Complete Guild History 1995-2008 Darksun

Complete Guild History 1995-2008
Darksun Online
1995-1997
Ultima Online
1997-1999
Asheron's Call
1999-2001
Everquest
2001
Dark Age of Camelot
Dark Age of Camelot (Gareth Server)
2001-2002
2006
Shadowbane
2002-2003
Star Wars Galaxies
2003-2004
Guild Wars
2004-2005
City of Villains
2005-2006
World of Warcraft
2004-2008
Fury
2007
Age of Conan
2008
Warhammer Online
2008
Darksun Online: 1995-1997
Lord Hades’ Office
LotD was founded in 1995 in a game called Darksun Online (DSO). There we put
together an elite group of evil PVP oriented gamers, and dedicated our time towards
dominating all opposition. We role-played villains who attempted to rule the world by
controlling critical areas of the game, and we succeeded even though every other
organized guild rose up to oppose us. In order for someone to use lands we
controlled, we charged fees, worship, and sometimes a sacrifice. Sacrifices could be
anything from an extra payment to making the hapless victims choose which guild
member we would get to kill from their party. Those who did not agree to our
demands were swiftly put to death, and sometimes we would kill them all anyway just
for the hell of it.
By the time LotD had been in DSO for a year, the forces of good across the entire
game allied against us in an attempt to break our stranglehold on power. After many
months of battle, LotD stood victorious while our enemies had almost completely
exhausted their monetary and personnel resources.
LotD fought in several PvP tournaments hosted by the DSO developers, and LotD
members always scored in the top five. After dominating the game for two years,
there was nothing left to prove in the game, no new foes to defeat, and new games
were on the horizon. Eventually we left to go to a game called Ultima Online.
DSO citizens in the main city street
Ultima Online: 1997-1999
After ravaging Darksun, we turned our attention to Ultima Online (UO). It was a
game with a skill system rather than a level system, and one that tried to simulate a
real world resource system. During our early time in UO, LotD remained mostly
neutral while we evaluated potential friends or enemies. We placed a guild tower
near the NPC City of Yew, and it served as our main base of operations for the entire
two years that we played.
LotD Tower on the Baja Server
Lord Hades organizes a PK storage house
LotD became famous for its swift and deadly “Lightning Strikes” against its enemies.
The Lightning Strikes allowed us to use hit and run tactics against larger opponents,
spread them out, and then destroy their smaller groups. To accomplish this we had a
network of over 100 homes across the shard that we used for recall libraries,
stockpiled equipment from PK runs to wage non-stop war, and we always travelled
prepared for a fight.
Eventually we allied with a guild called the Lords of Death, the Elves, and the
Warlocks to form the Player Killer Circle (PKC). The PKC went on to become the
dominant alliance on the shard, and fought against massive Anti-PK armies. The
Anti-PK's fought long and hard, but they ultimately lost the war as the PKC ground
them into the dust.
LotD and other PKC guilds destroy Avalon, the first player created city on Baja
UO went through a series of updates that created painful penalties for true PK style
wars, and in 1999 the UO devs began to implement updates that moved the PVP
action into the NPC towns. They tried to create the first MMORPG faction type of
PVP by implementing an Order vs Chaos system to promote sanctioned PvP while
continuing to severely punish random PK’ing. While this helped PvP regain its
foothold on the server, it allowed invulnerable by-standers (blue colored) to directly
interfere in our fights by healing our enemies. If you attacked a blue colored person
by mistake, you would be instantly killed by invulnerable NPC guards. The lamest
guilds began to field blue healer crews just to keep their fighter classes healed, and
UO urban warfare just went down hill from there. By the end of 1999, LotD was tired
of playing a game where the Devs kept penalizing random PVP while implementing
exploitable “sanctioned” PVP systems.
While in UO, our high level of organization caught the attention of a major fansite at
the time (Stratics Network), and it lead to the creation of Hades Hall of Warfare. The
Hall of Warfare was a subsite of the Stratics Network dedicated to all PVP topics for
Ultima Online, and we kept it active for the two years while we played.
Asheron's Call: 1999-2001
Allegiance Mansions as of Dark Majesty
After ruling Ultima Online for two years, LotD decided to move to a game called
Asheron's Call (AC). The guild leadership decided to send one segment of the guild
membership to Asheron’s Call, and another to the Everquest Sullon Zek server.
In Asheron's Call we used our time to learn how to play and be competitive in a level
based game that also required guilds to be able to manage large numbers of people
in order to be successful. Prior to AC, LotD had never been larger than 35 active
members at any given time. Lord Hades began playing on the Morningthaw server,
and created one of the original 5 monarchies on the server. In a little over a year,
Lord Hades had created a large player organization, called Allegiances in AC, that
was nearly 1,700 members.
Using the massive power of the allegiance and its ability to pass up experience to the
allegiance monarch, Lord Hades powered himself up to become one of the first ten
on the server to attain the level cap of 126.
Prior to LotD moving into AC and Everquest, a game called Shadowbane was in the
works. To be successful in Shadowbane, a guild had to be able to manage an
empire. While LotD did start major PK wars on the Morningthaw server, its intention
going into AC was to learn how to manage and coordinate massive amounts of
people. Overall our effort was rewarded, and lessons learned there helped LotD to
manage larger guild sizes in the games and years ahead.
Everquest: 2001
While some LotD played Asheron's Call, we moved a few teams of guild members
over to Everquest's new PvP server (Sullon Zek). While we were there, we fought in
the Dark Coalition alliance and against other enemy guilds we'd likely see in
Shadowbane. The Dark Coalition was in the top 3 of 20 ranked PvP coalitions, and
its members fought at both high and low levels against other forces.
Top 10 Guilds – Overall
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Inkara (Neutral)
Infernal Elite (Evil)
The Dark Coalition (Neutral)
Eye of Newt (Neutral)
Sect (Good)
Anarchia (Neutral)
Sanctus Lumen (Good)
Darkenbane Company (Neutral)
Circle Noir (Evil)
Honorbound (Neutral)
45,503 pts
34,000 pts
31,629 pts
28,119 pts
27,559 pts
25,345 pts
23,928 pts
23,802 pts
20,680 pts
19,437 pts
This was our first gaming experience with the guild called Sinister, which was lead by
Bone Dancer. All in all it was a good experience, and we established the ties that
carried us through Shadowbane Beta and early Retail.
Dark Age of Camelot: 2001-2002
LotD grew tired of waiting on Shadowbane and needed a game to play. We called
the guild together for an official presence in Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC) when it
released in 2001, and played on the Merlin Server as part of the Midgard faction. In
the early stages of the game, it appeared that it would be a fun place to game, and
Merlin was quickly dubbed the "PvP Server" of DAOC. Battles raged, keeps fell, and
relics were taken by many guilds who put differences aside to work together.
LotD and the Midgard Alliance on Merlin (Combine, PRX, Conquest, Clan519, Cult,
LotD) worked together to take all Merlin's relics during the first three months of
DAOC’s release. There were many battles on the frontier and keeps changed hands
a lot, but eventually most PVP ended up being a giant campfest in front of one
faction’s zone entrance. LotD eventually tired of this type of PVP experience, and
moved on to other games. During our time in DAOC we were able to score in our
Realm Top 10 and the Server Top 20, and we remained there until the guild officially
ended its DAOC presence.
Dark Age of Camelot (Gareth Server): 2006
LotD opted to return to Dark Age of Camelot in 2006 and play on the classic server of
Gareth. The classic servers were well over a year old by the time we chose to start
playing again, but LotD quickly put together a winning team. We broke into the top
100 within 2 months of playing, and broke into the top 50 just prior to the Labyrinth of
the Minotaur expansion. Here is where we stood just before the expansion.
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
LotD
Mornie Alantie
Phoenix Eternal
Clown Control
Vengeance
Shadow Wraiths
Corcairdhearg Baisteach
Oh Snap
The Forgotten Hiblets
Wicker Man
Legion of the Fallen
Blackfang Brotherhood
Opreina Moracul
15,596,417
14,289,400
14,265,796
14,069,653
13,572,246
13,417,534
12,578,441
12,463,455
11,511,840
11,079,685
10,955,737
10,625,641
10,591,937
Unfortunately the LotM expansion didn't bring anything to the end game play except
for one more lag infested dungeon. Additionally, Mythic merged Gareth with two
other classic servers. The result was that PVP became less about skill and more
about being part of a zerg. LotM didn’t impress us enough to stay around, so we
departed for other games.
Shadowbane: 2002-2003
Hades personal history with Shadowbane was long, and exceeds the time that LotD
stayed in Shadowbane. He began as a fansite reporter from the Warcry network, and
ended up becoming Waylander the Herald of War in the Beta. Hades served as the
Lead Shadowbane Advocate on all things from game balance, bug identification,
PVP balance, and class balance. Hades managed a team of 18+ class and issue
leads until he voluntarily departed in October 2006.
Scorn Server - Official Hardcore Server
Initially LotD was part of the most elite PvP nation in the entire game (Rolling 30's),
and we all made our home on the Scorn Server. Unfortunately the ties between
guilds that had served everyone well during Beta quickly decayed in Retail release.
The nation in Beta was made up of equal guilds, but in Retail the nation leadership
was formed from a select few personnel in the Sinister Guild. The nation quickly
became a dictatorship, and equality and respect was tossed out the window.
The Rolling 30's leadership began to change policies, order guilds about like
servants, and had a monopoly on city assets. The Rolling 30's also spread out and
quickly conquered, destroyed, or disabled evolving nations before they could become
a threat. We later discovered that a lot of this was due to the R30's ability to hack
and/or dupe billions of gold pieces, which allowed them to rank and gear up 20x
faster. With these conquests, the leadership of the Rolling 30's got huge egos and
continued treating the member guilds. LotD was not content to be a servant to a
select few, and departed the Rolling 30's to form a resistance movement.
LotD formed an alliance with the Order of the Severed Claw, Order of the Silver
Hand, House of Sagacious, and created a new nation (LAPD) on Ice Island. This
nation began to accept other guilds, and soon Ice Isle was impervious to Rolling 30
conquest attempts. LotD worked with the other lead guilds to streamline
communication, coordination, and planning during this time. We eventually named
our nation LAPD to mock the Rolling 30's and their city of Compton.
LotD and LAPD battle formation
LotD Hit Squad preparing to strike R30 assets
The Rolling 30's continued their conquest of other lands on Scorn, but they kept
losing guilds due to the way they treated them. The Regulators broke off and formed
a new nation. This nation was burned before it could grow into a threat, but they
continued to attack the Rolling 30's along with LotD and LAPD.
Eventually the resistance movements held the Rolling 30's in check across the
server, and the R30 conquest of newbie cities was halted. Shortly afterwards the first
wave of Rolling 30's leaders quit the game, and handed the reigns of power off to the
DDH guild. DDH didn't lead the Rolling 30's long before they too left, and handed the
nation leadership over to Mad Cams. The mass exodus of Rolling 30's leadership
was curious to those of us who had fought them to a stalemate, but soon their chief
treasurer was busted by Ubisoft for cheating and exploiting. Since this key leader
owned a vast horde of money as well as all of the nation's major assets, his banning
dealt the final deathblow to the Rolling 30's.
Scorn Server during height of LAPD vs R30’s War
As the R30 Empire began to fall, their leaders began to lash out at one another over
on the Vault forums. Here's what MadCams had to say about the mess Bone Dancer
and Darph left him after the City of Watts fell to allied forces.
Mad Cams Retires R30 Tag, and Surrenders Compton
LAPD moved in for the kill and continually hammered the Rolling 30's until we
bankrupted the nation. The Rolling 30's leadership that was left felt abandoned by
their previous leaders, and negotiated the surrender of their nation. A chapter was
ended and the most famous nation throughout Shadowbane Beta and early Retail
was gone.
LAPD renamed itself to "Reborn", and moved in to settle on the lands that once
housed the capital of the Rolling 30's empire. Unfortunately the war against R30's as
well as the wars for supremacy afterwards decimated the server, and the Scorn
server became one of the first to be taken offline.
Star Wars Galaxies: 2003-2004
LotD moved into the Flurry Server on SWG, and quickly established itself as the elite
Imperial force. We had several skirmishes with clusters of rebel groups, and soon
they learned to avoid us without overwhelming numbers. Our crafters labored
tirelessly, and our PA Hall was one of the first ones established on the server.
Using small unit PvP tactics and mopping up rebels everywhere, LotD began to get
notoriety amongst the population. We worked hard and were among the first on the
server to place an Imperial HQ near to our PA Hall. Early on, it would appear that
LotD had found some allies that worked in very much the same way that LotD did
and held some common beliefs with LotD. Those early days saw LotD ally with such
Imperial guilds as Bela Imperial Division, the Dark Order and Durmanhoth Clan. LotD
had placed its PA Hall and HQ on the planet Naboo, near the city of Keren.
During these early days, we had numerous skirmishes with such guilds as Clan
Blackblade, Vanguard, Bringers of the Dawn, RISK and Warriors of Justice, all of
whom had also based themselves on Naboo. During the height of the strength of our
alliance, LotD, DC, DO and BID made an attack on Vanguard’s Rebel HQ which was
located across a lake from LotD’s HQ. This turned out to be the first base take-down
on Flurry and showed the teamwork that our alliance used. It also turned out to be a
turning point in PvP on Flurry.
SWG Player City
Not long after this, DC and LotD leadership met and it was decided to pitch our lots in
together and jointly build a city. Since DC had more members than LotD, we agreed
to move to their location in order to expedite joining the two guilds together in one
area. We continued to work closely with DC and in November of 2003, when it was
possible to create player cities, the city of Corriban was born on Naboo under the DC
and LotD banners. However, this partnership was to be short-lived. DC had a
monopoly on the ownership of city structures, and although our membership built
most of the structures within Corriban and were mainly responsible for the quick
leveling of the politician that was mayor of Corriban, they had no desire to share
power in Corriban. They claimed again and again that sales of goods from their
crafters to rebels was needed in order to maintain the city, despite our repeated
statements that we would be more than happy to supplement the loss of revenue to
the city to truly make Corriban an Imperial city. Every time an LotD member would kill
a rebel within the city there was an outcry from the DC crafting community of how
LotD had wronged their clientele, even though LotD in every case followed agreed
upon rules of engagement. In January of 2004, LotD withdrew from Corriban and
moved to the north beach of Naboo, near Theed and formed the city of Necropolis.
With the forming of the city of Necropolis, LotD pulled together as a tight-knit group
and worked hard to make Necropolis a shining bastion of Imperial might. Within a
matter of a couple of weeks, the city stood strong and proud with all of the luxuries
that we had enjoyed in Corriban, and without the stench of corruption and rebel
scum.
LotD continued to make a name for itself despite the lack of PvP that was now
plaguing the server due to what became known as the holo-grind in which players
were forced to grind through countless professions in the hope of gaining a forcesensitive slot to create a jedi character. We were forced to excursions off of Naboo
as the rebel forces on Naboo were on the run. We began to make raids on the planet
of Corellia and soon we made the acquaintance of the Knights of Ash, an honorable
rebel guild that continued to fight in PvP despite the loss of peers on the PvP scene.
Leaders of both guilds sat down and it was agreed upon to have a war with KoA.
After a mere 24 hours, and only a few skirmishes, KoA ended the war at the behest
of its membership that could not continue to bear the brunt of the LotD forces.
Unfortunately, this would be among the last great battles of LotD in SWG. With the
holo-grind and decay issues that were introduced, PvP became very scarce and hard
to find in SWG. HQs that everyone thought in the beginning would become items of
prestige fell below the mark and were useless to any true combat with a plethora of
bugs and issues that came along with them. Instead of adding high-end content and
fixing the issues within the game, SOE began a campaign of changing the game at
its very core and releasing much hyped events that added little flavor to the game.
LotD began to field fewer and fewer numbers in the game and interest began to
wane. In March of 2004, it was decided to pull LotD out of Star Wars Galaxies.
Guild Wars: 2004-2005
LotD was the first PVP guild brought into the closed test for Guild Wars in March
2004. We quickly entered the test and put the PVE carebears to the sword. By June
2004 though membership began to point out some issues to the ArenaNet
developers such as a lack of PVP rewards, repetitive Diablo like PVE, and a lack of
variety for high end PVP competition (i.e. only 1 ranked ladder).
We made numerous suggestions to increase the PVP statistics, reduce the
repetitive grind time to PVE in order to become competitive in PVP, and get more
ranked team competition (4 vs 4 ladder, 6 vs 6, etc). We also brought up a concern
about something called a Smurf Guild. Smurf Guilds were basically fake guilds that
other teams used to practise with on the live ladder so they didn't risk their real guild's
rating. During the first six months of GW Retail, there were no less than 20 Smurf
Guilds holding spots in the top 60 of the Retail PVP ladder.
The PVP community revolted over this, and that fastest confirmed time for the best
closed test player to unlock one dual class PVP character in GW Retail (PreBalthazar Faction rewards) was 650 hours. It sucked because competitive PVP
guilds needed to have each member with 2-3 types of PVP characters in order to
field a variety of spec groups.
ArenaNet did eventually add a PVP reward system to the game (Balthazar Faction),
and allowed players to earn skills and items via PVP victories. The fastest rate of
faction gain was through Guild vs Guild (Ladder) victories, and slow to moderate for
the other arena types. This had unintended consequences though, and amplified the
Smurf Guild problem. Created to test builds, or to remain on the PVP ladder with the
intent to farm faction for people's characters to ultimately benefit the real guild, Smurf
Guilds took up ladder spots and eventually got to the top of the ladder. When that
happened, the Smurf Guild would usually go inactive, keeping its ladder spot thus
blocking ladder advancement for lower guilds.
Many PVP guilds quit in frustration with grinding faction and smurfing, or other issues
related to preparing to PVP, but LotD stayed in competition through September 2005
(6 months of Retail play). When we stopped actively playing we were in the Top 40,
and there were approximately 5,000-6,000 guilds in ladder competition behind us.
LotD reopened its Guild Wars chapter in 2006, and brought in some people from the
community to make another run at the ladder. We came back because ArenaNet
finally broke down and offered purchasable PVP packs, and that cut the grind time
down considerably. One of the previous issues we faced with stagnant guilds taking
up spots on the ladder still existed, so we were only able to make it into the top 100
when we returned. We basically got bored at that point, and let our rank slip away
due to guild inactivity.
City of Villains: 2005-2006
LotD Throne Room
Lords of the Dead opened up a chapter in City of Villains when it launched in 2005,
closed it in November 2006, and then returned for about 6 months in 2007. What
brought us to the game was the promise of base raids, the introduction of PVP
zones, the ability to play villain classes, and the hype that lead us to believe that
there would be some form of official PVP ranking associated with these events. We
formed LotD on the Freedom Server, and we were PVP'ing in the level 30 zone
within the first month.
Within our first 90 days we made our presence known across the game, and were
one of four guilds nominated for 2006 PVP guild of the year. The other three guilds
had long track records in the community, but we beat out many veteran guilds to earn
the nomination.
It took us about 90 days to get setup, established with a stable chapter membership,
and to figure out the best villain PVP group configurations. We established good
relations with some Cryptic Developers, and we worked with them to help balance
out villains for PVE and PVP. LotD and its feedback was noted by the lead zone
developer when Issue 7 was being developed, and we helped refine the Recluse
Victory PVP zone to make it as fun as possible.
Archon_Voss
Cryptic Studios Level Design Lead
Good Work LOTD- The zone is very much about using Strategies.
Regarding the pillboxes and recall, Heroes did not do this- it is a bug; currently, when
someone controlling the pillbox dies the turrets sometimes follow them to the
reclamator.We have fixed this, and it will be uploaded soon.
A_V
LotD totally dominated zone based PVP on Freedom and the Test Server (where any
guild could transfer to fight one another). We arranged over 20 base raids and never
lost a single one, and we were recognized by the PVP community as one of the top 5
arena PVP guilds in the entire game. We even formed a hero squad called the PWN
Shop, and frequently logged on to beat the crap out of the villain side when they were
too dominating. Whatever side we fought on was almost always the winning side.
LotD made a prolonged and serious effort to be competitive in the top end PVP
scene (Heroes and Villains), but there was no indication that some of the
fundamental PVP concerns of LotD or the PVP community as a whole would be
addressed before the guild moved onto another game. The COV forum moderators
frequently locked posts in the PVP community forums that were designed to get
discussion going, Cryptic had some PVP friendly developers leave, a year after COV
Retail release the base raids were still not in the game, and no formal PVP ranking
system could get any developer's interest. We felt like we were beating our heads
against the wall, so we decided to close down the CoV chapter and focus our efforts
on the future games of Fury and Warhammer Online.
World of Warcraft: 2004-2008
After roughly 9 years of experience in the gaming world, Lords of the Dead entered
World of Warcraft (WoW). LotD began in the Beta about 2-3 months before Blizzard's
official release in November of 2004, and WoW was our longest running guild
chapter with a span of 4 years played. LotD initially played on Archimonde, and later
transferred to Mug’Thol to escape massive login queues.
WoW provided unique challenges to the guild not previously experienced in our
ventures into other games. First, LotD had never really been in a game that lacked a
PvP focus. While the game mechanics of WoW may have eventually changed to
include more PvP, the vast majority of the game was PvE based in its infancy. WoW
also required a large amount of numbers in terms of people to progress and succeed
throughout the endgame. In the past, LotD has been used to small, focused, and
skilled, fire teams. Our approach had to be rethought when it came to this game.
LotD structured itself to deal with the 40 man raiding required in the early years, and
after the Burning Crusade (TBC) expansion LotD downsized to accommodate a 25
man raid structure. LotD continued to play WoW up until the 2.4 Sunwell Patch, and
had progressed into T6 content. With WoW not being a serious PVP game, LotD’s
approach to WoW was a more casual one than in games past. We always
advertised ourselves as a casual raiding guild, and tried to enjoy the game as best
we could while we waited on something else. Even though we were had a casual
focus though, LotD still ranked in the top 5% of all US progression guilds up until the
2.4 Sunwell Patch.
Since WoW was mostly gear based, LotD never truly opted to compete in WoW’s
PVP system. We did play the Battlegrounds for fun, but unfortunately Blizzard had
no guild wide rankings for participating there. During the time we played WoW the
Arena system evolved and did have player rankings, but it was filled with point
farmers and riddled with enough problems that we didn’t see it as anything
resembling a real competitive environment. Once Age of Conan released, we
packed our bags and left WoW for good.
Fury: 2007
LotD Score across all Tournament Types (Game Wide)
LotD Score in Team Elimination (Deathmatch)
LotD Score in Vortex (Capture The Flag)
LotD began working with the Auran developers in early 2007 when Fury was in its
internal closed test. The game had lots of promise, and the community felt that Fury
would offer people what Guild Wars didn't. Fury went into a public Beta in June
2007, and had a target release date of "Late 2007". At the start of the June Beta we
felt that Fury could release at the end of 2007, but as time went on it became clear
that Auran was going to release an unfinished game.
There were a few main types of PVP combat in the game, and LotD dominated them
all while we played.
Team Elimination: The winners were the ones that won two out of three rounds.
These were pretty fun head to head matches, and could become a great place to
arrange matches between guilds.
Vortex: These maps were basically a resource race. Your team had to capture
crystals, and bring them to your base. The twist was that the other team could raid
your base and steal all the crystals you had. That made for some interesting
offense/defense type action, and the sloppy team could quickly snatch defeat from
the jaws of victory if they were not on top of things.
Bloodbath: This was a big Free For All (FFA) type match where everyone could kill
everyone. It was a very fast paced, chaotic, and fun type of PVP.
PVP Ranks:
After Retail release players were assigned PVP ranks based on their skill and
performance. The ranks broke down accordingly:
2.3%
12.1%
18.7%
18.3%
19.5%
15.3%
6.9%
4.5%
1.9%
0.6%
Reborn
Initiate
Disciple
Adept
Ascendant
Expert
Master
Grand Master
Paragon
Eternal
The LotD membership had over 75% of the guild membership at Grandmaster or
above at the time of our departure. That clearly put veteran LotD members in the top
5% of all players in the game. As you can see from the screenshot below, LotD was
well represented with Top 30 players each week.
What Killed Fury?
What killed Fury was a series of shortsightedness from both the company leadership
and the developer team. According to several sources, Fury sold around 100k copies
of the game. However the game was plagued with technical issues revolving around
the unproven Unreal 3 game engine, they launched with limited PVP content that got
old quick due to a lack of variety, their 24 skill slotbar was too much for many people
given the quick pace of combat, and a game that advertised itself as no grind but
created a grind for gear and skill acquisition. Additionally many people refused to pay
a subscription fee for a game they felt was similar to Guild Wars (which had no
subscription), and so they left when they figured out they needed to pay to access
advanced game features.
The community ended up being a big collection of veterans and newbs, with very
little of a middle tier population. Auran eventually made the game free and did a big
content patch on Dec 14th. However that patch made gear even more important,
and basically forced people to have to buy gold from Auran for $20 a pop on a
regular basis to stay competitive.
In response to that patch, LotD along with several other leading guilds decided to
leave Fury and move on to other games.
Age of Conan: 2008
LotD Full Tier 3 Guild City
Age of Conan released in May of 2008 and LotD went to play on the Deathwhisper
Open PVP Server. There we encountered a lot of old school guilds such as Sinister,
Darkhand, Regulators, and many others. There were also new guilds that came to
Deathwhisper in order to try to gain some street credibility by challenging the old
school guilds.
The first guilds to challenge LotD directly were PFB, Sinister, and Hordes of
Goonheim. LotD game to AOC with a roster of 150 people, and structured to win
sieges as well as being able to lock down entire PVP/PVE zones. However even
with our size and strength it was difficult to take on an entire server of 2,000+ players
and guilds at the same time. Having played the game of thrones in previous games,
LotD picked up on the fact that most guilds on the server were trying to use NonAggression Pacts (NAP) as a way to limit how many enemies they fought at once. In
an effort to put or full attention towards the real war against Sinister, PFB, and the
Goons we agreed to NAP’s with guilds who sought us out so that we wouldn’t waste
time or resources fighting 1,000 side battles.
The early NAP’s looked like the flowchart below:
During the time that this NAP was in place LotD was actively fighting Sinister, PFB,
Ice Gaming, Vangarian Guard, Carnage, War Machine, Harm, and Hordes of
Goonheim all at the same time. LotD was the second guild on Deathwhisper to claim
a PVP Battlekeep, but Funcom hadn’t perfected siege scheduling so we ended up
with our first siege being at 6:00 AM on a workday. PFB tried to ninja LotD’s PVP
battlekeep with a 48 man raid in the hopes of being the first guild in the world to win a
PVP siege.
LotD wins 740 to PFB’s 47
LotD Mammoth Squad
Unfortunately for them they went from potentially being the first guild in the world to
win an AOC siege to the first guild in the world to lose an AOC siege attempt. LotD
showed up with a full defense force, and ran them out of the zone. Their leaders
spent days trying defend their loss on the public forums, and ultimately they lost so
much credibility that their guild began to fall apart.
Next on our war agenda was the Sinister guild whom we had a long track record of
fighting against in AOC as well as past games (see Shadowbane section). We had
been battling Sinister in the Kesh PVP/PVE zone for weeks, and with their PFB allies
severely weakened we launched an attack on their PVP Battlekeep.
Sinister claims hollow victory
LotD breached their walls, pushed them onto a rez pad, and had them safely bottled
up, but unfortunately still Sinister won on a technicality. With siege mechanics still
being new and still having an hour left to go in the siege event we figured we would
burn their battlekeep to the ground first, and then move on the blow up the rest of
their buildings. After we destroyed their battlekeep, the siege suddenly ended and
the game awarded them points for all their remaining buildings. So even though they
truly lost, according to the game they won. It was a hollow victory for Sinister
because they knew they got owned badly by LotD, but they tried to spin it as good as
they could on the forums. Sinister hung around for a few more weeks after this
defeat, but never regained their position as a guild that could significantly affect
server politics.
This is my last memory of Sinister, and Bone, before they left Deathwhisper for good.
The last member of our Axis of Evil to be destroyed was the Hordes of Goonheim. At
launch they had publicly boasted that they would plow everyone down with a 2,000
man mega guild, but instead they ended up being run off the server by LotD. The
first humiliation of the Goons was when PVE guild cities were vulnerable the first few
weeks of the game. LotD rallied 50 members, sacked their city, and slaughtered any
Goons who tried to defend.
Seeing the Goon horde so humiliated, the citizens of Deathwhisper rose up against
them and they began to be attacked everywhere. The Goons tried to recover by
attacking LotD’s PVP Battlekeep, but they were easily repulsed.
Over the next two months LotD and the Goons went back and forth until their guild
began to collapse due to poor morale, constant beatings, and LotD finished off
completely in AOC by wiping their PVP Battlekeep off the map.
With PFB, Sinister, and Goons gone LotD began to turn its attention building AOC’s
first American Tier 3 Guild City, and to other guilds who wanted to compete with us
for server domination. However hard they tried, the result was always the
samePLotD wins.
As we crushed opponent after opponent and Funcom didn’t improve the game, the
server population began to dwindle. The last major accomplishment that LotD could
truly do before moving on to the next game was to finish its Tier 3 Guild City. At the
time we were one of the most advanced Guild on the American servers and had
been selling level 80 crafted gear for months. We made our Tier 3 Announcement on
Sept 1st and it took us less than 4 months to complete the first Tier 3 city on the
Deathwhisper server. Funcom wasn’t in the habit of announcing world firsts at the
time, but recently started recognizing guilds after the new game director took over.
Another guild tried to claim the title of Word First for a Tier 3 City, and we protested
their claim. As a result, Funcom released the statement below.
By September 15th, Warhammer Online was ready to launch and LotD officially shut
down its AOC chapter. AOC was fun while it lasted but we beat every big name that
challenged us, dominated the server, were one of the top guild progression guilds in
the game (estimated 400k subs at our departure), and had nothing left to prove.
Warhammer Online: 2008
LotD went to Warhammer online in 2008, and played the Order Faction on the Azazel
Server. The history will be updated at a later time to reflect our final standing, but
early on we are certainly upholding our fine tradition of excellence.