Fox Hole:

Not Another Theme-Park MMO

nor Single Skirmish Simulator

Embedded Gonzo Journalism in one of gamings most complex terrestrial MMOs

Page Music: Sound Illusion - WW2 Bomb Shelter War Ambience

Breifing:

I don't really play shooters anymore it's for a lot of reasons and I make exceptions for the Half-Life series and my occasional hours long binges of Brutal Doom while I absolutely BLAST Caramelldansen over the crunchy audio of pixilated violence. I can still get down with SOME shooters especially my beloved twin stick shooters and simulation sandbox games with deemphasized weapons mechanics such as Voices of the Void, Half-Life, and even games like Fallout and Red Dead Redemption in large part due to both of them featuring a mode which takes tense stress inducing fire fights and puts them into slow motion.

Fox Hole is a rare beast of a game. It is a war simulation game. It's not first person, it's sort of a 45 degree 3D top-down perspectives like many modern turn-based strategy games only it is not turn-based. It plays out like a Real-Time strategy game where every player is a pawn on the battle field rather than an unseen god-general. Practically each and every bullet, gun, uniform, helmet, tank, boat, tanker, train, healing item windsock, and soon, airplane is created by players with materials gathered by players. Large scale troop movements are handles by guilds of players and wars can last real life months. It's an MMO but no two days are ever the same for any players. Missions are created by the players, goals are managed by leaders of within player created squadrons. It's a beast of a game to play, understand, and learn without rustling feathers. Either a teammates or your own.

I discovered Foxhole about a year or so ago while on a quest for a game that would offer limitless missions for a coop team working in a flying fortress style bomber. I am a bit of an aviation nut and my grandfather was the navigator on a B-17. At the time Foxhole was only teasing an up and coming feature of Aviation to be added to the game. Now a year later it is tested and rolling out very soon. I don't normally cover new or 3D games and a don't usually play shooter games but Fox Hole is more than any of that and so I would like to take the time over the coming weeks to embed myself with the Swords of Maro faction of the Colonial Army for the end of World Conquest 131 and the entirety of World Conquest 132: The First War that will see planes play a major role in the fighting. I will be staggering my reports by 48 hours in order to stop from giving away troop movements to the enemy, and I will be dating my journals using in-game time. I won't be playing every day it's not the kind of gamer that I am, but I have an end goal of reaching the point where I can give a valid gonzo report on the aviation element soon to be added to the game from whatever angle I am able.

At the time of writing it is Day 277 in the war 131 and the war will continue for 11 days 12 hours and 14 minutes and then the games largest update will be unleashed, this will change everything, including the map, but I will do my best to explain the basics of how the game works before I jump too far into specifics about my activities.

First off the maps is broken down into 43 individual hexes, each hex is a server, each server is synched up to the same world-clock and day/night cycle. Servers can become full. You can be forced to wait in a queue to enter a hex. This is the main downside to the games design but a necessary evil for the game to exist at all. The map is then further broken down into two opposing but equal sides (as far as landmass goes) a green side, Colonial and a blue side, Wardens.

When a war begins, as I said, both sides are equal, but each hex is further broken down into areas of control based on landmarks usually towns. On each hex is a land mark town known as a Victory Condition in order to win the Green side or the Blue side must control and upgrade an number of these town bases and then upgrade them with provisional garrisons. The number of Victory Conditions I think will likely change with the map update but we will see.

A day in the game is an hour in real life an hour in the game is 2.5 minutes in real life. In World Conquest, the games main mode, the average length of a war in the last era of wars in the game (the period after the naval update, the last large update) is 33 real life days. Longest 70. Shortest 8.

The war itself isn't as simple as two sides in an all out deathmatch every bullet, uniform, gun, tank, weapons emplacement, bunker and foxhole is built by a player using resources gathered by players. So in a war there are two massive sides, a frontline, and a complex series of supply lines each leading to areas where fighting is the heaviest. This info isn't readily available so scouts must bring it back but I have given a rough example of what this might look like. The home regions on the map are just glorified tutorial and lobby queue areas.

So as a player you might find yourself specializing in any number of things, naval combat, supply line running, resource acquisition, recon, or maybe even going behind enemy line to disrupt their supply lines to give your side the edge. You the player get to decide what you do, as you can imagine it's likely very chaotic. The game makes your blue or green, you decide what to do from there.

A large majority of the player base is in a player run faction or guild within their sides army. Great pains are taken to keep information here private and free from prying enemy eyes. There is no tool in the game to help you pick a faction, you must put the time and research in yourself, I will only be covering the Colonial side of the conflict (Green) and I will only be covering it from the perspective of a Swords of Maro player as after I put in the time and research I found them to be an accepting faction with many non-chud players. The thing that pushed me over the edge and made me make the call to join is the prevalence of the meme "Swords of Maro is very gay" in the Colonial community. This is used seemingly in a nonderogatory way an is a simple matter of-fact statement that the squadron is itself, very gay. A fact that I am willing to attest to, as I joined it.

I have a moderate amount of experience with the game and I am going to be brushing on gameplay and writing to you in-person from...