Clan Ultionis

Ultionis: Dorundain you are the founder and leader of the Oromëa. We are about a week or so now into release now, how do you feel about the game so far?

Dorundain: At some point, a long time ago, one of the devs made a comment that the devs were gamers first, and were building the kind of game that they wanted to play. As a result, they’ve built the game I’ve always wanted – a huge, seamless world, with near-limitless player freedom, the ability to build and siege cities, skill-based character progression, FPS-style combat, and so forth. It’s a mouth-watering laundry list of features for anyone who’s frustrated with the standard MMO fare, and Darkfall delivers on all of those promises. We were disappointed with some of the design decisions – the guard towers in the wilderness, the floating indicators over clanmates’ and partymates’ heads, and a few other things – but those don’t take away from the Aventurine’s massive achievement, turning a PvPer’s dream into reality.

However, being gamers first, as opposed to, say, businesspeople, they vastly underestimated the demand for their product, and were woefully unprepared at launch, despite the delays. I think the market will be a lot more forgiving of an independent, niche game like Darkfall that is so meaningfully different from anything else available, but I feel Aventurine wasted a huge opportunity. A smooth launch, with capacity for every paying customer, would have silenced a lot of the naysayers. As it is, the brilliance of the game itself is somewhat dimmed by the frustrating (if comical) fact that customers have to struggle so much just to buy it.

U: Oromëa was formed in 2003 specifically for Darkfall. I always recruited ingame, people I have played the game with for a while. How have you been recruiting when the game was not out yet?

D: Well, first of all, we focused on recruiting people that we could get along with. In-game skill, to a large extent, can be trained (my wife went from playing nothing but Sims 2 to getting regular top scores in Battlefield 2 in the space of about 6 months) but it’s nearly impossible to “train” someone to fit in, socially. This meant that our application process was generally pretty long, often over a month. It also meant that we rejected a lot of applications (60% or so, last time I added it all up). However, largely as a result of this, we’ve developed some really close friendships within the clan, and many of us have met in real life, even traveling to other continents to do so. It’s a cliche, I know, but we’re not just a gaming clan, we’re a community of friends.

Having said all of that, we didn’t spend the last 5 and a half years sitting around on a forum. We’ve played a number of games together while we waited for Darkfall, including Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Savage, and most recently Battlefield 2.

U: What was your strategy, if any, going into release? Did everything go as planned?

D: Hah. Our strategy was to get everyone in-game as quickly as possible, rush to our favorite hunting spot, and get our cash fast. None of it went according to plan. Some of us couldn’t get pre-orders. Many of us (myself included) couldn’t get past the patch server. By the time we were all in-game, the synch issues were so bad that the fastest way we could make money was fishing for lobster and mining for gemstones, because we couldn’t see any of the mobs.

This was obviously a setback, but I was impressed at how my guys rallied together, and despite starting essentially from scratch, within a couple of hours of the servers normalizing, we had the city spot we wanted, and even had the extra cash to help out some friends.

U: If the information on Darkfall forums are correct you are 68 active members. What type of clan are you aiming for and why?

D: We’re a little bigger than that on paper, but that’s an accurate reflection of our active membership. We haven’t really been aiming for a particular size; I personally believe that any organization of any size benefits from adding quality people, so our focus is more on ensuring that the folks we let in are the folks we want, rather than on whether they fit into a desired headcount.

U: Reading your recruitment post I get the feeling your are a roleplayerish clan. If there is any truth to that, how is that working out for you?

D: If truth be told, few of our members roleplay, in the conventional sense. The only requirement we make of our members is that they keep real-life talk out of the Public channel. But honestly, 99% of our communication is in ventrilo, and nobody wants to roleplay on ventrilo.

We’d be more accurately described as a loreplay clan – we call ourselves the “Mirdain Defenders of Mirendil,” and we do genuinely try to play by that code, and according to the Mirdain lore. We attack racial enemies, we attack people that we adjudge to be disturbers of the peace, we try to defend innocent Mirdain citizens, and we reserve the right to be a little arrogant and self-righteous in determining who falls into which category.

U: You are not an all race clan. What advantages and disadvantages in terms of clan warfare do you think that that will bring you?

D: This is rather a sore point with us. The game mechanics don’t really reward people for being a single-race clan (or even a single-faction clan). The floating indicators obviate any advantage we gained by all looking similar. Any advantage we gain by starting in the same area is negligible, when you amortize the lost hour or so of travel over the life of a clan. City guard towers (the bastion of hope for a lot of folks who want to see a disadvantage for all-race clans) only have 3 settings: attack anyone except allies, attack only enemies, attack no-one. None of these will make life any harder for an all-race clan.

U: In your opinion, what does Aventurine need to change with Darkfall in order to make it a successful game?

D: I’m certainly no expert on the MMO genre, but I’ll offer them what armchair market analysis I can.

They need to keep in mind that Darkfall is not a mainstream game, and accept that it almost certainly never will be. Aventurine is like a boutique store – it will be successful in the long run based on its product selection and customer service.

The customer service in the first week since launch has been abysmal. I’m sure things will improve, but I really believe Aventurine needs to make this a priority. Server outages without warning or explanation are not reassuring. Communication has never been Aventurine’s strong suit (whether by choice or circumstance) but letting paying customers know in advance (even 1 minute!) when servers are going down isn’t some unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky dream; it’s a basic standard of professionalism. Similarly, the fiasco that is account management and ordering needs to be sorted out. I tell my friends about Darkfall, and then they ask me where they can buy it. What am I supposed to tell them? It’s embarrassing.

However, Darkfall – the game – is a fantastic product. With some polish and with the addition of some of the features that were dropped, it will be even better. This is something I’ve explained numerous times to skeptical friends and clanmates, who weren’t able to participate in beta, or who were only able to play for a day or two: Darkfall is, at its core, exactly what we’ve been looking for: an MMO with free-for-all PvP, full loot, city-building and sieges, and an incredible, hand-build world to go out and explore.

If Aventurine can just sort out the business end – like allowing people to buy the freaking game – I really believe Darkfall will sell itself.

Ultionis: You are the leader of the clan Scary Bad Guys (SBG). From own experiance (Vanguard) and from what I can tell on the Darkfall forums and your own site you consider yourself a PK/Griefer clan. My personal view on griefers are that they are very egoistic players, would you agree? How is it to lead such a clan?

Darwoth: When most people think of the term griefer they instantly conjure up an image of an angry ritalin raging teenager killing lowbies all day while saying shit like “rofl pwned! u suck! i kicked ur ass dude!”, unfortunately the intelligence level of humanity as a whole has waned over the past decade and this stereotype is generally correct. however we are a completely different type of “griefer” guild not to be confused with the former, for starters the overwhelming majority of our members are in their late 20s and are fulltime professionals with kids, wives and a full load of real world responsibilties, gaming is simply our hobby not our life and as such we play the games in the way that we do because we find it to be far more fun to have an entire server of enemies and be on the recieving end of countless hate tells, attempts to hunt us down and whiney message board posts.

As for being egotistical i can’t speak for other groups but i would agree that our members all have healthy egos when it comes to gaming as anybody that is above average at their given activity would, if you are good at something it is only natural to have some sort of pride in what you do whether it be gaming or anything else. with that said however i would not say that our folks have hyper inflated egos at all, everybody is very down to earth and if we lose we do not sit around and develop some kind of complex over it. in my own experience the most unjustifiably egotistical players belong to the various self proclaimed “uber guilds” that sport 100s of members and do pve shit all day. usually these types are nowhere to be found at the games launch, finally they come out into the field after a 6 month stint spent maxing every stat and getting all of the absolute best shit imaginable promptly get rolled and then call you a nonfactor or insult your gear, go figure lol. these are the types of players/guilds we take great joy in fucking with.

The most difficult thing about keeping a guild like ours together is finding QUALITY members that play the way we do to offset the natural atrophy a guild suffers when folks go inactive and have to succumb to real world obligations, lots of people like watching or hearing about the stuff we do from the sidelines but very few players have the fortitude to play the game on hardmode and jump in with both feet. i could very easily mass recruit several dozen droolcups in the span of a month and run around like a cloud of locusts however that is not enjoyable for me or the other guys in our guild, we would quickly end up spending more time killing our own guildmates than other people.

U: In my eyes, for a griefer/pk clan, you have alot of rules (www.scarybadguys.com). Is that really necessary for a clan such as SBG?

D: I don’t think we have very many rules at all as most of them are just common sense rather than “rules”, the reason they are listed in our charter is because common sense is not very common anymore particularly among the younger generation of gamers. however as to necessity each one is absolutely necessary, with no structure or vision in place to keep the guild on the right track it quickly devolves into a clusterfuck which is why most guilds that start out as pk guilds eventually end up as a mass recruiting guild with no personality that sets them apart from the other 200 guilds just like theirs and from there they inevitably fall apart. our charter serves to help weed out the legions of retards that i do not want to waste my time sifting through, it also offers a quick overview of our guild at a glance for those players that are interested in joining our ranks.

U: “The fun already did begin, thanks!” – The words to someone you killed that claimed to be the alliance leader for Generals of War. Could I assume that you wount care to make any friends come retail the 25th?

D: That guy was one of those unjustifiably egotistical folks we were talking about before =P

as for friends and alliances, with the exception of some under the table friends in other guilds that would trade us favors in return for harassing an annoying guildmate or someone else that they didn’t like we have never had any alliances with other groups in previous games and will almost assuredly have none here either. that said however with the asset destruction/conquest mode of play in darkfall i can certainly forsee situations where we might temporarily assist some of the smaller pvp/pk guilds whom are in danger of losing their city or whatever to the large zerg guilds simply because we do not like zerg guilds nor the fad of recent years where everybody lumps into these faceless entities. games were a lot more fun in the old days when a big guild was considered to be one having 30 people and the playerbase as a whole had pride/loyalty for their guild no matter how small it was or how inconvenient it was to be in it, instead nowadays we have a mentality which promotes jumping ship to whichever group is the largest and offering the most benefits, i laugh my cock off everytime i see some guild promoting itself as a “multi gaming clan, 800 members and growing!” or some such and have a hard time fathoming just how bad someone has to be to want to blend in with that many other players, it has been my experience that quality players tend to gravitate towards small/medium sized groups so that they can stand out whereas shitty players try to find the biggest group they can so that their subpar ability is bolstered to at least mediocrity.

U: What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages in Darkfall to have a small clan?

D: aside from the overall more enjoyable experience of playing with a small group of friends as opposed to being cannonfodder in one of the lethargic juggernauts there are no real advantages to being in a small guild in darkfall. the vast majority of small guilds in darkfall will either fail, be absorbed by large guilds or enter into a large alliance of other smaller guilds and hence turn into a large guild themselves because the game mechanics are set up largely in favor of big guilds. what separates us from these other guilds is that most of our members have been together for a long time and have been playing games from the “guerilla warfare” angle for the duration, similarily our goals and ideas of what “winning” means are completely different, where most guilds want to own a city or curbstomp everyone they see we do not care about owning cities, nor do we care about “dominating” everyone we come across in a fair fight. we are simply out to have a laugh at your expense, if a few of us kill/loot/screenshot your guild leader and he in turn rallies the troops and you chase us around for an hour wasting the time of ten people we are the ones that win not you, if we pick off one or two stragglers all the better. we have no city for you to retaliate against but we can always find your members at yours and as such there is nothing you can do to damage us so we are completely bulletproof in that regard. If anything, down the road once the game has settled a bit the few small guilds that are able to successfully find their niche and do well in it will command a lot more respect and infamy than the larger guilds.

with regards to combat advantages, traditionally in past games superior cross healing, focus firing and maneuverability is what has carried small guilds over the typically sluggish larger guilds, all of these staples are not present in darkfalls combat system as heals are not adequate enough to outheal the damage of even one player, likewise focus firing in darkfall will not be nearly as effective due to the fps mode of play, once you get past two players chasing a target the third and fourth players either end up doing more damage to their guildmates than to the target or having to take longer to make extremely well aimed shots while the targets guild wears them down and in that case they would be more effective on a different target. previously smaller guilds if they were coordinated enough had an advantage in the chaotic combat that darkfall has, however with the addition of markers identifying friendly players that advantage is now gone and the bigger guild that brings more bodies to the fight now has the advantage instead.

U: I watched a fraps you made in Darkfall beta where you alone take out 4-5 players. People on the Darkfall forums often claim to be harcore pvp’ers. Do you think the standard on pvp will be much higher in Darkfall than other popular mmo’s?

D: as a general rule i think that with the lack of efficient heals, movement buffs and the limited amount of defensive counters that it will be harder for one or two skilled players to overcome a larger group than it has been in previous games. however with the friendly fire aspect, proper use of terrain and later on true AE spells i think that if the proper conditions are met that in some circumstances a small group or solo player will completely annihilate a larger group of players that did not think ahead and were able to be caught in a bad position.

As for all the “hardcore” pvpers it has been my experience that the biggest whiners and easiest folks to make fools out of are frequently those very same people that spend time telling everyone how “hardcore” they are, with full item loot i think a lot of these folks that have not played a similar ruleset before are in for a rude awakening, particularly the fps, wow, warhammer and aoc players that are used to a death equalling respawning 10 feet away 30 seconds later.

U: I have seen you argue in different threads on the Darkfall forums on subjects regarding pvp ruleset, guardtowers and cost to declare clan wars etc. Had it been up to you, would you have factions, rouge system etc. in Darkfall?

D: i think that an alignment system can add a lot of flavor to a game and typically i like them, aside from helping to attract sheep for the wolves to snack on it also serves to separate the bad guys from the good guys and give the bad guys a bit of notoriety, in uo if you were a red when you came on the screen people started to scatter because they knew right away what the deal was. the problem however is that alignment systems are very easy to fuck up, in order for them to work well the rest of the game has to be tuned in to support the alignment system, a “bad guy” should not be overly bogged down with tedious bullshit. things like travel have to be sufficiently fast so that the “bad guy” does not have to walk for 3 hours to bank, find targets or go train, individual player housing should be in so the bad guys can have a base of operations and so on. it should be difficult to be the bad guy, but the difficulty should stem from being a constant target of other players and a series of minor inconveniences, not from things like it taking you 5 times as long to do anything and your primary threat is being bored to tears.

If it were up to me i would have an alignment system, but it would be done in a completely different manner and the game mechanics would support it better.

Guardtowers however are idiotic and should be scrapped completely in favor of npc guards that are no faster than a player with comparable damage and hitpoint pools, the biggest threat this game faces to its success in my opinion is due to guardtowers and tedious travel times. nobody wants to spend an hour and a half going to a player city where there may or may not be players to kill only to arrive and discover that everybody is safely hunkered down behind their walls with guardtowers making it impossible to get to them. in past games you could sneak into the town via stealth and the guards you had to deal with were actually guards who could be evaded or killed. i worry about darkfall ending up in a balkanized trench warfare state a few months after release with players safely hiding inside their cities behind the towers and everyone being bored because they can’t find a fight unless they are in a large group, if that ends up being the case and there is no incentive for a player to leave their city walls (right now a player can train, harvest resources, and craft all without leaving town) most of the small guilds/groups will quit and the game will solely be for big guild vs big guild sieges/conquest which will get stale quickly even for those big guilds.

U: What will SBG have to offer Darkfall? From a community perspective and server politics perspective, do griefer/pk clans add anything to the game?

D: Every server needs a few genuine bad guys that everyone loves to hate, we have always filled that role nicely and will continue to do so in darkfall. in the past our “episodes” and videos and the subsequent bouts of message board warrioring and trashtalk that they instigate have always been a favorite in the communities we have been a part of and im sure we will produce some new additions for darkfall. from a political standpoint we won’t really be much of a player as we are more along the lines of a nomadic bandit style of play, however with the new siege mechanics if guild A attacks guild B and for some reason we decide that we dislike guild A you can count on us being somewhere in the fold be it attacking one of their satellite cities or something else if for no other reason than just to be a pain in the ass.

Ultionis: You are the leader of the clan The Mercs, currently playing Darkfall
beta. Can you tell us some more about your clan and what games you have
played before as a clan?

Osium: TheMercs was formed in 1992 I believe it was by Assassin and Thyrm for
Redbaron on Sierra-Online. They quickly moved over to Shadows of Yserbius
and established themselves the force in what is the earliest graphical
online RPG I am aware of. From there TM moved to Darksun Online which was
contemporary with the original NWN and Meridian59. TheMercs were the top
guild in Darksun Online before they left the game. Eventually they attempted
to come back but the clan and all it’s members were either banned or
threatened with a banning. Even uttering the guild name was a bannable
offense. The official reasoning was that “TheMercs” even just the name
caused panick and created a detremental environment for players.We moved to
Ultima Online beta where we were one of three very high profile player
killing beta guilds, the others being Inner Circle and The Obsidian Circle.
From there we moved to Atlantic server at release where we were extremely
successful. The guild hit a rough patch with Everquest and a large number of
players who had helped make us such a monster success in Ultima Online
refused to play Everquest and ultimately quit the guild. While some members
continued to play EQ on Rallos Zek and were quite successful, I struck out
into Asherons Call beta. With no previous experience in the game within a
week I had established myself as the most recognizable and best known
personality in the beta, primarily due to my extremely quick leveling and
the fact I was one of the only players who had flipped their PvP switch.
During the AC beta I was able to gather around myself some of the best young
FPS gamers in the world who were experimenting with MMO’s for the first time
with Rupture and Zen. We moved to the PvP server at release and again were
extremely successful. Most players who played Asherons Call Darktide from
release onwards consider our era of dominance in that game as the golden age
of what was probably the most successful PvP server in MMO history.
Following Asherons Call, which in hindsight we left prematurely, there
really have not been any games that have really piqued our interest. We have
been around, in every major release since Asherons Call with the exception
of Shadowbane (we deemed the game to be an abortion early in beta), our
presence in these games has varied from light to heavy, but talking about a
PvP guilds accomplishments in WoW is assinine, it isn’t why we play or even
what we like to play and is largely irrelavent to the history of a
PvP/Pkilling guild. Suffice to say we’ve always been at or around the top in
any game we play on any server we play.

U: What feature in Darkfall do you like the most? Why is Darkfall a game
worth playing?

O: There are almost too many to list but given the length of my previous post I
will try to hit just the most important ones. First, it is an FPS style of
gameplay. Immediately this style favors us when one considers a majority of
the guild is made up of ex members of Evil Geniuses, one of the most
dominant early FPS clan around, EG was responsible for extremely famous FPS
gamers like Reptile, Immortal, Icewolf. Guys who went to the early PGL’s and
won. So obviously an FPS style of gameplay is a huge draw for us. Second,
the game offers freedom in terms of PvP, there are no constraints, no
artificial rule sets. Everything is organic. If it makes sense in real life,
it probably will work in Darkfall. Having the most guys at a fight (within
reason) does not always mean you automatically get to win by running /assist
trains and dumping critical mass DPS on people one by one. Being outnumbered
in combat gives you a form of camoflage.

U: Some of the things that were planned to make retail were cut, what
planned feature would you have liked to see in retail?

O: I would have liked to see Four Legged Running not postponed until after
retail. I think this is a mistake, but at the same time I can understand
with manpower issues someone like 4LR being postponed. However, it is a
MAJOR feature and drawing point for people choosing their race especially in
a one character per server system. To not know how it will work is not a
good situation to put paying customers in.

U: You were quite vocal when Aventurine recently added markers on party and
guild members and called it “almost a gamebreaker”. Why is this such a big
deal to you? Would it have been any different if they instead introduced
dyes or other methods of showing your clan affiliation?

O: I touched on this briefly in the second question. Essentially his limits the
freedom and real world tactics that can be used. This in essense becomes at
targetting aid. People say in that thread argued “you can turn it off” or
“it is only on your clan members” To that I can only shake my head. Any
floating indicator be it on friends or on foes offers an immediate
infallible system of recognition. Turning it off will only put players who
do at a disadvantage. Dyes or other organic methods of identification which
can be countered by in game craftiness are fine and I support 100%.

U: Before this interview, I watched two of the fraps made by The Mercs. Is
fraps just a way to advertice or do you feel it serves more purposes?

O: Both, it is a way for us to get PR, and it is a way for people to see what
is possible in this game. We are not going to bullshit about the game, it is
rough around the edges but there is no other game out there right now that
will be driven by the players rather than by “The Vision”. We are not on a
disney ride here, there will be alliances, betrayals, power blocs, alliances
made to balance power. There will be small groups, big groups, there will be
PvP as it is meant to be. I see Darkfall as a cry from old time gamers who
can sit down and enjoy playing a mindless game for 15 minutes, but don’t
want that to be all there is. As it stands right now, the consolization of
gaming is in full swing, the trend in gaming since the advent of 3d
accellerators has been, make it look pretty, simplify it and make it as
accessible as possible. There are obviously some exceptions but the majority
of titles are sold on this. WoW is a perfect example, and while it is
massively successful commercially and nobody can argue that, should argue
that or begrudge them for it, some people want more, they want complexity,
they want depth and they want these things above accessibility and per pixel
shading bump maping version 15. As long as there are people who want this,
then small developers like Adventurine can come in and be financially
successful by catering to us. I guess I got a little bit off topic but
whatever ;p

U: What plans do you have for the Mercs come retail? Are you staying on the
euroservers if/when NA release comes?

We plan to kick ass and take names, make lots of enemies and few if any
friends. We will be transferring our characters to the NA servers when it
releases here as the majority of the guild is NA based.

U: In previous interviews on this blog we have discussed clanleaders playing
support classes. Darkfall is not really build like that, but are you as a
clanleader focusing on spellweaving or do you have other plans for your
character?

O: I don’t think people should pidgeonhole themselves in this game. It is
counter productive. Everyone should be a threat in a three dimensional
manner. You should be skilled at melee combat archery and magic. Depending
on the skill cap you may want to specialize more or less in one area or
another, however the fact is, if you are not at least proficient in all
areas you are going to be handicapping your character. I also don’t think
this will lead to cookie cutter characters. Everyone might be able to use
all three forms of combat, but not everyone will be focused in exactly the
same areas and in exactly the same way.

Ultionis: You came to Devianne with your clan p00t from noobwars. How was that server like? Was it one dominating alliance or clan just like on many retail servers?

Sp0d: First of all it was BnB server, noobwars was the “pve” private server in Greece where all the carebears had spellhowlers and xp’ed happily together. BnB was total chaos: mostly sr’s, big fights, pk’s and A LOT of trashtalking. It was indeed a dominating alliance. My clan came to devianne and the other clan (imperium) went to lionna and got into LittlePigs after a while. We used to spent endless hours in DVC’s heart to work off our karma.

U: In one of the first fights between Ultionis and p00t one of your members told me that p00t would take over the server in the future. Did that ever happen? If so, when did you dominate devianne?

S: I think it was like that in mid c5 and after. That’s why I quitted 1 chronicle after. I hate lack of competition. I also believe from what I heard that p00t with kakaoGR on the wheel were also pretty strong especially when they merged with mirmidones. Dominating is also a point of view. I prefer having the strongest group than a zerg. I could never be a part of Myth, Dynasty, AO1 or Imperium . Pretending to get along with so many people in order to be competitive is out of the question for me.

U: What is it with support classes and clan leaders? To name a few, Morlek – Fate, Captkirk – Titans, Thisson – Bloodypirates, Sorgsen – Ultionis and you, Spod – p00t?

S: Its pretty obvious that the leaders love their clan more than anyone else. That’s why they choose to play a class that they think no one else will. or perhaps no one else will play it effectively.

U: Perclo wanted to ask, how come you lost all fights even after you got Chant of victory. I thought that was kind of a rude question, so you don’t have to answer that. Instead, what clan did you enjoy fighing against the most?

S: @Perclo When I got chant of victory you were a not-worth-to-mention bishop in valor :/
I enjoyed fighting against almost every clan except BloodyPirates. They used to run and bsoe way too much. If I had to choose in terms of skill-difficulty it would be Ultionis. In terms of fun it would be Mirmidones.

U: Five short ones:

Warcryer or Prophet? Prophet but it was almost impossible to find one that played it as an active main toon and enjoy it.

Fate or Ultionis? Ultionis

Ebaying or farming? Scamming!

BnB or Devianne? BnB

Perclo or Empowered? NoMp or Zexlion

U: P00t archers are all the same to me. Hawkeyes, hawkeyes, hawkeyes. Please enlighten me on p00t’s 9 man best grp and put it up against 9 man devianne allstar group of your choise.

S: 1. Spod (wc) 2. NoMp (bish) 3. Kufodinas (bish) 4. Victorieth (sws) 5. Dooctor (bd) 6. ShiningArrow (sr) 7. Add1ct1v3 (he)  8. xxDudexx (he) 9. TehPwnzor (he)

Vs

1. Spires (pp) 2. Zexlion (bish) 3. LuSy (ee) 4. Enorasis (sws) 5. Neojita (bd) 6. Yurec (destro) 7. Dez (aw) 8. SilentShade (pr) 9. Trannyboy (pr)

U: So what’s next for you and p00t in terms of gaming?

S: Most of the “p00t core” either plays DOtA, either nothing at all and very few still play L2. I ll give Darkfall a chance when it becomes stable. It sounds promising but so did AoC. Maybe I ll meet u there Capitano!

Ultionis: Talking about your character “Sorgsen”, do you wish you picked a different one at the start?

Sorgsen: Well, actually I did have another name at start. I started out on Seighart as a spellsinger named nomincus. Transfered to Devianne because ping sucked on Seighart. Rolled yet another spellsinger named nomincus. Changed to plainswalker named MalaInSe in prelude or c1. So Sorgsen is my third name and no, I don’t regret it.

U: Ultionis was a successful clan, what do you think was the main reason for this?

S: It is very hard to name just the one reason Ultionis got so successful. First of all, we would never ever have got so strong had not Morlek invited us to Dynasty. That is a fact. We had 19 members when he took us on, it was never a problem keeping us at 40 members after that. The only reason he did take us on tho is that I left  Ultionis sometime in prelude/c1 to join up with Prophecy. Before that, noone in Ultionis really had any connections to the ‘big’ clans on the server. A third reason I  think is that we had a very solid foundation. Out of the 19 members we joined Dynasty with, I think somewhere between 10-15 stayed almost until Ultionis disbanded. And in a game where clans like Oblivion could be somewhat competetive with 20 members, 10-15 solid members is a good foundation for a clan. Ohh, and I want to add dicipline.  Not only when it came to pvp. About half our clan pve’d like maniacs. Going up at 9 on a saturday morning to exp at ToI 10th. Levels and equipment meant alot in Lineage and we took advantage of it (Altho we always claimed it was our ûber pvp skillz.) On top of all that we had, for some reason, an extraordinary high activity in clan. While Fate, GoA etc. had like 25/40 on sieges in the middle of the night for us euros, Ultionis had like 38/40.

U: What was the most challenging part of leading the clan?

S: Ultionis had kind of a different leadership than Gordon talked about in his interview. At any given time I think Ultionis was made up by 75% that knew their shit in all aspects of the game, pvp, pve, money making etc. We almost always had around 25% of the members that were not as good in those aspects, be that sometimes for good reasons like being new to the game. Given those circumstances I did, for good or bad, take alot of responsibility for alot of the members. While I studied tho, that was no problem for me, I could play 16 hours a day if I wanted, which is kind of scary now that you think back. Anyways… I think that taking time for alot of the not so selfgoing members and also get everyone to feel they were a big part of the clan was my most challenging part. There are many examples on me failing to do so tho for example with Finey and his danish friends.

U: Put together your best pvp team.

S: I was so fortunate in Lineage that I put together my best pvp team almost every day when I played. There are alot of players outside the alliances that I was in that I think are awesome solo pvp’ers and gankers and some of them are probably good in group pvp aswell, I just couldnt judge that since almost none of them frapsed while I was active. Altho I think I am an awesome Warcryer I wouldn’t really want myself in the team, if that is ok. I always like prophets so much more in group pvp because of their ability to res. So here goes. Spires – Nepito – Dioptase – perclo – Catira – Agantara – nancyboy – Silentshade – Jado. I feel that I want to explain some. I have never played with a better prophet then Spires, he’s like the most quiet guy and never bragging, but he does everything right – which is buffing/ressing when needed. Nepito is just a very good computer player, period. I like Dioptase cause he never did anything wrong really, you always had songs, I dont have higher expectations on a sws. Perclo, well apart from being an Italian stud, he is quite a decent healer after Ultionis equipped him in boss jewels and what not. Catira is just the same way as Spires, you have the heals and the buffs before you have time to ask for it. Agantara is just funny in pvp – and a decent player . Nancyboy and Silentshade archers, nothing more to it. Jado is also just an archer, but abit smarter than nancyboy and Silentshade.

U: According to several disgruntled clan mates, you often misstarget and kill them rather than the enemy. Any truth on this?

S: This is true, on alot of occations this has happend, yes. But I blaim it all on the targeting bugg where you got the last target you had on target again when you start fighting. Apart from when I do it to Agantara, then its just for fun. Angry british english is funny. I recently killed him in another game…. while in group with him. It was fun.

U: Is it true that you often go berserk on vent while pvping, and what’s with your famous keyboard-smashing?

S: Well what the fuck! That’s one of the reasons I didn’t put Caveat up there on the best pvp group. He’s all to quiet. Sometimes I thought he was dead irl while we pvp’d. But it’s all good, I talk for the both of us and he tell me what we did wrong after. Seriously tho, in a game like Lineage you need one or two people to call targets. If you don’t you will lose, playing versus equal level/equipped players. I took that on me, since I know I wouldnt be able to shut up anyways. Infact I remember when this all started. It was in Forbidden Gateway. Me, Caveat and a few other Ultionis members fought Warcry. This was during the time Warcry was the shit and Ultionis wasnt the shit. Me and Caveat argued like mad on vent on how and if we should do it, even during the fight. We lost horribly. After that Leafellion ordered us to pick one of us to take command in fights. We chose me. Oh, and by the way, after that fight Morlek (my hero) and crew came and ran Warcry over. Going red and party recalling with Auri.

U: What game do you see yourself playing during 2009, and what’s the main feature in that game that attracts you?

S: I’ve tried out alot of mmo’s the last year or so. With Warhammer I realised I can’t stand faction games where you can’t kill those on your own side. Like…what’s the point, really? With AoC I learned – never trust a game that has ‘potential’. All big failures. I will play Darkfall or Mortal Online. If they suck, I will finally grow up. Grow a moustache, cut my hair and get a ‘real’ girlfriend.

Ultionis: If I can recall correctly you played Lineage II since prelude and were a member of quite a few clans (Lotus, Warcry, Purgatory etc). Are you still playing? What made you stay in game for such a long time?

Redviper: Mostly I stayed around because the people were fun to hang out with. I don’t play anymore, haven’t for about a year or so except for a short stint on bartz.

U: You made yourself well known in many ways in Lineage II. One being taking screenshots of you alive with 9 dead Dynasty members. Was it important for you to get well known amongst the community and are any means to get there ok?

R: It was a long time ago and I think we did it as an in joke. Nothing really special tbh, and I did always think that I was more famous for my legitness

U: I disliked you and Canedra equally. Who would win a fight between the two of you?

R: Definitely me. Cane sucks! Plus I’d be playing Kaycer and no one can beat Kaycer!

U: I always claimed that you and members of Purgatory in general were very good solo pvp’ers but couldn’t pvp in group for shit. Any truth to that or did your enemys simply have better groups (archer vs. mage)?

R: It was a mixture of both. We never did have many support classes and Purg was a bunch of independent minded people. I wouldn’t blame being mages on it. We just didn’t care enough I think. Although I think at our height our best group was pretty good as a team. But yeah we all did love solo pvp (or small ganks) compared to lag fests.

U: We (as in Dynasty, Covenant) have been questioning Purgatorys, p00ts and other enemy clans legitamacy. Whats your take on Covenant and Dynastys legitamacy?

R: Purg was super legit!

Actually we never did think that Fate (and I guess Titans – we didn’t have much of an opinion on Ultionis) was very legit. Overall I am sure the legitness was probably more a case of propaganda instead of any intrinsic quality of the clan. Ofcourse now that those days of rivalry have passed both sides have a much better idea of what was going on.

U: Some of the most epic fights I have had ingame has been with Warcry and Purgatory. Altho we were awesome and all…those were the fights I thought I was more likely to lose than to any other alliance or clan. I guess that those clans and alliances were sort of like an archenemy to me personally. Who was your archenemy in Lineage – clan and/or player?

R: I’d say Fate was pretty much my arch nemesis. If I had to pick a player I’d say Oni or Choda. I have an undying hatred for daggers! Or Smoked.

U: What is next for you in terms of gaming?

R: Nothing really. Lineage was the first and last online game I played. MMOs take way too much time and I don’t have enough these days. Maybe if they merge servers I might play again for a short time.

Ultionis: Refresh my memory please – You were a member of the quite large alliance SPQR before creating your own clan Bloody Pirates? In what chronicle was Bloody Pirates created and which where your friend and enemy clans at that time?

GordonGreedstein: I don’t exactly remember what chronicle it was but it was shortly after World of Warcraft was released. If I remember correctly, from the very start we were fighting (or more accurately, getting killed by) Fate/Ultionis, who were generally much higher level than we were. I seem to remember getting killed many times in Dragon Valley Cave . I don’t think we had any allies or friendly clans at the time. But we did form alliances/friendships later on.

U: What did Bloody Pirates have that you could not get in SPQR or some of the other alliances around at that time?

G: The clan was created in backlash to membership in Hiro’s alliance. He was a nice guy but had way too many rules that interfered with our enjoyment of the game, so we left to form a clan without such rules. The only rules were to help our friends and @$#%^ everyone else! Otherwise, you could do pretty much what you wanted even if it wasn’t very “nice.”

U: From my point of view Bloody Pirates was made up of cocky soloplayers. Any truth to that? If so, how was it to lead a group of such people?

G: Hmm. I don’t think I would describe our members as cocky but we did have a lot of players who were not inclined to take direction from authority figures (allied clan leaders, alliance leaders) that were outside the clan. Our members would often challenge “orders” that they thought were foolish and this could be a challenge to managing the external political aspects of the clan. As the Captain, you have to balance these conflicts carefully otherwise you are going to have a mutiny!

Internally, in many ways, the members of Bloody Pirates made them easy to “lead” – because they usually took initiative to accomplish things on their own and they had a high degree of collaboration with each other. In some other clans, I think players might depend more on leaders to give them instructions but that was largely unnecessary in our clan. People took initiative and worked together very well. The main challenge, internally, was to mediate disputes between strong personalities who sometimes didn’t get along.

U: Any regrets? What would you have done differently if you could start all over in prelude?

G: My main regret was to start as a dwarf. The class was very enjoyable, but was severely handicapped with respect to participating in the PVP that ultimately proved to be at the center of the game. In order to participate, I had to completely reroll. Other than that I don’t have any regrets.

U: You played a warsmith as your main character. Were you serverfirst on any crafts? Did you have loads of money?

G: My main character was originally a Bounty Hunter, so no, I didn’t have any server first crafts. However, our clan did have two of the first S-grade weapons (they were drops from Antharas). One was a Saint Spear. I don’t recall what the 2nd was.

I made a lot of money, from raid drops and from severely exploiting the manor system. I did not have loads of money because I used the money to equip the members of the clan as best I could. I never had overenchanted weapons, epic jewels, etc. of my own.

U: What clan or players did you most enjoy to have as an enemy in Lineage II and why?

G: Having the strongest clan/alliances on the server as opponents was the most challenging aspect of L2. However, the most fun enemies to fight were the players and clans that were most evenly matched to our own power and abilities. So I would say TheInquisition (Wrathmore’s clan) and xxTitansxx were our most enjoyable enemies.

U: Damnit, seems like I have to break my seven question rule. Your nine players vs. my (Ultionis) nine players. You get to chose the line up – who would it be (on both sides)?

G: Haha. That’s a great question. Since you said players, I can choose without regard to classes, so :

BP Team: Indadark, Areondell, FlamingTurd, Sangias, Mersin, ArtisticMayhem, Nahksuirebit, Tsarvadim and Raveloft

vs

Ultionis Team: Agantara, Sorgs, Silentshade, Nancyboy, Smoked, Estalia, BlizzardH20, Dez, and Perclo

U: Does Bloody Pirates still live? What is your/Bloody Pirates plans for the future in terms of gaming?

G: Technically, it might still exist on Devianne or whatever server Dev merged into. I transferred to Bartz but I don’t play anymore because I don’t have the time (or the interest) that it takes to advance through the content beyond level 79. And the politics aren’t that made Devianne fun aren’t there for me.

I would like to play Lineage III if that ever comes out, but I would prefer to have the easier job of being a clan member rather than a clan leader. I haven’t found any other game that holds my attention like L2 did.

Ultionis: You are an old school Lineage II player. What are you doing these days when it comes to gaming?

Jado: I quit L2 about a year ago, these days I spend my time rooming the online poker tables making millions of dollars. Oh and I play the occasional game of Starcraft, my first and only true love!

U: Jado, your silverranger character on Devianne, was quite well known during the time you played. What many people might not knowis that you played a Dark Avenger, Nimixes, when the game was first released. Given the choise today what would you have rather played and why?

J: Hmm, probably neither. Although if I had to pick I would still go for the SR, I had a lot of fun abusing the speed and playing an archer in pvp was very fun. Although I would have loved to do Olympiad on a DA in the later stages of the game. L2 has a lot of fun classes, I liked my sws and bishop a lot too. Just depends on the mood

U: You had quite a long and unusual Lineage ‘career’. You started out as Nimixes on Devianne, then you went to Teon and powergamed there for about half a year, just to come back to Devianne as Kells and later Jado. You recently asked me – Looking back, would you do it all over again?. Now the question goes back to you.

J: Yep I certainly would! I had a lot of fun getting lost in the magical world of L2 and neglecting my real life for this game, although I do think I would have tried to balance things out a little better! But I still haven’t found anything that comes quite close to the feeling I, and I’m sure you too and many others used to have when we first started playing L2 and discovered everything about the game. Good times indeed!

U: You were quite high level early on in the game and member of one of the ‘best’ clans at that time, Prophecy. From that point of view, what clan and possibly what players would you have thought to be dominating the server later on?

J: Well it became quite clear early that Morlek would have a big influence on the game, he was a very dominant personality on ventrilo and seemed to be smart in dealing with people and situations that arised. I also of course knew that Sorgsen would be the best player ever to show himself on the battlefields of Lineage 2! These answers seem very obvious, but looking back it just stood out since the beginning, that you two would come far in L2 if you kept playing.

U: I will have to ask you the same question I did Agantara, who was the all time best pvp’er and which clan was the most outstanding on Devianne?

J: All the time best pvp’ers.. that’s a tough one. I thought Agantara himself was quite good, and seedkun always impressed me also. But maybe that’s just because his class was overpowered. Even though many might not respect him KakaoGR deserves mention, he was a very tough opponent.

U: So what is next, what game do you see yourself playing during 2009?

J: Well, hopefully Starcraft 2 if it comes out! I’ll be willing to give another MMORPG a try and will do so if anything comes along, but I’m not really set on playing any of them just yet. Maybe the games can surprise and be so good that I just can’t say no.

U: What is the main feature in that game that makes you want to try it out?

J: As a long time Starcraft fan I have anticipated SC2 for a really long time. If anyone doesn’t know about SC, it’s a super deep strategic game which is kind of similar to chess. The strategies, options players have and the skill that it takes to master the game, is the reason I just never really lost interest. Hopefully SC2 will be equally hard to master and of course the e-sports scene for it will be huge.

Ultionis: You are an old school Lineage II player. What are you doing these days when it comes to gaming?

Slycutter: I play L2 some, I tried Warhammer but it was like a WoW clone almost and the pvp was not as promised. I also play a lot of Xbox live, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty 4, and Gears of War 2 (if they cant fix the shitty party matching)

U: There has been alot of talk about you and katanas on orphus and l2blah. What is the deal with that?

S: It is how I made money back in C3, it was so bad I sometimes had several sets of katanas being sold at the same time, highest was +14 I made. Was around the greek invasion time so they had a lot of adena to spend and I was more then happy to take it.

U: From what I can remember you played Lineage I. Care to tell us some about that – in terms of your role on the server and what character you played etc.

S: I was a prince (in L1 clan leaders were an actual class so you started the game as one was kind of a different take) and a lead medium size NA clan on I think Dep server been so long. It got over run with Chinese people and real life came into account so I pulled the cord, since a prince needs to run a clan, I did not want to reroll so I just quit.

U: In Lineage II you chose to lead and stay in a smaller clan Wretched OutKasts. Through all the chronicles in LII there must have been other options, other clans or alliances to join. For what reasons did you stay in a small, maybe not as competetive clan?

S: It felt like home. I played a lot of Mmorpg’s many clans are just a means to an end and no one really feels obligated to anyone in the clan. In a game like L2 I think we can all agree that its the people that make the game not the game.

U: I am going to ask you the same question I did Agantara. Who is the all time best pvp’er and which clan is/was the most outstanding clan on Devianne?

S: Whoa all time thats a tough one, there are few people, Smoked, Methoz, Platinumdrgn, Polti, Reason, and MikeOson. Clan I would have to be one of three old clans, original Glory with Loom Reason MikeOson Robynne Tommyboy etc. all the same clan, the Fate/Ulti combo and the Titans clan before they broke from Dynasty.

U: Alot of guesses has been made on l2blah on the true identity of PkMastablasta. Do you sit on any inside information?

S: Yes but I can’t reveal my sources.

U: What game do you see yourself playing during 2009?

S: I may try DarkFall, Aion seemed good but now I am not sure. Too many MMORPG have disappointed me in the last year though, so may just take a break and play my Xbox. Plus Dawn of War II, SCII, and Diablo III coming out might have me tied up too.