I haven't been around since the beginning, but I can give a brief history of what I remember. When I joined, NS was on top. They were a goddamn Farmhouse. No one could even hope to touch them with those timers set at 09:00 UTC. I didn't really see much activity in MH until I joined Capital Acquisition though. Being the first corp I joined that actually bothered to PC I was blown away by the skill of these guys. This isn't just me talking out of my ass either. CAP actually held the most MH for a period of time, but we'll get to that later.

At the most pivotal point in time related to FF 14' (The Rouge Wedding), DNS took 98% of MH. I don't really recall exactly when, but I know that a lot of the big corps were in the same Alliance. "The One True Empire" it was called. **** started brewing when AE. left the Alliance though. Right about when Zatara and Fatal Absolution followed through on their original plan to kill DNS internally prior to being bought out.

(LARGE FU+ºKING GAP BUT)
long story short Fatal Absolution takes over 36% MH while in General Tso's Alliance...

Later on Shep Grey petitioned to Zatara for Fatal Absolution to give up land to TSO's equally; Zatara approved by reducing down to 10%. On the surface, Cap was getting into a lot of fights with O.H. I hear that at the time O.H. was on DL's payroll. It was never very serious though, and rarely were districts actually flipped. However, Shep and OH leadership, alongside TOP and KEQ, struck a chord that would send Roman's boat crashing into ruin, Fatal Absolution and OH into an un-ressolveable blood feud, leading to the remission of Fatal Absolution, and the death of Murphy's-Law and Molon Label; TSO Alliance was defeated. We took 13 districts in one day. I personally participated in 5-6 PCs that day.

After that, nothing really happened that was noteworthy for awhile. Capital lost it's leadership, and we were dormant for the longest time. I don't know if it was before or after we went silent that we managed to take most of MH, but we started giving it away to smaller corps.


(ANOTHER LARGE FU+ºKING GAP)
long story short FA awakens to war with OH...

OH almost wipes them out
Silly Rabbit breaks off FA to save FA by (becoming FAAAAaaaAAAmous ) resurrecting Negative-Feedback with Kane Spero
OH almost wipes out FA (again)
FA asks NF for help
NF allies with FA to stop OH's warmongering
OH is losing at this point... horribly
NF decides to spare OH
NF takes in OH refugees
NF implodes due to this and fractions off to become a new AE, others return to FA
AE takes in the same refugees it imploded over to wipe-out OH for good, as well as exhort [extort?] peaceful corporations.
Radar comes back and mercy kills OH

Meanwhile...Capital was in Egbringer VII, sipping on mimosas... untouched

I honestly don't know the future of Dust. To me personally, it seems like corps are rising and dying faster than ever.

The politics IS the history, Kail. Whether bought, bartered or battled over the transference of ownership in MH is all political. The starmap is the illustrations to the story.

[quote=Heimdallr69]

Albeit I see people like ydubbs here saying everything after X time is meaningless....eyes of the beholder. As long as one carries the flag, does its colors mean nothing to those who march behind it?

Because their primary means of stranglehold to ensure success was full exploitation of most every mechanic possible to not have to actually fight? **** like spamming mass attacks to take a whole team into an empty battle while avoiding any populated or actively monitored ones? Or spamming whatever the most broken/exploitative fit was available after any patch? Relying on total game-break glitches like the LAV glitch to not just win but avoid fairly earned losses? Because the only time or reason they rose to anything that could be considered a grip on PC is after they're basically the only people still playing the game at all anymore? I mean **** man, I fkn PWN at monopoly when I play solo. And don't even get me started on Command and Conquer when it's to 4 players and I am all 4, table flips and all.

They earned their no-prize.

Well, I don't claim to be any sort of be-all end-all of PC but I for my active PC period never saw a strong team. The couple times they actually fought I did see a whole lot of one-dimensional fotm spam tho. And definitely saw a lot of peek-a-boo games deployed in battles they were no-showing while they tried to scout out an empty match to load 16 into.

By "only people playing" I do mean literally the only people playing. Any point along the DUST timeline can be use as a litmus for the "successful because everyone left" arguement rhetorically except for when the active player numbers actually support it. Pre or post the Rogue Wedding, for example. Difference between that and this tho is the active playerbase numbers are so low now, soooooo low, that there's not even a contest. It's a win by default.

Which to the original question is why nobody in their right mind applauds their "success" that way. It undermines the definition of success in competition and equates mere (albeit sustained) participation to viable, active competition. Hell, trophys all around in that case, my NPC corp owned Molden Heath in that case.

Fwiw, I think if there's going to be timeline correlations to events (totally worthwhile for context) those should probably be the larger external RL events that shaped the game like say, Pre Uprising-Uprising (for the old guard, betaperiod stuff) Uprising-Rouge Wedding (for the actual release stuff) Rouge Wedding-Server Close announcement (for the post RW period). Even several months prior to closure announcement tho playerbase numbers were in steep decline. But as a general breakdown, that encompasses the vast majority of viable playing period, marks the biggest shifts imo without delving too far into the Nerf/Buff update meta carousel that occurred and leaves plenty of room to showcase everyone ever involved in MH/PC and where notable also discuss those metachanges and how they affected groups individually.

The couple months prior and this post Closure announcement period is very epilogual, worthy of inclusion as well but in exactly that sort of context. The Epilogue.