I agree. It's the same # twice.
It's symmetrical.
It looks good in a line, or a square with one in the middle.

Its the perfect bed time...or wake up time.

It's very positive in binary language. (1 = yes,true) Great attitude for a number.

Sure there are other reasons for 11 to be awesome.

Oh yah man! Me and Jeeves go WAAAY back on netscape.

I just like 11.

I think there's 11....

I would have called this Magnifidoug Dougifesto

Just me. Personal preference.

I wasn't aware of any grace period.

Dont know yah, but welcome!
Glad to have yah!

Always sad to see.
3

Happy 2026 earthers.
2025 was weird.

I hope everyone has a fantastic attempt at 2026.
Put your best foot forward, and give it your all.

Dream big, and take small steps in that direction a little everyday.

Best,
Empy

*poops in the corner*

There. Food for new flies.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hannukah, and that jazz.
Drink more, worry less, and stop reading social media.
Have a great time.

Arrow was fun.
Welcome.

This new generation of transformers are taking FOREVER to get here.

159.5

Black Friday...

Amazon. F stores. Not a chance.

Just having dad and few stray army friends over with nowhere to go.

In the past, Thanksgiving was a grand event. Wall to Wall Italians, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, just waving and spitting food while they yell at each other. Then we'd all settle in for a game of "Screw your neighbor", what we called "Ganjuu", a family card game we played for as long as I can remember. My first game was when I was about eight years old. There's only two rules. No crying, and first one out has to get every other person a drink or dessert. If you cried, you automatically lost and had to serve the rest of the table.

My grandfather died about ten years ago, just before I got married, that was the end of Thanksgiving. We tried two years later, but my cousin was taken by a horrible cancer at 36, needless to say, we cancelled thanksgiving again.

Then, Thanksgiving took place at my in-laws, and they were welcoming enough. They asked me about traditions, and I told em about Ganjuu. Last year, after about six Thanksgiving's, they brought a deck of cards and a toothpick, and asked me to teach them how to play ganjuu. It was moving to say the least not only how nice they were, but how much I missed my family.

This year, thanksgiving is cancelled due to the untimely death of my father in law, and my brother in law just had a baby not yesterday.

So, for the first time in over a decade, I invited dad to come hang for dinner. I think it'll be nice.

Dallas, the idea of this post is to post more.

Totally DA. Game level. We can restore that balance between game and personal.

Great take.

I hear that. I need another Achilles repair. Tore my left one after my right one healed from surgery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0XGswUuZU0

It doesn't matter where the identity politics, radical ideologues, and left wing insult politics came from, it matters that we have a chance now to forge new alliances, declare war, or don't, fight and win, or fight and lose, (then move on for next set) just like earth 2025, and have fun with this GAME. An escape from reality. A community of people who played a game for 30 years together.

Some toxicity, competition, old grudges, whatever are to be expected, but what we witnessed, or got dragged into, was plain disgusting behavior of little man babies. (and no, I was not innocent in some cases)

So where do we go from here for a more "utopian" experience?

Recruit, retain, fight, net, play, respect each other as human beings on this escape from reality. There's enough hate in the real world.

We find people who care, help the developers build the bells and whistles. Or....

we do what we can do until the end.

Thats all that's left.

Everything is on discord these days for most postman.

At this point, my suggestion is create new alliances and we can worry about who joins where later.

Come back to alliance.
Fresh Start.

I guess. Let's utopia this bish.

Makinso, bottom line = our player base grew toxic AF, Utopia's did not.
It's that simple I think.

I missed 9 years so I don't know what happened during that time. I know when I left for that period, there were like 30 mid sized clans, 400-500 players, NO BOTS, 8 active mods, 3 devs working, and decent Foreign Relations over ICQ and IRC.

Now, all of that is gone, and I only saw a bunch of Voldomorts running around crapping on everybody. So I assume that started the whole thing. Now that the Death Eater people cant post, i mean, sure, it's quiet, but its pretty nice if ya ask me, I think we can work with that, but we need what's left to step it up and promote our little slice of pie over here. Maybe we can snipe utopia players, like the good ol days.

we also need to make it fun.

The last war was a blast between clans that had prior tense relationships. We had a damn blast! That should work to retain players.

I dont know if it works but they have some sort of integrated bot and chat directly in the web interface...

That's pretty neat...

There are a number of reasons Utopia has lasted this long and does so well. The most obvious, is the community respected each other as people in public places.

And two, they have all sorts of cool gadgets, bells, and whistles. If some programmer type peeps could volunteer some time, or whatever, maybe we could have bells and whistles too. One guy can't do it all.

Plus their page is catchy and what not. I dunno. I hate utopia. But I can see the draw.

My country name is butternuts

Hes a good dude.

....LETO IS STILL TYPING...

Leto: Okay okay, sorry, I had to make sure I got this entire thing off my chest...."YES".

Lefty: (looking confused) it took you THREE DAYS to type YES?!?!

Poncho: I hope the hamsters eat you leto. Son of a....

Lefty: Anyway, back here at alliance chat hiding from the hamsters on top of an air duct. They can't seem to climb the smooth stainless steel of duct work.

Poncho: Good idea lefty. Smooth is always better.

Lefty: That's what she said.

Poncho: Well folks, its hamster apocolypse here at Alliance Talk. They've eaten the couch they were hiding in, and well, if you could see it here, it's rather dusty, and sort of looks like a fallout game at the moment.

Lefty: We'll call it, "the wasteland", Leto is "The Ghoul", and we can get Doug to play "LUCY" the loveable vault dweller.

Poncho: I think doug is out for this casting call.

Lefty: Oh, perhaps fingolfin is available to play the overseer?

Poncho: Enough Lefty: we're not remaking fallout. Its a classic as is.

Lefty: There must be a way to beat these guys.

Poncho: I mean come on! They're hamsters not death claws!

Lefty: I thought we were leaving the fallout talk....

Poncho: Sorry, I am just so excited for season two. You know deathclaws are irradiated ferrets. Do you think we could become death claws in a post apolcolytpic earth empire?

Lefty: Anyways, I think we can fight em.

Poncho: Hiding is good too. Eventually they'll leave.

Lefty: Where?

Poncho: We can hide underground. There's an access tunnel there that Llaar used to poop in.

Lefty: Oh god. Thats horrible! Why would we do that?

Poncho: Mehul built it back in 03 to protect it from Y2K. It's lead lined.

Lefty: Wait, he built it in 03 to ... protect...from...1999?

Poncho: nevermind that, clearly it worked.

Lefty: It's only ten miles away.

Poncho: Ten miles? There's an army of hamsters between us and it!

Lefty: We can order doordash?

Poncho: Yah, that's a good idea. Let's just get doordash. Wendy's? I like that bacon sandwich with all the bacon. What's it called?

Lefty: Bacon?

Poncho: Right.

Lefty: Alright, Ill call.

Poncho: Stand by for next week folks. We're going to secure a secret bunker in the llaar poop sewers to start our coalition against the hamsters. Until then, say bacon!

HAWK,

It's real simple.

The delay was explained. It was a delay due to the actions of the banned. We all had to wait, as a result of the actions of MOST of the banned players. The ones who, for about a year now, attacked players personally and publicly, then turned their relentless toxicity on the volunteer game staff for enforcing the staff's definition of the game rules. Instead of accepting their short term fate, they went to war against the volunteer game staff. Should some of those folks get another go? Yes. But there are many of em that deserve the time they got. They acted almost criminally, and in one case, DEFINTALLY broke a couple laws.

I see the "a-hole" thing from both sides. The country name was a mash up of "ban all and dissent", referencing a political figure and certain talk show hosts, and taken from some show or movie or something. From cyref's side, I can see his reasoning for the name, and how it was shocking to get called on it, I can also see the game staff side, where for like a year, they have been relentlessly publicly attacked, insulted, and accused of stuff, that normal adults would have resolved privately in some sort of conversation or legal type of mediated situation or something. So i get it. It could have been seen as a dig at the staff. I myself have been banned 3 times for getting wrapped up in the scandals and toxic behavior. I hated it. It's not the Empy that played in 99 to 2000 whatever year. We are in our 50's, 60's and 70s around here. Why are we acting like children? JUST PLAY and engage and WAR. That's how we keep alliance. Otherwise we'll be netting with the girls on coop.

With that said, through a short discussion, and a couple of thank you's, and perhaps didn't even impact it at all, showing some appreciation for keeping this game and SERVER open for whatever amount of years for us to act like toxic 13 year olds hopped up on snorted pixie sticks before gym class, we got the november start date we want, and we get to keep alliance.

Now you wanna show up here and F it up?

We got the explanation. We got an analogy to explain for those of us who don't understand.
We got the date we wanted. So start a country.

JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME. Cue the bootlicker comments. I could care less.
We get to play something that should have died A LONG TIME ago.
Wanna trash me for supporting the volunteer staff? Go ahead, no affect on my life WHAT- SO - EVER.

I cant disagree with the analogy. Hopefully we can come to an accord in the near future. Or, see yall on dec 7th. Good news, there are still good people who want to grow the game and build whayever community we can. And some us want to war. (On the court)

Thanks for responding.

No disrespect slag. The bad apples are all but gone. Most of us will wait, but those of us waiting aren't the bad apples. Ill admit i got caught up in some drama with others, but most remain are not at war with game mods/team. We just wanna play.

Please don't sqaush the server. We can turn it around.

Have a good night boss.

Naval ships?

...the hamsters are out of control...

hmmmmm