T7 soldier left Celtica to found Danger Close last clan discount, seems a few players followed, he is really active so hopefully that community will flourish.

oh hey its highlighted now!

Interesting, thanks Stefano

What's the difference between a "written podcast" and a blog?

Thanks everyone for your support. It is great that the thread got highlighted!

I understand, that the revolutionary format of text podcast might be not that easy to grasp at first, but I promise that if you follow it, you will get a better understanding ;)

# Episode 2: Exodus from Celtica

What we know about Celtica?
- I estimate the significant downfall in Celtica's activity happened in 2023. Late 2023 I contacted Celtica with an offer about merging Clan League teams as they were one the clans, who had decent activity in Clan League 16, but they did not sign up for the upcoming Clan League 17. The negotiations (well at least they responded) didnt end with anything good.
- If my sources are right, then in early 2024 t7soldier was promoted to the managers of Celtica. Dont know exact reasons though.
- Some people, who later ended in the newly created clans, left Celtica before the the Clan sale of April 2024.
- In total it is just 5 people left, which is not really significant considering Celtica's total headcount.
- During the clan sale, 2 new clans were created by former Celtica members: Starfleet Commamd (yes, with a typo; now basically dead) and Danger Close

Danger Close

As of now Danger Close had managed to get some reasonable success recruiting a lot of high level active players, who had not been related to Celtica previously, and getting close to the coin zone of Clan Wars.

The success mostly comes from sole t7soldier's activity:
- he alone made more than 4kk points in last month
- he managed to get top-1 in the most recent coin leaderboard with 44k coins
- he continues his tournament organizing activity
- probably it is he who is sponsoring the CW activity in the clan (yep, they pay coins for CW wins)

Previous episode: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/757659-prime-hour-click-now?Offset=1

How many coins do they pay for CW wins and where did you get this information? :0

https://www.warzone.com/Clans/?ID=810

clan page, 10 coins/win, 100 coins for most wins. I see a greedy altto and Warltus in there.

Edited 4/30/2024 17:50:12

I would like to add that T7 soldier is one of the people who is attached to Metal Gear 4.5, another user in it for the long haul. They have been 2 v 2 partners for a long time, they offer unique games on rarely played maps under the open games tab, they also promote said templates in tournaments.

Metal Gear 4.5 is also the owner of a big clan network as well. After founding his eponymous clan, he transferred most of the active CW people to the uncapped After Dark clan, but then he also purchased more clans under the discount (Knights of After Dark among them). Both T7 and MG 4.5 have amassed a lot of coins between them as a result.

- if this thread get highlighted, instead of one coin, everyone will get 5 coins! Yay, go smash that "Like" button!

bump

Ok it seems 5S is stalling giving out coins to the first 13 players as long as there are 7 more participants who will be eligable to win 5 coins each if they post something meaningful here.

So all attention here!

Trying is the first step to failure.

There meaning.

Not trying is failure.

Coinzzzz

This is cool to see, can't wait for more great content!
Also I agree that an episode format (dealing with one issue/news item at a time) is a more sustainable and less stressful format than the monthly newsletter - great idea!

Yep, I agree.
When doing it topic by topic rather than month by month tho, care must be taken to now let the thread get locked during periods of lower activity.

Thanks to everyone, who commented and liked :D

Since there are still 14 commenters, I decided to force stop the waiting period and make the extra coins from the missing commenters redistributed to the 14 ones:
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37814323

Edited 5/7/2024 19:53:19

Awesome :)

# Episode 3: A bridge to Warzone Community Newletter

As the WCN is obsolete now and has not been updated for a few months, I just decided to make a really short recap of major events, since the most recent release of WCN.

Warzone update 5.26

After almost a year of no updates, Warzone got updated to version 5.26.0

The promoted feature is the new rendering engine and the availability of 3D in browser, which can be turned on by modifying the URL.

Also, a lot of minor changes, yet some are, IMHO, quite controversial.

There was a blog post, but no official forum thread (yet, there is one more less dedicated to the update) and no AMA so far.

Links:
- https://www.warzone.com/blog/index.php/2024/04/update-5-26-preview-of-new-rendering-engine/
- https://www.warzone.com/Forum/756729-warzone-update-hypothesis

Clan Wars seasons 42-46

- The dominance of Myth Busters continues, they won all the past seasons
- Biggest achievement for clan Harmony, they finally managed to get top-2 for the first time in the clan's history.
- While the list of CW competitive clans is more or less the same, the ranks from 5-9 change a lot every season. The Last Alliance managed to get top-1, and {101st} actively fluctuate, etc.

Currently it is season 47. It started with a record breaking timeslot, with the most players playing a single CW slot though the whole CW history. Optimum seems to be pushing for top-1 (or at least, they are very solid at top-2). Will see after the season ends, how it works out for them.

Link: https://wz-cw.5smith.ru

HTL Finale

The "Harmony Tournaments Leaderboard" finale series of tournaments was announced. Basically, this is a subset of Harmony tournaments, which are available to the public and have some form of continuous competition.

What distinguishes this event from lots of others, is that there is a real money prize pool of $500, paid out to the top 6 players. Great initiative!

Link: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/750442-introducing-htl-finale

1k idle super-ascensions by Ivan0

The Super-ascension leaderboard got a new mark recently.
Ivan0 reached a milestone over 1,000 super-ascensions. Crazy!

He also released a video of a full super-ascension done in under 30 minutes.
If you are into Idle, it is worth to check that out.

Links:
- 1000th SA: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/589522-superascension-leaderboard?Offset=1206
- Video: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/589522-superascension-leaderboard?Offset=1208

Harmony-Eternity clarification thread

No one expected, but after a few months of public silence, Harmony manager posted a "clarification" statement.

It was mostly a rehash of the same old drama. Yet, among new facts:
- We got a link to a Clan League preparation game, which added a lot of tension and escalated the situation
- Accusations of an attempt to bribe Eternity (no details on that)
- The existence of Survey of Harmony clan members by Eternity
- Intent of Eternity to release some CW template guides
- A big throwback story is mentioning of player Phakh Gokhn, who had been a recruiter for clan HAWKS a few years ago, and whose style resembles Eternity's one

Link: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/752922-eternity-harmony-clarification

Who is Truth Dragon

An old Warlight-era player returns and makes a new account using VPN named "Truth Dragon". Despite him posing as a new player, people quickly understand that he uses an alt account, because he plays too good for a newbie.

Truth Dragon makes his way to Myth Busters and makes some new friends there, yet also establishing different relationships with other members of the community.

As of now, the event is mostly over, but so far no one has cracked who the Truth Dragon is.

Link: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/755855-truth-drangon

That's all :D
Comment, like and subscribe!

Previous episode: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/757659?Offset=25

# Episode 4: CW season 47. OP pushed, but MB's reign continues

The CW season 47 ended a few days ago. The season started with a timeslot which broke the record of highest number of players and games throughout the whole CW history.

After a long break Optimum was seemingly making a push towards top-1. For a significant amount of time they were able to tie with MB in terms of activity, but not in terms of winrate. After the first week, Optimum already lagged by 30 wins behind having 56% winrate against MB's 68%. Myth Busters won top-1 again.

The season ended with Optimum having 61% winrate, which is high enough to secure a solid lead against top-3, but is not enough to beat MB's 70%. Actually by the end of the season, Optimum's number of total wins was closer to top-3, rather than top-1.

Is it really possible for Optimum to beat MB in the nearest future?

I would say "no". With overall decrease in WZ activity (stale meta + summer time) and no real changes in CW, there is just not enough available talent to fill up a engaged+skilled roster in a traditional way.

Even Optimum now signs up players of under 1k QM rating to the CW team. Not sure, if that's a path to top-1, because unlike the mid-tier "50%" clans, lowering CWR doesn't help Optimum and every their loss is giving advantage to MB.

What would a new contender need to overthrow MB?

Probably find some new way to "cheese" in CW. MB pathed their way to the top by making a clan of alts to siphon talents from top clans for part-time CW. Something groundbreaking would be needed today to overthrow MB.

There have been theoretical ideas of "is it possible to make a special team from top players of many clans just for the sake of one-time dethrowning MB", but as far as I know, they are only ideas.

Another option, which came to my mind, is find a way to leverage the skills of active, yet lower skilled players during the CW games. Either through some tooling, or by better players helping lower skilled players during the game ("Over The Shoulder Playing").

What do you think?

Previous episode: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/757659-prime-hour-click-now?Offset=38