The Early Raiding Scene

It’s pretty hilarious to reminisce at just how backwater the early raiding scene was on Scarlet Crusade.  However, I think that in a way this actually helped Ladies of Destiny survive.  In the very beginning, LoD was a huge guild in terms of numbers (my “interview process” was literally just me whispering some random level 10 person who I needed to talk to in order to get invited, and then instantly having a guild invite pop up on my screen).  But over time I guess Matron must have developed some sort of standards, because we developed into a relatively small guild that had a handful of the server’s best players, but could never dream of fielding a full 40 man Molten Core raid.  As Matron alluded to in his post, the threat of losing our better players to the more advanced guilds was a constant theme for that first year of LoD’s existence.  Luckily for us, even the “more advanced guilds” on Scarlet Crusade would’ve made the current Ladies of Destiny look like Ensidia:

• Empire – The first attempted Alliance raiding guild was led by the Night Elf Rogue, on again off again Moonwink lovah, and overall uber-doosh, Vaan.  He ended up luring away several of our former guild members, including Angie, Hoa, Moonikki, Sirena, and most notably Wildelia.  Empire ended up flaming out extremely quickly when Vaan’s leadership turned out to rival that of Huntmaster’s in NC Gaming.  Matron’s heart remained broken for several years though, until Wildelia finally came back to LoD in TBC
• Emerald Lords – Another attempted raiding guild which flamed out rather quickly.  They actually took several LoD members on their MC runs (including myself), but never tried to recruit anyone away.  My first few MC raids were with them.  If I had to sum up their raids in one sentence, I’d have to go with “they once spent 15 minutes arguing over whether we should do random rolls on greens which were upgrades for people, or just DE them to save time”.  Yes, GREENS!  The guild blew up after a particularly brutal night of wiping repeatedly from trying to pull Lucifron without getting imps from the cave, or a pack of corehounds at the same time.  Good times!
• Archon – Archon started raiding around the same time as Emerald Lords, with infinitely better results.  Luckily for LoD, they had no interest in any of our members, as they were succeeding very well on their own.  We have several former Archon members in LoD today, and we generally always had a good relation with them (with the notable except of Tarja getting BANT from their TBC community raids for making Nightmusic cry)
• Haven – This was a new guild that started having some success in Onyxia, and was somewhat of a threat to poach LoD members, but never did to my knowledge.  All I really remember was one night when Emarori got really mad at me because I wanted to go to their Onyxia raid instead of run her thru quests, with the logic that “you can do level 60 stuff whenever you want, but how often will we have a full night to do Stranglethorn Vale quests?”.  I ended up telling them that I couldn’t go that night because I had promised my girlfriend that I would help her with quests – they never invited me back even though they continued inviting several other LoD members for a month or two afterwards.  Yes I’m still bitter :(
• Eternal - I was there for the very first raid of this new upstart guild led by a bald hooligan Priest named Baynoor.  The difference in attitudes between them and Emerald Lords was night and day.  Every time we wiped on a single core hound or lava surger, that was a great attempt guys, we almost had it!  When the the initial trash respawned before we even made it to the imp caves (much less to Lucifron), that was a great job guys, we learned alot tonight!  Even when the Hunter named Hakhu who had gone the entire raid DPSing while naked, went into great detail about how he would have more fun dry humping his grandmother, and then hearthed out and gquit mid-raid, people just laughed it off and no one yelled at anyone.
• Dark Heaven – Just when we were building our Zul’gurub group into a strong force of ~20 consistent raiders, a disgruntled faction of raiders from Archon split off to form DH, taking several of our non-LoD raiders, including Pung, Ningning, Veyl, Whitefox.  We always had a love/hate relationship with DH, and they played a huge role in the beginning days of LoD’s 40 man raiding.  I’m sure Matron will want to say more about that tomorrow though.

Finding Our Way in Zul’gurub

Maybe I digressed too much about other guilds on the server, but I suppose that’s ok since this is also the Scarlet Crusade 5th anniversary.  But anyways, like I said, in that first year Ladies of Destiny was mostly a small guild with some really good players, but not even enough to fill a 20 man Zul’gurub raid.  It’s fun to look back at just how noob we were back then though:

• DKP - So we read that the really good guilds don’t just do random rolls on loot.  We knew you were supposed to earn points for showing up, and spend them on loot… but I think that’s about as far as we knew how it worked.  I think our original system was that you earned 1 point for each boss killed, and blue gear cost 5 points, and epic gear cost 20 points.  But then we realized that the blue gear wasn’t all that great so we made it free.  Then eventually we realized that epics rarely dropped and that everyone had a shitload of points.  So then we increased the cost of epics, until we realized that everyone who ran ZG the most had negative points.  Also, some nights Tarja kept track of the DKP, other nights Matron did, other nights Anowyyn did – there was no master list anywhere, just the up to date current tally on the website.  Eventually we realized that whenever Matron said he would keep track of DKP, that night usually never got updated and ended up not counting.  So pretty quickly we moved to a system where I kept track of everything using a master spreadsheet, and Matron hasn’t been allowed to go near DKP since
• Bijous/Coins - Everyone needed to collect bijous and coins for their ZG setpieces.  Since there was no such thing as guildbanks (and even if there was, only half the people were from LoD), so we passed them out individually at the end of each raid rather than doing the logical thing and saving them all until people have the other mats needed for their setpieces.  I don’t remember our first system at all, the only thing I remember was that Muttonboy NEVER won the roll on anything, as if it was some huge cosmic joke.  We eventually changed it to a system where everyone rolled after the raid, and then we would pick which coins we wanted, in order of who rolled highest.  It was unnecessarily time consuming and silly, but people got the stuff they needed so I guess it got the job done
• Learning to play – Matron and Faranon thought they were coming up with some novel concept when they “invented” the tank switch for the Spider boss.  Tarja and Miyuki had no idea that Paladins were allowed to stand there and do nothing but heal, without meleeing stuff.  Silverluna was considered one of our better DPS even though she was so busy talking on vent that 75% of her DPS was autoshot.  Darreck actually got stuck in a cage by the Tiger boss. Muttonboy would die a dozen times a night, despite blowing thru a stack or two of Invulnerability Potions.  We cleared an entire wing of trash using the strategy of “Emarori gets naked and enslaves 1 mob, other mobs kill it, warlock dies and gets rezzed – repeat times 20″.  Moving out of the gas cloud on the Snake boss was something that we eventually realized was a good idea, after several weeks of killing the boss.  It was literally impossible to get the entire raid to run past the mobs near the first bridge without aggroing them.  Matron couldn’t even run across the bridge without falling off, even with no mobs nearby.  Matron continued taking rezzes on Bloodlord and taunting the boss even though he had died over 10 times and his gear was completely red.  Few people had Damage Meter mods, so the overall damage/healing done for the entire raid was always posted in raidchat for everyone who didn’t have them.  Threat meters?   Those didn’t even exist yet!  So yeah, I think we’ve come a looooong way since those days!

Year 1 – 2005

Our story begins, as all good WoW stories do, in Goldshire. 

Scarlet Crusade was opened on Feb 22^nd 2005 as one of a handful of new RP servers.  I had originally started playing on Bleeding Hollow and was frustrated at falling behind the pace of most of the other players.  Back in Vanilla WoW, at least the early days, leveling was the game.  You were your level.  Your level gave you power.  It brought with it a sense of awe and wonder.  So starting on a new server, even in level with everyone else, was an attractive proposition.

Why Ladies of Destiny

RP servers have a shelf life.  As the server ages the number of people still engaging in RP falls off.  People become more interested in other aspects of the game… pvp, raiding, alting etc.  But on day one of a new RP server the role playing is alive and well.  I knew I wanted to start a guild of my own, the previous guild I was in on my old server was really poorly run and I figured since I had hit level 35 on my mage I pretty much knew everything I needed to know about WoW, right?

Tapping into the RPness of Scarlet Crusade was part of my plan to start.  Establishing Ladies of Destiny as a female toon online guild gave it an identity and theme, without being too exclusionary.  Little did I know that this rule would govern and mold the guild for the next three years, not to mention invite many interesting questions about its origins.

Recruitment

Okay, I promised Goldshire… and most of what I did to start the guild happened in Goldshire (mind out of the gutter please).  It was the #1 hot spot for finding new talent! (mind out of the… aww never mind) 

Here’s where my genius as a guild leader really becomes apparent.  When the server first started I employed the same type of recruitment that all new guilds use these days… the tried and true method of General and Trade channel spam…  God I hate myself.  I was a little bit obsessed with wanting to be a really large and influential guild on the server.  I had one main “rival” guild in my quest for  eing a big guild, The Red Hand, and I can’t count how many /who Red Hands I’d do a day, comparing their guild roster size to LoD’s.

Looking back I wonder what my guildies must have thought of their guild leader.  On the one hand you had a very specific theme and identity being established, with an RP base and a female toon only rule, which couldn’t possibly be the brain child of a guy.  On the other hand you had a megalomaniac guild leader using every trick in the book to gain members, creating imaginary and unreciprocated competition with other guilds for members, obsessed with size… total give away…  I am dumb.

So all that aside getting new members was imperative!  The coolest thing about a guild in Vanilla was having a tabard, right?  So the first thing I did was take donations from our earliest members and get a tabard asap.  This was a major recruiting tool!  Do not underestimate how important it was to have a colorful cover for the mish mash of gear you wear in those early levels.  Not to mention it gives you an identity as part of a group when everyone on the server is basically searching for a place to call home.

The other major recruiting tool was the fact that I was a tailor.  Tailors made bags.  Bags hold stuff.  People need to hold stuff.  It was that simple.  That first week I just sat in Goldshire every day, having guild members come to me and give me their linen to be made into bags.

The game used to be a whole lot simpler.  Bags and Tabards, shot-gun recruitment in the trade/general channels… this is how great guilds were formed.

A comedy of errors and luck in these first few years, as you will see.

Another interesting note about recruiting in those early days – As I mentioned earlier, level meant everything in WoW.  Any time you met someone that played WoW you’d ask two questions “Do you play Horde or Alliance?” and “What level are you?”, these questions were even more important than “What class are you?”  or “What kind of gear do you have?”.  So if a guild had a very high (omg level 40!) level player in these early days it was a mark of honor.  You’d root these people on in guild chat as they leveled.  They’d act as mascots, as figureheads of sorts.  “Oh LoD has a level 53 hunter!”

Unfortunately the types of players that sprinted out in front of everyone else when leveling turn out to be the anti-social misfits of our society.

So basically I was focused on recruiting as many people as possible, with almost zero requirements outside of being a female toon, and I was targeting a sub-section of WoW society that probably can’t play well with others.  This led to a few occasions of drama, which I’ve since stricken from my memory, and lots of guild defections as the high level players from all the different guilds banded together to form one doomed super guild of social misfits.

Whew, the early days.

Losing Guildies

I hate losing members.  As people leveled to 60 everyone started to identify what they wanted to spend their time doing.  With the release of Warsong Gulch some LoD members spent all of their time pvping and waiting in queue.  Other members tried to finish their dungeon sets from Strat and Scholo.  Still others, the best geared or perhaps the most connected of us would be invited to fill raids with larger guilds.  What I hated to have happen was X guild approach a guildie and offer them something that LoD couldn’t, a spot on a stable wsg team or an invite from a “serious” raiding guild.  The only way to stop this from happening was to provide these same opportunities for LoD members within the guild. 

It was an early lesson in how WoW works, those that provide the opportunities hold the power in most any situation.  This rule would play out a few times during LoD’s history.

Raiding

LoD sort of missed the boat in terms of early MC raiding, in fact only a few guilds on the server even zoned into MC when it first came out.  What really defined LoD and what it was to become was Zul Gurub.

Blizzard’s first twenty person instance came along just in time to see many of us finishing our dungeon sets and looking for a challenge.  I remember forming up to raid ZG four or five nights a week.  That wasn’t because we were hardcore and clearing the instance or anything, in fact it was the opposite.  We were hardcore casuals that targeted a boss or two each night.  We’d work on a boss for a few nights in a row before downing him.  Some bosses we spent weeks working on!

We also didn’t raid with entire LoD groups at this time.  We probably pugged a good half of the group, which allowed us to make some fantastic friends along the way.  Unlike most pugs we’d try to invite the same people back each night, eventually forming a semi-regular group which just zoned into ZG every night and had a blast.  We met Pungs, Ning-nings, Eclypses, Darrecks, Wolvis, Faranons, Muttonboys, Jaedes, and Dineas.  I think a lot of people enjoyed raiding with us because we were fun and fair when running raids.

ZG really turned us into a guild in the true sense of the word.  Rather than just adding a green chat channel, being in LoD finally meant that you were a part of something.  For the first time we were working together on difficult encounters as a team.  Seeing someone else get a drop was almost as rewarding as getting one of your own.  Everyone was chatting on vent (somehow we were almost half women, for those wondering) and having a blast.

MMOs require a certain dedication.  Some people can motivate themselves by world rank or gear.  For most others playing the game means enjoying time with friends.  Many people hit a wall in MMOs and there is a critical point where they need to find a group to become a part of or else they just quit and move onto the next game.  I know for many of us ZG raiding was the time period where our interest in the game and each other took hold.  Those few months of raiding are probably responsible for more current WoW addicts than we’d like to take credit for.

ZG was also the instance where we were introduced to some of the simple responsibilities which come from running a raid.  How do we assign loot to a group of people that may vary each night?  How do we give away bijous or coins so that people can get the items they need?  Which bosses do we focus on?  Who do we invite?

It was all a grand experiment and for the most part we did a great job.  People were understanding if something didn’t work right the first time.  It was the perfect way to ease into raiding and establish a group of people that liked spending time together.

There’s more that happened in that first year… an early alliance with Dark Heaven… and from that an eventual alliance with The Fel Watch and Twilights Legacy.  Those stories play a bigger part in 2006 so I’ll leave those for tomorrow.

For now I’m reminded of my high school motto Tenui Nec Dimittam, which means “Take hold and never let go”.  I think these early days of LoD and ZG were the time when the game and guild took hold of many of us and has never let us go.

Humble beginnings…