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First, I want to congratulate Team Orange and especially the Philippines. I am not trying to detract from your victory and your battle resolve is impressive, even to an old warrior like me.

Really, there's no one else I would rather lose to.

I have been told I do not have a very good reputation in the Philippines, but I'm used to my bad reputation. I still like the Philippines and #e-sim.ph is the only foreign channel I auto-join when I log into IRC.

And, really, that's what bothers me the most.

It's hard to express how disappointed I am, right now. Even explaining it doesn't accurately convey, because it's being contrasted with such excitement and optimism from less than 24 hours ago.

Tournament Events are almost never interesting.

Only one World War has ever lasted more than 9 rounds and a vast majority of Team Cup battles ending in 11 rounds or less, with 55.56% of all Team Cup battles (excluding the current Event) ending in a blow out of 8 or 9 rounds. More than half the battles are 'no-contest' victories.

The United States, being the prudent and jaded country we are, recognized this would be the case immediately and, as a rule, has never fully invested in any event. The closest we have come is offering some partial level of supplies to encourage people to participate and have fun and spend some money.

Having gone some time without a real fight and having a strategic reserve of around 6000 Q5 weapons and, most importantly, having a very strong team this time including the likes of Greece, Macedonia, Slovenia. After the initial victory against team Yellow and seeing how the rest of the tournament was likely to stack up, we made the decision to put our full weight into this one.

The US squared of with Team Green, facing a battle in which we were down 5 of 6 rounds after day change. We rallied, the best fighters in the United States strategically buffing as our rank-and-file fighters petered out, leaving our heaviest hitters time to hold the early rounds after day change of the Team Finals.

As the comeback materialized, the Philippines became increasingly aware that they may face us and not Poland in the Final. I hung out in the Philippines and we exchanged friendly jabs and analyzed the lay of the strategic landscape between rounds.

Greece, many of whom had believed the battle was lost when they went to bed, woke up to Team Blue winning 6 of 11 rounds. They rallied their forces and carried our momentum, winning narrow victories and securing our place in the Finals.

Somewhere around half the spectators of these final rounds were players that were not even involved.

The eyes of the world watched to see the most stunning upset victory in the history of eSim Event battles.

The atmosphere in our channels was indescribable.

If eSim had cars to turn over and dumpsters or couches to set on fire, we would have had a riot like follows sporting events.

This is what Team Cups should be like.

With much of Greek damage tapped, we lost a string of rounds against Team Orange. This was not unexpected, with the real question on everyone's minds being, "What will happen after day change?"

The answer was one so disappointing, no one could have predicted it.

The server was down for two and a half hours, seriously eroding US momentum as it moved into primetime. When the game was back online, the battle had Two hours and Fourteen minutes to go. Now, I recall calculating that the first round after day change would be at about 01:00 server time. Maybe I miscalculated, but I'm pretty sure it didn't have more than two hours on the clock at day change.

As the round 7 drew to a close, the US mustered it's forces and stared down the gathering swarm of Filipinos.


It feels a little like this.

With the debuff clock ticking down for the strongest of our forces, we prepared the throw down and turn the tide...

Then, with roughly three minutes left... the server went into maintenance mode as it does every day. We all grumbled and refreshed the page uncomfortably for five minutes. Then ten minutes.

Reality set in, for many of us older players. About a year ago, this was a major problem, with '5 Minute Maintenance' lasting for hours until someone showed up at the eSim office to kick the server in the morning.

The server remained in maintenance mode for around three more hours.

I even had time to take a nap.

When I was awoken by mrmariokartguy 's pings to find the server back up, I found I was lucky enough to be one of, I believe, two US Delta Force members who had not yet debuffed. I had 20 minutes to deal my damage, awesome.

Then I looked at the round.

The clock, which had closed at T-3, was now back to 40 minutes. I would not be able to fight at T-2, so I dumped what was left of my damage and began rallying what few US troops I could muster as Filipino damage rolled in. It was 1:30 AM where I am in the US and was around 3 in the afternoon Filipino time. We poured everything into that round and lost.

At that point, with the US going into the very early hours of the morning and the Philippines just entering prime time, I made the decision to withdraw and ask all remaining fighters to return their supplies. We were now under 1000 of the original 6000 Q5 weapons we had in stock yesterday, many of them going to players who lost patience or simply had to sleep. A lot of those we will probably not get back.

I'm not writing this because I'm upset that we didn't win. I'm sure many people will believe that, but it's not the case. I'm upset that the US finally had a chance in a tournament, and our role in it was destroyed. The four rounds we can normally secure over night were reduced to one round, that we ended up losing. Round seven ended up lasting for at minimum EIGHT HOURS, with the clock actually ticking for nearly three hours in game.

The United States was cheated out of a chance to make a difference in a battle we were excited about.

The Philippines was cheated out of a chance to prove, beyond any argument, that they are a World Class military force.

eSim was cheated out of what promised to be perhaps the most spectacular contest any of us had seen for some time.

Could the US fighters have secured victories through the night and into the European morning? Would the Philippines have enough supplies to hold at bay heavily armed American fighters?


I've been in a lot of fights and have developed strategy for many alliances and I've developed the strategies that have won upset victories more than once. I'm pretty familiar with the war module.

But I don't know the answer. I can't even guess, except to say that it would have been very close, and very interesting.

We'll never know.

We can argue about it all day, and I'm sure some people will. I'm sure some Americans will be sure that, if the server had preformed as it was supposed to, nothing could stop our might. I'm sure some Filipinos will be convinced that nothing could have stopped their numbers.

But really, none of us will ever know.

And that's the greatest tragedy.

I don't want a medkit to make me feel better.

I don't want a medal.

I don't want anything they can ever give me.

What I wanted was a fair fight.

What I wanted was that fight.

And I don't think what Filipinos wanted was a hollow victory, with Americans giving up just as they're getting ready to go toe-to-toe with us. I had so many of them trying to tell me it wasn't over and not to give up.

Because this isn't what they wanted either.

They wanted to defeat us on the field of battle as warriors.

Not for us to see the impending checkmate coming 10 moves down and concede their victory, as if it were a chess match.

That's why I say nobody won.

All of us lost more than we could ever be won, now.

That's the real tragedy.

Love,


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