Original date of blog: January 5th, 2015
I actually have no idea how many parts the Platooning entry will eventually exist of. I’m starting to think a lot, judging by all that goes on between myself and those I platoon with or will platoon with. In my second entry of this blog, I said that the drama that came with clans in games nearly put me off gaming multi-player games for life. And you will have noticed the title of this entry. Go figure!
Not long after making the entry about Turtle and Panda, I was dubbed Penguin. Because, well, they had cute animals, I wanted one too. We joked about being a clan together, called Clan PTP (subtle, isn’t it?). It was around that same time that Panda told me and Turtle that he wanted to invite another friend onto imessage so we could meet him. Turtle already knew him, and I had seen him in games from time to time, so we were fine with it. Thus, I met Mouse. Mouse is quite the random dude. He’s happy-go-lucky, and he often tanks like that too. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. Sometimes he calls it noobing. He is an excellent player though, and with his bright and chipper personality he’s a joy to talk to. And to make fun of. Which he can take – another point in his favour.
Once Mouse had joined our little band, we decided to take it further. I got Owl and Leopard in on it too, and a few more joined us. Then came Chimp, and chaos reigned. Chimp, it turned out, knows a crapload of players. And not just any players – really good players with winrates and reputations that srsly impress me. I’m not just talking high 50%’s, I’m taking 60’s and even 70’s. It goes to show – good players know good players. We started to joke around that everyone should claim a cute animal as their other nickname (I think Chimp should be either a dungbeetle or a chimpanzee (obviously, we went with Chimp), seeing as he’s very fascinated by (his own) excrements >.> ). That is when I thought of the name LOCA. It actually stands for Lots of Cute Animals, but it’s also nicely related to our overall mental state.
Either way, the imessage-group grew and grew… and grew… and grew… until we got to the point where someone not checking their imessage for one single day would end up having nearly 500 missed messages. Not to mention that for those of us not using iOS 8, there’d be a new group with each addition. And the fact that messages would come in when people were tanking, upping their ping and depending on the backflow sometimes even being responsible of people losing a game. So we started looking for messaging alternatives.
We tried several different apps, and all have their pro’s and cons. The one we eventually settled on is one I’m not too happy with (Palringo), but it serves its purpose, and Chimp is a big fan. The biggest pro of it though is that it will only get messages to you when you open the app – thus it won’t affect your ping and you can ignore it if you want to. And still the group grows. At the moment, we have 26 members, and there are some pending ones.
I am a little worried about all the possible drama that can break loose, but most of us are fairly down to Earth, and this game just doesn’t allow for all that much drama to begin with. So I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it will all go well. In the chat, we have five admins and the rest is all mod, so everyone has a title. Aside from myself, Chimp and Panda, there’s two veterans. Not in age, but game-wise. They were around from the very beginning of WOTB, I learned today. Back when you got to tier X and there would only be one or two other tier X’s to play with/against. They sounded like really old geezers when they reminisced about that – this despite the fact that they’re both quite young. Maybe I should name them Waldorf and Statler in this blog, but they will actually be Elephant and Jaguar.
What I like most about our Clan though, is that overall everyone is nice, and fun. Usually when making large groups of players there’s always this one (at the very least) guy or girl that rubs you the wrong way the moment they come along. And that’s just not the case here. It’s a delight, with all the mostly random conversation going on, the tank information and advices that are shared, and the battles that get shown off, or the noobs that get made fun of.
And these guys all know their tanking. So far, I’ve platooned with only a few of them, and it’s been awesome. These are the guys you can build on, that know what to do in any given situation, that take your tank’s weaknesses into account when you tank with them, just like I (try to) do for them. I’ve not yet developed a ‘feel’ for them like I have with Panda and Turtle, but I’m sure that’ll come in time.
The funny thing is that I still think of myself as quite the noob. Unworthy of playing with them, for fear I make their winrate drop. It’s a ridiculous thought. Not only are these guys overall so good that even if I completely noobed, they’d manage to get a brilliant victory all the same, but I’m also starting to become one heck of a player myself. Yes, that is, in part, because of the great platoons I’ve been a part of, but if I were actually a bad player, or a bad team player, they wouldn’t platoon with me.
That, and I’ve had some fairly epic victories myself by now, too. I have a very decent winrate by now that will only continue to climb on as time progresses. I am nowhere near invincible, and I have a lot to learn still, but I think that admitting that will only make me better – it keeps me from getting overconfident.
I am the matron of Clan LOCA (in fact, despite all the members, I am still the -only- female in there. I’m starting to appreciate how rare us females are in WOTB), and I am proud to be a part of that, no matter how chaotic things are right now, and no matter that I haven’t platooned with just about half the members yet.
On the computer version of the game, there is a thing called Clan Wars, which is pretty self-explanatory. This isn’t available in WOTB yet. When it does hit the game, and I’m sure that eventually it will, there’s a good chance we’ll be the largest Clan right from the start, and likely the strongest as well, with all the excellent tankers that are with us right now. Other clans won’t know what hit them.
LOCA will pwn all.
Battles fought: 3,260
Winrate: 57.06%
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