians essentially claiming it was their territory. I and other Chonguns rallied to our brethren, and we'd get into fierce PVP brawls. I still remember leaving hunts with my party to go fight a Barbarian named Gogeta who was a frequent aggressor.
Though, there were some Barbarians who through our clashes we came to develop mutual respect. MPython and Vexi are the names I can remember right now.
The whole thing ended up getting coordinated between the paths into official battles in the Vale with the whole Chongun path Vs. the entire Barbarian path. After that the community started to get involved, having people show up to disrupt the battles and taking sides. It started to get out of hand then as Barbarian RP turned more toward becoming abusive event disruptors and Chonguns went through a series of identity crises that diverted the path away from the original rp of honorably knightly warriors and more toward shamans, diplomats and scholars. This left the Barbarians rather unchecked by any specific group -- the militias tried to pick up on the act but the reality is nobody in the militias had the stats to give any meaningful resistance to Barbarians in the Vale.
( the reason I never joined the Buya or Kugnea armies was because I have always felt they were never interested in any meaningful defense of players because they did not form PVP units. I briefly joined the recently created Nagnang Army because they formed one, but a certain scandal led to the ousting of the general who had brought me in. After that it transformed into another nonsense group just like the other militias, so I left. )
By that point I was no longer in the Chonguns due to my....eh, well known disagreements with the direction it went, but I still got involved in some of the PVP situations, coming to the aid of Chonguns who whispered me for assistance and such. I still remember spending my Halloween nights camping Vale at the spot people got warped to, fighting a bunch of PVP trolls who used Mingken rez to repeatedly wear down people's durability using Rage to bust items, taking advantage of the fact Gateway was removed from people who got warped to Vale.
Poor game design led to injustices like that, and it was only by self-policing could justice be restored. The problem of course meant we had to spend the entire night camping a single spot in the Vale to protect people from a handful of trolls. I still think it was time well spent though.
I do remember this as i was a part of it also from my side. What a great time we basically would bum rush, as a group, any people in vale or sire (back when mythic vale and west gate buya vale, even ka ming east vale) used to have a plethora of PVP'ers that would always hang out there. Then when someone would kill us, it became a path thing, you would whisper every single person possible to come help and they would turn into full on engagements. Those were great times, and totally not even scripted, the rivalry occurred very naturally over the course of many years.
Its unfortunate that some would really abuse the game mechanics we had to be disruptive (ie pushing) however, there is no abuse these days because most people now are more mature than we were in our adolescent years with a spell literally too strong for its time. On the other hand though, i remember when there would be the bandito's who would block doors, to everywhere in the kingdoms just to troll people. I would sit there and push them away for hours until they left, and get requests all day long for me to move door and cave blockers.