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To new guildmates and applicants: Register for the site on this page and complete your registration process, and you should be able to post as a guest on the forum. Register on the forum, and you will have to wait for me (Ailinea) to activate your account. In either case, please let me know when you have registered and need further access so I can promote your account. Sorry for the trouble. Blame the spambots. |
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Portent Alliance: Who are We? (A History) |
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Written by Ktok
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Wednesday, 24 December 2008 15:11 |
I think it’s high time that a post be made stating who we are as a guild, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. Hopefully most of this isn’t news to our veteran members, but I’m sure more than a few of you would be interested in the details of the guild’s past.
Long ago, over five years to be exact, I returned to the world of Norrath after a very long departure. I had originally played an Iksar SK just after the first expansion, Ruins of Kunark was released. However, being on dialup at the time, my experience wasn’t very much fun and I quit not terribly long after starting, presumably never to return.
It wasn’t until the launch of the LoY expansion that I started looking at EQ again. What I found really tested my resolve about not trying it again, and most of the temptation came in the form of the Vah Shir race. Call me crazy, but I’ve always loved the cat races of Sci-Fi from Wing Commander to the Man-Kzin Wars of Larry Niven. I myself am working on a series of novels that prominently features a felinoid race, two members of which were named K’Tok and T’Mitka.
What finally set me over the edge and made me take the plunge was when I took a job working a long way from home. Having to stay all week in a hotel, it occurred to me that playing EQ would be something Tmitka and I could do together even though we were far apart. I got the game in May and rolled Ktok the Vah Shir on May 21st, one day after my birthday. Roughly a month later, I mentioned it to Tmitka, got her a copy of the game and asked her to try it out. She wasn’t sure at first, but she grew to enjoy it.
In the mean time, I was being courted by an all Vah Shir (Kerra to you EQ2 folks) guild to join them. I eventually agreed and Tmitka joined them as well. This guild was called the Kerran Unity. In doing so, I set aside my own ambitions to form my own guild.
The Kerran Unity was fun at first, but the limitations of only having classes available to Vah Shir quickly became apparent. As a Warrior, I *needed* a Cleric to group with, but Vah Shir couldn’t be that class. I rolled my own cleric, Korgus (now Korguss due to an Orc in EQ2 having the single S version of the name), but since he was a Froglok he wasn’t permitted into the Kerran Unity.
Eventually, I reached a level where I wanted to do my epic weapon quest. Our leader of KU, Jatsya, told me that I should forget about it and that it was far too hard for anyone to do if they weren’t in a raid guild. “We’re a family guild”, she said. “We can’t do those things.” This was the first “family guilds can’t do raids” encounter that I had, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Why *can’t* casual, family guilds raid? Who made up that rule? It didn’t make sense to me, but I put it aside and set about getting my epic all by myself.
By making friends in other guilds, hosting and leading my own raids, and with a little pure determination, I finished my epic without the help of Kerran Unity. In fact, the only member to help me was Azra, a Rogue who I also helped with her epic. In fact, the final piece of my epic was earned *after* we left Kerran Unity and formed Portent Alliance.
What sparked our departure of KU? I’ll try and make this short. Over the months that I was in the guild, I rose up through the ranks quickly. It wasn’t long before I set my sights on the leadership position, as I knew Jatsya was suffering from burnout and would soon step down. It should be mentioned here that Jatsya was not the founder of KU. A person by the name of Xenophon was, and he had abandoned the guild suddenly upon having a bad break up with a female guild member he was having a cyber relationship with. Jatsya had to contact a GM to be given the leadership rank after it became obvious that Xeno wasn’t coming back and had left the guild to die.
So, in the twilight of Jatsya’s stint as leader, Xeno suddenly returned. He claimed he wanted nothing to do with leading the guild and simply wanted to play the game, so the guild held a vote for the new leader. Once everything was said and done, I had been voted in nearly unanimously because I had promised change that would let us actually do more in the game than we currently could… which was practically nothing.
As my first act as leader, I announced a plan to add a sister guild to our roster that would be of any race. I did this because many of the members were dead set in keeping the Vah Shir only nature of the guild. Our “ally” guild, an all elf guild, was too concerned with political intrigue and electing a new leader every month to get any sort of support going (apparently they felt this helped them, whether the elected leader had any knack for it or not). Besides being perpetually distracted by elections every month, the constant change in leadership made coordinating events with them impossible. We needed non-Vah Shir allies, though, so I felt our next option would be to make our own.
Xenophon was suddenly very loudly declaring that I was trying to add other races to the guild, and even after quoting my original statement multiple times, people still insisted on believing him even though I had very clearly said that KU would remain Vah Shir only, in writing, on their message board. People started siding with Xeno, the very person who had already left the guild to die once, and began ignoring anything that I said. I tried to fight the good fight, and toyed with the idea of kicking out the obstinate elements in desperation (cut out the infection to save the patient), but eventually Tmitka and Azra convinced me that it wasn’t worth it and that we should form our own guild.
As my final act of leader of KU, I put Xenophon in charge and we left the guild. It seemed to be exactly what everyone wanted, including Xeno, but in a few months time he had completely destroyed Kerran Unity, and it never recovered. I can’t lie, while part of me hated to see the old guild die off, a different part of me did enjoy the irony.
Meanwhile, Azra, Tmitka and I set about writing a lore for our guild. You can find this in various places on the web site, so I won’t go into too much detail. We were also still a bit stuck on the idea of a Vah Shir guild with a “everyone else” sister guild, and so, working this into the RP, we created *two* guilds. Portent of Luclin and Portent of Norrath. It really did make sense given the RP, I swear. In short, PoL was comprised of those Vah Shir who believed in the vision, or The Portent, of the future destruction of Luclin and were seeking a way to stop it. PoN was made up of the races of Norrath (Vah Shir lived on Luclin) that believed in the same vision, but were more concerned about the effect it would have on Norrath itself.
It’s worth noting that this RP was written out well before the events of EQ2 were made public, and was an educated guess on our parts (based on nothing more than about 5 promotional screencaps relased by Sony) that turned out to be very accurate to what cannon lore turned out to be. It was written out in this way to provide the guild and eventual, RP-based bridge to EQ2. See Ailinea’s RP for more information on how we made the jump.
Our main goal in starting two guilds was to prove that you could have an all Vah Shir guild with a sister guild of other races, be a family guild, and yet still muster successful raids. I guess if you could say Portent Alliance started with a mission statement, that was it, and we met and exceeded our goals.
It was slow going for any new guild, especially one with such an odd setup, but we grew steadily. We took on some refugees from Kerran Unity, and some old friends from other collapsing guilds (Tollus/Gaak/Schwanda for example). We had our ups and downs, swells and lulls, but we grew into a respected force on the server and began conducting regular raid events for ourselves and the server community that needed help. Epic quests became old news for us, and we were literally finishing epics on average once a week or more.
It was around this time that practicality sunk in, and I realized we needed to merge into one guild if I was going to keep a handle on our growing membership. I told the guild we would be merging, wrote it into the RP, and applied for the guild name Portent Alliance... the name meaning an official alliance and merger between Portent of Luclin and Portent of Norrath.
Most people were either pleased or cautiously optimistic, but others were very upset at the loss of a Vah Shir only guild and threatened to leave. Even Tmitka (aka, Ailinea) wasn't in favor of the idea at first. I knew it was the best thing for the majority of us though, so I went through with it, and we lost a few short sighted members. By and large though, it was the right choice, and we grew even more in power and respect, and began cracking into the Planes of Power themselves.
Then along came EQ2. It had always been out intent to have a branch there, but once we tried it, the majority of us couldn’t go back to EQ1. Oh yes, we tried, but more and more we found our days being spent in EQ2 with EQ1 going forgotten for weeks, even months at a time. Eventually the choice was made to officially withdraw from EQ1, leaving our characters there and the guild still intact should we ever want to return, but to focus our efforts in EQ2.
Over the following months, some of our members chose to return to EQ1 for various reasons, and some more of our members grew ambitious beyond their capabilities and launched several ill fated attempts to harm the guild and undermine the council and myself. For a while, many more members were lost to these insurrections than were gained. The guild dwindled and appeared to be in decline, but we were simply licking our wounds.
After many trials and attempts to knock us down, we thrived, but it was still shaky. With the implementation of the guild recruitment tool, our membership grew exponentially over a few short months. I heard again and again from people I didn’t even know that our guild name is respected and trusted as having quality members with a keen sense of honor. A good portion of the raiding alliance we were part of had the Portent Alliance guild tag over their heads at any given time.
However, with rapid growth came a decline in the family atmosphere we were so used to. Cliques formed, people became ambitious for themselves, and the focus was lost from the guild itself. We tried...we really did. But it began to feel more like a second job than the fun, family, competant atmosphere that usually marked the Portents.
Once again, I couldn’t imagine any game would take us from EQ2. I tried many other MMOs, as many of you have, but for the vast majority of us, EQ2 was still home. We even dipped our toes into Vanguard. Then Reavyn and I gave WoW another shot, many updates since the last time we played it. It was fun. Very fun... and all consuming. Sort of like a plague of pure delight.
The even *more* solo and single group friendly content, lack of spawn camping, and no shared dungeons (I hate competing in dungeons) coupled with Blizzard’s light hearted humor and unwillingness to take itself very seriously sucked me right in.
Now, Kunark had been live for a while in EQ2 and I don’t even own a copy yet. In fact, the most recent patch for WoW launched on the same day, and I was so excited for a *patch* that I didn’t even realized an *expansion* was launching for EQ2. Since then I’ve tried very hard to care that Kunark is live, and that I’m not leveling toward 80 or seeing the new race. I’ve tried really, *really* hard, but I just can’t do it. I don’t care. Operation failed. Damn not given.
In the meantime, we had to put down one more attempt at a coup in EQ2 that helped seal our decision that EQ2 simply was not for us anymore. Those who tried to sabotage the guild this final time simply did not "get" what it was that made the Portent Alliance unique. We did not kick them, however...they pushed the button themselves and left. We continued to fiddle around in Norrath a little more to stabalize the guild again for the remaining members, but pined for Azeroth and the newly-launched Outland.
Thankfully, most of our long-time members had faith in us and joined us in our leap over to Azeroth. Once again, we were small and unheard of despite coming over to a relatively new server. Our history means little in the long run to people who weren't there, but thankfully we've been finding new members who would have fit right in even during our earliest EQ1 days. We might not have been one of the first guilds on the Sentinels server, but we can say with some authority that we're one of the oldest.
The amazing part is that the members who have been with us since EQ1 have all remarked that the guild feels more like it did in EQ1 than it ever did in EQ2. It's become a close-knit family again made up of good players with a wonderful sense of humor. Instead of the rapid growth that occurred in EQ2, we're slowly pulling in a few people here and there, making sure they're a good fit for us and that the Portents is a good fit for them.
The result has been a very solid core of players. As of this writing (about a month after the Wrath launch) already we're filling out 10-man raids that are mostly, if not technically, all PA members. We still have more members coming up in the ranks and will soon be able to join in the raids when they hit the level cap. I have a feeling that in time we will be filling out the majority of 25-man raids, but our main focus will remain inward as we nurture and support each other. Getting new gear and being involved in raids is nice, but we've always put people before pixels. We won't make the same mistakes as we did in the past.
It’s been a long, strange ride, but it’s also been, and continues to be, a blast. I wouldn’t be anywhere else and I hope you all feel the same way. We set out to prove, above anything else, that a family guild *can* hunt, quest, raid, and excel at the game, not in spite of being a family, but *because* we are a family. We’ve proven that time and time again, to the general amazement or outright disbelief of those who still cling to the disproved idea that you have to choose one lifestyle or the other.
Keep it up, folks. You’re part of something special. You’re part of something many people would tell you doesn’t, and can’t exist. You’re different. You’re unusual. You’re a unique. Be proud of that.
So there you have it... Where we’re from, how we came to be, what we are, and where we’re going. Comments? Questions? I’m all ears!
((PS: For those who may wonder, here is the location of each Portent Alliance guild.
EQ1: Firiona Vie
EQ2: Antonia Bayle
WoW: Sentinels (US) ))
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