I-C History
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 1:49 pm
Edit (August 2015) I killed all the pictures by cancelling my hosting, bit gutted it ruined this. Still have them all so will re-add at some point. In meantime all I-C pics here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/134211121@N04/page1
Edit (Feb 2018) Decided it was time I fixed the pictures.
20/04/2011
A history of our guild I wrote initially in 2006 that I'm finally getting around to checking over and updating in 2011. The parts where I wasn't active in game obviously have less written than when I was actually playing, until someone else fills in the gaps.
P16 early months:
I-C(Infernal Covenant, or Infernal Covenant of the Damned to give the original full guild-stone name)was formed in August 2002 on the Europa shard of Ultima Online, shortly after publish 16 was introduced. The guild aim at it's inception was quite simple: To form a small efficient group of player killers not afraid to take murder counts in or out of statloss.
The founding members were Calix, Nixon and Slamer. Despite very different backgrounds in the game, we'd bonded well as part of the ELR(Evil Llama Riders) guild. ELR was anything but the efficient guild we wanted to build, despite having many players with a lot of individual talent. Once the guild became embroiled deeply in the EPK(Europa Player Killers, basically a huge, unorganised gank PK guild, formed as a coalition of existing red guilds) we saw a perfect opportunity to branch off and create our own group.
A major problem for us back then was we were all still played on dial-up internet, at a point where the vast majority of UO players were now on broadband. This made such a huge difference in UO at this time. Our first new members also predominately lacked broadband connections. Joining us in the first few months of the guild were Benn, Padaxus, Cyric, Mallet, Silke and Sonez, all from the ELR guild. Villa also joined us at this time, a friend from Nixon's role play days.
For these early months we were generally happy with small successes. The champion spawn dungeons were full of blues with tens if not hundreds of players on screen at any time, and our dial-up connections weren't best suited to such conditions. We did manage several successful raids on the dungeons, but PK guilds taking and controlling champ spawns was unheard of on Europa at this stage, the amount of players on blues was simply too high. Red guilds were very few and far between. Europa's recognised and established Order/Chaos and Factions guilds all stuck to playing blues and competing for spawns rather than engaging in what p16 was made for - Player conflict and territorial control.
Around this time we also got into a small war with the DDi/Del guild(Delucian Defence Initiative), one of the bigger, more successful factions guilds. Most of the action seemed to take place on the message boards rather than in game, but we did have a few amusing encounters with them near to the PHT guild house where it was proven they were either rusty from being out of the game for a while, or just plain sucked.
The main red guilds on Europa at this time were all small. EPK did carry on for a while but it's influence and numbers gradually waned, and it's primary guilds - PHT and ELR - returned to their independent states and guild stones. Alongside these two guilds were I-C, NDR and -T-(Mark-o's guild who I believe changed name a few times)and Vem. None of these guilds boasted more than 10 members max, and so rarely were seen in the field with more than 5 players. Vem(Polish players recently moved over from Siege Perilous) were probably the best guild on the shard at this time, regularly beating us as well as the remaining recognised 'old' PvP guilds.
Of all these guilds, only the -T- group were real established members of the Europa PvP community, so it was left to upstart guilds, with people relatively new to PvP or the shard upholding the PK 'tradition' whilst the recognised PvP guilds grubbed around for money and scrolls on their blues. I can't imagine they were having anywhere near as much fun as we were. I believe all the above mentioned guilds except for ELR also engaged in statloss PKing as well as the new style dungeon PKing that didn't incur statloss.
We were generally on friendly terms with PHT during this stage but our relationship with the ELR guild was heated at best, mainly due to their GM(Piourk) insisting that the breakup of EPK was our fault, for leaving and creating I-C. As mentioned above, the Vem guild were probably our toughest opponents and occasional allies.
Around this time Nixon managed to res my favourite 7x scribe mage deep in statloss after dying to Munky of all people, which I'll continue to remind him of forever.
I owned the house outside of Dungeon Shame and this became our informal headquarters as we laid claim to Shame itself. In the early days our only victims there were the occasional monster hunters, but as our claim on the dungeon became known, PvP guilds gradually migrated to the dungeon to fight us. We had many memorable fights at the location with guilds such as C*C(CoM Core, a faction guild), 6I6(The most 'well-known' PvP guild on the shard from before p16) and NDR. occasionally small groups of I-C would team up with a few NDR to raid a bigger, champ spawn dungeon.
We'd been together 3 months or so when we recruited some new members. Zole, a friend of Slamer's from factions and Senji, an ex EPK player who generally ran solo. Nixon had escaped dial-up by this time and we were developing a solid, skilled group. Buster also joined us around this time, another ex EPK player.
December 2002 - AoS launch:
During the first few months we'd been together as a guild, our in game performances were gradually improving, but the main thing that bound us together as a strong unit was that we used an IRC channel to organise and just for general banter. It's amazing to say now in the days of voice software of some kind being almost essential for all gaming guilds, but back then just being in an IRC channel made us a closer and more organised group than any of our opponents, who generally just relied on ICQ to communicate. The entire guild was usually in IRC for at least some time during everyday, even when we weren't actively playing UO.
We'd also started sharing our UO account information with each other, another sign that we were growing from just being a UO guild into a real group of friends.
During this period we added a few more members: Ingo(Cyric's brother), as well as Future/FC and Art, another member stolen from ELR.
A guild we started having a lot to do with during this time were EEV(Ethereal Veterans of Europa), they were a blue guild just starting to get into PvP at this time. A lot of our members had history with them in the game, and we were on very good terms, often setting up pre-arranged fights with them, for practice and fun.
We also took our first two failed trial members Jun Kai and Rare Collector.
Rare Collector was someone we had reservations about due to his history in game, but we were willing to give him a chance due to his links with a few of our members. He was actually a very good PK, a lot better than most people on Europa will ever give him credit for, but in the end his mouth/ego let him down. Whenever we died, he blamed everyone but himself, he would shit talk respected opponents, and generally we just didn't feel he was someone we'd trust with our account details, which was always something we took into consideration when accepting a new member into the guild on a permanent basis.
Jun Kai was another good player, I met him in the Terathan Keep where we were both solo PKing, and he seemed a good guy. The only reason he was rejected from the guild is he refused to get involved in any out of game activity. He didn't post on the message boards, wouldn't come into IRC..the only way any of us could communicate with him was when he would come by the guild house to see if any of us were around and PKing.
During this period Zole started to develop his reputation as one of the better PvPers around, despite being on dialup. He played a niche template, using barding skills to enable him to use a fire-horn on a mage PK template. This proved very effective and certainly played a large part in his and our rising profiles on the shard.
The main in game event I recall from this period was X Lord X(Probably the most well known PvPer on the shard and GM of the 6i6 guild) was married in game to some girl at a GM led event at the Hedge Maze. Nixon was contacted by X Lord X to see if we would arrange to protect the event from any 'griefers' by taking our reds to the wedding itself, for a fee. We of course agreed this, but upon the guys turning up(Present were Nixon, Silke, Slamer, Buster and Rare Collector I believe) they were instantly attacked by 6i6 and others, prompting them to return in alliance with the DJs(Deathjesters) and PHT guilds and attack the wedding. I think it said a lot about the state of Europa PvP at the time that they only guilds prepared to go there and take counts were the DJs and two 'upstart' guilds like I-C and PHT. The rest of the PvP community sat around playing happy families on their blues.
At this stage the Age of Shadows UO expansion had been announced, and the very thought of the problems and changes it would bring took a lot of us, myself included, into UO retirement. The last few I-C members played on for a month or so, until at one point only Senji and Villa remained active and they joined PHT, our old allies.
AoS March 2003 - November 2003
When the AoS UO expansion launched in March 2003, I-C hadn't existed as an active UO guild for over a month. We still had the IRC channel and most of us used it daily, but those that still played UO were part of more active guilds, Villa now in EEV and Senji in PHT. The rest of us had deactivated our accounts in disillusionment at the proposed AoS changes.
When it became apparent the AoS changes didn't change the most important things - we could still PK and grief people, we gradually drifted back into the game.
Nixon was one of the first to reactivate and he resurrected the guild mostly on his own. He recruited Kzar, who was a Felucca based Role-player we'd met in p16, and Kashar, who many of our members knew from their own role-play days. Noxin and Wild also joined at this time, well known RP PvPers. Wild was making a return to PKing after years away, and Noxin gaining his first experience of it.
At this point I believe everyone bar myself now had broadband, so we were on much more of a level playing field with our opponents, despite some of the imbalances that AoS brought. Due to my lack of broadband, I personally didn't return to UO until May 2003.
Between AoS launch and my return to the game, Nixon had built an impressive PvP guild out of the rebuilt I-C. Almost everyone had returned, and people such as Cyric, Zole and Sonez were building reputations as some of the most dangerous PvPers around. Together with effective team oriented mages such as Benn, Nixon, Kashar Senji and Noxin - and an effective dexxer in Villa.
The guild was winning far more fights than it was losing, and perhaps because of this was attracting more applications from prospective members. The pick of these was Zim Zum, of PHT at the time, but quickly building himself a reputation as a top PvPer. We'd fought against him often in Destard during p16, but he had thrived in AoS, and once added to the guild strengthened our team greatly.
In one particular fight that really proved how the balance of power on the shard was shifting, Nixon and Zim embarrassed the once mighty 6i6 guild, killing 5 of them, leaving all corpses on one screen, perfect screenshot material which ended up on our(and their) forum. This of course added to the guild's reputation, and our public message board gradually became the main centre of PvP discussion for the shard. My own personal contribution to the guild at this time was much more in forum politics and propaganda than actually in game!
Another development since AoS launch was the evolution of our old friendly adversaries, EEV from a blue champ spawn guild into a red murderer guild. They were still involved in the champ spawn scene and now claimed dungeon Deceit as their own. We were involved in many classic fights against guilds such as C*C and NDK whilst helping to defend this dungeon.
C*C were the last major factions guild left after AoS, and quickly became one of the most well equipped and dangerous guilds around. NDR had also progressed, adding many new members, whilst their core(who were always generally dexxers) were now strengthened by the new special moves AoS had introduced.
ELR were also still an active guild and our rivalry continued, although now results tended to be even more slanted in our favour than ever before, thanks at least in part to the tactics their GM - Piourk - continued to employ despite repeated failures. They still had many individually talented players, but their unorganisation as a group led them to continue losing players to other guilds throughout AoS. we often joked about ELR being our 'feeder' guild and in reality it was quite true. Alderis joined us from ELR a few months into AoS, continuing the tradition.
One of us(I forget who) managed to gain access to their private message board at one point, and it contained hilarious threads such as "Do you use party bars or not".
Other enemies during this time period were Marko and Armstrong's faction guild DiE as well as their PK offshoot guild [hi!]. The PK side contained many old enemies from p16 such as Lady Peekay, and Dark Galleon(Who later played as I-C in Shadowbane). The DiE guild were generally very effective but small, they were quick to exploit AoS items to their fullest and also made use of every new bug the expansion had brought in, chief among them 'Tele-bug', where you could cast teleport on yourself and be instantly taken away from the dungeons or lost lands(where you could no longer recall or gate).
DJs were very similar, at this stage had probably the biggest item advantage on the shard(Coma White comes to mind), but were an effective small group. Vem were also still around, although on what seemed a more part-time basis than in p16.
Our comedy enemy of this time were SdP/SdF, a guild primarily made up of 15-16 year old kids that hung out at the tunnel to Delucia. We beat them in near 100% of fights, and took screenshots to post on our public forum where they were very vocal, knowing they would react, and badly. This UO war eventually turned into more of a forum war between certain I-C members and SdF, which culminated in Noxin creating the infamous 'Kung Fu' video involving Pain(Sdf GM)and his Kung Fu instructors involved in various ball-grabbing techniques. You'd have to read the threads and see the video to understand. I wish I still had it. They eventually joined ELR, the logical choice for two of our weaker enemies to band together.
Our public forum at this time had become so active at this time that I took the decision to convert it into 'Europa Felucca Community' board. I hoped to get participation from not just the PvPers but the role-players and merchants left on the facet also, and this was relatively successful. For a year or so the board was very active, and quite hilarious, with people posting from all the major guilds. It seemed to become something of an obsession for trammel players as well, with hundreds of complaints about the topics on the board going to the administrators of the site where the board was hosted.
Guilds such as UCH, 0B0, AB and CHu were generally classed more as victims than opponents, being primarily blue champ spawn guilds that avoided PvP whenever possible.
Another emerging guild was AoS, made up of trammel players new to Felucca, but armed with multiple artifacts each, making them increasingly difficult opponents as they began to get better at PvP. They were led by Athena, who played exclusively dex based characters, 'gimped' to allow him to kill most people in 1-2 hits.
Most of the old PvP guilds made some effort to establish themselves in AoS, but many couldn't or wouldn't adapt, and gradually drifted away from the game. The guilds mentioned above were the main forces on the shard during this time period. Four to five months into AoS, the bug that had kept most of the insanely overpowered doom artifact out of Felucca was fixed, and they gradually began flooding into PvP, mostly into the hands of the monster hunting guilds who were happy to spend hours in a trammel ruleset mindlessly bashing monsters, something we and most of the other PvP guilds weren't prepared to do.
The fun in the game began to decline for us once people such as Bad Angel of UCH gained artifacts allowing them to cast at FC4 whilst we all had FC2.
Zim Zum and Senji had formed an impressive partnership at this time and were probably the two most well known and respected PKs across the shard. They were also making an impact in factions, regularly winning fights with their fc2 characters verus players with fc4, a near impossibility.
Zole was by this point known as one of the best players around, being one of the first people to use the LMC item attribute, and as in p16, inventing unique and effective templates.
It was also around this time that housing decay was turned back on(It had been turned off due to the World Trade Centre attack), and obviously two years worth of deactivated account's housing fell at once. This made for a night of crazy IDOC fights, and we managed to secure almost the entire area around our guild house, owning a town north of Skara Brae involving 27 individual houses. Our merchant friends Terry and Petra also ran a shop selling PvP supplies right in the heart of our town.
Slamer had also created something of a shard treasure with his house at Destard entrance. It was setup in such a way as to trap players inside once they had entered - surrounded by lured creatures from the nearby swamp. Most of the shard died there at least once before realising their mistake.
One of of favourite guild memories occured during this time period. Nixon had developed quite a reputation as a 'neighbour griefer' - wherever he lived he ended up killing his neighbours daily, which usually culminated with them moving out. At this particular time he was living on Ice Island, not far from Deceit entrance.
Some new neighbours moved in once he'd been there some time. So of course Nixon decided to welcome them to the neighbourhood by PKing and res-killing them. We went on our PK rounds for the evening, but when Nixon returned ready to log off, he found multiple Energy Vortexes and Blade Spirits awaiting him in his house, and his new neighbours appeared with spells prepped and weapons ready. Of course, the I-C cavalry was called in and the trammel neighbours quickly dispatched.
The next evening Nixon logged in to the same scene, these new neighbours(4-5 of them seemed to be living in the same house)were outside his house. They were all killed again of course, and soon their attitude changed from aggressive to pleading.
As a guild we were always prepared to come to an arrangement with weaker players - if there was some profit to be gained for ourselves. A token price was demanded for these players to be 'left alone', which they refused to pay. They all died again, and this is where the comedy ensued. One of their number informed us a Game Master was his friend and on his way to ban us all because "Killing people is illegal in UO". Another stated "I'm in the RAF and they will bomb your houses when a GM gets your IP" It actually seemed like he was serious - he was that angry.
They died a few more times each that night I think, and at some point one of us managed to get friended to their house and access us all to it...I forget how this happened. Eventually we were presented with a UO in game book, written by the apparent leader of these players, Katie. It stated our list of supposed crimes, how we had ruined the game for her, and what she was prepared to pay for us to leave her alone.
I forget what else occurred, but eventually they moved away, but not before one of their more outspoken members(Reborn Gremlin, who will appear again a few years later) asked if he could join our ranks. Sonez and Nixon duly gave him a chance, asking 500k for the honour of dueling Sonez (the guys knowing full well he could not win). Victory meant he could join, defeat meant he could not. Of course he lost, but was offered a chance to fight again - for a further 100k. He proceeded to die again in under 5 seconds, and we had gained another enemy who would appear again and again over the years!
We also managed to cause a lot of controversy in the still semi-active Faction scene by taking our Reds to faction fights, and generally griefing the faction guilds we disliked. This prompted a reaction on EFC from none other than Actual Fantasy/Aiken Drum, one of the more prominent True Britannian members, who claimed we should be banned from the game for interfering in faction combat on non-faction chars.
[img]http:/www.griefed.net/clxx/UO/senji/eu/EllisDee.jpg[/img]
A while into this new 'artifact' era, there were fewer and fewer reds on the shard. The shard was infested with blue champ hunt guilds awash with artifacts. People who were purely interested in PvP such as ourselves were at an ever increasing disadvantage because we didn't go to Dungeon Doom and monster bash. We spent our time PvPing. After a few nights of finding ourselves fighting upwards of 40 artifact-equipped blues wherever we went, ourselves and EEV, both capable of fielding 10-11 players at peak, decided to ally. The objective was simply to give ourselves a better chance in fights. Not to dominate the shard, or work spawns together, as our enemies claimed. Both guilds had found themselves increasingly outnumbered and out-itemed over the previous weeks. PHT were also involved in this alliance, but at the time Kristoff was their only active player.
Our alliance did tip the balance in our favour. The blue gank seemed to break apart a little once they started losing fights, and soon the message boards complaints began about our own numbers. This went on for at most two weeks before another alliance formed out of the ELR, AoS and DJs guilds. The C*C guild could also be included in this as they were often involved in their fights due to many of their members having alternate characters in the DJs guild. This alliance had formed supposedly to combat that of I-C & EEV, but they were also doing many harrowers with their new found numbers to control it. ELR were their cannon fodder and provided most of their reds, and AoS and DJs provided all the itemed out characters, mostly controlled by poor players, thankfully.
A huge 40 man fight occurred in Deceit one night at the height of this. All guilds were involved, I-C, EEV PHT(Well, Kristoff) on one side, and ELR, DJs and AoS on another. In the initial encounter close to the champ spawn we were all killed very quickly...this was probably the first time we had encountered large amounts of players with FC3-4 all together and it showed.
We regrouped and returned to Deceit, killing the majority of them before the remaining(Including ELR GM Piourk) fled the dungeon. Presumably we were lucky enough to catch them by surprise. We made the mistake of remaining inside the dungeon at the exact location of our victory, hoping for another fight, just as they had done - and their alliance soon returned and won the third and final fight of the 'Battle of Deceit'
Looking back now i'm amazed to see how well we did in winning one fight, two guilds of poorly itemed players, all with faster casting of 2, against 3 guilds with at least 5 FC4 and numerous other FC3 players between them, as well as the two most dangerous and artifact-laden dexxers on the shard, Athena and Slacher.
A few nights later the alliances again clashed over an IDOC house near the Delucia Tunnel. There's a pic of at least 20 players on screen from the two alliances, just as a temporary field alliance of our old adversaries NDR and Vem crashed into the back of I-C and EEV, handing victory to AoS and co. Thanks LookFar!
Both alliances broke up soon after, I think at least in part due to more and more players leaving the game due to the ever increasing commonness of artifacts in PvP. ELR were certainly very disadvantaged due to this, and I personally left UO again in November 2003, soon followed by most of I-C and a good proportion of EEV.
The remaining few I-C eventually joined EEV when it became clear that the rest of us would not be returning with the game in it's current state. We were back to being an IRC & forum guild for a few months.
Christmas 2003 - May 2004:
The majority of us had quit UO during the height of the artifact madness, and if reading EFC at the time was anything to go by, things were getting worse and worse on Europa. Our old enemies AoS had formed a new guild called AI(Artifact Infantry) and as the name implies, were ludicrously well equipped. They had large numbers, were very organised, all rode the ridiculous looking Swamp Dragons(Which at the time reduced spell damage taken by 10%). It appeared they had almost complete control of the shard.
With this in mind it made our notorious weakness for returning to UO easier to resist, and we embarked into other games, firstly the Defiance player-run shard(Operated by xlx of the 6i6 guild), I personally played for only a week, but others carried on for a few months, doing a great deal of PKing.
We also did a guild move to Shadowbane when the first European shard announced, and went with quite a big presence, around 10 I-C members, along with a selection of old allies/enemies from Europa playing under the I-C tag. In a strange twist we ended up allied with some other old Europa enemies, DDi, working as part of the 'Nation' they led. Our presence in the game lasted six months at most. The game had huge promise, but was beset by bugs and bad implementation - and in reality, it just wasn't UO, a game most of us still loved.
Eventually most of us did what we always did - went back to Europa. This time we had a large faction force. Europa was perhaps unique among all UO shards at this time in still having an active faction player base. As factions also seemed to be far less infested with artifact-laden players than champ spawn fights, it seemed the logical place to go. PHT I-C and EEV alll joined the Minax faction, and together with more traditional Minax guilds such as DDi, quickly took possesion of all towns. At this time most of the faction guilds were scared of Zole(or Donnelley, his faction character and the name they knew him by) and a good proportion of I-C and EEV played together under his guildtag [ry in factions.
In April 2004 OSI launched a new shard - Test Sosaria. It was planned as a permanent shard, but to be used as a testing ground for developer ideas, as well as a place for players to interact in game with the dev's themselves. Noxin and Wildcat sensed a potential in this that very few others did - a chance to show the dev team how stupid UO PvP had become, and give them an idea how to fix it. A few other Europa people, mainly I-C played the shard with them on occaision, and the fights they were involved in generally involved them beating the so-called 'best pvpers' on the shard(A group of American kids) easily. This helped Noxin gain the ear of Hanse, a prominent member of the dev team.
Gradually Noxin explained and demonstrated to him what was wrong with PvP. It was apparent that Hanse himself had no PvP experience, but he seemed very willing to listen to those who did, and was very keen to see it improved. He seemed to be spending more and more time with Noxin, which persuaded me to start playing the shard, in an attempt to get some of my own points across to a dev team member.
At this point Noxin had been given Game-Master powers on the shard, and generally when not with Hanse spent his time using those skills to abuse the completely idiotic population of that shard.
It also appeared Hanse was seriously considering applying some of the changes he and Noxin had discussed to all the OSI shards. This raised interest in our IRC channel greatly. Soon pretty much all of us were on the shard.
Zole happened to be boasting about this newfound influence to some friends on Europa, one of whom claimed he was also on the shard, and had the ear of another developer, Evocare.
This gave me hope because Evocare was something Hanse was not - A PvPer himself. Soon a group of us, and Zole's friend CeLt, from the AoS guild on Europa, were gathered in an IRC channel to see how best we could use our influence to get these changes actually put into the real servers. It seemed Evocare had been ready to publish his and CeLt's list of changes(A list almost identical to the one Hanse and Noxin had put together), but he was leaving OSI within the week to take up the lead developer's position on Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
Our hopes now rested exclusively on Hanse, which worried me because despite his good intentions and willingness to get things right, his knowledge of PvP mechanics was basic at best. He was also prone to believing some of his short sighted ideas were far better than what Noxin and the rest of us had suggested to him. One day he told Noxin to test the new spell-casting timers he had put in place. Myself Noxin and Alderis tested these changes, and to say they would have removed all skill from mage PvP is an understatement.
Eventually though Noxin and Hanse together pulled it off. All the excessive AoS attributes were capped: LMC, SDI, HCI etc. All at good levels. I was constantly arguing for the caps to be lower, but in hindsight they were almost perfect as the two of them designed it. Swamp Dragons were nerfed. They created easily the the most balanced era of AoS PvP, and in my opinion one of the best PvP era's ever in UO. Up there with late t2a and p15.
My personal claim to fame from this is the capping of Chivalry spells at FC2 for mages(I argued for all char types but Hanse insisted on just mages) - it was my idea. Shame Hanse then coded it wrongly and it wasn't introduced to the shards...
Hanse also sneaked in a couple of strange changes of his own - to how the Invisibility spell worked and how poison worked. We weren't going to argue with these changes at the time in our happiness/disbelief that we had the ear of the person in charge of the game we loved. As it happened these changes he added turned out to be the only bad things about the publish that Noxin had worked on with Hanse - Which ended up being Publish 25. I'm still amazed that we were ever involved in that, was pretty surreal.
Something that shouldn't be forgotten is that we also had our first 'Real Life' meet-up during this period, up in Newcastle at Benn's house. I traveled north with Pad, and also in attendance were Benn, FC, Slamer, Nixon, Alderis, Zole and Buster.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/134211121@N04/page1
Edit (Feb 2018) Decided it was time I fixed the pictures.
20/04/2011
A history of our guild I wrote initially in 2006 that I'm finally getting around to checking over and updating in 2011. The parts where I wasn't active in game obviously have less written than when I was actually playing, until someone else fills in the gaps.
P16 early months:
I-C(Infernal Covenant, or Infernal Covenant of the Damned to give the original full guild-stone name)was formed in August 2002 on the Europa shard of Ultima Online, shortly after publish 16 was introduced. The guild aim at it's inception was quite simple: To form a small efficient group of player killers not afraid to take murder counts in or out of statloss.
The founding members were Calix, Nixon and Slamer. Despite very different backgrounds in the game, we'd bonded well as part of the ELR(Evil Llama Riders) guild. ELR was anything but the efficient guild we wanted to build, despite having many players with a lot of individual talent. Once the guild became embroiled deeply in the EPK(Europa Player Killers, basically a huge, unorganised gank PK guild, formed as a coalition of existing red guilds) we saw a perfect opportunity to branch off and create our own group.
A major problem for us back then was we were all still played on dial-up internet, at a point where the vast majority of UO players were now on broadband. This made such a huge difference in UO at this time. Our first new members also predominately lacked broadband connections. Joining us in the first few months of the guild were Benn, Padaxus, Cyric, Mallet, Silke and Sonez, all from the ELR guild. Villa also joined us at this time, a friend from Nixon's role play days.
For these early months we were generally happy with small successes. The champion spawn dungeons were full of blues with tens if not hundreds of players on screen at any time, and our dial-up connections weren't best suited to such conditions. We did manage several successful raids on the dungeons, but PK guilds taking and controlling champ spawns was unheard of on Europa at this stage, the amount of players on blues was simply too high. Red guilds were very few and far between. Europa's recognised and established Order/Chaos and Factions guilds all stuck to playing blues and competing for spawns rather than engaging in what p16 was made for - Player conflict and territorial control.
Around this time we also got into a small war with the DDi/Del guild(Delucian Defence Initiative), one of the bigger, more successful factions guilds. Most of the action seemed to take place on the message boards rather than in game, but we did have a few amusing encounters with them near to the PHT guild house where it was proven they were either rusty from being out of the game for a while, or just plain sucked.
The main red guilds on Europa at this time were all small. EPK did carry on for a while but it's influence and numbers gradually waned, and it's primary guilds - PHT and ELR - returned to their independent states and guild stones. Alongside these two guilds were I-C, NDR and -T-(Mark-o's guild who I believe changed name a few times)and Vem. None of these guilds boasted more than 10 members max, and so rarely were seen in the field with more than 5 players. Vem(Polish players recently moved over from Siege Perilous) were probably the best guild on the shard at this time, regularly beating us as well as the remaining recognised 'old' PvP guilds.
Of all these guilds, only the -T- group were real established members of the Europa PvP community, so it was left to upstart guilds, with people relatively new to PvP or the shard upholding the PK 'tradition' whilst the recognised PvP guilds grubbed around for money and scrolls on their blues. I can't imagine they were having anywhere near as much fun as we were. I believe all the above mentioned guilds except for ELR also engaged in statloss PKing as well as the new style dungeon PKing that didn't incur statloss.
We were generally on friendly terms with PHT during this stage but our relationship with the ELR guild was heated at best, mainly due to their GM(Piourk) insisting that the breakup of EPK was our fault, for leaving and creating I-C. As mentioned above, the Vem guild were probably our toughest opponents and occasional allies.
Around this time Nixon managed to res my favourite 7x scribe mage deep in statloss after dying to Munky of all people, which I'll continue to remind him of forever.
I owned the house outside of Dungeon Shame and this became our informal headquarters as we laid claim to Shame itself. In the early days our only victims there were the occasional monster hunters, but as our claim on the dungeon became known, PvP guilds gradually migrated to the dungeon to fight us. We had many memorable fights at the location with guilds such as C*C(CoM Core, a faction guild), 6I6(The most 'well-known' PvP guild on the shard from before p16) and NDR. occasionally small groups of I-C would team up with a few NDR to raid a bigger, champ spawn dungeon.
We'd been together 3 months or so when we recruited some new members. Zole, a friend of Slamer's from factions and Senji, an ex EPK player who generally ran solo. Nixon had escaped dial-up by this time and we were developing a solid, skilled group. Buster also joined us around this time, another ex EPK player.
December 2002 - AoS launch:
During the first few months we'd been together as a guild, our in game performances were gradually improving, but the main thing that bound us together as a strong unit was that we used an IRC channel to organise and just for general banter. It's amazing to say now in the days of voice software of some kind being almost essential for all gaming guilds, but back then just being in an IRC channel made us a closer and more organised group than any of our opponents, who generally just relied on ICQ to communicate. The entire guild was usually in IRC for at least some time during everyday, even when we weren't actively playing UO.
We'd also started sharing our UO account information with each other, another sign that we were growing from just being a UO guild into a real group of friends.
During this period we added a few more members: Ingo(Cyric's brother), as well as Future/FC and Art, another member stolen from ELR.
A guild we started having a lot to do with during this time were EEV(Ethereal Veterans of Europa), they were a blue guild just starting to get into PvP at this time. A lot of our members had history with them in the game, and we were on very good terms, often setting up pre-arranged fights with them, for practice and fun.
We also took our first two failed trial members Jun Kai and Rare Collector.
Rare Collector was someone we had reservations about due to his history in game, but we were willing to give him a chance due to his links with a few of our members. He was actually a very good PK, a lot better than most people on Europa will ever give him credit for, but in the end his mouth/ego let him down. Whenever we died, he blamed everyone but himself, he would shit talk respected opponents, and generally we just didn't feel he was someone we'd trust with our account details, which was always something we took into consideration when accepting a new member into the guild on a permanent basis.
Jun Kai was another good player, I met him in the Terathan Keep where we were both solo PKing, and he seemed a good guy. The only reason he was rejected from the guild is he refused to get involved in any out of game activity. He didn't post on the message boards, wouldn't come into IRC..the only way any of us could communicate with him was when he would come by the guild house to see if any of us were around and PKing.
During this period Zole started to develop his reputation as one of the better PvPers around, despite being on dialup. He played a niche template, using barding skills to enable him to use a fire-horn on a mage PK template. This proved very effective and certainly played a large part in his and our rising profiles on the shard.
The main in game event I recall from this period was X Lord X(Probably the most well known PvPer on the shard and GM of the 6i6 guild) was married in game to some girl at a GM led event at the Hedge Maze. Nixon was contacted by X Lord X to see if we would arrange to protect the event from any 'griefers' by taking our reds to the wedding itself, for a fee. We of course agreed this, but upon the guys turning up(Present were Nixon, Silke, Slamer, Buster and Rare Collector I believe) they were instantly attacked by 6i6 and others, prompting them to return in alliance with the DJs(Deathjesters) and PHT guilds and attack the wedding. I think it said a lot about the state of Europa PvP at the time that they only guilds prepared to go there and take counts were the DJs and two 'upstart' guilds like I-C and PHT. The rest of the PvP community sat around playing happy families on their blues.
At this stage the Age of Shadows UO expansion had been announced, and the very thought of the problems and changes it would bring took a lot of us, myself included, into UO retirement. The last few I-C members played on for a month or so, until at one point only Senji and Villa remained active and they joined PHT, our old allies.
AoS March 2003 - November 2003
When the AoS UO expansion launched in March 2003, I-C hadn't existed as an active UO guild for over a month. We still had the IRC channel and most of us used it daily, but those that still played UO were part of more active guilds, Villa now in EEV and Senji in PHT. The rest of us had deactivated our accounts in disillusionment at the proposed AoS changes.
When it became apparent the AoS changes didn't change the most important things - we could still PK and grief people, we gradually drifted back into the game.
Nixon was one of the first to reactivate and he resurrected the guild mostly on his own. He recruited Kzar, who was a Felucca based Role-player we'd met in p16, and Kashar, who many of our members knew from their own role-play days. Noxin and Wild also joined at this time, well known RP PvPers. Wild was making a return to PKing after years away, and Noxin gaining his first experience of it.
At this point I believe everyone bar myself now had broadband, so we were on much more of a level playing field with our opponents, despite some of the imbalances that AoS brought. Due to my lack of broadband, I personally didn't return to UO until May 2003.
Between AoS launch and my return to the game, Nixon had built an impressive PvP guild out of the rebuilt I-C. Almost everyone had returned, and people such as Cyric, Zole and Sonez were building reputations as some of the most dangerous PvPers around. Together with effective team oriented mages such as Benn, Nixon, Kashar Senji and Noxin - and an effective dexxer in Villa.
The guild was winning far more fights than it was losing, and perhaps because of this was attracting more applications from prospective members. The pick of these was Zim Zum, of PHT at the time, but quickly building himself a reputation as a top PvPer. We'd fought against him often in Destard during p16, but he had thrived in AoS, and once added to the guild strengthened our team greatly.
In one particular fight that really proved how the balance of power on the shard was shifting, Nixon and Zim embarrassed the once mighty 6i6 guild, killing 5 of them, leaving all corpses on one screen, perfect screenshot material which ended up on our(and their) forum. This of course added to the guild's reputation, and our public message board gradually became the main centre of PvP discussion for the shard. My own personal contribution to the guild at this time was much more in forum politics and propaganda than actually in game!
Another development since AoS launch was the evolution of our old friendly adversaries, EEV from a blue champ spawn guild into a red murderer guild. They were still involved in the champ spawn scene and now claimed dungeon Deceit as their own. We were involved in many classic fights against guilds such as C*C and NDK whilst helping to defend this dungeon.
C*C were the last major factions guild left after AoS, and quickly became one of the most well equipped and dangerous guilds around. NDR had also progressed, adding many new members, whilst their core(who were always generally dexxers) were now strengthened by the new special moves AoS had introduced.
ELR were also still an active guild and our rivalry continued, although now results tended to be even more slanted in our favour than ever before, thanks at least in part to the tactics their GM - Piourk - continued to employ despite repeated failures. They still had many individually talented players, but their unorganisation as a group led them to continue losing players to other guilds throughout AoS. we often joked about ELR being our 'feeder' guild and in reality it was quite true. Alderis joined us from ELR a few months into AoS, continuing the tradition.
One of us(I forget who) managed to gain access to their private message board at one point, and it contained hilarious threads such as "Do you use party bars or not".
Other enemies during this time period were Marko and Armstrong's faction guild DiE as well as their PK offshoot guild [hi!]. The PK side contained many old enemies from p16 such as Lady Peekay, and Dark Galleon(Who later played as I-C in Shadowbane). The DiE guild were generally very effective but small, they were quick to exploit AoS items to their fullest and also made use of every new bug the expansion had brought in, chief among them 'Tele-bug', where you could cast teleport on yourself and be instantly taken away from the dungeons or lost lands(where you could no longer recall or gate).
DJs were very similar, at this stage had probably the biggest item advantage on the shard(Coma White comes to mind), but were an effective small group. Vem were also still around, although on what seemed a more part-time basis than in p16.
Our comedy enemy of this time were SdP/SdF, a guild primarily made up of 15-16 year old kids that hung out at the tunnel to Delucia. We beat them in near 100% of fights, and took screenshots to post on our public forum where they were very vocal, knowing they would react, and badly. This UO war eventually turned into more of a forum war between certain I-C members and SdF, which culminated in Noxin creating the infamous 'Kung Fu' video involving Pain(Sdf GM)and his Kung Fu instructors involved in various ball-grabbing techniques. You'd have to read the threads and see the video to understand. I wish I still had it. They eventually joined ELR, the logical choice for two of our weaker enemies to band together.
Our public forum at this time had become so active at this time that I took the decision to convert it into 'Europa Felucca Community' board. I hoped to get participation from not just the PvPers but the role-players and merchants left on the facet also, and this was relatively successful. For a year or so the board was very active, and quite hilarious, with people posting from all the major guilds. It seemed to become something of an obsession for trammel players as well, with hundreds of complaints about the topics on the board going to the administrators of the site where the board was hosted.
Guilds such as UCH, 0B0, AB and CHu were generally classed more as victims than opponents, being primarily blue champ spawn guilds that avoided PvP whenever possible.
Another emerging guild was AoS, made up of trammel players new to Felucca, but armed with multiple artifacts each, making them increasingly difficult opponents as they began to get better at PvP. They were led by Athena, who played exclusively dex based characters, 'gimped' to allow him to kill most people in 1-2 hits.
Most of the old PvP guilds made some effort to establish themselves in AoS, but many couldn't or wouldn't adapt, and gradually drifted away from the game. The guilds mentioned above were the main forces on the shard during this time period. Four to five months into AoS, the bug that had kept most of the insanely overpowered doom artifact out of Felucca was fixed, and they gradually began flooding into PvP, mostly into the hands of the monster hunting guilds who were happy to spend hours in a trammel ruleset mindlessly bashing monsters, something we and most of the other PvP guilds weren't prepared to do.
The fun in the game began to decline for us once people such as Bad Angel of UCH gained artifacts allowing them to cast at FC4 whilst we all had FC2.
Zim Zum and Senji had formed an impressive partnership at this time and were probably the two most well known and respected PKs across the shard. They were also making an impact in factions, regularly winning fights with their fc2 characters verus players with fc4, a near impossibility.
Zole was by this point known as one of the best players around, being one of the first people to use the LMC item attribute, and as in p16, inventing unique and effective templates.
It was also around this time that housing decay was turned back on(It had been turned off due to the World Trade Centre attack), and obviously two years worth of deactivated account's housing fell at once. This made for a night of crazy IDOC fights, and we managed to secure almost the entire area around our guild house, owning a town north of Skara Brae involving 27 individual houses. Our merchant friends Terry and Petra also ran a shop selling PvP supplies right in the heart of our town.
Slamer had also created something of a shard treasure with his house at Destard entrance. It was setup in such a way as to trap players inside once they had entered - surrounded by lured creatures from the nearby swamp. Most of the shard died there at least once before realising their mistake.
One of of favourite guild memories occured during this time period. Nixon had developed quite a reputation as a 'neighbour griefer' - wherever he lived he ended up killing his neighbours daily, which usually culminated with them moving out. At this particular time he was living on Ice Island, not far from Deceit entrance.
Some new neighbours moved in once he'd been there some time. So of course Nixon decided to welcome them to the neighbourhood by PKing and res-killing them. We went on our PK rounds for the evening, but when Nixon returned ready to log off, he found multiple Energy Vortexes and Blade Spirits awaiting him in his house, and his new neighbours appeared with spells prepped and weapons ready. Of course, the I-C cavalry was called in and the trammel neighbours quickly dispatched.
The next evening Nixon logged in to the same scene, these new neighbours(4-5 of them seemed to be living in the same house)were outside his house. They were all killed again of course, and soon their attitude changed from aggressive to pleading.
As a guild we were always prepared to come to an arrangement with weaker players - if there was some profit to be gained for ourselves. A token price was demanded for these players to be 'left alone', which they refused to pay. They all died again, and this is where the comedy ensued. One of their number informed us a Game Master was his friend and on his way to ban us all because "Killing people is illegal in UO". Another stated "I'm in the RAF and they will bomb your houses when a GM gets your IP" It actually seemed like he was serious - he was that angry.
They died a few more times each that night I think, and at some point one of us managed to get friended to their house and access us all to it...I forget how this happened. Eventually we were presented with a UO in game book, written by the apparent leader of these players, Katie. It stated our list of supposed crimes, how we had ruined the game for her, and what she was prepared to pay for us to leave her alone.
I forget what else occurred, but eventually they moved away, but not before one of their more outspoken members(Reborn Gremlin, who will appear again a few years later) asked if he could join our ranks. Sonez and Nixon duly gave him a chance, asking 500k for the honour of dueling Sonez (the guys knowing full well he could not win). Victory meant he could join, defeat meant he could not. Of course he lost, but was offered a chance to fight again - for a further 100k. He proceeded to die again in under 5 seconds, and we had gained another enemy who would appear again and again over the years!
We also managed to cause a lot of controversy in the still semi-active Faction scene by taking our Reds to faction fights, and generally griefing the faction guilds we disliked. This prompted a reaction on EFC from none other than Actual Fantasy/Aiken Drum, one of the more prominent True Britannian members, who claimed we should be banned from the game for interfering in faction combat on non-faction chars.
[img]http:/www.griefed.net/clxx/UO/senji/eu/EllisDee.jpg[/img]
A while into this new 'artifact' era, there were fewer and fewer reds on the shard. The shard was infested with blue champ hunt guilds awash with artifacts. People who were purely interested in PvP such as ourselves were at an ever increasing disadvantage because we didn't go to Dungeon Doom and monster bash. We spent our time PvPing. After a few nights of finding ourselves fighting upwards of 40 artifact-equipped blues wherever we went, ourselves and EEV, both capable of fielding 10-11 players at peak, decided to ally. The objective was simply to give ourselves a better chance in fights. Not to dominate the shard, or work spawns together, as our enemies claimed. Both guilds had found themselves increasingly outnumbered and out-itemed over the previous weeks. PHT were also involved in this alliance, but at the time Kristoff was their only active player.
Our alliance did tip the balance in our favour. The blue gank seemed to break apart a little once they started losing fights, and soon the message boards complaints began about our own numbers. This went on for at most two weeks before another alliance formed out of the ELR, AoS and DJs guilds. The C*C guild could also be included in this as they were often involved in their fights due to many of their members having alternate characters in the DJs guild. This alliance had formed supposedly to combat that of I-C & EEV, but they were also doing many harrowers with their new found numbers to control it. ELR were their cannon fodder and provided most of their reds, and AoS and DJs provided all the itemed out characters, mostly controlled by poor players, thankfully.
A huge 40 man fight occurred in Deceit one night at the height of this. All guilds were involved, I-C, EEV PHT(Well, Kristoff) on one side, and ELR, DJs and AoS on another. In the initial encounter close to the champ spawn we were all killed very quickly...this was probably the first time we had encountered large amounts of players with FC3-4 all together and it showed.
We regrouped and returned to Deceit, killing the majority of them before the remaining(Including ELR GM Piourk) fled the dungeon. Presumably we were lucky enough to catch them by surprise. We made the mistake of remaining inside the dungeon at the exact location of our victory, hoping for another fight, just as they had done - and their alliance soon returned and won the third and final fight of the 'Battle of Deceit'
Looking back now i'm amazed to see how well we did in winning one fight, two guilds of poorly itemed players, all with faster casting of 2, against 3 guilds with at least 5 FC4 and numerous other FC3 players between them, as well as the two most dangerous and artifact-laden dexxers on the shard, Athena and Slacher.
A few nights later the alliances again clashed over an IDOC house near the Delucia Tunnel. There's a pic of at least 20 players on screen from the two alliances, just as a temporary field alliance of our old adversaries NDR and Vem crashed into the back of I-C and EEV, handing victory to AoS and co. Thanks LookFar!
Both alliances broke up soon after, I think at least in part due to more and more players leaving the game due to the ever increasing commonness of artifacts in PvP. ELR were certainly very disadvantaged due to this, and I personally left UO again in November 2003, soon followed by most of I-C and a good proportion of EEV.
The remaining few I-C eventually joined EEV when it became clear that the rest of us would not be returning with the game in it's current state. We were back to being an IRC & forum guild for a few months.
Christmas 2003 - May 2004:
The majority of us had quit UO during the height of the artifact madness, and if reading EFC at the time was anything to go by, things were getting worse and worse on Europa. Our old enemies AoS had formed a new guild called AI(Artifact Infantry) and as the name implies, were ludicrously well equipped. They had large numbers, were very organised, all rode the ridiculous looking Swamp Dragons(Which at the time reduced spell damage taken by 10%). It appeared they had almost complete control of the shard.
With this in mind it made our notorious weakness for returning to UO easier to resist, and we embarked into other games, firstly the Defiance player-run shard(Operated by xlx of the 6i6 guild), I personally played for only a week, but others carried on for a few months, doing a great deal of PKing.
We also did a guild move to Shadowbane when the first European shard announced, and went with quite a big presence, around 10 I-C members, along with a selection of old allies/enemies from Europa playing under the I-C tag. In a strange twist we ended up allied with some other old Europa enemies, DDi, working as part of the 'Nation' they led. Our presence in the game lasted six months at most. The game had huge promise, but was beset by bugs and bad implementation - and in reality, it just wasn't UO, a game most of us still loved.
Eventually most of us did what we always did - went back to Europa. This time we had a large faction force. Europa was perhaps unique among all UO shards at this time in still having an active faction player base. As factions also seemed to be far less infested with artifact-laden players than champ spawn fights, it seemed the logical place to go. PHT I-C and EEV alll joined the Minax faction, and together with more traditional Minax guilds such as DDi, quickly took possesion of all towns. At this time most of the faction guilds were scared of Zole(or Donnelley, his faction character and the name they knew him by) and a good proportion of I-C and EEV played together under his guildtag [ry in factions.
In April 2004 OSI launched a new shard - Test Sosaria. It was planned as a permanent shard, but to be used as a testing ground for developer ideas, as well as a place for players to interact in game with the dev's themselves. Noxin and Wildcat sensed a potential in this that very few others did - a chance to show the dev team how stupid UO PvP had become, and give them an idea how to fix it. A few other Europa people, mainly I-C played the shard with them on occaision, and the fights they were involved in generally involved them beating the so-called 'best pvpers' on the shard(A group of American kids) easily. This helped Noxin gain the ear of Hanse, a prominent member of the dev team.
Gradually Noxin explained and demonstrated to him what was wrong with PvP. It was apparent that Hanse himself had no PvP experience, but he seemed very willing to listen to those who did, and was very keen to see it improved. He seemed to be spending more and more time with Noxin, which persuaded me to start playing the shard, in an attempt to get some of my own points across to a dev team member.
At this point Noxin had been given Game-Master powers on the shard, and generally when not with Hanse spent his time using those skills to abuse the completely idiotic population of that shard.
It also appeared Hanse was seriously considering applying some of the changes he and Noxin had discussed to all the OSI shards. This raised interest in our IRC channel greatly. Soon pretty much all of us were on the shard.
Zole happened to be boasting about this newfound influence to some friends on Europa, one of whom claimed he was also on the shard, and had the ear of another developer, Evocare.
This gave me hope because Evocare was something Hanse was not - A PvPer himself. Soon a group of us, and Zole's friend CeLt, from the AoS guild on Europa, were gathered in an IRC channel to see how best we could use our influence to get these changes actually put into the real servers. It seemed Evocare had been ready to publish his and CeLt's list of changes(A list almost identical to the one Hanse and Noxin had put together), but he was leaving OSI within the week to take up the lead developer's position on Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
Our hopes now rested exclusively on Hanse, which worried me because despite his good intentions and willingness to get things right, his knowledge of PvP mechanics was basic at best. He was also prone to believing some of his short sighted ideas were far better than what Noxin and the rest of us had suggested to him. One day he told Noxin to test the new spell-casting timers he had put in place. Myself Noxin and Alderis tested these changes, and to say they would have removed all skill from mage PvP is an understatement.
Eventually though Noxin and Hanse together pulled it off. All the excessive AoS attributes were capped: LMC, SDI, HCI etc. All at good levels. I was constantly arguing for the caps to be lower, but in hindsight they were almost perfect as the two of them designed it. Swamp Dragons were nerfed. They created easily the the most balanced era of AoS PvP, and in my opinion one of the best PvP era's ever in UO. Up there with late t2a and p15.
My personal claim to fame from this is the capping of Chivalry spells at FC2 for mages(I argued for all char types but Hanse insisted on just mages) - it was my idea. Shame Hanse then coded it wrongly and it wasn't introduced to the shards...
Hanse also sneaked in a couple of strange changes of his own - to how the Invisibility spell worked and how poison worked. We weren't going to argue with these changes at the time in our happiness/disbelief that we had the ear of the person in charge of the game we loved. As it happened these changes he added turned out to be the only bad things about the publish that Noxin had worked on with Hanse - Which ended up being Publish 25. I'm still amazed that we were ever involved in that, was pretty surreal.
Something that shouldn't be forgotten is that we also had our first 'Real Life' meet-up during this period, up in Newcastle at Benn's house. I traveled north with Pad, and also in attendance were Benn, FC, Slamer, Nixon, Alderis, Zole and Buster.