Earlier today, DHB Wildcat, formally of Warlords of the Deep, winners of this years alliance tournament, posted what appeared to be an admission of foul-play between Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire. It fell to Kadesh Priestess, who is still a member of Warlords of the Deep, and CEO of This Game is Terrible to respond to the accusations.
Evening all,
I have been left with the unpleasant task of replying to this post and accusation by a valued member of our AT Team. The DHB was crucial in many of the matches we had to win, his advice during matches with regards to target calling, positioning and general awareness were vital to us winning this year.
It is with great sadness that we’ve had to air some dirty laundry in public, and that the DHB felt unable to come to us privately and discuss his concerns about the matches or to validate any suspicious he may have had about the way in which either matches were conducted.Within the DHB’s post, there are various opinions he has given which have been portrayed as facts which we will here debunk, sadly we’re going to have to be pretty brutal in our analysis:
Match 1: Warlords had brought typhoons the entire tournament, we were comfortable in this setup and it made sense for us to bring, however camels brought a setup that a tough nut to crack. The reason there was “wierd” target calling was that the DHB was not privy to any of the theorycrafting decisions that were made during the construction of their of these setups. During tests we had not shot the ET buddy (bellicose) because we were testing the efficacy of the setup vs team who doesn’t know all details of how it works, in the real thing it was the obvious primary and that is exactly what we went for. Sadly our tactic failed as we lacked tackle/webs on our target due to screening and ECM drones and so we lost the match. As to the matter of the starting lineup of pilots; Warlords as a team has a very limited number of pilots to run with, however it had been discussed multiple times of removing the DHB entirely from matches because of his disruptive, long and frankly annoying method of communication. Against Camels, arguably one of the harder teams, we needed peace on comms. This decision was eventually overruled by myself.
Match 2: Camels brought a turtle. A strong one. We got out drafted, nothing more, nothing less. We gambled they would bring a different setup which was weaker to the typhoons, given the bans, and we were confident we could win and out execute them. The DHB has compared this to game 2 of the finals, people will note in game 2, we successfully bumped their vessels, and furthermore, Camels widow’s disconnected twice during the fight in the finals. Comparing these 2 and then drawing a conclusion that something must have been up is illogical.
The DHB has been part of Hydra for 3 years, during AT12 he happily accepted his Chameleon prize without any feelings of remorse of dishonour, and furthermore he won roughly 280bn isk betting on the fact that Camel would infact win with evebet, during AT13 he also acquired his AT ship quite happily and netted a modest 360bn on bets of us winning. Any such self loathing or feelings of despair would be believable, however if the DHB was truly as principled as he wants to sound he would not have accepted the chameleon he was given a year ago and the uniques he was given this year for his efforts.
As to the finals, Warlords had been executing and playing incredibly well the entire final day, we had crushed exodus, and then annihilated PL in matches that couldn’t even be considered close. The on form team performed much better than the team that hadn’t had much time to get into things.
I will focus on game 3 and 4. For any alliance, or any person, to say let us sacrifice a potential half a trillion isk to appease the opinion of a single alliance, they could be considered mentally challenged. Throughout the PL series, we switched 2 out of 5 RSBs to RECCMs, and camel had just brought a widow turtle, and we knew they had an Etana/Widow turtle. We did not change RSB/RECCM layout after PL fight, it has been kept-as is, as we considered jamms as bigger threat than damps. We lost only one RSB in the beginning because it was on the frigate.
During match 4, camel had brought a setup that could very well have won, however they were not playing like in training. So my original calls were correct until the game changed. DHB did a good job in changing the targets we should have been neuting, as our 2 fc’s tunnel visioned and we won. The DHB claiming a lot of praise for the decisions that match, however, is false and self serving. He did very little except get himself tackled out of position, and change the malice neuting target.
Now that we have dealt with his apparent ideas of how the matches go, a few words about his accusations and opinions:
The DHB was part of theorycrafting, and a pilot, this was the entirety of his involvement in the AT. His theory crafting suggestions were not listened to so he rage quit the channel multiple times. His ideas he posted on our suggestions forums were removed by him when they were analysed and dismissed. A large number of his suggestions revolved around using Alliance Tournament ships, or overly expensive, not in line with the meta, or insistent on using ships that were not effective at all, in other words, they were straight up bad.Anything that he has posted or insinuated in his post, is his opinion and that is the entirety of its validity. He had no access to any of the leadership channels of Warlords, he was not privy to any discussions within leadership, nor was he involved in any of the FC’ing or decision making process before any match.
The DHBs bad temper and negative attitude throughout the entire alliance tournament caused many issues within the Warlords team, that prides itself on being a fairly healthy environment to be in. If things went against the DHBs way he had a tendency to go on tilt, and shout and scream on comms or ingame until his voice was heard, and then summarily dismissed. During the camel series he was incredibly angry at the fact that we had lost so badly, everyone in the team was down, however he was most notably incensed because of his nature. That chatlog is completely bullshit.
If CCP would require such empirical evidence as to our lack of collusion on any of the matches, we recorded much of our match communications, although we did not expect to have to release them (especially because of a deluded line member) and we would be willing to release them to disprove the accusations posted.The long and the short of it is this: the DHB felt fairly undervalued this tournament, his opinions were generally disregarded, his attitude was terrible and he had a lot of friction with members of the team. He has cashed out over 800bn isk personally between the 2 tournaments he feels so bad about participating in, has gladly accepted his AT ships without qualm and infact asked to buy more, and further than that he is attempting to discredit 30+ people who trained hard, played hard and dedicated a lot of time to win a tournament that was arguably the best tournament in recent years. His opinions are his opinions and his alone, they do not reflect that actual facts, and more importantly his opinions are based on nothing more than conjecture, an inflated ego, and a strong belief in something that isn’t there.
Any insinuation or accusation of collusion we categorically deny. Warlords played 100% to win every game, we put everything on the line in a number of matches, including those in which we are accused of “colluding.” Both teams played their hardest to win, and anyone saying otherwise does nothing more than discredit the team-mates you played with and trained with for over 3 months, tarnishes their name and reputation. I wasted hours trying to calm you down over minor and unimportant things these past few months including humoring all your ******* ******** setup ideas and I thought it was over with the end of the tournament but you still find a way to completely waste my time. Glad you left on your own.
Despite this reply, we will probably never know the truth behind the accusations, but with a defense submitted, what is your opinion, are Warlords of the Deep, and by association Camel Empire, innocent or guilty? Is this a legitimate defense, or an attempt of character assassination against DHB Wildcat?
