First some background information.
I have been familiar with darkenbane since around 96 or 97, i fought them for a very long time on rallos zek and gained the respect of the members for not using the lame tactics of most the other anti DB folks, and almost always fighting solo even against multiple foes. eventually this evolved into a friendly arch enemy type thing and while bitter enemies we would still shoot the shit in tells, and at times fight side by side against mutual enemies.
After a breakup with my guild at the time due to them cowering from pvp i decided to go random PK instead of guild/alliance war PVPer and ran around solo for a few months before linking up with darkenbane.
Back then the guild was radically different from what it has become today, there were approximately 2 dozen members and everybody helped each other, knew each other, and hung out together, if folks were not in game they were in a chat room, people with computer jobs would have a browser with a DB chatroom minimized in their toolbar. it was truly the best guild i had ever been in and when gray was banned for stupid reasons on rallos zek most of us up and dropped our highly developed rallos zek characters and followed him to sullon zek which had just opened, that is how tightly woven the guild was, i was unaware at the time that this was due to the second massive purging of morons in the guilds history and that the only folks left were the real DB.
On sullon zek everything was very fun and enjoyable for the first 2 months, then however many unknowns began to find their way into guild chat almost all of whom were invited by either grayrage or his wife lisa (axxeron, axxy, lesa), tension and drama started to slowly grow between the new folks that many didnt like and the old folks. then against the wishes of every single officer in the guild several neutral guilds disbanded and were absorbed into the guild inflating our original roster a good 2 times over, at this point there were approximately 5 factions/clicks in the guild that didnt like the other people and fighting and bickering over xp, loot drops and anything you can imagine inflated to huge levels.
At this point DAOC was released and myself along with several DB members left and went to play DAOC.
Meanwhile on sullon however things continued until many DB either quit EQ for other games or rerolled to the evil team where they enjoyed the company of friends there more then that of the several dozen retards that infested their guild, the final destruction of the guild occured when grayrage got angry that one of these inner guild factions decided to kill a mob by themselves and not notify him of it (this mob had a piece of loot he had wanted badly for sometime, a bio orb) he then went on a rampage and disbanded darkenbane and moved to legends with about 4 people (a blue server) where he stayed for several months (causing the longtime allied german branch orden to separate from the guild after 3 years of playing with DB) collecting levels/gear/AA points before returning to sullon zek and joining the premier neutral PVE raid guild TOW (tides of wrath), its also noteworthy that this entire time from disbanding to the time he quit everquest (approximately a year and 3 months) gray did not say one word to anyone from DB whether they were involved in the bio orb incident or not, did not once vist the website to check on "his guild" or any involvement with anyone whatsoever, even after several longtime members including myself went to the TOW boards to reach him and ask what the deal was.
Because of this a very large number of DB absolutely despised gray not only for the bio orb incident and publically embarassing everyone in the guild with his temper tantrum (which he made public by whining in the news section on the frontpage of our website), bur for abandoning the guild as well.
As time went by the guild was almost completely dead (the boards during that time were getting maybe 10 - 15 posts a week) when shadowbane beta became open, gray was still playing everquest with TOW and said he would not be returning or playing SB when i asked him, so i then took it upon myself to try and reunite darkenbane in shadowbane, i was successful and managed to get around 2 dozen old time darkenbane members on the roster along with several friends of ours from both rallos and sullon and we launched the guild under the name shadow consortium. poltical grappling in shadowbane aside, the guild was highly prosperous and was regarded by most on our server (scorn) to be one of the top pvp guilds on the server.
A month or so into shadowbane gray had a falling out with the TOW leadership and quit EQ, i got him to come to shadowbane and reunited him with the guild, made certain that old grudges were smoothed over between him and the various people who hated his guts, even though i had several people threatening to leave the guild if i let him in, all was well and gray was reunited with the guild again.
Shadowbane ended up sucking and everybody eventually left the game for other games, but the guild was now unified and in tact once again. gray took off to planetside with a few members and started up a new branch of the guild there (80% of which were recruited from PS and will not know much about anything in the guilds history prior to PS), others went to eve online and warcraft3 many went to various other RTS games or FPS games, i went to UO.
Then while awaiting world of warcraft EQ discord came out, many many DB members reactivated long cancelled accounts just to play on discord since it was pre expansion and luclin completely ruined everquest pvp. this leads us to the present situation and my departure from the guild.
The circumstances regarding my departure.
This was the result of a large ongoing disagreement between grayrage and myself that finally ended up in gray having a classic juvenille flare up and thusly removing my access from the boards and posting in multiple places that i had been booted in response to a post i made on the private officers forum, which was a reply to an ultimatum made my gray and was asked to discuss issues on the private board, however i guess my post was unacceptable or unanswerable because instead of replying he simply removed my access to avoid doing so.
What were we in such heated disagreement about you ask?
Primarily two things........
Firstly and most importantly, the guild has become overrun with people running cheat programs of all description, a good 50% of the members (and virtually every last one of the new discord recruits) now use these programs (primarily SEQ, but also speedhacks, tracker progs and most likely the zone warps), grayrage openly encourages and supports the use of SEQ on the private boards whilst he publically denounces the same and even posted a thread containing the information to make SEQ work for those that didnt know how to do it, i was and am vehemently against this and was extremely vocal about it on the private boards and in game chat. but seeing as how the "leader" uses it and has used it ever since the early days of rallos zek after his return trip form europe where members of orden d reinigenden finsternis set it up for him and encourages others to use it, the problem was not going to go away. after a phone conversation with grayrage (dave) we came to a reluctant agreement that i would not cause waves over SEQ on discord in return for gray promising to not allow cheat prgrams in future games we played.
However others were using speedhacks and other more nefarious cheats, notably wikybus, ewwok, and fragile (tokkas) have been verfied as using these cheats, a half dozen others are suspected of it but have not yet been verified so i will refrain from mentioning them for now.
I found out about these 3 using the hacks from several concerned DB members emailing and PMing me to see if i could clean up the situation, i brought the matter to grayrages attention in teamspeak and on the boards and he refused to boot them. instead he posted a smartassed tongue in cheek post on the private boards meant to humor myself and the others disagreeing with the cheat use, he then followed up the post with a plan to defeat the ogres using SEQ collected information as a further example of his true stance on the issue.
He then posted an ultimatum to me on the officer boards, an hour or so after my reply i had been booted.
Needless to say there has not been a single day where the top 5 points leaders on discord did not have at least 3 among them that would not be there but for SEQ and other cheat programs.
Secondly, i was/am against massive recruitment of unknowns. everyone who is a longtime DB member can remember at least a few massive retard infestations that destroyed comraderie and unity within the guild, each time one of these massive retard infestations is the sole doing of gray and his wanting to be an all powerful uber guild rather than what we started as, a small tight knit pk guild.
The situation never changes.......
1> New game/server comes out.
2> Most of the core DB are playing together and are a very strong force.
3> Gray decides to let in a few unknowns.
4> Then a few more.
5> Then all their friends.
6> Guild becomes bloated and a good 50% of the members are now new guys that nobody knows, half of which nobody seems to like either.
7> Drama and arguements ensue.
8> Something small happens and sets off the powderkeg causing either a splitup, or many people to leave. generally the majority of the new people leave, along with a few core DBers who have had one grayrage clusterfuck to many and are unwilling to deal with it anymore.
9> Gray, in the aftermath of losing most of his retards along with a few of the good members vows that from now on we will remain small and very selective of who we let in like before, usually insitutes recruitment rules and policies that will be "followed from now on" etc.
10> See step 1
An example of this would be the fact that thus far over 17 people from discord that nobody really knows have managed to find their way to being a DB member, 17+ new people in the coruse of less than 3 weeks. most of whom have very very little pvp experience and hark from blue everquest servers, and only wish to join darkenbane for leveling assistance and protection, virtually all of whom will be gone and never heard from again once discord is brought down.
Yet another example is the 107 man roster already present for world of warcraft when beta has not even begun yet and recruitment is still going strong.
I can think of 25 - 30 people i consider true DB, who the rest of those folks are ive positively no clue, and neither does anyone else, including gray.
By comparison other old school notable pvp guilds, such as SIN, CC, KAAOS, TR, TB, LOTD and others have very selective recruitment policies, and have avoided the drama stained history of darkenbane and the loss of core members partly because of that.
In any case i do not wish to get to long winded, and the rest of the content on this website that is hyperlinked throughout this message should pretty much explain just about everything, needless to say after approximately 5 years with darkenbane i am no longer affiliated with DB nor will i be again, not unless grayrage resigns and someone competent is placed in charge.
To all my friends within darkenbane,. i know a good number of you will hate me after this, so sorry but it needed to be done. i will not allow someone to boot me over disapproving of cheat programs and wanting to remain true to the original concept of what DB is supposed to be and used to be, then not only lie about it on the private boards but then publicly decry the very same things. not without consequence anyway. and i do hope you all wake up and shed yourselves of the ineffective "leader" who has managed to "lead" DB all these years only by the countless contributions and interventions of the many officers working behind the scenes to fix his screwups so that we may be on the same side again, if not then hey its only a game and i still like you =P
Many of you are likely wondering what my future plans with regards to games will be now, well as of the moment i am enjoying my various FPS games and UO, i have recently reactivated my SB account to fuck around with a few of the old shadow consortium crew there (any old SC that wish to join us are more than welcome) i have also begun recruitment for a new PK guild that will launch with the release of WoW, this guild will be like what darkenbane is SUPPOSED to be and USED to be and will be a much needed alternative to grays "new darkenbane" for all of our old RZ and SZ friends and disgruntled DB members. IE no massive retard recruitment, no cheat programs and no leader going on removal sprees when folks disagree with things, nor disbanding the guild and vanishing for more than a year over loot. those of you interested in this are NOT to send me a PM as not only are they not secure but it is quite possible i will be banned from the site after this as well, instead email me at wothdar@yahoo.com.
