In all honesty I didn't think I would ever be making another post here again. I knew what had been said here about JOG and me, people have their opinions on us, myself, this game and everything in between.
Everyone I assume has read our post on what we thought about what you did. It is what is is. And it is not changing. To be honest in the end it doesn't really matter if you did or you didn't. When we beat you guys ( or atleast felt we did) of course we were happy. Look at the players playing on the field. And yes it was discussed on our private forums. But it was not mentioned publicly. Because beyond us saying yes great job, wins and loses aren't what they once were in this game. I couldn't tell you JOG's record. Do we care if we win or lose, of course. . . you always want to do well. But the days of being perfect have long past. Now we want to be a good powerful clan, with solid members who help the community continue to move forward, especially since it is as small as it is. Thats why so many jog members joined the mix scrim idea vvv had. It was to help the community. Thats why we worked with all of you to create a hall of fame this year. That is why we sat down with fjo to try to work out any remaining issues there.
I wouldn't be posting anything here if I didn't read what sinister had wrote yesterday. Because what i saw on that post was something that went beyond the normaL as in I will one up you in a debate. You will noticed you never saw myself go back in forth with you over points. I could have and we could have gone round and round. Sin you are an equal to me on that front. But why? There would be no point. We made our statements as they were, and let them stood. The topics were locked because honestly when ever a clan makes a statement there is always fall out from the opposing team. As was evident here. And we didn't want that.
About JOG policies: I post this here cause I want you guys to understand how jog works. I speak for the clan when it comes to external issues. However the Jedi Council of JOG has to come up with the policies that we stand for. Not all council members agree on policies. But majority rules in JOG. Also when it comes to the rest of the clan. Yes you don't get always everyone to agree. or even understand. It depends how deeply they are involved in the policies of the clan. Some just play the game to play it. Others take a more serious approach to the game, the clan and the history of the clan. Some of our members didn't understand our stance. Some said poop you vvv, we shouldn't have anything to do with you. And everything in between.
Now what i post here now is the inner thinking of why we do what we do. I only post this because Sinister took the time to open his heart out. I respect that and yes I am a fellow christian too. This is the reason why we denied your request for a written challenge. Its not because we don't accept them, but because of what it represented in saying that this is the only battle. Remember this was the thought process prior to you guys stating you were throwing the matches that you claim you did. Its still our policy because there are some, especially in leadership that believe in honoring the history of this game and how all clans have conducted business for years now.
The history and evolution of Match play, to the betss of our ability to describe it.
Scrimmages and the term Official Match
The term scrimmage basically harpens back to a time in which clans played friendly clans to sharpen there skills. For us, clans like our allies of AFH, GOR and UDN were used to do this. Scrimmage meant that the outcome did not matter, just it gave clans a safe place to as I stated, hone their skills. Our word for them back in the day was War Games. That was what JOG's term for what a scrimmage was. Not all clans had that term, but the usuage of them was the same.
Eventually the term scrimmage became used to say we want to fight you and if you lose its no big deal, we can just call it a scrimmage. The reason for this was because that was the only way clans could get anyone to fight the big clans. VVV ran into this problem back in the day and started naming everythign they did basically a match because it was the only way to get a match. Jog was the same way.Clans would say to little clans, lets play a scrimmage and then play them and mark it down as a win. Because it was. Sometimes clans would field great players and sometimes a mix of great players. But they were all matches.
Basically in time the word scrimmage became what is considered a match to any clan that understand how the game is played.
In 2006 and 2007, what you fought is what you fought. As in you counted everything. At that time, there were no Xat chats. The best any clan had was a shout box. So everything was done via forums. You would basically state your lineup playing, match rules and score limit. Also who would be what side was to be first. This is everything you do now in a chat box. But that got old fast, because you could only do so many matches so fast that way. And players want to play more matches and as fast as they can get them. SDJ actually really kinda pioneered the art of setting a match on the fly. They were smaller battles, usually a 2 vs 2 to a 3 vs 3. rarely did it get to a 4 vs 4.
After 2008 the clan scene changed. Clans that remained were not the big clans of old, but smaller units of clans and they usually didn't last long. The sdj approached served them well, especially since a lot of the clans that were being made, had key members who once fought for SDJ. And so matches were now gotten on the fly as the norm of how you set up matches.
Also to note. . . if you were low ranking player, you never saw any matches. usually only the top dogs did them. So everything was always official.
Now the term official match only comes up when you are supposivly stating your line up to be the best you have. There is no distinction between having to write that down via forum, or write that down via chat as per what was being done by all clans, in that matches were being made daily. That was what it was. . . back in the day.
We changed that policy in 2011 to accomendate the changing community and smaller population of players. We also did so to help unite the clan from top to bottom. I will explain more on this later.
Present Issues and the Reason for our policy:
JOG has had its best line up and some variations of that out to play vvv for a while now. We had it out that night of the mix scrim. It had it the other night as well. And I am talking again 5 to 6 players deep in strength. Every one thought everything was on the up and up at this time.
The reason why we didn't play ball with the written challenge. . . .Its simply because from history you can see that what we have done so far has been Matches, official as anything ever has been. You have had most of your best lineups in them, we have had ours. They have been in every format possible. 2 vs 2. 3 vs 3, 4 vs 4 6 vs 6 etc. And by you asking for that match via written down, to us it was your way of saying throw that all out the window, that doesn't count. We want a real match! And that to us was understood to be a farce.
That is why we stated what we did. Not because we are afraid of you or trying to find loop holes to avoid this real match. But because we were sticking up for how the game has been played by us, by you, by lsj, by sdj and every other clan in the history of the game has played it. I once again state look at VVV's record. Your official record is loaded with on the fly clan matches as official matches. They had their best players playing in them. It didn't require them to write anything down via forums. Because that was not how things had been being done. We are good with that because JOG has similar records.
Now JOG started something totally different last year however. It played lesser ranked players in their matches and still called them matches. That had never been done. So our loss tally went up some. But we were constantly playing clans with their best lineups in them. It was expected by us that we would lose some. But the community was much smaller than before and there was no way we could play like we once did. hence the change.
We made that abundently clear to the community in a heated debate between us, lsj, yourself sinister, and many other members of the community old and new last year. Kratos was major player to that conversation and I remember you there as well sinister. So when you stated that you had no idea what our policies were, that it included everything we played. . . it seemed like BS to us.
Plus if you look at just our last few weeks history of who we have been throwing out to play ( our best players for the most part) its like saying that doesn't count now, when it obviously did back in the day.
We also stated by us that we would be more than happy to continue playing matches via chat as we had been. . . with any and all lineups. And I stated that there have been instances in which we have asked for battles with 5 to 6 players in our lineup against yours( who would be consider your best) to play. My point of this was to say its easy to do the type of match you want at any time.
Now you might have a bit of a different view of how matches have worked, but being that many of our JOG members have been in the game for a long time, since its beginning, thats how we see it.
See what you have to understand, we believe in honoring what has come from the past, to the future of how things are handled. Whether it be how good a player was, to how matches are played and what is considered a match. By doing so we are even sticking up for VVV and how they have done matches.
I can honestly say we didn't wish any issue with VVV. When clans gets heated obviously issues arise. Its apart of the game. Would we like to be on better terms with VVV, of course. you guys are apart of the community and a major part of it. Its up to the clans that remain to keep this game going. Perhaps in a way we did. Although its not how we would like to. Now I can not say all players of JOG want to have anything to do with VVV any longer. I just can't make that claim. But what i saw from Sinister was someone that looked to me that he was sorry for his actions. And that i can respect, reguardless of what has come prior.
I hope this helps settle the feud, that I know JOG doesn't wish to have, and from what I am seeing, the leadership fo VVV doesn't wish to have.
I hope you all have a better understanding of us and myself.
And I hope you all have a happy new year.
