January 24, 2023: The Rare And Ignominious Bronze Badge
The Rare and Ignominious Bronze BadgeOne of the rarest and least awarded of the Ultracorps Achievement badges in the bronze badge. This is a race specific badge and is bestowed upon commanders who finish between 6th and 10th place in a Mega or Ring game. Being recognized for a top ten finish is usually a nice thing. With bronze badges, not so much.
Upon further reflection, is it really all that nice? It basically outlines the fact that five players or more, playing the same race as you, finished ahead of you. With a large player base, a bronze medal honors a significant achievement. With fewer players in a game, it highlights a certain mediocrity that does not often render a medal stand finish.
One should note that to receive a bronze medal, a player must complete the Mega alive. Bronze medal winners all have one thing in common. They are survivors. They took their hits and they lived to see another day.
Some players have no bronze medals at all. They have plenty of gold and silver medals but very few or no bronze ones. Why is this? There a several reasons; one being that if you are good enough to place in the top spot for your race, then you are not bad enough to finish outside of the top five.
Iconic player Sentrion has 37 unique medals. Only two out of the 28 racial standing badges are bronze. UC_Rommel, Agramer and Randiv have no bronze badges. Solitar has one bronze badge. Travail has one. Check through the standings and view some profiles. Bronze badges are rare. They are also getting harder and harder to acquire. If races are evenly played in a game, it takes close to a hundred players to support a bronze badge level.
Check your profile. See how many badges you have and whether or not you have silver and gold alone, or if you have bronze medals too. See what other players have as far as badges and note the scarcity of bronze medals. Check the dates. Lots of bronzes came along 10 or 12 or more years ago. They are even more elusive now and are nearly impossible to get with the current player volume.
Bronze medals are certainly rare and the dubious honor inherently attached to bronze medal holders can be a little embarrassing but not quite humiliating. It is certainly not an achievement about which someone would Ultramail back to their home sector. It is more the kind of recognition that creates a little bit of shame and then shines a spotlight on it.
Maybe all is fair in love and war, but it seems just a bit unfair to see a permanent record and recognition of an apparent subpar performance. The ignominious bronze medal is not only rare in number it is also rare in that it is one medal that many Ultracorps players would rather not have. The bronze medal is a double edged sword that keeps on cutting.
Starcharger Fleet Commander
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