Conan Expedition
| Conan Expedition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||
| |||||
| Belligerents | |||||
 BMW SA Discord | Pubbies, Streamers, and Goons | ||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||
|
Taylor Swift Kimsemus Tempus Thales | N/A | ||||
| Strength | |||||
| 100s of Bimmers and Goons | Countless pubs | ||||
The Conan Expedition was a series of efforts by BMW to branch out into the game Conan Exiles in the first few months of its EA release. Many historians consider the venture a failure that marked the end of BMW its original incarnation and the catalyst for many events in the years after.
History
By the end of 2016, Rust had completely fallen off after the 2nd Rusticity War and BMW was desperate for a new flagship game to stabilize the enbattled group. The announcement of Conan Exiles proved to be that lynchpin, and all effort was shifted to prepare for the game, including securing a thread on SomethingAwful to recruit for the game. This all proved highly successful, as BMW received a wave of new recruits for the game.
The Linux Port
During the launch, Rejdukien and Tempus Thales began working on a Linux port of the games server in an effort to self host a server for BMW and Goons. The project gained widespread recognition, as the devs themselves had chosen to not release a Linux release of the server. THe project increased attention to BMW, but is believed to have possibly been one of the first bricks in the foundation of TT's resentment against BMW's success.
Initial Success & Internal Strife
The lead up to the launch saw literally hundreds of Goons pouring into the BMW Discord who highly anticipated participating in what they believed would be BMW's style of zerg combat in a new game not called Rust. However, issues began as soon as the game launch when it was revealed that servers had miniscule caps, allowing only a fraction of BMW's playerbase to log in and allowing no room for pubbies.
Further issues came when new Goons, not fully understanding the concept of not griefing friendlies, began griefing friendlies. One such Goon, Akumos was banned by Kimsemus, the first person to ever be banned from BMW. Taylor was initially hesitant to allow this, but given the circumstances and the amount of other things going against the group, didn't raise a complaint.
Eventually BMW found a groove, once most of the hype had died off and stable groups were able to get off the ground. Rej and Teknoir led most of the charge in the stead of Taylor and Kim, both who had seemed to have little interest in continuing with the game in any real capacity.
Remnant Groups
After a month or so, the game was all but dead in BMW with only Cynthia Dutch and Duster continuing on, though eventually splitting off from BMW, much against Taylor's wishes.
Legacy
The failure of Conan severly dampenend BMW's longterm plans. With the failure of their only planned "anchor game", the leaders were lost. To stem the bleeding of people, Taylor chose to focus the community more on the political side of things, eventually leading into the SA Rapefugee Program. Many saw this as the begging of the end for BMW, though many argue that without the political involvement to keep things going, the ensuing "slump" would have been even worse, potentially even fatal.