The Truth about the Breakup of Valor Elite

Our first Editiorial Piece is courtesy of AutumnWindz. As a Forum regular and charter member of Valor Elite, he felt it necessary not only to eulogize but to help people understand the history behind VE--Valor's FIRST flagship clan, he talks about VE's Birth, challenges, accomplishments, and finally, their demise.

"VE never had big egos or a spokesman talking it up anywhere, there was no trash talk coming from VE, and there were no forum sigs for VE, but VE was a great clan and I feel it was overlooked sometimes while it existed, it never got the kind of recognition that its greatness deserved. So here's VE, from my eyes, as an officer and original Valor Beta Vet."

-AutumnWindz
Prologue

In the betas, Valor had two major clans running things, The New Era =+= and Elements of Death EOD. Both clans regularly fielded enough players to fill half a platoon or more, and Valor's reputation for dominating in Domination was in large part thanks to the large-scale organization that clans like this provided, something that Raven and SVER at that time could not compete with.

With the retail release, =+= went to SVER first for the trophies and stayed there just long enough to realize that Zipper was patching the game into oblivion, and thus The New Era effectively ended as a force on MAG as most of their members left MAG before even coming back to Valor. What that left was EOD on Valor as the only remaining organized, powerhouse clan from the betas. I myself was in a clan, called W-H, with BattleCry1791. We were small, but we were elite, and we regularly won 90% of our games in all game modes, including various wins on Domination that would not have happened without us. After a while, EOD and W-H merged. What happened there was that, a month or so into the retail release, we had effectively created the first super-clan in MAG, regularly filling 3 squads in games with many of the best players in Valor. This was the birth of VE, sometime in early March or so.

Valor = VE

For about two to three months (March - May), VE was genuinely the best clan on Valor. This was before GUN or ARx came around, and before Up$ had built its name up. When great players from other factions came to Valor, VE was the place to be. When randoms needed a good clan, VE was it. We were picking up new members every day, and out of those there were quite a few straight-up killers that boosted our profile that much more. Quite a few ARx and GUN members today are former VE players. At VE's peak, we had the top Valor and 3rd overall player in the world (BattleCry), 7 top 100 players (including myself), and around 20 top 1000 players.

Valor is still pretty organized in terms of clans, and in my opinion Valor has always had the most win-hungry players and the most team-oriented players. VE epitomized this, and then threw in a dozen or so 3.0 KDR type killers who shared the team mentality. In my opinion, there is no other large clan now apart from TDF that can say this, and that is what made VE the best clan in Valor at the time. We rarely lost, there was an entire month where I was holding a monthly win-ratio of around 95%, and set records of an attacking win in Sabotage with 18:17 on the clock, as well as over 60 wins on Acquisition weekend, with 22 straight wins at one point.

But then one of the leaders, Harbie, former longtime leader of EOD, decided to retire from gaming immediately. He was the one that had been organizing things such as weekly practice meets, setting up the website, and putting together tactical squads in preparation for clan wars. Another leader, BattleCry's PS3 died, and VE began to crumble from within. The weekly practice meets went by the wayside, and players began leaving. In VE's early days VE won many more than it lost against almost all other clans, but by June and July when it was more common to run into other clans (due to lower player counts), VE was already a mere shadow of its former self, and in late July VE officially disbanded.

Epilogue
Most VE people have floated off into the winds, some found other clans in Valor, some of our best guys left MAG forever and the rest of us, after 400-1000 hours each on Valor, have moved to Raven for some less stressful MAG time (check us out at PinkFluffyBunny [ :) ]). It’s sad when you think back on it, how it didn’t last longer and how Valor actually really needs a super clan like that right now. This is not to say that Valor's current top clans aren't good, but I don't think any of them could regularly field 2-3 full squads and roll every game mode, especially Domination, like we used to.
VE may not have had the best group of straight beast killers like some more recent clans have done, but when you put 8-10 beast killers with 10-15 more above-average team players in one platoon, and then have them all share the same goal of winning together, that is the most powerful thing in MAG and VE accomplished it.

Here's to one of the less-talked about 'best' clans that MAG has seen, Valor Elite_ [VE], and all the members that made it happen and made it worth writing about.

Being Valor's Flagship Clan: 
Valor's flagship clan? I know a lot of people now would take offense to VE being known as the flagship clan, but... we definitely were THE Valor clan for awhile as I stated earlier. Back then, only (and I mean only) 3C and TDF put up really good fights against us regularly. However VE merely exists as a memory now. Those of us currently on Raven definitely liked Valor, I mean most of us spent at least 400+ hours on Valor, but in the end MAG is a video game, and the Valor portion of the game had seriously burnt us out. If MAG was real life and Valor was for real, VE would have been the elite operations group, and VE breaking up would be like if we all decided to retire home to our families before fighting so hard for Valor took us away once and for all... instead, MAG is a video game and VE disbanded, and some of us went to Raven.

Why VE wasn't high-profile:

I've always felt that VE didn't get the kind of recognition it deserved because we literally had no big talkers, no forum-trolls, no shiny clan sigs, no stat-padders, but VE was the best clan Valor had. So this has all been our side of the story. Basically, if/when we ever go back to Valor, there will be no VE either. Valor's flagship clan used to be VE, but there are other clans on Valor now.

Why VE Disbanded:

This may not be the 'edgiest' thing you've heard, but it also isn't quite what you'd expect. It wasn't the leadership, it wasn't the members of VE, and it certainly wasn't any external enemy. There were rarely any disagreements, we won more than enough to keep anyone from rage-quitting, and members who were kicked were all newcomers who weren't following the "VE way" (tm). At VE's core was a fiery drive to win all games for Valor.

It was Valor's fault that VE dissolved.

Valor PMC killed Valor Elite as a clan, and it killed many of its greatest players. VE regularly carried entire platoons to victory in Sabotage games, we always split our forces and saved the other side in Acquisition, and we split our power between all four platoons in Domination, with just one or two of our members each holding down one letter, spread around ALL 8 letters sometimes. Each of our members were carrying on their backs up to an entire other squad of randoms in Valor games in order to get the win, and while we had plenty of members that were more than capable of doing so, as you can imagine, it got incredibly tiring and frustrating after hundreds of hours. VE was made up of some of the most hardcore Valor vets around (including myself), and the fact that we had to do literally everything to get close to a win really burnt us out as a clan, and burnt our players out regularly. Many players left over time to go to other factions or join clans that were less serious about winning on Valor, and yet others (some of our greatest players) just up and stopped playing MAG at all. Valor burned our players, and eventually burned VE to the ground as well.

Think about this - I had never vetted in over 400 hours and spent all that time on Valor because for me, MAG = Valor. My first and only vet so far has been once to Raven.

Basically, the leadership couldn't have held it together even if we tried. A lot of our remaining players still do play together - just not on Valor and just not as VE. VE was a great thing but it was perhaps too great and achieved so much, because it demanded too much out of itself and its players.

Expelling Members:

I don't remember who exactly was kicked out of VE, but one was kicked for camp sniping at the spawn while we needed direct help at objective A in Sabo (we were assigned to B, but helping A out as usual) and another was kicked for always asking for officer positions even though there were others far more deserving. There were more who were kicked, lol.

Valor:

Valor has the most fun maps to defend and attack, on all game modes, hands down. Their weapons are fun to use as well. Their look isn't weird like Raven or stupid like SVER. Valor never had overpowered maps like SVER, and Valor's play-style isn't stab-happy hide-in-the-bushes like Raven, so I still prefer Valor's straight-up shoot me or I shoot you kind of feel. I think a lot of us still like Valor alot, it's just that Valor was really abusive as a PMC while we were there and for me at least, I'm probably on Raven to stay for quite a while. It was really dedicated work to achieve the 83% win rate I had on Valor, which is something I think even most serious Valor clans now can't hold in the long-term.

Valor's Clans:

Speaking of Valor, I think all of Valor's current good clans are pretty good. Specific mention goes to GUN because we used to play with their core players a lot and they are great guys, ARx because they're organized and have a few of our ex-members, and Up$ because despite what people think of them, they're solid and PDIGGY is actually pretty laid back and a good teammate as well. The top clans have some great players and organization for sure. KEQ is great as well. But I do feel that they all lack the sort of golden combination of numbers, skill, teamwork, and dedication that VE had. You need lots of players, but you also need high overall skill, good leadership, and you have to be super determined to pull off wins on Valor even if it means your KDR gets wrecked. I still don't think there are any clans on Valor that have over 80% win rates in all game modes overall. And that is no disrespect, playing on Valor is the hardest... but VE gave me an 83% win rate that would put me at top 10 on Valor currently.

On Raven:

We've made a lot of friends on Raven in our short two weeks here so far, including TDF, whom I have immense respect for as a clan, and we've picked up a few great additions to our group of regular players. And at least Raven isn't SVER.

Blog Extra: This is easily one of our best and most informative pieces and we hope that Zipper is reading this. Valor PMC is essentially the majority of MAG's newer players and their ineptness is an indictment of your total lack of a true training mode (as people like Stylie77 and Thagmor have addressed repeatedly) This ignorance on how the game is meant to be played is a microcosm of what goes on in the game in general. MAG is a game with a bit of a learning curve when you compare it to current FPS's. To not include a mode that goes in-depth, is mandatory and explains MAG to newer players makes the game noob-unfriendly and frustrating for MAG Veterans.

Fun facts about VE
Everyone was required to have full rez on all loadouts. This was agreed on as a founding principle by the original co-leaders.
Everyone was required to have a mic and use it, especially in leadership positions.

At its peak, VE had ~50 members
VE had 2 leaders (co-led) and 4 officers
Players who failed to play as a team in a game could be kicked, and at least two were indeed kicked

CTM, the old clan of NbkxWarrior, Young_Godz, and Ace_Skillz, was originally supposed to merge in with VE as well. (Props to them for making GUN afterwards though, good clan)
VE always had an opening for a good assault sniper, but that was never filled.