Actually – “rather disappointed” is definitely a huge understatement.
The following is cut from what’s left of the Mercs forums (full text on link)
So no-one came forward to take on the mantle and continue the traditions of the Mercenaries and people instead looked for other homes. I suppose I can’t blame you, we had enough troubles trying to maintain progress and losing a large number of people meant if you wanted to continue you were bound to look elsewhere.
Because of this I have finally closed down the Mercs. The guild still exists as a one character guild purely because I did not want the name to be used for someone elses guild. When I say closed down, I mean for now closed down unless the same players decide to restart it.
What makes me most angry about this statement (and the rest of it) is that for the last couple of months after a fair few people left Mercs, I’d been telling people on the now dead forum that they could retire their characters (as I have done with Iceangel) and they’d retain the treasured “Mercenaries of Darkness” guild tag. It would be their’s, they’d earned it and had the right to keep it.
What I wasn’t expecting was a GM who’d had a lot to do with the collapse of a guild/organisation that I started 3 years ago to rip up those promises and make them utterly worthless by effectively disbanding the guild. Maybe we made a mistake 2 and a half years ago by entrusting the GM job to this particular person ? A person who’s main consistent trait has been to avoid management of the issues that arose within the guild, which eventually led to its collapse.
Very disappointed at seeing that message on the old Mercs site – especially as the author of it has continued his old pattern of not asking people before actually doing something rash. That’s one sad thing about this – whenever action was taken by that GM, it was out of the blue because of how out of character it was for there to actually be any action.
Where am I now with Warcraft ? Apart from being rather disappointed and not a little bit angry about that Mercenaries Of Darkness tag being taken away, I’m quite happily playing away at my own pace on a new server. I’m in a small guild having been introduced by a very good friend from university. They’re a good bunch and I’m enjoying being around them. It’s a relaxed feeling and their leadership is active. Quite a contrast to the Mercs, who were dominated by progress fixated people who didn’t actually want to organise anything.
I’m rapidly closing in on my rapid levelling record and should quite handily smash it. I’m not raiding with the new guild yet but that should add new interest and challenge when I get there. New character, new role, new people. Looking forward to it 🙂
My Eve subs have been cancelled as it’s still a highly boring game to actually play, plus it looks like the neighbourhood has gone downhill with an old name being invited into the alliance. Plus Eve’s main draw is the player owned territory with the mechanics involved in that territory changing hands being broken due to the game hardware not being able to handle the numbers involved. Anything to do with The Maelstrom server in Warcraft just makes me angry, although I still keep an eye on VR cos they’re a good bunch.
So I’m now on another server and I’m enjoying my time there. Enough to be crash levelling one character and most likely some more 🙂