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What is Hardcore, and why does S.o.W. label itself Hardcore?


Astrus

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"We will not make the same mistake we made in 2005-06, our members will
be prepared for the abusers and griefers of Star Citizen
." - Astrus  

What is hardcore?

Sanctuary of Wanderhome is a hardcore organization. But what exactly does “hardcore” mean to us? First we will talk about what hardcore is, then we will talk about WHY S.o.W. is a Hardcore organization.

S.o.W. calls itself a “entry level friendly, ‘Hardcore’ organization”. We welcome new Citizens to Sanctuary of Wanderhome, but does that mean that you have to live in your grandmother's basement or fly out and live at the ‘WANDERHOME Compound’ to satisfy org needs? 

Well the answer is a resounding “No.” and we think what we define as “Hardcore” may relieve and surprise you.

As a “Hardcore” organization, Sanctuary of Wanderhome...

  • Understands that “You can only be as casual as your attackers/enemies allow you to be.” (Explained below in the "why" section.)
  • Prefers to stay goal oriented.
  • Prefers "depth" and "complexity" as tools to enable problem solving.
  • Hungers for game related information as to stay as adept as possible to current and potential future game “metas”.
  • See’s defeat as an exciting puzzle to be solved rather than a moment to pity ourselves.
  • Basks in competitive play and trains diligently, as to not become victims in the verse.
  • Creates content for ourselves to modify or extend our gameplay in creative ways.

Does “Hardcore” mean that there are less interpersonal relationships and all “work” all the time? Absolutely not. 

In Sanctuary of Wanderhome there are friendships that span 14+ years. Supportive friendships where our network of friends have helped each other acquire jobs, professional and financial advice, and in a few instances have even been able to help a few of our college students gain acceptance into Master’s Degree programs. Because “Hardcore” gamers are usually “hardcore” in most aspects of their lives outside of games.

 

Why, and how, did SoW decide to
make itself a hardcore organization?

 

The days of “fun”, taken by force

In the Our History video we briefly talked about “The Base Wars”, during our tenure in Star Wars Galaxies, and to understand why we chose to define ourselves as a hardcore organization, a bit more context is needed in that story.

Before the base wars happened, we inadvertently became the richest org on Wanderhome server with quite a few in game commodities cornered. 

Most of us were pretty hardcore farmers but very casual PvP’ers, until a particular organization decided to actively hunt down our members and grief our faction bases that we used to finance our org endeavors. 

We attempted to bargain with them, as traders do, and we quickly found out that the only currency that our enemies wanted to deal in was our anguish, frustration and loss of pride.


Demons run, when good men go to war

For weeks we attempted to ignore them and it caused massive losses in morale within the org.

The less we fought back, the more frequently they came to feed on our misery.

One day the entire enemy organization came to our city, which at the time was the largest player city on Wanderhome server, and stood on the City Hall steps and shouted “THIS CITY IS OURS NOW. AND YOU'RE NO LONGER WELCOME”. They killed our members passing by who were attempting to peaceably do PvE faction quests near our in city faction bases and mission terminals.

That was the day, in 2005, that the leaders of “<SancT>”; Astrus and co-guild leaders, Shawkorrr and Yva Xorna  decided that the unprovoked abuse of our org had to stop…..Completely.

We tried to take “the high road”, we tried our best to play the game the way we wanted to play it, but our enemies provided us with content that cut off our usual day to day lives in game.

Sanctuary, for the first time, did not have the choice to be a “casual” or “normal” org. That choice was violently stripped from us.

In this traumatic experience we had to come to grips with the reality that “We can only be as 'casual' as our enemies allow us to be.

Our “hardcore farming” lifestyle was taken from us and after weeks and weeks of attacks, we couldn't bare the constant taunting and griefing from our new found enemies in the opposite faction.

We decided to fight back. We were angry, and our enemies made the rivalry far more ad-hominem than honorable. Harassing us in game and slandering us in forums and social media.

Fighting back would be no easy endeavor for a org that couldn't be called casual but definitely couldn't be called PvPers either.

In planning to defend ourselves for the long term, we quickly realized that the majority of our org was highly skilled at making credits, but not at defending themselves in PvP.

For 3 months we played the complacent victim as we trained vigorously. We morphed ourselves into an entity that could defend ourselves at a 'top 1% PVP level' while still being able to hold our place as one of the richest orgs on Wanderhome server.


The pain of transformation

Over the course of 3 months we transformed ourselves into a elite, tactical fighting machine that never slept, never gave up, never surrendered. We were so effective that our allied Rebel faction orgs trusted us to command the majority of its battles in an alliance called the URF (United Rebellion Front). 

As noted in the "Our History" video, we beat back our abusers, and forced their org and their allies into a complete loss. However this change took a massive toll on our organization internally.

To beat back our abusers we had to become, what was considered by a large sum of our members, a “Hardcore PVP Organization”.

During the transition from a Industrial organization to a “hardcore” Industrial and PVP organization, we respectfully lost almost 50% of our members, most of which left because they didn't want anything to do with PvP. 

Most of the members who left, in 2005, loved S.o.W. as it used to be; a traders guild with not much external “drama” surrounding it. But when "drama" came for us, they weren't strong enough to stick with the org and help us weather the PVP storm. It just wasn't what they signed up for. This taught us a valuable lesson.

 

From Chaos lessons learned

We'd won the war, morale was higher than it had ever been, but in the leadership meetings we had to come to grips with a mistake we  vowed to never make again; “We can never label ourselves as a normal or casual organization, because We can only be as casual as our enemies allow us to be.”...

After the war was won, and surprisingly to us at the time, we gained far more members than we lost.

Our members felt confident and protected. And even though we were attacked afterwards, and even lost a few battles, we knew that we had what it took to adequately defend ourselves and do more than just survive, we could thrive in battle and economically.

We learned from the losses of our membership during this time, and vowed in the future to let our members know upfront what type of org S.o.W. is, was, and will need to be in the future.

We must be able to deal with the many dynamic circumstances our enemies may provide us. This is why we call ourselves a "Hardcore" organization and label ourselves as such.

We will not make the same mistake we made in 2005-06, our members will be prepared for the abusers and griefers of Star Citizen.

We will never give up, we will never surrender, no matter the losses no matter the tenacity of our enemies.

You can only be as casual as your enemies allow you to be.

 

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This is the beauty of a game like Star Citizen. The world is open, each and every person has the option to empower themselves through training to become the hero. To defend themselves and their friends from any threat. In a world where drake caterpillars will be as hunter as real caterpillars... we shall never give up and never surrender.

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