My RO History II

The beginnings are over, and its time to move on to what I consider the Golden age of my history!

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Ethereal and HocusPocus

Just after Peacemakers broke and before I joined Ethereal, Twin and Hikaru Hinoto invited me to join Ethereal. Not content with joining in my current condition, I waited until I was level 70 before joining. Ethereal was in all respects a WoE guild, though all of us were 7x-8x. Truth be told, we weren’t that successful as a WoE guild either. We were barely considered a WoE guild and even a simple castle break was cause for celebration. However, we excelled at the one thing we all did together, HP parties.

A few times every week, we’d get our usual party together and craft MvPs. Our guild spot in Old Payon was southeast of the kafra, where we would gather the usual culprits. Our party would consist of me and another sage, usually Sayuki, as the main HPers with Twin and Sumi as our PC couple. Of course, that doesn’t include the many people that joined the party for the multiple other roles. At a time when LoD drama and MvP leeching was an issue, we played together for the fun of fighting MvPs. As a 7x sage, I would’ve never had a chance at catching even a glimpse of MvPs out in their natural habitat. As I’ve mentioned before, it really was the best of times. However, it wouldn’t last.

Some time had passed (about 4-5 months), and some members of Ethereal grew uneasy. Hikaru Hinoto, despite being an enthusiastic leader, wasn’t a very active one. Sometime around February 2005, a couple of Ethereal members led by Kaiboshi and Iko’ led a successful rebellion against Hikaru Hinoto and created a new guild with nearly all the former Ethereal members named Arcane, which was led by Iko’. Under Arcane, we continued to HP party with the usual cast. However, just a month later, our HP parties would simply cease. In a one-two punch from Gravity, PC would only reduce gem reqiurements by one, while the ???? option of HP would have a reduced chance to proc Class Change. Around the same time, various members began temping into Sonic for WoE. This became frequent enough that Arcane itself collapsed on itself, sending its members to various places in the world. Combined with the advent of New Payon, the era of my sage had just ended, nearly 8 months after its creation.

With no reason to level my sage anymore, and with a good amount of mage gears backing me, I decided to make a wizard, while at the same time making a guild. A guild which would later be called Mutiny…

To be continued

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Way back when…

…there were still new players, you could find a good number of novices running around novice island. A very common tactic when starting a guild back then was to make a new character, run it through novice island while partying every novice you saw, and make a guild with those very same novices after getting out. When I made my mage, this was the exact same tactic I used to start up Mutiny.

Draco had recently seceded from my account and was working his way to his second hybrid knight when Mutiny was formed, so he took a major role as co-leader of the guild. Activity problems never arose ’till 15 days into the guild’s conception, when all the free trialers dropped out. That would’ve been the end of it if it hadn’t been for one of our more eccentric members, Bazard Dream, who would randomly go out and recruit members out of the blue. It was that very same person who would later push for an alliance between Mutiny and HolyExe, due to him having characters in both guilds. Bazard Dream probably doesn’t play anymore, or knows how much of an impact he’s had on the direction Mutiny’s history, or even my history.

Draco and I struggled to recruit competant members in the following weeks, being one of the few second classers in the guild. Pretty soon, some members became a core part of the guild’s persona. Mindcrime and Mazukot, a sin and knight respectively, were among the oldest members of Mutiny, and also the first to hit second class while in Mutiny. Ozzie Osborn from Hellions months back joined on a new aco named Heal Osborn he was making. Unfortunately, all three either disappeared or dropped from the guild before the summer. Mind and Maz went on to fulfill their dream of starting their own guild, and Osborn simply stopped coming online. From that point on, we enter the later stages of Mutiny, and the core membership that we all know today.

The late Mutiny era was indeed our best times together. The core membership from the pre-merger era were very close-knit. Grogian, one of Draco’s swordie buddies, played the ever important role as our unofficial recruiter. Ronfar Lightwalker (who later made a sage named Matt Elementwalker) became one of the co-leaders of Mutiny as well, and was one of my major sources of advice exclurding Draco. Alias Drake, Melody (who later made a dancer named .Emma.), and Terra (later made a priest named Holy Angel) were among the few active girls in the guild, though Alias Drake left a week or so before summer. Keitobi, one of our older members, often kept to himself, but also actively participated in guild events. Haru Glory, another one of Draco’s swordie buddies, was one of the few of Draco’s swordie buddies (he had five) who made it to knighthood (Gro became a crusader, oddoneout was on a free trial, Overture was simply lazy, Maz turned knight before all of them). Cheerios, a sin, was one of our few higher level players, which usually put him at a disadvantage when we made guild parties.

Although we were allied to HolyExe, we rarely went to WoE with them, due to our stupidly low levels (70-80 was considered a high level back then, but most of our members were still in the 40-60 range). We did, however, WoE with one of Draco’s older friend’s guild. Atonement, who had just recently changed to monk, was the leader of a similar novice-party-born guild named Divine Slayers. Our WoEs were pretty uneventful. We would run to the emp of a Brit castle, at which point if there were defenders, we’d all die, no exceptions. If the emp was empty, we’d have cheerio and whoever else was on to break the emp, usually taking a few minutes, during which if another guild rushed us, we would’ve died. Half the time, we never got past the WoE 1.0 guardian archers. But at the time, It was fun, simply because it was something the guild did together.

We continued this way ’till summer set in. In June, I brought the co-leaders of Mutiny together to discuss the inactivity problem. We had a decent base of active members, as seen above, but we also had an even larger base of inactive members. Of our 20 member limit, we were only seeing about a third of them ever on. HolyExe, our allies at the time, were also having the same problem with activity. One thing led to another, and VrmpX, the leader of HolyExe, and I began talks on a possible merger between Mutiny and HolyExe. I consulted the guild’s core members at the time, who had no objections. Sometime in the middle of June, we came to the decision for Mutiny to merge into HolyExe, while keeping Mutiny’s identity. The titles Team Mutiny and Cruel+Unusual were allocated to Mutiny members who didn’t want another title in HolyExe. The actual merger took place rather smoothly, with all the active members transfered within a few days. Instead of breaking Mutiny and joining the guild on my wizard, I took out my newly job changed monk, DarkerTemplar…

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Post-Merger HolyExe: The First Iteration

There is a huge difference between recruiting one person and recruiting several people from the same group at once. When recruiting one person, that person is the only one that needs to get used to the guild and the people. When a larger group joins another larger group, as was with this merger, both groups have to get used to each other. As the merger finished, the first week or so of our joint membership was dedicated to getting to know each other. V attempted to incorporate Mutiny in HolyExe’s emblem, but failed miserably, so we simply left HolyExe’s emblem untouched. All in all, HolyExe members were very receptive of the merger, and we were soon the closest of friends. A few weeks after the merger, Twin entered the RO scene again and I convinced him to join us. During the same time period, Draco married Holy Angel. HolyExe’s core members were slightly higher level than that of Mutiny core, but that isn’t saying much when the level range was still 60-75. Due to the conditions of the merger, I was given a spot as a co-leader. If I remember correctly, the first five titled members on the guild list made up the group of co-leaders and sub-leaders known as HolyExe’s council (not very sure about this, correct me if I’m wrong V). Off the top of my head, the core members of HolyExe were o pollo (who later got married to Emma), NauCT (quit after a certain event in HE history), Equina (later married to V), Furui Pillow (now known as Shiawase Peach/Momo), Kenshin (no clue what happened to him, he was one of HE’s sub-leaders), Maxwell (now a well-known member of Wasa), Magnus Kain (left to private servers with his wife after some time), and BeyX (another monk, disappeared suddenly then reappeared, then disappeared again). If I forgot someone in HolyExe, it was because they were insignificant. Insignificant!

My memory of this era is rather fuzzy (more like I don’t have enough screenshot evidence), but I remember HolyExe had a very good relationship with Living Dead Dolls, the leader of which was Rynette. However, HE never actually allied to LDD until after a certain incident. I don’t remember much on the topic of allies at the time, nor do I recall much about WoE in HE. Supplies were meager and we never held a castle, but in the end, it was about the experience. We also MvPed semi-frequently, which was coincidentally how I got my first MvP, on a Dracula with a jumble of members from HE and LDD. V and o pollo frequently MvPed doppel on their own, while I went with guild Dracula parties.

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HolyExe and Mutiny

Things continued peacefully for 3 months after the merge, but a few members began to get a little restless, as was the case with Ethereal. The concept of mandatory WoEs is common today, but back then, optional WoEs were very much normal. V was considering making HE a full-fledged WoE guild, with WoE attendance a factor in whether you stayed in the guild or not, a very controversial move. A few members from the Mutiny side of the guild opposed the policy, and a heated debate arose from the circumstances. Combined with the stress built up from a week-long guild leveling event (thanks for the tip), tensions rose between the members and the higher-ups. I was able to keep Mutiny members from doing anything drastic while I was around, but my account expired just a day or so later. Back then, I used Pay-by-Cash to renew my account, so it took a few days for my account to come back up. However, it only took a few days for the conflict to come to its climax, resulting in a massive mutiny (oh, the irony) within HE. Almost all the core members of Mutiny and HolyExe seceded from the guild and formed a guild named Band of the Hawk, led by a former LDD member named Daiego. The aftermath of this rebellion left HolyExe in shambles. Very few core members were left, pretty much coming down to about four core members plus V and I. Any attempts to reason with Band of the Hawk members concluded with nothing resolved. In all honesty, it was likely this incident that cracked something inside V. No longer the reasonable person he was a month ago, he became a being consumed with hatred for Band of the Hawk, and sought every chance he could to destroy them (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little). I personally stayed in touch with my old members, but slowly drifted apart from them.

I left V to his own devices to return to my now empty guild on my wizard, Mutiny. The rebellion may have shook up V, but it also hit me very hard as well. The only members left being Draco, who has no choice but to follow my directive, and Twin, who has stayed on my side for god knows how long. Although this time in Mutiny was brief, I did recruit two important people. At the time, Draco and I had both finished our alchemists, and I made an alternate guild on my alchy to hold them. Payon cave was one of my favorite spots to recruit in, so I headed there to recruit people for my alchy’s guild. At one point, I recruited a pair of archers and a thief. One of the archers eventually became inactive, but the remaining archer and thief became fast friends of mine. The archer, Talesslaser, quickly moved up in the world upon leaving Mutiny, while Rorelu, the thief, attached to Mutiny like the plague. At one point, Rorelu stated he wanted to join another guild. I said that he could go ahead, but I wouldn’t tank him if he did. As a result, I indirectly blackmailed him into staying in Mutiny, even after he became a sin.

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Styx and Stones may break my bones…

…but words will never hurt me!

With autumn setting in, I decided it was time to drop my wiz and Mutiny and try to start over by joining another guild on my monk. Twin went and joined Slaughtered Saints during this time. Around this point, V had disbanded HolyExe and joined Pestilence with Equina. I joined a non-woe guild for a little while before taking a tip from Draco that Styx was recruiting. I had remembered Styx as a rather well-known guild quite a while back, so I took the chance to move up in the world. V and I kept in touch after the incident and around this time, I promised V that if he ever remade HolyExe, I’d come and help him bring it back to its former glory. In the meantime, I would work my way through the social cliques of RO. Liquify or Paradiso, the leader of Styx, was very receptive of new members, so Draco and I had little trouble joining Styx while it was still in its rebuilding stage. Around this time, Mind and Maz had also returned, giving Draco a reason to throw them invites to Styx as well. As a combo monk, I had always leveled in Magma. When I joined Styx, I bought myself a decent +8 Trip Clam Chain and went to TI2. At first, I couldn’t 2-shot them, but as I leveled and got more str, it became easier. Liquify had a monk whom he always leveled at TI2 as well, so I soon learned about the high-end WoE scene from him. Styx had limited success in WoE itself, holding just one castle at one point due to a lucky break. Some time later, Liquify disbanded Styx and joined Insur along with a few members. I was leveling in TI2 guildless with Twin (don’t ask) when I saw Liquify on his monk leveling there as well. It was then that he offered me an invite to Insur, which I accepted. From that point on, I’d be a member of Insur.

To be continued…

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