SITREP: AM01-MIKE-03 Cell Battle
Man.... What an adventure that cell battle event was. I don't think I've had the pleasure of that kind of competition since I was back in MIKE-04. Well fought everyone.
About a 1-2 years ago, one of the Res I speak with regularly forwarded along an open discussion an agent was having about one of our ENL counterparts. They ridiculed their profession, stating they felt their job was better than theirs and they made more money than the other player. I suppose this was a compensation to make light of the fact that if they can't beat someone in a game, they at least feel as if they are winning in real life. Things like this stick with me, I've held onto that for a while and decided to let loose on this event because of this attitude. I can't abide pretentious jerks. I enjoy being one right back to these types of people, in spades.
We all come from different walks of life. Older, younger, employed, retired, unemployed... Where we come from and what we do outside of Ingress has no bearing on what we can do and achieve in the game outside of affording us the luxury of free time and gas money. Some have more than others, but those with limited time and resources can use their skills, knowledge, and teamwork to overcome those gaps.
I want to give a huge shoutout to the Massachusetts ENL who went above and beyond for the cell battle. They put together a couple of really great draws and we were able to work together to merge/execute those draws together, resulting in two consecutive large fielding ops within two checkpoints on Sunday with support from ENL from outside their area and eyes in the sky. This resulted in changing the landscape of the event, putting up over 17 million MU over multiple checkpoints, on top of the MU they contributed in the lead-up to the weekend. By and far, this was the killing blow that moved this from a competition, to the Resistance chasing damage control on how many more points they would salvage in the 12.4 to 2.6 point blowout. Pulling off a fielding op in the middle of this event is hard enough... I was told via my Res contact that on at least three occasions, our stray links ended up blocking Res plans. But the ENL merged draws overnight on Saturday, moved keys Sunday, and executed back-to-back operations flawlessly for the 1pm and 6pm checkpoints. Excellent work agents!
It's not a secret this game has been in decline for the past few years. The playerbase has slowly aged out or retired from regular play. There isn't much new blood and it doesn't appear new development from Niantic is helping that trend. It was fantastic to finally get back a feeling of team play which has regrettably been something that I felt must be chased rather than a regular occurrance. I hope everyone had an enjoyable time competing, meeting up for meals/drinks with other agents, reminiscing about "the good old days", and being able to put up a few fields together. With the end of this event, I will be semi-retiring from Ingress like the rest of you guys. I hope to see you at anomalies and events, it has been an interesting life experience for me.
That being said, I would like to dedicate my efforts from this event to the ENL agent who was ridiculed. Like I said, we all come from different places. There is always someone who has it better or has it worse in life. Video games are awesome in that they don't discriminate. They do not care about your job, your age/health, and they do not care about your social status, or lack thereof... The only thing they care about is how well you move around the bits and bytes of data on a computer somewhere. We're all on an equal level, we all have an opportunity to accomplish great things. To the toxic person who felt they had to make it about their personal life, I hope you can improve as a person, and as an agent. Your result was 12.4 to 2.6. We'll see you again for the next event. Best of luck.