Ensidia

Factions and the Baddies


People viewing a guild from the outside will never have any idea about the inner workings and social interactions within the guild. As time passes, more and more misconceptions appear about how the guild operates. In this blog I'm gonna derail a bit from the planned structure and write about two things: Firstly, I'll write about the aforementioned factions, something all guilds have whether you notice it or not. A group of people with similar background or interest tend to flock together, and from the start of TBC Nihilum had a couple of such groups; some smaller ones which were formed and disbanded as people came and left, while some stayed unchanged until the merge. The second part of the blog is more about trying to clear misconceptions about the quality of players a hardcore end game guild has, even a successful one like Nihilum. Outsiders might think that all the people that join are exquisite players, which is clearly not the case. Over the years I've read so much stuff about "the oldskool" that simply wasn't true. In that section of the blog I'll focus on the most entertaining and worst Baddies that I could remember. I don't want to openly insult anyone with that part of the blog, I'll just describe things as I saw them. If you don't like it, you can either call me a liar and forget about it or suck my dick, whatever floats your boat.

Factions

The Danes

Danes were in Nihilum since the start, and they were held in high regard by everyone else in the guild. The thing that made them stand out, apart from the fact that they were mostly really good players, was that they could unleash unmatched fury and hatred on someone that they didn't like, and also they were pretty much the main influence on Kungen’s decisions. When speaking of hate, I don't mean the passive aggressive comments or anything; these were full blown open hate-storms on anyone that would in any case cross their path... or just played badly. Hearing Ekke, Clinkz, Wrathed, Epi and Cloze rage on someone like Ahoq in CL channel, or random scrubs in guild and raid chat was honestly a thing of beauty. If Kungen didn't want to kick someone for whatever reason he had (mostly because he is a pussy!), they would just take shit into their own hands and pretty much mob up on someone until they left the guild. Later they mostly stopped caring, some of them quit, some lost interest, but the "duty" of controlling the retardation fell to the other group of people.


For the lack of a better expression, the VT crew

After the Swedish channel fell apart at the start of TBC, because most of them left the guild, a bunch of us started hanging out on vent and our channel quickly became the biggest one. The most vocal people were Ghorok, Zooc, Muqq, Quantz, JohnnyR and myself, joined later by Bananeen, Melghor and Tun. It all started out as a bunch of people dissing each other, having fun and telling obscene, highly inappropriate and politically incorrect jokes while raiding together. Honestly, in that place a minute wouldn't pass without a retarded joke or a comment about someone for whatever reason. It was all good fun, until the mass of people started joining and consequently started to annoy the fuck out of the original crew. Trials and new members saw it as closest to a raid channel that Nihilum had, which was never the intent since all the raid leading was done in writing. I mean who doesn't love raiding while bashing Gaap, Jinxarn and Neg all day every day? Of course all good things come to an end, and after constant whine to Kungen from GD and Neg that they can't properly concentrate (“Why did you die, GD? – They were laughing on vent.”), most of the people just had it and we locked ourselves in our own channels where we wouldn't be bothered by the crowd.


The Brits

Brits were similar to the Danes, a faction that had existed since the vanilla days. Like all other factions, they had something in common, but this particular thing came with a twist. They were all horribly obnoxious and cocky while being among the worst players I have seen. I didn't know how they managed to stay in the guild for so long. Did they manage to sneak through vanilla due to 40 raid spots? Whatever it was, what I saw was so horrible that I literally couldn't believe players this bad could exist. Imagine Winternacht, a rogue so awful that he actually did not notice that his main hand weapon was broken and that he was doing 200 dps on a whole 3 minute Gruul fight... or Zigawraith, a shaman that had failed 10 times in a row at clicking one of the cubes on Magtheridon. I know being stationary while the only thing you have to do is click on something when someone tells you to can be hard... if you're an amoeba. These guys actually managed to pull it off. But my favorite among the Brits was the Count of Bad, cockiest and douchiest of them all, Lewt the priest. I'll agree with you than in progress you can miss a thing or two coming past you, or that you lose focus for a second and fuck up, but imagine this guy (music from Jaws is on), healing on Vashj, standing still on the platform when a strider spawns and starts to slowly crawl towards him. For those that don't know, Coilfang Strider is pretty much the slowest creature in wow apart from Neg when he had to move from a void zone. So Lewt stands there spamming heals... "LEWT MOVE, LEWT MOVE MAN, LEWT STRIDER YO, EY LEWT SLOWEST MOB IN THE GAME IS MOVING TOWARDS YOU!" SPLAT!!... Same shit happened next try. And the try after that. And again. Seeing that, I think there were more collective facepalms occuring than when we discovered GD had BoP bound to "K" key. That is pretty much how this bunch played - talk about oldskool hardcore. Luckily, when we tried to attune everyone to Tempest Keep, Kungen kicked most of them from the guild and the last remaining Brits left soon after, which was the 2nd best move he did in TBC regarding improving the guild.


The Baddies

Every guild has good and bad players, and every guild has awful scrubs that you'd think couldn’t exit their room in the morning because operating a door handle might be too challenging for them. This section is more or less about these players. Don't ever assume that because the guild is successful they only have good players and even the worst are better than some guild’s best... That's not true; I honestly believe that some of Nihilum’s worst were also some of the absolute worst. Earlier I spoke about Magtheridon and how one of best things for Nihilum was the removal of British scrubbage. Another of those days was the so called Bloody Thursday, a day where we lost many souls... that no one missed. :)
    How those people came to write an application and later get accepted still baffles my mind, and even worse, how the fuck did some of them actually get promoted? Below is a short list of Baddies, which some people for some demented reason think were good. Mind you, most of these people get accepted to other guilds on the account of having played in Nihilum, but they "left" because of "this and that" and "the guild wasn't right for them". In most cases it means they got shit-canned and laughed at for months and years to come.

-Audax: lets start with one of my favorites, Audax was a friend of Tharghan, a Nihilum Class Leader. Tharghan got this brilliant idea, he thought if you're good to the Danes you're as good as accepted, so Audax proceeded to "farm Danish rep" (I'm not fucking with you, those were his exact words!) So the guy gives them herbs, mats, loads of shit... and ends up being treated the same way as every brown-nosing homo before him. Guess Danish rep didnt help there. He got canned on Bloody Thursday after dying from phoenix hellfire, just to use a soulstone when the same phoenix is on him and die again... this was one of the more pro moves the guy did.

-Delight aka Gorr: Beyond Redemption's best, an up-and-coming warrior reroller. A guy that I think Kungen had really high hopes for. Now this guy was so horrible, that he managed to fail on every single assignment ever given to him, and mind you, that was like BR's raid or guild leader or whatever. Figures why so many people from BR sucked so much dick they could open a shop in the Red Light District. He gets an honorable mention because of his all time record in TK; 10 deaths from the first trash pull to the pull of Void Reaver. 10 deaths... I don't think Landolph could have done that even if he tried, and Landolph could manage to die from a breeze in Terrokar Forrest. Delight got kicked with Kungen’s legendary quote saying "I can’t defend you any more because you're so awful"

-Maniakul, Dreacust, Vanitya, Ahoq, Toorum, Snookiwooki and every single hunter we recruited in TBC apart from one (whose name I won’t mention because I’d rather die than praise that drunk in public): Hunters... bane of Nihilum if you ask me. Guys so horrible that they couldn't collectively decide when is the best time to MD the tank, 2 sec before, 1 sec before or 1 sec after the aggro reset (true story). When Cloze joined for KJ progress on his hunter, they couldn't tell him what their assignment was, this being after 2 days of working on the damn boss. I don't have to say twice that this was the class that barely got attuned to TK, because no one wanted to do SH heroic with them. Ahoq was for ages known as "top on threat, last on dps", dunno how he managed to pull that off, but it was impressive. He's a nice guy nowadays and I think of him as a friend, but a year and a half ago, I could stab him with no regret or remorse, awful awful hunter. Funny thing was on KT progress, where the original plan was having Maniakul and some other hunter kiting the engi guy. After 30 tries of them fucking it up and dying we had to send in the pros for the job: the warlocks. This is the elite we relied on for KJ! Then there was teen legend Vanitya, some 15-year-old kid with a mental disorder who couldn't target an orb on KJ if his life depended on it. Or Snookiwooki my man... now this guy was an actual rocket scientist, I'm not fucking around, he was. Probably a really bad one however, since orders like "nuke the bats" on Vashj seemed too complicated. His ability to nuke the boss with zest and ignore the adds was almost as strong as Neg’s ability to single target chainheal Kungen. Maniakul though was a hero, I don't want to diss him (not because he DDOSed me and Nessaj for a week after he left) but because he's Zooc's best friend or something like that :) - but he was one of the guys that got canned on Bloody Thursday after being so bad his mother would abort him if she knew how he played WoW. He wasn't kicked tho, but did the ol' "you can't fire me, I quit" routine and left with the literal quote "im had enough!" :D

-Xladydeath, Mastu, Necrach, Kobayashi and many many more of the warlocks we recruited over the years: we recruited scores of warlocks every year. Most were average, some were good, but none of them could hold a candle to the hunter crew. This was a cheerful and above everything very incompetent group of players. Mastu, the most incoherent guy ever, got his legendary status not by his horrible gameplay, but by farting in Epi's face at a real-life meeting (paying 2k euros for a clip of that). Then we had Xladydeath - I know, sick name - a guy that got booted because he let his friend play while he went out to get wasted, just to come on vent and cry about it. Yes, literally cry about it - dunno what was more amusing, the fact a grown man cried about getting canned or the way he played before that. Among the biggest heroes were Necrach the Greek, guy that got booted for not having flasks ON PROGRESS, then recruited back because he had crafted shadow resistance gear, just to be kicked again after we killed Mother Sha’raz because he sucked. Last guy I remember was Kobayashi. I don't know any details about him, apart from the fact that he was a ninja IRL or something. Yeah, I’m not fucking around, a German ninja warlock - fucking badass right there. Yeah, our warlock recruits were awesome, kinda puts why Jinxarn got promoted into perspective h3h3.

-Palumba: Now this guy was fun. He was one of Kungen’s best recruits, and for him to recruit you, you just have to outplay his alt in a pug... yes, you're right, only reason why this scrub got in Nihilum for KJ was because he outhealed Kungen’s skanky priest alt that even Neg could outheal (ok maybe not Neg, but imagine the worst healer you know of being blind, without an arm and having just suffered a mild stroke). Ok, so Palumba joins the guild, makes every single person hate him in the first 2 hours of his stay and combos that with one of the best KJ performances we've seen. He managed to die twice a fight, every fight, without surviving a single try. Pro right there, insta cannage; Kungen never played that skank alt priest again, I think. (oh and yeah, the reason why Kung thought he's good on that alt because he apparently solohealed Karazhan with it - what he forgot to mention was the fact that everyone was fully decked in Sunwell geared, irrelevant tho ofc:)).

-Mylina, Ramberg, Shepiroth and a plethora of other pala scrubs: One would think a pala is an easy class to play, especially after watching Nessaj or JohnnyR (or myself on anyone’s pala ofc). But apparently for some people it's not. This group of inbreds right here was so bad, that they couldn't handle to single spam a tank, literally. And when it came to BoPs, it was a whole new chapter of fail. At the time their leader and sensei was GD, 2nd worst pala to grace us with his presence since Ramberg, so noone expected much, but some performances were just appalling. For example Ramberg had one duty, and one duty only on Eredar Twins, which was to heal me while I tanked. After 5 or so insta deaths, we found out that guy had absolutely no idea how his class worked and that he did one Holy Light every 5 sec or so. Mylina was similar, if that guy moved from environmental damage, fanfares would sound and fireworks were launched, because that was as rare as New Year’s. Really, since Nessaj, JohnnyR and even - omfg can't believe I’m saying this - Awake had stopped playing, our palas were so shit, I'm shocked we killed anything at all.


-Etienne aka KidArctica aka Kim Recruit from Forte, one of three of Zooc the e-Casanova’s recruits. In essence, Kim is a cool and intelligent person, but she couldn't play for shit. Only reason Kungen let her stay in Nihilum was the fact that she did 1 interview so apparently "she was working for the site" and the fact that she annoyed the fuck out of me and several other people. Fail on the whole front, max respect for lashing out against me on the first Sunwell boss saying "TAKE ME ON, BITCH!" I still fucking laugh when I remember that, shes a baddie, but a cool one, like the next guy...

-Darmor was another baddie I liked. Our first impression of him was that he was prolly one of the sickest recruits we ever had - adaptive, helpful, smart, good damage, everything you could ask for from a mage. But the day he got promoted he became a cocky douche that played just awful. His best performance was definitely on Archimonde where he managed to die every single time AS A MAGE. It was so funny, but at the same time sad, because we actually had to rely on him. At the end of Nihilum he was again becoming better and better and we kinda became friends (say thanks for the Skull of Guldan, bitch), but because of his mid period I simply have to name him here!¸

-Sanduckhan, Karnee, Serbandsteel, Solor and the rest of the supertanks I cannot recall: Tanks were never really a weak point in Nihilum, we had Kungen (old Kungen™ aka the good one), Zooc, Rullis (old Rulah, not the post Katie Price incident Rulah) and later Tun as the core tanks, but sometimes you (like Muqq) gotta fill them gaps, so we always kept an extra tank or two in the guild. I already mentioned Delight, rest were a nuance better, tho not anything their mothers would be proud of. Sanduckhan was the druid with lowest threat this side of Atlantic, didn't really fuck up much, but when he joined the raid you could hear the collective moan from all the dpsers. Karnee was a super nice guy, but he wasn't all that when it came to tanking. Actually, the lowest point of his career I think was when Nessaj had to play him on M'uru ("mm ey mate, gimme your acc, you're shit" <- or a variation of that). Last but definitely not least, Sunandsteel aka the welfare recruit, again another seemingly nice guy that turned from officially the biggest Kungen and Nihilum fan to the biggest hater by miles. Social aspect of the guy aside (was no secret that he was recruited in both guilds to boost the alts and similar shit), he wasn't a great tank... I'll go as far to say that he was one of the worst we had (nobody could have taken Delight off the throne since he had went tanking – that homeboy was the king), simply because he was obsessed by changing the way we do shit. Pulling mobs where we don't kill them, killing bosses the way we don't do it etc, tho his biggest moment of fail was probably Illidan tanking where he couldn't grasp the concept of being able to build threat on the boss after the caster phase even before he kills 4 healers and 3 melee. Every... single... fucking... time...  Similar to when Sandu came to the raid and casters moaned, you should have heard the healers when they were informed that SaS would be tanking their side of M'uru adds. Zero TPS, adds running left and right and him dying like a sack of shit; the running joke was that he was saving his CDs for KJ. The whine was constant, especially from Anise who I think planned a trip to Serbia with a machete at the time. I personally haven't seen that kind of hate since Clinkz raged on Ahoq for 30 minutes straight.


-Gd aka Grandeath: Biggest mistake Ghorok did (apart from starting to suck off old men on the streets of Malmo for change :D) was convincing GD to reroll horde. What started off as a guy that we never thought would play on progress, ended up becoming not only a core raider (my brain hurts when I write this), but even a Classleader - or well, more of a resident whiny bitch, soon after all the paladins had gone MIA in one way or another. This guy, and he is a nice person don't get me wrong, was one of the two people (together with Neg) that harmed the guild in the worst of ways. Not because of the level of bad they were at, they were bad ofc, they were fucking shitawful even, but because of the position they had and because of the dependency we had on them. They hurt us more than any of the scrubs above. GD was so bad, that he managed to die even more times than Darmor or Ahoq on Archimonde, and trust me, those two were death machines. Needless to mention that GD was a paladin, a class with more than one tool to protect itself from dying on any fight, let alone a trivial encounter like Archimonde. It soon became the stuff of legends and a continuing joke in the guild. Almost as big of a joke as when he tried to BoP someone. In Hyjal, if you were a dpser getting aggro on anything ever, if a good pala like JohnnyR or Gaap had cooldown on BoP, you were pretty much fucked. Mylina, Gd, Shep... good luck getting a BoP from these, there was a better chance of Raa the sun god descending on earth and saving you from the raging mob than being saved by them. The running joke on vent was that GD has BoP bound to ctrl-alt-k and when we saw a SS of his UI we noticed it was actually on K or something... He of course denied it, but maybe he'd be better off saying it was on K than needing 10 sec to BoP someone with a more convenient bind. But all of this wasn't even as bad as when he had to respec to protection. He was our tanking hero on Felmyst and one of the most important players on M'uru, so yeah the fact we failed miserably there is not surprising to me, thinking back on it. I mean, if you want to fail on an encounter, put an imbecile on an important duty. The worst part was we honestly had no other choice. Just check the famous Youtube "GDGDGDGD" clip, and you'll get an idea... Also, that was one of his least retarded moves. On top of all of that he couldn't concentrate when anyone spoke on vent about anything. Hell, that guy failed in a 5 man because someone was telling jokes on vent. As a classleader he quickly became the target of basically everyone in the CL channel, even taking a bit of aggro from Ahoq, when he quit the guild after Kungen called him an annoying whiny fag or something similar. Some good soul actually convinced him to come back so we could continue farming gear, but yeah... sadly I don't think he ever got kicked, but was one of the people we left behind at the merge.


-Neg aka Neggy aka the Rat: He was other of the two that I think hurt the guild the most. Neg joined from BR at the start of TBC and soon earned his first and biggest enemy - myself. There was something about the guy... I don't mean the incompetence, of course there was a lot of that about him, but it was something more, he just grinded my gears in an unexplainable way. Only reason a bad player like that can survive in a guild like Nihilum is if he has some other qualities, and in Neg’s case, that was his bank. Neg’s bank of goodies was far better supplied than Magtheridon AH with the relevant shit we needed for raids. You need materials, flasks, herbs? Go to Neggy, he'll still rip you off, but at least you don't have to click as much as on the AH. :) And enterpreneurism wasn't his only talent, that guy was best known for his amazing powers to not notice shit he’s standing in. If you targeted him during a fight, you'd be surprised if he wasn't targeting MT and spamming chain heals on him regardless of what hp he, melees and rest of the raid were on - talk about sticking to the plan. Oh the times we spent focus targeting him during whole clears just to see the amount of time he'd change the target, or my favorite, globally muting him on vent just to see the light go on when he's trying to smartass. There are loads of funny stories about this guy, my favorite being his triple death on a Najentus fight without moving an inch, also in a movie. Eventually sometime during M'uru progress when we couldn't raid because of some raiders’ absence, he ultimately left the guild to join SK Gaming, which of course recruited him, a decision made to most likely hurt our roster more than to improve theirs, because hey... it wasn't a secret that the guy was worthless. Result of that was him being left behind when the merge occurred, again dumped by his peers like the useless guy he always was - I only wish Kungen did it somewhere in SSC, not like whole CL channel didn't rage about Neg being in the guild for more than a year.


So yeah, we had some baddies. Don't get me wrong though, we also had exceptional players, but it would be super boring to write about those (plus, who wants to spend hours reading about me:)). Still, if you think that most of the mentioned players would be good in some other guild... Think again, seriously. It just proves that playing well isn't the only quality you needed to stay in a community like that. All other guilds have similar stories, but I guess that whole part about warm and fuzzy feelings from Wipe Club guy holds true in a way.


TBC awards

In the wake of XXX of the year/decade/eon that end of every year is flooded with, here's Buzzkill’s TBC Hall of Fame - good and bad!

Shortest failed trial of TBC: Poptisse
      Invited for a couple of tries on Felmyst, being one of our e-Casanova’s recommendations. The fact that she had a vagina didn't help at all, Zooc’s XX chromosome recruits were all but fabulous, therefore we didn't expect much. Fail after fail, Pop was booted out like an old shoe to win the shortest failed trial award! (She was recruited later and turned out to be one of best healers we've seen, but there's no award for that, so stuff it!)

Shortest succesful trial of TBC: Tun
    Yeah, also prolly shortest trial -> classleader promotion. Brownnoser? You be the judge. :)

Longest trial of TBC: Jinxarn
   Oh ye, ol' Jinxaroonie... Wanna know how not to behave during a trial? Eat during trash clears, afk all the time, sometimes do totally sick damage, other time be completely worthless. That was Jinx for around half a year that his trial lasted, no secret that he started playing better when he changed to male orc with a ponytail.

Worst tank of TBC: Delight
    First I wanted to say SaS, but I kinda remembered Delight’s escapades in TK, especially on Al’ar, there must be roadkill faster than this mofo when it comes to moving.

Worst Nihilum PvP team of TBC: GD, Etienne, Nealina
    Hundreds of games to sustain that revered 1300 rating, worst team award goes to GD's team of awesome, mockery of the server and as skillful as 9 frogs on acid tied together running on 3 keyboards. Combine 3 keyboardturning backpedalling mouseclickers together... and well that’s pretty much what you get.

Best Nihilum PvP team of TBC: Zamos, Muqq, Battlehunter, Buzzkill and random pala we changed every week
    Wtf biased? Nononono, 4 dps with 3 Skulls of Gul'dan does not mean it was easy or anything, absolutely serious about this one.

Most hated guy in the guild by the guildies in TBC: Awake
    Noone comes close to this one, happiest day in the expansion was the day he got booted.

Most overrated recruit: Solor
    MT and GM of a renowned guild turned out to be a shitter, was a shocker for me personally, another Forte guy that disappointed. :DDD

Best couple of TBC: Zooc & Gaap    
    After failing with his interracial sex escapades and a door, Zooc strikes a jackpot with our beloved Gaap, you guys gotta make him tell you all about the "Twister".

Saddest moment in TBC: Ahoq getting a legendary
    Losing M'uru? Losing KJ? Not by a longshot. Hearing Cloze on vent when Ahoq got the bow? Pretty much the saddest thing I've heard on the internet.

Biggest facepalm moment: GD on Archimonde
    Dying on Archi can happen to anyone, but dying on Archi as a paladin from fall damage, just to get ressed and to die less than a minute later in a fire without popping one cooldown as a paladin is something special.



Enough ranting, I'm gonna get stabbed if I continue... So, my next blog will derail even more, I won't talk about progression and stuff like that just yet, because I'll need a whole lot of screenshots for that so we need time to dig out old HDD's, in the meantime 3rd blog will have more of a Q&A vibe, people have loads of questions about that era of the guild, so I'll make a thread in forums where you can ask, and will do my best to answer all the good ones in the new blog.