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End of an era Sun Sep 12, 2010 2:11:08 PM EDT - by Demorgoth - 112 comments In 1999, fed up with the disorganisation of public dragon raids, a group of likeminded hardcore EQers banded together to form a guild to excel at the task of large scale raiding. Souls of the Shadow was formed as one of the first new 'uberguilds' as they came to be known. SotS was forced to change it's name to Night's Watch after countless altercations with the disorganised public raids we constantly beat to the kill, leading to GMs, Devs and even the man behind EQ himself getting involved. The PnP was implemented, but we continued kicking ass and taking names (and all the loot). Eventually a split in the leadership lead to Dark Horizon being formed from the vast majority of SotS raiders, and a fledgling DKP system being adopted. All this time our sister guild Ytrilynth's Horde raided alongside us, and eventually they joined DH too. We had the best part of a decade excelling at the most bleeding edge of Everquest's hardest content. Maybe not serverwide first, but always in the first wave of elite guilds. Other legendary guilds came and went, but DH endured as one of the only surviving 'original' raid guilds. We deliberately held a comparatively 'light' raiding schedule of only 4 nights a week, yet still managed to stay right at the forefront of progression. This was only possible through a conscious decision to focus on our raiders rather than farming for an army of alts or a huge roster of part time raiders. We always had an outstanding core of obscenely high attendance players meaning we could field the same force week in, week out. We learnt the events together, and almost every piece of loot the guild gained was present at every raid meaning we could move on without farming old content to gear up a bloated roster. We proudly held high standards, which not only applied to potential membership, but beyond that into resolutely resisting any types of exploitation, account buying/selling, cheat programs or automation. Sure, it wasn't all roses and killshots over the years, but we were never in trouble. Being 'top of the pile' meant a steady stream of the cream of potential recruits and we could keep our elitist standards high knowing spaces on the raid were preferable to compromise. Year on year we consumed the hardest content EQ had to throw at us, farmed the endzones, and then when new content was released almost everyone was pimped out and ready to engage. Then came Seeds of Destruction which ironically sewed the seeds of our destruction, which was then followed by Underfoot which all but finished us off. SoD was trivially easy in terms of raid content. The hard fought advantages we'd worked so hard for over the years by getting to the endzones fast and gearing up our entire raid force in the best there was, were suddenly worthless. Suddenly guilds all over the place were level with us on gear and the steady influx of quality replacement to members lost through natural attrition dried up. Having never had to deal with any of this before, we were slow to react and inexperienced at any type of active recruiting - people had always approached us, and we didn't know how to go out and find the quality we were looking for. With nothing but trivially easy raids to accomplish, SoE's solution was to give us 'hard modes' of the exact same raids, except with half the loot and lower numbers allowed. Core people who hadn't needed Tower loot for months got bored, burnt out, and eventually quit the game Then Underfoot came out, and the seeds sown in SoD started to get harvested en masse. Artificially overtuned raid content designed to slow progress and hide unfinished/untested raids meant UF hit us like a brick wall. Our forte of being able to do with 40 what others did with 54 and 20 sitters was no longer sufficient. Inexperienced at mass recruiting, we couldn't replace the elite and geared raiders we'd lost or fill raids with quantity to compensate. Slow progress led to frustration for some, and for the first time in our history we lost people to other guilds instead of only quitting the game, and started slipping down the leaderboards. A short alliance with Iratus Lepus held promise but ultimately failed to work out. We recruited hard and tried to replace the drip drip drip of core raiders leaving, but ultimately it was a vicious circle. A fully geared and skilled high attendance member would leave, and we'd try to replace them with several lesser geared, lower attendance, less experienced raiders with less invested in the guild. That would lead to an overall drop of raiding expertise in the guild, and more would get frustrated and consider leaving. That's not to say all apps were like that, it's just that we couldn't afford to pick and choose the best, so ended up more transient raiders than was ideal. That said, we've picked up some amazing players along the way who really deserve to be at the pinnacle of EQ's raiding elite Dark Horizon will remain as a guild indefinitely for those who want to keep the tag, but there wil be no more official raids. |