CS7 and World of Tanks

CS7 is a gaming community that I am a part of. The game that most of us play is World of Tanks and I will talk about that in depth below.
http://www.cs7clan.com/index.php
I've been a part of CS7 for a couple years, and there are now over 200 members.
As a Christian "clan" we have a set of behavioral standards that we adhere to, and, in general, we do a good job of lifting each other up, rather than tearing each other down.
I believe our average age is higher than the average gaming group, and there is a core of mature guys and gals who are the backbone of the fellowship. However, we have a good bunch of younger members, who's parents are usually pretty happy that they are gaming in an environment where bad language and toxic attitude is a rarity. In fact, although CS7 is a Christian ministry, it is not, in fact, a Christian-only clan. We have had (and probably still do have) members who are not Christian, but join for the friendly environment.
As far as fellowship goes, we have a Wednesday night Bible study (going through Revelation now), an active forum, and there is usually someone on our TeamSpeak channel.
In addition to World of Tanks, we have members who play Battlefield, Everquest landmark, Minecraft, Star Trek, Star Wars TOR, and a group who are heavily invested in the upcoming Star Citizen world.

Now, on to my favorite game, World of Tanks:
At the basic level, WoT is randomly picked teams of 15 tanks, tank destroyers, and self propelled artillery fighting it out over various terrains. There are hundreds of tanks, with tech trees based on countries (US, UK, France, Soviet Union, Germany, China, and Japan). Tanks are divided in to ten tiers, with tier I being pre-WWII tanks, and tier X being, for the most part, post WWII tanks. Experience and in-game credits allow you to move along the various lines of the tech trees. For the most part, the early tiers are populated with inexperienced gamers, and tiers I and II are divided from all the other tiers, in order to maximize entry-level enjoyment.
World of Tanks is a free-to-play, free-to-win game, where there are no restrictions on tiers or participation based on purchases. There are micro-transactions that you can do if you want, including buying premium time, and premium tanks. Premium time gives you bonuses to how much experience and credits you receive, (50% bonus), and premium tanks give you bonuses to crew training* and are cheaper to maintain than regular vehicles. Premium tanks tend to be a little weaker than comparable tanks of their tier that are maxed out, thus they are NOT a "buy this and win" purchase.
*did I not mention that your tanks have crew in them? Your crews gain experience, and get better attributes, and then further skills and perks. They can be moved to any vehicle in their country, but lose experience for doing so (with larger penalties for moving between classes)
Tank classes... there are -light tanks, these tend to be scouts; fast moving, weak armor and weapons, -medium tanks, average stats all around, -heavy tanks, lots of armor and heavy weapons but slower, -tank destroyers, with widely disparate qualities, but generally low armor, heavy guns, and -SPG self propelled guns, or artillery, which are inaccurate, slow loading, heavy hitting machines. There are so many variations on the tanks, even within the classes that matching style of play with the right tank is an important part of the game.


I'll stop for now, but if anyone is interested, I would be happy to go on at greater length.

Very cool! Did you guys do Extra-Life this year?

That is the gaming-for charity event?
No, I don't know if the guys have ever heard of it...I keep plugging podcasts, and some guys listen, but not to as many as I do.
Besides... it'd be a little misleading to tell people that we would do a marathon gaming session for anything other than compulsion...

Just curious Mikel, but why is it called "CS7"?

Ross wrote:why is it called "CS7"?

The overall clan is and has always been, "Christian Soldiers 7th Division". Wargaming, the parent company of World of Tanks, has a rule against proselytizing in the game. They are rather wishy-washy on that rule, and generally have a live and let live attitude, as long as no one complains. As our clan grew we gained notoriety as "that Christian clan" which led to conflict with some clans and individuals who found our name offensive.
Wargaming made us change our name. We debated changing the name altogether, but decided that we already had a "brand". So we changed our name from "CS7 Christian Soldiers 7th" to "CS7"...which fools no one (that is the point) but is technically within the rules.
In other games we are still "Christian Soldiers 7th" with the abbreviation "CS7". The one I have paid the most attention to is Star Citizen, where the powers-that-be have a very hands-off approach...or maybe just have a more free-association mindset. Because the SC game is to be a galaxy-simulator we can be a group of space-faring missionaries if we want: we will just have to deal with the outcomes of that for good or ill.

mikel.withers wrote:

Ross wrote: why is it called "CS7"?

The overall clan is and has always been, "Christian Soldiers 7th Division". Wargaming, the parent company of World of Tanks, has a rule against proselytizing in the game. They are rather wishy-washy on that rule, and generally have a live and let live attitude, as long as no one complains. As our clan grew we gained notoriety as "that Christian clan" which led to conflict with some clans and individuals who found our name offensive.
Wargaming made us change our name. We debated changing the name altogether, but decided that we already had a "brand". So we changed our name from "CS7 Christian Soldiers 7th" to "CS7"...which fools no one (that is the point) but is technically within the rules.
In other games we are still "Christian Soldiers 7th" with the abbreviation "CS7". The one I have paid the most attention to is Star Citizen, where the powers-that-be have a very hands-off approach...or maybe just have a more free-association mindset. Because the SC game is to be a galaxy-simulator we can be a group of space-faring missionaries if we want: we will just have to deal with the outcomes of that for good or ill.

That's cool, I would love to participate in that idea for Star Citizen, and I think that game would be right up my alley, unfortunately I KNOW my computer would gasp its last breath on that. Maybe when I get back stateside I can hang out with you guys on some other platform or something. Why the "7th Division" though, any reason?

As far as Star Citizen goes, I was a huge fan of Wing Commander (I had to mentally translate from "Man-Kzin Wars" to "Wing Commander") so when I heard that the creator of that and Freelancer was going for a totally immersive game, I was super-excited. However, my poor non-gaming PC is just incapable of running it, so I look on at my friends in something akin to jealous awe. Maybe in five years or so when I can afford a computer capable of running it I can jump in as a noob and muddle my way through the mega-corps that will have arisen.

Why "7th division"? As our founder "Jay" once said, it sounded kind of cool...and that kind of works.

mikel.withers wrote:As far as Star Citizen goes, I was a huge fan of Wing Commander (I had to mentally translate from "Man-Kzin Wars" to "Wing Commander") so when I heard that the creator of that and Freelancer was going for a totally immersive game, I was super-excited. However, my poor non-gaming PC is just incapable of running it, so I look on at my friends in something akin to jealous awe. Maybe in five years or so when I can afford a computer capable of running it I can jump in as a noob and muddle my way through the mega-corps that will have arisen.

Duuuuude. Chris Roberts games are in fact the best, I'm feeling a great force compelling me to buy a new computer now....no....will not...

I loved Freelancer and am a terrible, terrible WC nerd. I've read most of the novel adaptations of the games and sometimes I still watch the in game movies from WC 3, 4 and Prophecy. It was one of the games that had a big impact on me as a kid. I actually still haven't played Privateer or WC 4 yet though, I'll probably purchase them from GOG at some point. I completely agree about the jealous awe thing, I'd like to play it too. Its just GOG.com for me, for now though.

Maybe if I have to replace this hunk of junk in a year or two. My favorite IP (WH40K) has an MMO release coming up next year so we may NEED to do that :-)

The Warhammer world is really cool. I prefer the non-40k version though. When I was having serious panic attacks a lot, I would try anything to stop them...Yoga was awful, least relaxing thing I think I have ever done, and that was before I looked into the religious aspects of it.... so for me, painting miniatures became my go-to thing. A neighbor even got me cat whiskers to do fine detail work. My Imperial Longswords were really neat...so much so that my son thought they were toys, not decorations, and now i think I have a pair of legs and maybe a sword+arm someplace...but that is it.
I really like "Shadow of the Horned Rat" back in the day, and I think a terrific MMO would be your unit being your character... doing Merc work or what have you.

mikel.withers wrote:
Wargaming made us change our name. We debated changing the name altogether, but decided that we already had a "brand". So we changed our name from "CS7 Christian Soldiers 7th" to "CS7"...which fools no one (that is the point) but is technically within the rules.

Wow. If you guys were preaching the gospel on the servers, I get that. But they made you change your name just because it had "Christian" in it? I might have been able to eventually cool down enough to not make a big stink about it online, but I'd really want to (calmly and peacefully) talk to the powers that be on that one and try to understand how that ruling isn't discrimination.

A couple of our members HAD gotten in trouble for "preaching" in-game. I forget the exact terms of the EULA, but "Christian" in our clan name was against it. ...I think the spirit of the rule is to keep people from having names that are anti-particular religion, but the letter of the law bars the usage.
Some of our guys were pretty miffed, a couple seriously considered quitting altogether. I was in the camp that by keeping our initials, we kept our identity, and in doing so we were not going to be silenced. Kind of like: better us in the game, then all Christians abandoning it altogether. I have to say that WarGaming does a good job of not discriminating, we are not the only clan to get nailed. They do, however, show leniency to some of the high-ranking professional grade players that have names that I have reported as offensive.

Well, this world is broken, but all things considered that sounds like it could have gone much worse. My hat's off to you for how you handled it. Good reasoning.