aVo YouTube channel image.
Team Avolition
(often stylized as aVo) is a Minecraft griefing team that popularized putting videos of griefing on YouTube. They spread to other games in later on, such as DayZ and Rust. Team Avolition's endeavors are highly controversial, with detractors labeling the team as a bane on gaming in general, or fans that claim their actions are hilarious. The group just enjoys what they do. While most of aVo’s members are inactive, Storm Surge continues to post videos with guests.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: aVo could qualify as this, especially Storm Surge. He's actually a very calm, intelligent, and entertaining individual... who nevertheless destroys people's buildings and structures. It helps that he's actually become friends with some of the people he's griefed (I.E. the people of Spacemonkey and Doridian).
- Always a Bigger Fish:
- The true damage to the servers don't come from aVo themselves, but rather from all of their fans that see the videos and come onto the servers after watching the videos.
- This may be part of why Team aVo doesn't usually put the IP of the servers they grief in their videos.
- The Christian server has since put a restriction on who can enter due to fans imitating the Team's behaviour.
- Anti-Villain: Although the entire point of their videos is to burn stuff, kill people, and aggravate the other players, they do target admins who have an overinflated ego or have otherwise made themselves targets, as with AllNaturalX and Rice-Think. Not only that, they're now friends with two targets of their griefing, Spacemonkey and Doridian. In addition, they will also leave you alone if you say 'Team aVo deserves Ice Cream', which apparently translates to 'I/we appreciate the effort you put into this'. Inversely, if you say they don't deserve ice cream, you are screwed.
- Arch-Enemy:
- The fully-Christian server they trolled have gone on to declare them the worst thing ever to have happened, and gone to very extreme countermeasures to make access for them impossible. Apparently, this is in part owing to them opening the floodgates for other trolls.
- A series of their Minecraft videos deal with what amounts to a internet war with a Reddit community. Team Avolition destroyed a specific server hosted by Reddit and posted the resulting footage on Youtube. People from that community found out and tried, among other things, a Distributed Denial of Service attack and tried to ban Team Avolition from their Minecraft servers using a global list of forbidden players. The Team responded by banning every single admin and moderator by using that same global list due to its shoddy programming. Needless to say, neither side has forgiven the other.
- Surprisingly, Doridian (the person who made the system they used, who was also banned, and had his server griefed by them before) actually became friends with them later.
- Rice-Think seemed to think of Avolition as one. They then proceeded to antagonize them and, after that, left the servers public after a while.
- "Begone" Bribe: In the Complex series, one of the team members distracts one of the targeted players by trying to build a cone right next to his town, and then kicking up a great big fuss about it when the said player claims the area to make him stop doing it. The guy eventually offers the team member a million server credit to make him go away.
- Berserk Button: Seriously, do NOT tell them they don't deserve ice cream. It will result in Tranquil Fury and the total destruction of your server.
- Blatant Lies: They do this whenever speaking to an admin. No, they totally didn't steal that boat.
- Boring, but Practical: Storm Surge himself notes in a conversation with Doridian that the most effective way to stop griefing is to set up a Whitelist, as it requires a lot of time and energy to get to a server using it and getting banned from a server using it could end up devastating (since you couldn't just hop onto another random account to get back into the action until you got bored).
- Break the Haughty: Occasionally they will unleash their destructive ways upon a server whose admins have gone Drunk with Power. This is more often than not the outcome.
- Bullying a Dragon: Happens a lot. Everybody seems perfectly happy to antagonize the team of griefers that has repeatedly gotten around every security measure they run across. Rice-Think especially ran into this problem, since they attacked the team and then didn't add any protections to their own server.
- Butt-Monkey: Krysk is arguably one, especially to Ransure/Jade (in the earlier episodes) and Storm.
- Calling Card: They will change many signs to let you know Team Avolition was there. They also make 'swastars' —
a swastika inside a Star of David.- In the earlier episodes, Storm and Krysk would frequently put fences under half-blocks (due to a glitch at the time, fences under a half-block would prevent movement up the stairs). The two fenced the stairs in Dunklshreken's castle to let the server know aVo was back.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Although Storm is generally pretty cool and levelheaded, he has a pretty foul mouth.
- Cool Boat: They love to 'steal' other users' boats (by completely erasing or otherwise destroying them to the point where it looks like there was never a boat there) and leave behind humorous messages about how they won't return the boat.We took your boat so we could help you by replacing your ugly blue sails with rockin' purple sails. We might not necessarily bring it back. Sorry.
- A Day in the Limelight: Jaroks, the player who bore the brunt of most of Storm Surge, SalC1 and The Horizon’s shenanigans with Dunshire during the Complex Gaming saga, happened to be recording his own series for YouTube at the time, and captured most of their efforts from a different angle. He also joined Storm to deliver the news to the server’s Discord that Mojang had banned their server for breaking the terms of service.
- Death by Irony: Mentioned by Storm Surge in the description of the Left 4 Dead 2 Griefing - 30,000 Damage Pistol video:Now there's a hurricane about to grief my house, so hopefully the video finishes uploading before this ironic twisting storm of fate. If my house gets damaged by a storm surge, I will probably die from an irony overload.
- Defeat Means Friendship: They have ended up becoming friends with a few of the people they griefed early on, such as Dell and Doridian.
- Dirty Old Man: Well, not necessarily old, but the target of one of their Minecraft HG griefing videos is a guy who, on one server daily, asked in the chat if any girls online could send him nudies.
- The Dragon: Krysk to Storm Surge. Alternatively, he's The Lancer, depending on the point of view.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: When they first started, the Team only had nonexistent or basic modded clients, relatively primitive griefing methods (pouring lava down Dell's house is juvenile compared to some of their escapades later on), and a general lack of coordination that they became infamous for later on (although the Cobblecloud incident was fairly thought-out, if somewhat unsuccessful). Arguably justified, as their griefing methods had to adapt to the constantly evolving countermeasures against griefing itself.
- "Eureka!" Moment: In "Reddit Episode 15: Diamonds", the team is screwing around on the top of a hill. When Storm_Surge is crafting diamond tools for everyone, Krysk playfully destroys the crafting table, sending the diamonds flying. Storm_Surge quickly re-pockets the diamond, only for them to duplicate for a split second. When he mentions this to the team, Krysk remembers that there was a duplication glitch for Minecraft, and modifies their Reliant client program to allow the creation of infinite-stack blocks, which ends up being the primary griefing tactic for the video.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- They destroy creations, crash servers, pester players, and use homophobic slurs, but only on servers with bad or non-present admins. Most of the time.
- They also tried to troll a pedophile.
- Failed a Spot Check: This moment from 'Reddit Episode 14: Jericho' feels like something out of a stealth video game.
- For Great Justice:
- Storm Surge calls out the trope name before demolishing a tunnel on a server where tunnels were not allowed.
- This is also one of their reasons for griefing—to punish admins on servers that abuse their power.
- Flight: Their Reliant client allows them to fly around.
- For the Evulz: The primary reason for griefing.
- Funny Background Event: lamp912, Darkassasin 2142, dabicloud, and stridernfs making various faces in chat.
- Game Mod: "Reliant", a modified Minecraft client at least partially of Krysk's work that allows the team Flight, X-Ray Vision, Super-Speed, and Other Super Powers. Reliant was specifically built for Avolition's griefing, with capes to identify their accounts to each other.
- Gone Horribly Right: Rice Think's system for detecting griefing used a system to tell if individual blocks had been tampered with. This meant that Team Avo simply wiped the structures from the face of the earth and got away with it, since the system didn't report if blocks had been removed entirely.
- Griefers: Team Avolition is one of the finer examples of this type of player on Youtube. Most of them have programming experience in some fashion, and have managed to get around a great deal of security measures utilized by their targets.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In one episode of their Spacemonkey griefing, one of them decides to turn the Admin complex into a monster spawning zone by removing all of the torches, only to get attacked by a spider, and later a skeleton, on the way out. Later in the same episode, their usual trick of putting fences under stairs(which, in that version of Minecraft, prevented the stairs from being climbed) gets one of them stuck as a Creeper's approaching.
- Kill It with Fire: Their backup plan for almost every griefing is to just set everything on fire.
- Manipulative Bastard: Storm Surge is able to talk his way out of most risky situations, often also instructing his friends on what to say and do to avoid suspicion. Without him they would probably get banned a lot quicker. He's so good at it that it sometimes leads to Et Tu, Brute? when he finally reveals himself to be a griefer.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After stringing along a perverted player, they have him believing they are a hot girl sending him pics - when one of the members' invisibility runs out. The others quickly turn him invisible again, but it's too late. The victim sees his name - "Agent Harry" - and realizes they've been messing with him.
- Oh, Crap!: PS3's reaction when he realizes that aVo is back on Spacemonkey.
- Storm had one episodes prior, when Sugarfree accused him of burning down the treefort.
- Refuge in Audacity: At one point, they destroy a building, bury the remains, tell an admin they're planting trees, and have the admin help them... the same admin who built the building in the first place.
- Retired Monster: The entire team for Minecraft, as Minecraft servers have become robust enough in their protection that griefing is either not fun or downright impossible. That said, no amount of protection can stop Storm Surge from hitting people with Social Engineering.
- Ridiculously Fast Construction: An inversion: they often speed up and set music to scenes where they spend some time destroying a large structure.
- Right Under Their Noses: A recurring theme, especially after their hacked client is updated to allow for permanent sneaking. They often grief right next to unaware players.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Of sorts. When Sugarfree's house gets burned down by Krysk and Storm, he goes off and trashes the server. He is subsequently banned, while the other two get away (mostly) scot-free.
- Running Gag: The aforementioned destruction of every single boat they find.
- Sarcasm Failure: The team's general reaction to the Rice-Think server.
- Scenery Gorn: Often towards the end of some of their episodes, when Storm surveys the damage they've caused.
- Shout-Out: A few, although some were made by other players in the chat:"SKEWER THE WINGED BEAST"
- Some users on Spacemonkey make sporadic Team Fortress 2 references.
- In fact, Dell the Engie's name is a reference to the very same character.
- Some users on Spacemonkey make sporadic Team Fortress 2 references.
- The Smart Guy: Krysk, Team Avolition's main programmer for their client.
- As Jade/Ransure helped create Jade Vision, he may also be an example.
- Social Engineering: Everyone on the team uses it to some extent, but it's Storm's weapon of choice.
- Early on in the Spacemonkey saga; The players voted to make Storm a moderator because he worked to repair the tower that they just griefed.
- Twice during the "Rice Think" episodes. First, they demolished a castle. As they were trying to bury the remains, they received help from the player who built it. Second, Storm_Surge was destroying a gazebo. He was caught in the act by another player, so he pretended that he was "upgrading the floor." He asked the player if he could fetch some logs. After the new structure was built, the player helped Storm_Surge protect it.
- Stuff Blowing Up: One of the ways they grief when they find a server that allows TNT and explosion damage.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Any server with the Big Brother server addon requires that they do this; Big Brother records who modified which block last, so doing something like putting lava in a house would just get them banned. Their solution, therefore, is to utterly destroy any structure and remove any trace of its existence.
- Troll: Naturally.
- Villain Protagonist: Nothing they do can objectively be construed as constructive behavior, but that doesn't stop them from having over 200,000 subscribers at their height (at a time where that was incredibly popular), and slightly less that when their content slowed down.
- Villainous Breakdown: The corrupt Christian server that they destroyed responded to their (quite rightful) server takedown in the form of nonsensical jabbering and homophobic slurs and insults aimed at the team.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Rice Think's countermeasures fall both under this and Too Dumb to Live.
- X-Ray Vision: Jade Vision, named after the member who made it (also known as Ransure).
- Jade Vision wasn't "made" by Jade; all of Reliant's features (at least in the early stages) were programmed by Krysk. Jade Vision was named after Jade because of his uncanny ability to find hidden chests and other valuables on servers.
RelocationAgent: We're awful people.
Krysk: No; we're amusing people.
