GM FrightOfficer
Joined: 01 May 2008
Posts: 2698
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re: History!
 by GM Fright on 02/23/2011 2:30 am
I've got this notebook on my desk where, among a few random notes, I keep track of everything having to do with WoW. I've been playing for over 5 years, and this notebook goes back to just over two of those years, to the very beginning of Wrath. I started flipping through it tonight, and it got me thinking about everything that's led us to where we are now.
I hate nostalgia in this game. Talking about "the good ole days" and "back when" is a dangerous and stupid path to take, and I won't do it. However, in this case, everything that's led up to now has very definitely sucked giant balls by comparison, so I thought, considering how much Banana likes stories, that I'd share this one with you guys from my perspective, in a not-too-detailed form, to give all you new folks a lesson in how this went.
The story of The Art of Ruin starts not long after I began playing WoW, which was around January of 2006. That next summer I joined an MC raiding guild, and that fall we cleared BWL and had started into Naxx. That's when my rogue looked like he does in my signature below. Then, when BC was released, the guild split, and eventually I became the GM. For over a year we barely held it together, and would have been considered a third rate progression guild at best (elaboration is a full other story). Finally, in the spring of 2008, I gave in, and when I threw in the towel, the rest of the guild did, too, and the original Art of Ruin was disbanded.
After a short stent healing on another server on my shaman, I ended up on Suramar as alliance with Toxx, my friend who had introduced me to the game. I leveled a bunch of different characters, but the warlock stuck, and a couple months before the end of BC he hit 70. Toxx had joined up with Absolution, and fairly new guild that had knocked the socks off some raiding, and just before Wrath was released, Toxx helped get me into Absolution, also. And that's where the real story, and the notes in my notebook, starts.
That was a very talented guild, and we had a great time. We blasted through Naxx, Malygos, and even Sarth3D pretty quickly, riding off the successes they had at the end of BC. My notebook shows my target dummy numbers for different specs; back then 3k DPS was really pushing it. After a few pages of gear choices and numbers and stuff, there's a Thorim strat written out. The Abso GMs/Raid Leaders, Trem, Anaar and Nisou, let me work out a different strat for the Thorim fight, and even step up and explain it a touch. It was the first "raid leading" I'd done in at least a year and a half (and I don't think I did very well). Then we stalled at Yogg.
From my perspective at the time, poor attendance killed Absolution, particularly on Yogg attempt nights. From what I'm told, it was GM/Officer burn out. I think one leads to the other, in any order. Either way, 25 man raiding was done. They had the plan to continue casually at 10 mans, but I, along with most others, wasn't very interested in that. I applied to Unreasonable, at the time the best Alliance guild, and second on the server. However, after a couple trial raids, I knew I did not enjoy their style at all, and I withdrew my app. By this time, most of the Absolution guys were reforming under the guild Resurgence on horde-side. So after a little while I came over and joined them well into the horrible Trial of the Crusader patch.
Unfortunately, Resurgence did not last very long, either. Just as the Icecrown patch was being released, the guild fell apart, and a few of us were left holding the pieces. Eaden/Cattleguard was given GM, and he made myself and Roshkanu officers. After a few weeks, Eaden passed GM over to me, and we were solidly pushing our way blindly into 10 man Icecrown, just for the sake of doing something. Anything.
That was right around November of 2009, and I've been at the head of this runaway train ever since. It was a very, very difficult beginning (elaboration is a full other story). We spent at least a month on 10 man Rotface alone, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have several conversations with the officers about disbanding the whole mess and walking away. But we stuck with it, we killed the abominations, and started working our way through the rest of the wings. In March of 2010, I decided we needed to re-energize the whole thing. There was a lot of "remember the old days?" and "man it sure was great when..." Like I mentioned at the start of this post, I hate that nostalgia crap. You don't move forward when you're always looking back. I realized that we needed a completely new guild, a new website, a new everything. The name Resurgence was too closely tied to everything that came before.
So I took suggestions for a new guild name from the 12-15 members of the guild at that time. I tossed in 3 or 4 of my own, and we ended up with about 12 names to start off with. Some of my favorites were Voodoo Economics, Mannequin Republic, and Red Alibi. After the first round of voting, we had 3 finalists: Arsenal, Archetype, and The Art of Ruin. Another round of voting (through in-game mail) and AoR beat out Arsenal by one vote. So we had a new name.
At the beginning of April we switched over to the new guild, and I got this website and the new vent server set up. If you look deep into the News forum, you'll see the very first post made on April 2nd, titled "Welcome to The Art of Ruin!" Within a couple months of this, we had pushed through the rest of ICC and were attempting 10m Arthas.
About the time that we became AoR, Tremurr, the mastermind behind Absolution and Resurgence, came back onto the scene. He decided to put together another 10m guild, as guild building is an extreme talent of his, with the eventual goal of joining with us to restart 25 man raiding. As restarting 25 mans had been our goal and entire reason for continuing to raid for the previous 5 months, we helped in whatever ways we could. Then, in June, after an incredibly difficult and painful process, we finally realized that goal, and became the 25 man AoR that we are today (elaboration is a full other soap opera).
The names of the raiders in our very first 25 man raid are written in my notebook. Out of those 25, only 6 are still around: Azakel, Masticus, Junkr, Banana, Aarroun, and myself. Though a few, vrulg, savallia, and abs, aren't entirely gone. However, three months later, the members of another raid are in my notebook, and 20 of those 25 are still with us, a very big difference. The first several months of 25 man raiding were extraordinarily volatile. Tremurr, my co-GM at the start of the 25 man raids, parted ways with us a couple months after forming, and we sent more than a few sub-par raiders packing, taking great pains to ensure the level of standards in this guild were higher than in any of our guilds past.
The rest of my notebook is filled with boss strategies, wait lists, DKP fixes and manual attendance records. We've had our share of difficult times, but the habits and loyalty we've formed along the way keep pushing us forward to bigger and better things. And the rest, as they say, is history!
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