why merge failed

hey folks,

to start, i want to say that everyone from MPA is still family to me. it's weird calling people i met on an online gaming family, but there were some good times. 

i can't say i know the exact details. but i think it's important for members to know what happened from when i was brought into the mix. when the merge happened, it was quite sudden. for anyone not in leadership, it was just fun. tons of MPA people ported over and the merge just happened. what most (and by most, i mean everyone outside the 10 or so people in leadership) didn't know was how much struggle there was behind the scenes.

old und had our style. loose, fun, kill shit, and worry about shit like TD, EA, EW etc 2ndary.

MPA had their own style. a lot more structured and organized, clear cut roles for each leader, and a clear chain of command.

seven recognized that in order to succeed, we needed to merge. we would be the ultimate alliance. obviously with merges there are difficulties. MPA gave up a lot, they ported over and ported their farms over. a few of their deputies stayed back to keep the MPA alliance healthy, a few stayed because they didn't think the merge would work out.

honestly, everything appeared to be dandy to all of us R2 and under folks. but behind the scenes a lot of bickering was going on. i don't want to go into exact details. but since i chat with everyone, things now makes sense to me. the first sign of tensions that i noticed was when ZK was booted from leader chat, he was upset regarding tech research. he was passionate and wanted our old mates back in (by expanding faster, they can all come back). the next sign was COhiker leaving, then coming back, then leaving again.

d/t tensions, lack of hearing voices and tones, people got more and more upset. an understanding was met when leadership was given to 7. this little peace lasted shortly. this is also when i was brought into the fold.

by the time i was brought it, i was overwhelmed. it took me 2-3 days to figure out what was going on, but the final 2 days of the alliance broke down to this.

seven brought milky way aka kit kat from MPA over to help organize. he needed a brute biatch to just come in and tell us what to do. so she did as asked. unfortunately, i think it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. i know i was a bit irritated. but all the things she implemented were positive (imo). unfortunately there were a lot of side chats. we have strong personalities here.. ZK DUKE SEVEN SKOZZ. it's not easy to get 4 type A guys playing a war game to agree.

MPA said they would stay if 7 was leader and we split deputies evenly. some people didn't want duke as a deputy. i honestly felt we were very close... but then skozz told a joke... someone mentioned something about skozz as r4. and he laughed and said he's r5. seven took it the wrong way. he thought skozz was accusing him of stealing the alliance and pretty much said i'm done. skozz got upset and pointed out that this is the exact drama that he was complaining about. seven quit, gave skozz leadership. skozz got pissed and said fine, you want organization. he booted a bunch of MPA from leadership positions. he sent out a letter regarding TD etc times and said we're going to go back to killing shit.

mind you, duke is traveling back from vacation and driving on and off. he signs on, sees he got booted from deputy, and pretty much says fuck it, i'm going back to MPA and offered home for anyone that wanted to come back.

that's how the split happened. by the end, UND representation was 7, skozz, myself, and lusty. mpa was duke, kit kat aka kk aka milky way, mad dog and juan sanchez.

mpa said the only way they would come back is if skozz was r4, not r5. skozz admitted to me that he made some brash decisions. but he honestly seemed tired of all the bullshit.. we all were. i was in a damn chatroom listening to people argue for 2 whole days. i hated it. he gave leadership to thrasher to let him solve it. now und representation was thrasher, myself and lusty.

thrasher had a good plan. r5 is a dummy account, 4 und members are deputies (myself, thrasher, lusty, skozz, 4 mpa of their choice). it was suggested that ZK and duke not be deputy, d/t both of them being too passionate. it was a starting point, but what broke down was.

1) mpa wouldn't accept that their leader would not be at least r4 in the merge. further reinforcing how they feel that some of the und members look down on them, seeing them as 2nd tier players.

2) mpa wouldn't accept a dummy account, because they worried that skozz could get upset again, take back leadership and boot everyone.

thrasher felt that a split leadership was the only fair thing. mpa didn't trust us with a dummy account shared by all. at this point, negotiations broke down.

note: this is MY viewpoint of what happened. i was there for every single conversation starting at the point where seven was the leader. anything before that.. the pre merge shit.. i have no idea.

we tried, we failed. we're stupid. i know for a fact that there were people in MPA that never wanted this to work out. i've spoken to them, i can just tell. but there were also guys in UND that didn't help the situation. they know who they are, they know they contributed to the fall merge, and yes, they feel bad about it.

MPA did not poach alex or karasu, they left on their own free will. we did not and will not poach players back. i absolutely condone poaching of players. if ya'll are former friends and chat, fine.. i don't care. if people come back, it's on their own, UND WILL NOT actively recruit people back from MPA.

right now our relationship is fragile. we are union with MPA. we fight our own battles, but we have a common enemy. if VKW comes and attacks MPA hard, i'll be the first to drop tags and go help. i did that earlier today when they rallied against fragles. MANY mpa players have said they would do the same for us. i don't want misunderstandings breaking things up. it's obvious we are stronger together. we just need the right leadership in place to lead US as a team. vs 2 different people in the same company competing against each other.

if anyone has any questions, please come directly to me. lets keep alliance chat to fun stuff, killing, and calling times.

all new members, GET LINE APP and send lusty your username. she'll add you. we have a 699 realm with current and former und member/friends. and we have an emergency line. you post there ONLY during emergencies, it's for if you're being attacked, or if farms are being attacked. 

shoestring fail weekend

Everyone talks about how awesome shoestring was, well, damnit, i'm going after it. I ignored the fact that it rained and was 60-70 F all week. i knew thursday night was cold and friday would hover around the freezing temps. everyone at work was getting sick, courtney to my left was sick all week, d, to my right was out sick wed and thursday. i was starting to feel like crap on thursday and was really worried about the weekend. by the time thursday night came i knew i was f'ed. i went to bed at 8pm, took a nyquil, 2 melatonin and a naproxin. i woke up at 6am and could barely open my throat. i called in sick, but i couldn't fall back asleep. i just laid in bed moaning like wuss for 2-3 hours. 

i had plans for a few weeks to climb with becca and a 2nd partner, but one after another the 2nd partners bailed. by the time it was friday i was too sick, and too tired to try and find a 3rd. i figured i wasn't feeling great anyways, so climbing in 2 would be faster. i generally drive up friday night, but figured it would be nice to go to bed early, in my own bed and get a late start sat morning if i felt better. shoestring is short anyways, i knew i needed the fresh air. i spent most of friday doing everything to recover, i made chicken noodle soup, i stayed warm, i drank tons of fluids. sat morning was rough, i was achy and congested, but we made the drive up. we got to shoestring and there was no ice... well, there was ice, just not something worth climbing. so we headed to willard, which looked pretty fat.

becca and i soloed the bottom section, which had more ice than i had ever seen, it was quite fun. prob wi2- stuff. i knew there were people on LHMW, so i decided to check out lower hitchcock, a climb i vowed to never do again. when i got to the base of the climb, i noticed a v-thread, i'm guessing someone decided to either rap off, or bail off. regardless, it looked pretty good so i called becca up and i went for it. super easy wi2 climbing lead to the rock section. the first time i was on it, i had no idea where i was going and went straight up the middle, it was scary and i had no pro the whole way up. with beta, i realized that i was supposed to go left, which i did this time. i tried traversing back onto the face, but the climb was so bone dry my tools wouldn't latch onto anything. i decided to downclimb and work my way up the left. a few tool sinks in the left and some hands on climbing got me up. of course, becca made it look super easy. she put her tools away and just climbed it bare handed...

we had some lunch and decided to get on east face slab south, a climb that i somehow have never been on. i recall aaron saying that he had to bushwack really far back to find a decent tree to anchor, and since we only had a 70 meter rope, i decided to just look around and see what i could find. luckily, i found a tree with rap rings on it. i brought becca up and decided that i should rap first in case the rope didn't reach. glad i did, they were about 15 feet off, even with rope stretch. i built an anchor on some stupid thin ice and let her rap off of that while i down climbed. a bit spicy, a lot of fun. next we hit upper hitchcock, it's a fun little calf burner and the upper headwall was in super candled conditions. really fun easy climbing, if you're ok with going the whole way without pro. i get up, anchor in and bring becca up.

it had been a few years since i've done upper hitch, i forgot that the walk off goes by the summit, it was nice to catch a decent view. we met a local who was on a hike after working at bretton woods, she was pretty happy to get up with some daylight left. from there it was a straight shot to the trellis to unload gear to dry. we opted for delaneys hole in the wall, got lucky and scored bar seating, ate all the things, then i just crashed. took a sudafed, a couple of melatonin and simply prayed i would sleep 10 hours and feel awesome the next morning. alarm rang at 6:30, i was so confused (yay drugs), i reset it for 7, then again at 7:30. after some bitching and moaning to myself i was able to pull myself out of bed, get packed really quick and head the bagels plus. bumped into the capitan and jake, so weird seeing her in NH, without 10 other news team members and 2 vans. i was going to yell out "news team, assemble" but it was like 8:30am and i didn't want the locals to hate me. by the time we got to the parking lot, it was 10 am. becca had to be back in RI by 5, 6 latest. figured we would do a single climb and call it a day. i thought of standard to penguin, or dracula. there were 3 parties on standard, so i opted for dracula. by the time i hiked up to the base, the leader was at least 8 or 9 screws and starting the stemming section of the climb. it took him roughly another 30 minutes to finish that section. they took a pretty cool line, center to right. i figured i would just go left, but i really wanted to dry dracula right, so i opted to wait for them to finish. all in all, it takes about 90 minutes. apparently these guys were "swinging" leads on dracula, in the sense that they couldn't do the crux, get lowered, switch off and let the other guy TR up to try it. one of them took a fall at the crux as well. people need to realize ice climbing is not rock climbing, if you're placing 12+ screws to get up dracula, and taking pretty much aiding up the climb, you probably shouldn't be on it... but who am i to say.  i got really cold, but figured we had to get moving. i wanted to take their line, but not use their holds, so i moved a bit right. i got about 30 feet up and my hands started to barf since my gloves got wet (on another note, is dracula ever friggan dry?). i threw in a screw, clipped in and hung for 2-3 minutes. i hastily started out too soon as my hands were not done barfing, put in a 2nd screw and hung on that, only to hear the ice crack once i weighted it, fired in another screw to the left, moved over, clipped that and decided to just wait until i was done barfing before i moved again. few minutes go by, my hands are done barfing and i was able to move again. i make my way up to the last 3rd of the climb fire in a screw try to warm my hands up before i work up the last section. the stemming made it really easy i fired in another screw before pulling the top out only to realize that i wanted to go left, so i down climb a bit, traverse over and climb rock that was covered in a thin layer of ice, covered by a thicker layer of snow. i bring becca up, she also gets the barfies on the first 3rd, and just hangs to shake out and warm up. after that, she fires up the climb quite easily. 

drying your gear, and drying your gear quickly is important. this is my getup, what is yours?