The following post, in its entirety, is an unedited response from Zheg, Omni's main raid lead and sole Senior Officer. I've been asked to post on his behalf, since he's unable to do so on these forums.

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@_Crow -
We averaged at 18 for most of the collisions with you. I can’t call them fights because that label requires a majority of our skills to actually fire off. If you had 73ish, that means you actually had just over 4 times our numbers, not including the rest of the EP l33t players that surf your disaster. They may have slipped in unnoticed last night, but it was the first time I didn’t see multiple drac members bombing us inside your stacked raids, so at least we’re making strides there.

I hope the irony isn’t lost on you or any of your folk that AotP is a result of your oversized, but bruised ego – when the excuse you tout out to the world is that the other, better guilds called a spade a spade and you were all labeled terrible pvpers. It’s a story you sell to the lemmings, and I’ll give you credit that you do it well, but you aren’t doing this because better players have too big of an ego, you’re doing it because your own ego is too large, but you can’t back it up. This is the last, desperate attempt to stay in the ring by someone that wasn’t able to cut it in multiple attempts on the pvp guild scene. I may not like izy, he certainly doesn’t like me, but there’s at least a two-way respect that occurs when you know the other person can capitalize on the tiniest mistake you or a group member makes that ends up resulting in your wipe. It’s a respect that means you can never treat the other with kid gloves when you see them. It’s a respect you’ll never have from anyone. It’s a respect that you so desperately crave and deep down you know you’re incapable of achieving, so this is the result. Catapults are “busy” whenever you’re nearby and the main tool meant to prevent your continued existence at keep fights is rendered useless. As crown I’ll be the first one into your horde, but 5 seconds later I still can’t get my dawnbreaker to actually fire off. I can rattle off the list of skills and ults that are worse in lag, the ones that are 50/50, the ones that tend to work near you despite your stacks, but the bottom line is that even with all of those issues outside of our control, you still lose a raid, two, sometimes more when you deal with us. Posting like you do is a glaring cry for attention – maybe that’s what you’re after since you know you’ll never achieve the respect you want as a raid lead.

You and your lemmings parrot over and over that it’s not breaking the TOS. I’d gleefully point out that ZOS’ coding and server limitations result in crashes and unfunctional skills when you bring the numbers that you do. Capitalizing on a game-breaking mechanic like that to your benefit, repeatedly, is indeed against the TOS – the difference is that there needs to be intent behind it. We all know it’s intentional on your part to cause crashes and prevent skills from working (ZOS just can’t act upon it without proof of said intent), because it nets you your ‘wins’. If you’d like to challenge me on whether it’s against TOS, go ahead and admit that you do it intentionally, and then we’ll see how ZOS responds. I’d wager it would be a ban, even if temporary. So you and your lemmings can either put up and admit it, or stop using this excuse of it not being against TOS so there’s nothing wrong with it.

It’s been touched on before, but I’ll repeat it for emphasis. You are not helping your lemmings in pvp. You are not teaching them to be better, you are not teaching them the skills they need in the next chapter when they move on to other guilds. You are the kind of lead that people like me needs to spend weeks correcting all of the bad skills and intuition when we recruit people that operated in guilds like yours. I grant you that drac and other guilds don’t work with new players, but it’s a fallacy to imply the majority don’t. I’ve recruited from zone chat, I’ve worked with friends of friends that are new to pvp but want to improve – the difference is that I actually train them so they’re useful eventually and not just another body. A difference of opinion, I suppose, to other raid leads – but I’ve always believed with the anemic population we have in pvp, you need to train and take on new people at times because that’s how you replace the skilled players you eventually lose to attrition. So again, you and your lemmings should probably stop the other false narrative about every guild shunning these players. We don’t, we just expect them to want to improve if they expect us to devote our time to them.

And lastly, to finish this wall of text off, I’ll say to other EP that if you truly don’t like what AotP is doing, the best way to eliminate the behavior is to stop surfing them, stop helping them, stop pretending you’re outraged but go quiet when your friends are bombing/running siege/ganking to help them at the same keep. Most have alts on DC, on AD. Play them. Wipe AotP over and over for a week, and they’ll crumble. The lemmings stack with crow because it nets them AP and they prefer crashes to deaths. As soon as they stop winning because of numbers, they stop showing up to his groups, and they decay. When CN did this garbage on DC back in the day, I made an AD so I could fight them and wipe them over and over. What’s your excuse?

How come Drac can kill almost my whole Zerg from time to time with 16 people, but you guys can't with 18? Not being smart, just seriously curious 🤔. I'm sure if you or whoever your raid lead is would ask Drac or Solar for advice on improving as a guild they would gladly help ya out! ❤️ @Ixtyr

PS: why can't Zheg talk on the forums? Did he get banned?

@Machete I mean TECHNICALLY it's all one Zerg 😜, but I always like making sure no matter how many we go up against we have even or overwhelmy numbers! Hopefully AD and DC can get some decent zergs going too so we can have some challenging fights! ❤️ I thought there was an AD guild that was going to start running more, but I may be mistaken 😯

_Crow wrote: »

@Machete I mean TECHNICALLY it's all one Zerg 😜, but I always like making sure no matter how many we go up against we have even or overwhelmy numbers! Hopefully AD and DC can get some decent zergs going too so we can have some challenging fights! ❤️ I thought there was an AD guild that was going to start running more, but I may be mistaken 😯

Last raid we (with 15 to 18 most of the night) fought AotP five times (that I recall / was there for).

The first fight we had 2 people disconnect in the first few seconds. We killed 46 of them. We lost 9 players. One of us ran to set up a camp, and the rest of us stayed to delay the remaining players until the camp was up and we could all rez. In that fight, I took damage from 34 ultimates and 53 players total over the 55 seconds of combat.

The second fight I desynced after a few seconds, and when I got back into game about 8 minutes later I was dead and rezzed at the gate.

The third fight we killed 39 of them in the initial push, lost 5 of our own, then spent about 3 minutes kiting and killing them repeatedly as they rezzed with the goal of delaying them as much as possible so that another AD group (who was running about 15 to my knowledge) could hit BRK. Eventually we wiped after killing 84 unique names (no idea of distribution between AotP groups and pug/randoms), a total of 146 kills (we killed a few 3-4 times), and I took damage from 71 different players over the five minutes before my death.

The fourth fight we lost a few people to a render line right away (they were running in place not able to do anything), and still managed to kill 28 of them before running away to camp.

There was also a fight with a scroll, where we ran into the EP zerg and no skills would go off. I think we all stood there trying to kill each other for about 20 seconds before everyone died at the same time as skills caught up.

@_Crow if you had even numbers, or even double numbers, you would lose every time to a competent opposing group. If another faction brought even numbers to fight your 70+, the servers would die / everyone would crash. I'm tempted to try to do it once just so you see what it's like to have to render in that many people at the same time and have half your raid crash, but nobody in their right minds (on AD at least) would want to inflict that upon themselves. This is what makes most of us question why you're so happy knowing that you're causing problems to other people. If you said, "I don't care about other people and I'll do whatever it takes to win", then we'd call you a donkey or some such and leave it at that. It's your attitude of blaming the ZOS team / servers (which we agree with) and claiming that there's no fault of your own involved (even though you know that bringing that many players to the same place causes the latency, crashes, and lag) that has everyone thinking that you're delusional.

Once again, my main point from last time is that you're not teaching people how to play. You're teaching them that the only way they can win is to bring overwhelming numbers. If you're not running a raid of that size, the grand majority of your players are completely useless for anything other than PvDoor. If that's what makes them happy, then power to them and I have nothing to say - but I would tend to believe that most people want to become better players and learn how to get kills without lagging everyone out or needing 30 ultimates at the same time to kill your opponents.

Edirt_seliv wrote: »

if playing the way they enjoy happens to crash............that's just gravy.

That's the point so many people have been making. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_BrianWheeler etc. If the servers/game could support fighting those numbers, and we could get skills off to kill them, it would be fine. We would welcome those fights. When half of us crash just getting close to them, some desync as soon as they have to render 70+ players, and a few more get stuck on render lines trying to move/kite, there's no chance.

@_Crow The "counter" to your stacking that many is easy. Everyone in group has to change their builds and skills for the ones that are not optimal, but work in lag. Then we become a no-skill-one-skill-spamming herd, which is not fun to play. See you next Tuesday - we may do that for a night just to set an example.

You answer was "make a zerg to fight the zerg", which is just indicative of your lack of strategy, and willingness to cause problems for others - to the point that they can't play the game when in range of your zerg. I can respect your goal of helping new people, but feel the complete opposite for your disregard of common sense and courtesy. We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that point, and there's no use in continuing the debate.

You did indeed say that too, though consistent AD and DC players who are on those factions 90% of the time won't be doing that. Faction loyalty isn't really a thing, though most people do tend to stick more to whatever faction they favour.

As you said, it's a game and it's meant to be fun. You may have fun winning keeps and fights the only way you're capable of doing so - by lagging everyone else out when they come into render range, but everyone else who is lagging out is not having fun. Most will likely stop playing while you have your 70+ in the same place, or go to other campaigns if there's anything to fight there.

We now understand that you don't care about other people, and that's fine - we just wanted to confirm / validate that understanding that so that we can plan accordingly.

I think the sad state of the game is that this is a reality, and not just with 1 guild or 1 faction.
People will be annoyed to read this but the fact is this is what Cyrodiil has become.
It doesn't take an advanced mind to realize in the end it is just a numbers game to win any fight you encounter. Even better when you cause half of the server to crash because of the size of your ball.

The other reality is that AoTP is not the only guild or EP the only faction that does this.
Everybody plays around the numbers game now.

DC has their LoM, GoD, Skele Bois, Orc Army, etc faction stacks of 50+ DC in one spot that bog down the servers and just overwhelm anything they're fighting through superior number because why the hell not.

AD has their Homicide Inc, War Bunnies, Tertiary Meat, Fantasia, etc that stack together and cruise through outnumbering people.

EP has their AoTP, War Path, etc

Every faction guild that "plays for the map" has conglomerated under 1 banner, their alliance banner to roll the map when they decide they want to. Because that is simple, easy and assured victory and nobody wants to lose.
Guilds do this. "We only have 12 in group" is not a valid argument when you're surrounded by 30 other faction allies in your fights.

There are 3 clumps on the map, 1 for each faction because players don't spread out. When they do they die and nobody wants to die.

Cyrodiil has grown to be an even more congested playground as the game has grown. And now the performance is so god awful and unbearable because of that.

I guess to get to my point, AoTP is not the only guild or group or players that are guilty of becoming a swarm with the intention of winning their fights through sheer numbers and even destroying server performance either with intent or even unintentional. Some of the individuals I see commenting about this topic bring a smile to my face because they can be accused of the same "actions".

There are a select group of players in my mind that avoid doing this, and most of them barely PvP anymore because the only fight you can get is against an entire faction at a time. The game is stale because of how large the faction stacks have become and performance is suffering because of it.

Players should be punished for stacking their entire factions population in one area. Without those punishments this type of PvP that promotes mass clumping, outnumbering and even crashing servers will continue to blossom.