Warzone Newsletter #9A recap of interesting stuff of August 2023.
NONO’s empire of alt accounts exposed and dismantledThere are a lot of events in that story, so I will try to arrange them all from the perspective of community:
- Winter 2022-23 – Clan Wars community starts to notice FTW! clan, which has an abnormally high amount of Free Wins in CW, and constantly manages to get top-20. FTW! is a small clan run by NONO, who had been earlier confirmed to use alts in global chat raffles. There are suspicions about FTW! using alts in CW to some extent, but either these suspicions are not strong enough, or people just don’t care.
- Winter 2022-23 – Clan Good News gets created and enters Clan Wars. It employs a tactic similar to FTW!’s one. The clan tries unsuccessfully to recruit people in Warzone forums. There are suspicions of alts in GN too, but overall GN is regarded as an independent clan just following FTW!’s steps.
- Spring 2023 – FTW! and GN successfully play in CW, sometimes very close to top-9 (aka “coin zone”). The top performance is in CW season 33, when FTW! ties with The Fancy Dot ● clan on wins and due to “mod 128” tiebreaker gets top-9, pushing FDC out of coins.
- 2023-08-14 – Player Eternity from Harmony posts a thread “Evidence of FTW and GN Using Alts and Rigging CW”. Key takeouts from the first post:
-- Clans FTW!, Good News, Really Right and a significant amount of clanless accounts are suspected to be almost completely consisting of alts.
-- There are suspicious round robin tournaments between these clans, which helped to establish the connections.
-- Most accounts have been created at similar times; come from same 4 countries: Germany, Austria, Canada and US (New York); play 1v1 games and have similar win rates; become inactive at very similar time.
-- The FTW! and GN have a very similar pattern of operation in Clan Wars: they surrender/boot against all clans, which are not strong top-9 contenders. The results of such performance, is that some clans (namely Myth Busters) greatly benefit from this.
- 2023-08-1X – as discussions evolve:
-- The initial claims of rigging Clan Wars specifically in favor of certain clans are dismissed.
-- It becomes confirmed that FTW!, GN and RR clans not independent, but all are probably operated by the same player: NONO
-- Among ~10 members of FTW! there are only 2 real players: NONO and LAFfe Lukas (a young kid, son of player Krulle from clan The Last Alliance)
-- Eternity claims that full investigation by Warzone mods is already going on and the punishment is imminent
-- There are accusations of Eternity to be an alt (namely an alt of Texx from Harmony), but they are mostly trolling. (some seem to treat these claims as real, though)
-- It becomes suspected, that the main goal of the alt-network is getting coins from Warzone wheel with multiple accounts.
- 2023-08-17: the alt network of FTW!/GN/RR is leaked to commence massive coin transactions to accumulate coins on certain accounts. The target accounts are mainly within the alt-network, but there is at least one confirmed fact of coins being transferred to an outside player (connected to FTW! via other relations, but not directly operating the alt-network).
- 2023-08-17: NONO uses his unknown alt “Reborn Bird” to create clan Phoenix
- 2023-08-19: Eternity suggests that as redemption NONO refunds FDC members the coins, that they lost in CW Season 33. NONO refuses.
- 2023-08-19: NONO starts deleting his accounts. Before the deletion of major accounts, he writes a little farewell message in the thread with a reference to the source of the inspiration for the account’s name and a link to the corresponding music video.
- 2023-08-21: NONO rapidly creates 4 new clans with a plan to get the infamous “mod 128” clan ID. (Clan ID of 768 (one of the “mod 128” ID) is believed to be an advantageous clan ID for Clan Wars) The four clans by NONO have names inspired by Taylor Swift songs, with the designated “mod 128” clan to be named “Anti-Hero”. Unfortunately for NONO, the very “mod 128” clan ID gets sniped by another player. After the coup, the accounts, which were used by NONO to buy the 4 clans get deleted.
- 2023-08-23: NONO transfers a significant amount of coins to FDC as a compensation for the missed rewards. He renames one of his old accounts and joins knyte club clan, which, presumable, agreed to take him as part of the rehabilitation process.
- 2023-08-23: NONO’s accounts get official suspension (basically that’s the first time when we see official reaction of Fizzer to the events). Coins previously transferred to FDC and another one external account get deleted too.
- 2023-08-24: NONO starts making low level alts to post messages in global chat and forums. His basic point is that he has been punished enough and wants to have a fresh start without any more manhunt after him. If that is not granted to him, he will continue the “war” (whatever that would mean) against Warzone’s establishment. NONO’s more vocal account are getting suspended on a daily basis. At the moment of the newsletter, these guerilla actions by NONO continue.
The most heated period of the NONO’s alt network reveal has probably ended. NONO’s network of alt accounts got effectively dismantled (accounts either deleted, or banned). A lot of “ad”-coins were wasted.
Link:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/709647-evidence-ftw-gn-using-alts-rigging-cw
CW season 35 is over – all as usual, S36 – Optimum pushing for top-1Nothing unusual here. Myth Busters – top-1, Prime – top-2. Top-9 is the same.
Interesting, that knyte club (former Mothership) totally outruns M’Hunters, which had poached a lot of players from Mothership a few seasons ago. Nice comeback.
This was a 4-week-long season. And the seasons getting longer is a stable trend for a lot of seasons in a row. Don’t know if that is on purpose, but Clan Wars already had a period of very long seasons and that didn’t end well. Hope that the seasons will get shorter.
Season 36 has started and after a few days Optimum demonstrated, that they can really compete with Myth Busters for top-1. After a whole week though, MB reclaimed their intermidiate top-1 and having a significant lead. Might this be the season when MB’s winstreak ends?
Link:
https://wz-cw.5smith.ru/
Harmony’s crazy recruitment driveClan Harmony has been doing some massive recruitment recently. In the past 45 days, ~140 people joined Harmony. As of now, Harmony has over 300 members.
General recruited player profile:
- Have not been recently in any clan
- Low (<500) or non-existent QM rating (means don’t play QM a lot)
- Relatively low amount of points in last 30 days
- % of RT games vary a lot (from 0% to 80%)
- Total multiplayer games played vary a lot (from a few dozen to thousands)
- “Empty” profile bio and usually no pic
I have no idea, where these people come from.
I think there are two main takeaways:
- There is a significant capacity of players in Warzone, who may be introduced to the clan scene.
- If you really want to grow your clan, then with some effort you can do that.
This all may serve as a great example for the clans, which struggle with recruiting.
Links:
-
https://www.warzone.com/Clans/?ID=366-
https://wz-clans.5smith.ru/
New diplo clan to revive the Real Time diplo gamesA prominent diplo player Reichtangle is trying to revive Real Time Diplo games. To do that he builds an RT diplo community on the basis of clan Polandball. His plan is to regularly make good-quality RT diplo games, so that people would actually taste the good side of diplo games, and then the community will continue and grow from that.
While I personally don’t understand diplos, I think that’s a great initiative. At least, there will be a common ground and benchmark on what “good” diplos are according to the diplo community.
Link:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/711082-reviving-real-time-diplo-games
Nations Cup 2023 Round 1 ended, pairing for Round 2 announcedFrankly, I don’t follow NC close enough to write a lot here. The event in going forwards on a full speed.
If anyone would like to write an extensive message about NC’s current status, you are welcome.
Link:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/711319-nations-cup-2023-2nd-round-matchups
That’s all for now. Surely, I have missed *your favorite event of the August*, so dont hesitate to write about it in the comments. Like, subscribe, turn on the notifications 😀
Edited 8/30/2023 23:24:53
