Torn City Times

sugarvalves [1963573] — On Friday the 2016 edition of the Torn City Dog Tag competition ended with a second straight victory for Kniv, who not only retained his title but also managed to acquire an astonishing 1287 tags and 22806 points in the process. In fact, so high were everyone's scores this year that Kniv's winning total from 2015 would only have been good enough for 4th this time around, making his margin of victory even more impressive. I congratulated Kniv on his victory over the weekend, but I also asked whether he regretted taking part in the interview with me a few weeks back, as it seemed to gain both him and the others involved a lot more negative attention during the competition's early stages; " Thank you, thought it couldn't be done, that someone was more hungry for it than me. But me winning the way I did proves that almost anyone can win this, so it's a fair competition for everyone. My average tag score is 18, so this competition is just d...

sugarvalves [1963573] — As 2016's Dog Tag competition rapidly draws to a close, the current leader sits on 20,130 points with 1,052 tags, holding a lead of 4670 points over their nearest challenger on 15,460. 14,000 points are good enough for 3rd place at the moment, and 6,192 points will sneak you into the top 25, but whether this will be enough come Friday 2pm is difficult to say. Especially since Duke's latest tantrum. Everything seemed to be running smoothly of late, with established players racking up tags and a few youngsters threatening to shake up the old guard. But the entire competition was thrown into turmoil on Friday, as the beef between Duke and Bodybagger once more reared its ugly, vein-straddled head. For those who aren't aware, Duke began assaulting members of Bodybagger's Oil Crew in retaliation for his excessive muggings. The Duke is known to enjoy the occasional dust-up with a stranger, but when Bodybagger abused this privilege he struck back hard....

sugarvalves [1963573] — The 2016 Dog Tag competition has well and truly kicked off this week with the leading collector now soaring into a lead of nearly 2,000 points. As of 4pm today 13,450 was the target for those aiming for top spot, with 2nd place on 11,907 and 3rd on 9,519. Those who are placed 4th to 10th are separated by a margin of just 3,000 points, and last week's 2nd placed Duke is currently languishing down in 11th on 6,411 points. However, with 11 days left before the winner is crowned literally anything could happen; if you were to misrepresent the meaning of the word literally of course. Figuratively speaking, the competition is more evenly spread than the margarine on an OCD sufferer's toast, and it's highly possible that we could actually have a low-ranked outsider taking the top spot come November 25th. Surprisingly, many of those in the top 25 are not high-level players, they are not well known, and they are doing incredibly well to fly under the radar ...

sugarvalves [1963573] — The 5th of November saw Torn's annual Dog Tag competition kick off with a bang, albeit one which was apparently not loud enough to alert many of the city's drug-addled laggards, many of whom only became aware of the competition once their own tags were snatched from their necks. Although truth be told, the competition actually surprised everyone, with even the city's drunken leadership baffled by the sudden onset of jewellery-based carnage. As ever the competition will run for the best part of a month, having kicked off on the same date as the United Kingdom's Guy Fawkes Night, and ending somewhat amusingly on the 25th of November, which just so happens to be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women; a charming way to mark such a worthy cause. But, for those in favour of maiming both gentlemen and ladies for their identification tags, what exactly are the rules, and do they differ from those of competiti...

sugarvalves [1963573] — Bounties. Whether you love them, hate them, or you couldn't care less either way, these purchasable hits upon fellow players have undoubtedly had a major impact on the life of ordinary Torn citizens. But for as long as they've been around, bounties have also been abused and complained about, and as such, the forums of Torn have been littered with suggestions regarding a possible solution. After weeks of my own investigation into the subject, during which time I interviewed both victims and perpetrators, I hoped the matter would come to its own natural conclusion. Alas, with the recent spate of bounties inflicted upon the populace by Mat-Senpai, this is clearly no longer an option. Mat-Senpai has seemingly targeted inactive users with thousands of bounties in a bid to cleanse them from the community and win a bet, but in actuality, the biggest impact of his bountying spree has been to highlight the power wielded by the city's most powerful players. ...

sugarvalves [1963573] — As regular readers of the Torn City Times are aware, this paper takes a dim view of those who seek to harass our citizens through excessive bountying. Newcomers to Torn are often burdened, bothered and brutalised in this way by grudge-obsessed establishment figures, with the end result being a notable decrease in the number of migrants retained by the city. Many have speculated on why these people feel justified, nay, obliged to harass others with assault by proxy, but in an effort to foster greater unity between the people of Torn, I reached out to some of our most infamous bountiers for a series of interviews, and some of their responses may just surprise you. Most citizens incorrectly believe Dekloren to be the cruellest and most frequent bountier in Torn, but as you can see from the above ranking taken earlier today, he has actually vacated the top 10 due to his relative inactivity. If the rumours are to be believed, it seems Dekloren's commitment to b...

sugarvalves [1963573] — For those blessed with working eyes and ears, and even those without, the recent confrontation between Duke and Bodybagger cannot have gone unnoticed. For the past two weeks Torn's most notorious loan shark has been forced to fend off daily attacks by the city's strongest player, and in an effort to do so, events have turned most ugly indeed. If one were to make love in an ugly tree and give birth somewhere inside the forest of unfathomable hideousness, you'd have to drag said offspring for miles through de-beautifying foliage to produce a child halfway as grotesque. But for those who are unaware, let us briefly recap the situation thus far. On the 7th of October an employee of Bodybagger's Oil, Ridgerunner, revealed that he and his fellow Oil Rig workers had been targeted by Duke in a surprise mass attack. This was apparently in retaliation for an unprovoked spree of daily aggression by Bodybagger, and since then both parties have increased th...

IIIlusionist [253384] — Pull up a chair and grab some popcorn, because this is going to be an interesting and fairly lengthy tale. Upon their inception, Born Fighting (BF) held the Faction ID 32, which at this point made it the oldest faction in Torn. Although ID 32 bore various names in the past, including Superheroes In Tights, it adopted the BF crest around 2013, when it was purchased by Rapid_riser [262223] for the princely sum of $1,000,000,000. BF was part of the 39th family, which also included 39th Street Killer and 39th X. BF's relationship with 39th SK was a mixed bag, to say the least, with some 39th SK members begrudging the constant requests to help BF in wars, and others happy to help out, often going above and beyond what was asked of them. BF started out like any other ambitious new faction, with few members and little experience, meaning they had to build the BF name and strength out of nothing. During the early years Rapid_riser, with JungleFever [485551] as co-...

sugarvalves [1963573] — For a city to survive indefinitely it must possess one of two things, either the ability to recruit new citizens via migration, or a population capable of sustaining a consistently high birth-rate. However, with Torn's men about as virile as a vasectomised Panda, and our women proving more barren than the harshest stretch of the Sahara, it is clear that attracting new blood to the city is our only hope of survival. With that in mind, this article's initial aim was to interview Torn's most promising new citizens, in a bid to share the secrets of their success, whilst also exposing some of the difficulties new players encounter. So, having been pointed in the direction of Torn's highest stat and level gainers over the past month, I approached those who had made the biggest impact. Sadly, much to my disappointment, I found that many of the city's most industrious new recruits were actually former citizens attempting to begin a new life for the...

sugarvalves [1963573] — Torn's eldest citizens know all too well that the detonation of Dirty Bombs is a frequent occurrence, with close to forty dropped since the very first radioactive attack carried out by JamilB in 2008. But, with two such explosions coming in the space of four days, Torn's citizens must be wondering if they are about to see a return to a time where hazmat suits and six-armed mutants became the norm. Before last week Torn hadn't seen a dirty bomb since the 13th of May 2016, yet with two now coming in quick succession, many are worried that we may be in the midst of another Mischi3vo-style terror campaign. Mischi3vo famously struck the city three times over two days in 2012, followed by a further four assaults between 28th and 29th November 2014, and it was incidents like this which prompted many to invest in Neumune and Rosary Beads. Rumours abound as to who organised the October 1st detonation, with _Cynic_ looking the most likely culprit; and anothe...