Post by Tony Blair on Feb 9, 2007 18:56:57 GMT -5
I was recently asked to speak about the early days of Urban Dead survival but any discussion about the early days of survival most involve the CoL.
Not many survivors appreciate just how lawless the early days were, but back then you really didn’t have anyone you could depend on. Barricades didn’t exist yet so you had two real protections against zombies you either had to hide inside a building, and hope that by dumb luck alone the walkers didn’t find you, or you had to gather in large groups and hope that the school of fish defense theory would protect you. It sounds stupid now but at this time you actually did see large groups of people standing outside of buildings or even on open squares. It was just the mentality at the time no where was safe and death was only a matter of pure chance. Of course most rooks thought that you could permakill zombies just by gunning them down but all of us quickly learned that our bullets were useless as a defensive tool.
Your best defense was to find a common building and gather inside with as many survivors as you could hoping that even if the zombies did find you that there was some safety in numbers, and if you were smart you never betrayed the location of your safe house over open forums. This early defense saved many lives but the effectiveness of this strategy exposed a new threat that had always been present and was considerably more dangerous than the zombies. We started out calling them looters, and then we more appropriately named them people killers, which were of course shortened to just PKer, but they have been the bang to many a survivor since the beginning of the game.
The threat of dying at this time was considerable more dangerous than at any other time in the games history because Necrotech Syringes didn’t exist yet and when they finally were implemented nobody knew exactly what they were, and in an UD world about 50-70% of the population was level one nobody even knew how to use them. It was during this time that the single most infamous murder in game history accrued when a group of looters snuck into the Oram Walk Police Department and assassinated Officer Daxx easily the most popular safe house leader at the time.
People were outraged and even though we were able to quickly revive Officer Daxx after we gained the use of Mark I NT syringes our anger did not subside much. For one the thing the early syringes were not user friends because when you were revived you were reduced to 50% HP and worse yet you were standing and vulnerable to attack, and for another a lot of unsuspecting noobs were getting toasted in these attacks.
We needed a centralized leadership to deal with the PKer threat and there was a strong sentiment to make Daxx president. Although leadership was thrust upon him Daxx didn’t want to accept and instead came up with the idea to appoint a council of 9. The seats were given out on a first come first serve basis and to acquire one you needed at least 10 Votes; even Daxx himself would have to run for council. All seats on this council were equal there was no president but in addition to the council members were servile military leaders such as myself who were given voting powers nearly equal to council members. One of the common misconceptions about the CoL was that Daxx named it the Council of Leaders he didn’t. The survivors who supported the council wanted something to call it and since there were no organized groups at the time councilmen were elected from large safe houses. Since everyone on the council was already a leader of a safe house people just started calling it the Council of Leaders.
The creation of the CoL marked a substantial change in the lawless order of things not only because of the CoL itself but also because servile significant game changes, which included PKing only being worth half x.p. and you didn’t earn a bonus for a killing blow anymore, survivors could jump out of windows instead of seeking death in suicide by cop scenarios, Necrotech syringes allowed us to bring the murdered victims back to life, flak jackets (which weren’t active from the start) and body building (which wasn’t an original skill) offered a small degree of protection from PKers, the ability to heal other survoirs made us harder to kill, and the ability to close doors and dump bodies gave us a small degree of protection from the zombies outside. Days after the creation of the CoL we also got the ability to barricade which remains the single greatest protection from zombies of all.
Still the CoL offered the most significant deterrent to PKing of all when it created the bounty list, which prompted the creation bounty hunter guilds to track, these killers down. In addition to the bounty system the CoL also implemented servile other protective survivors to benefit the general survivor public which included the following
· A public listing of CoL supported safe houses to provide new comers a safe haven. The listing of these safe houses was of course voluntary
· Support teams to aid in reviving and healing
· Barricade Squads led by sergeant Jeff Shockmatic squads to fortify safe houses because most survivors still didn’t have the construction skill
· Mobile combat units like the Cannonball Crew to defend, secure, and recapture existing safe houses
Whatever complaints one might have had with CoL the organization with it’s thousands of supporters helped to tame wild west era days of UD, but it could not survive it’s own success. The CoL was always a necessary evil and many new comers quickly became resentful of it and questioned its current usefulness. That combined with the thousands of critics the CoL already had created a strong anti CoL sentiment, but the true Achilles Heel of the council was the matter it was created. In order to establish its legitimacy the council had to be formed from the strongest leaders that we had the time, but in the early days the only thing that made you a leader was having intuitive and being aggressive enough to take charge of situation. Naturally with the exception of officer Daxx and a few others most of the early leaders were quite forceful and undiplomatic. This fuled the anti CoL fire and caused it’s eventual destruction.
Not many survivors appreciate just how lawless the early days were, but back then you really didn’t have anyone you could depend on. Barricades didn’t exist yet so you had two real protections against zombies you either had to hide inside a building, and hope that by dumb luck alone the walkers didn’t find you, or you had to gather in large groups and hope that the school of fish defense theory would protect you. It sounds stupid now but at this time you actually did see large groups of people standing outside of buildings or even on open squares. It was just the mentality at the time no where was safe and death was only a matter of pure chance. Of course most rooks thought that you could permakill zombies just by gunning them down but all of us quickly learned that our bullets were useless as a defensive tool.
Your best defense was to find a common building and gather inside with as many survivors as you could hoping that even if the zombies did find you that there was some safety in numbers, and if you were smart you never betrayed the location of your safe house over open forums. This early defense saved many lives but the effectiveness of this strategy exposed a new threat that had always been present and was considerably more dangerous than the zombies. We started out calling them looters, and then we more appropriately named them people killers, which were of course shortened to just PKer, but they have been the bang to many a survivor since the beginning of the game.
The threat of dying at this time was considerable more dangerous than at any other time in the games history because Necrotech Syringes didn’t exist yet and when they finally were implemented nobody knew exactly what they were, and in an UD world about 50-70% of the population was level one nobody even knew how to use them. It was during this time that the single most infamous murder in game history accrued when a group of looters snuck into the Oram Walk Police Department and assassinated Officer Daxx easily the most popular safe house leader at the time.
People were outraged and even though we were able to quickly revive Officer Daxx after we gained the use of Mark I NT syringes our anger did not subside much. For one the thing the early syringes were not user friends because when you were revived you were reduced to 50% HP and worse yet you were standing and vulnerable to attack, and for another a lot of unsuspecting noobs were getting toasted in these attacks.
We needed a centralized leadership to deal with the PKer threat and there was a strong sentiment to make Daxx president. Although leadership was thrust upon him Daxx didn’t want to accept and instead came up with the idea to appoint a council of 9. The seats were given out on a first come first serve basis and to acquire one you needed at least 10 Votes; even Daxx himself would have to run for council. All seats on this council were equal there was no president but in addition to the council members were servile military leaders such as myself who were given voting powers nearly equal to council members. One of the common misconceptions about the CoL was that Daxx named it the Council of Leaders he didn’t. The survivors who supported the council wanted something to call it and since there were no organized groups at the time councilmen were elected from large safe houses. Since everyone on the council was already a leader of a safe house people just started calling it the Council of Leaders.
The creation of the CoL marked a substantial change in the lawless order of things not only because of the CoL itself but also because servile significant game changes, which included PKing only being worth half x.p. and you didn’t earn a bonus for a killing blow anymore, survivors could jump out of windows instead of seeking death in suicide by cop scenarios, Necrotech syringes allowed us to bring the murdered victims back to life, flak jackets (which weren’t active from the start) and body building (which wasn’t an original skill) offered a small degree of protection from PKers, the ability to heal other survoirs made us harder to kill, and the ability to close doors and dump bodies gave us a small degree of protection from the zombies outside. Days after the creation of the CoL we also got the ability to barricade which remains the single greatest protection from zombies of all.
Still the CoL offered the most significant deterrent to PKing of all when it created the bounty list, which prompted the creation bounty hunter guilds to track, these killers down. In addition to the bounty system the CoL also implemented servile other protective survivors to benefit the general survivor public which included the following
· A public listing of CoL supported safe houses to provide new comers a safe haven. The listing of these safe houses was of course voluntary
· Support teams to aid in reviving and healing
· Barricade Squads led by sergeant Jeff Shockmatic squads to fortify safe houses because most survivors still didn’t have the construction skill
· Mobile combat units like the Cannonball Crew to defend, secure, and recapture existing safe houses
Whatever complaints one might have had with CoL the organization with it’s thousands of supporters helped to tame wild west era days of UD, but it could not survive it’s own success. The CoL was always a necessary evil and many new comers quickly became resentful of it and questioned its current usefulness. That combined with the thousands of critics the CoL already had created a strong anti CoL sentiment, but the true Achilles Heel of the council was the matter it was created. In order to establish its legitimacy the council had to be formed from the strongest leaders that we had the time, but in the early days the only thing that made you a leader was having intuitive and being aggressive enough to take charge of situation. Naturally with the exception of officer Daxx and a few others most of the early leaders were quite forceful and undiplomatic. This fuled the anti CoL fire and caused it’s eventual destruction.