The Soul / THESOUL

The Soul has a long and detailed history dating back over a decade and, like most stories, there is always good and bad.

The First Age – Dawn of The Soul

• The forming of the guild by Guild Leader Simone, 4 May 2005. Under the leadership of Simone and Richard, The Soul as a guild starts making its mark in the distant and recluse World of Atys.

• In this isloated world, the emergence of ethnic and religious divisions in the ideology and ideals between the native Kami and the alien Karavan following a global catastrophe, the Kitin swarms, sees the formation of two dominant factions amidst the surviving population – giving rise to the guild aligned to either the Kami or the Karavan.

• The Kami and Karavan factions each worked to establish themselves as dominant powers in the new lands saw the construction of great temples dedicated to the ideals of factional deities. In this time The Soul established its self as a burgeoning quiet power in aligning itsself to the honourable ideals of the Kami, labouring hard and contributing greatly to the temple efforts. The Guild in this time earns the highest and most distinguished accolades in all the lands for Fighting and Harvesting in the efforts to construct these temples. These accolades are recorded in the Halls of Fame and on the statues that still stand in honour to all those who laboured in the construction efforts.

• As the lands of Atys settled, Outposts were established that hosted production of unique and valuable crafting materials and catalyser crystals – making them highly prized and sought after across all the lands. This quickly escalated into global conflict and great battles over control of the Outposts and the goods they produced. Conflict soon became common and chaotic.

• The Soul establishes its first stronghold Outpost at, Malmont Farm, in the Desert Realms of the Northern safe lands of Atys.

• In this time, The Soul experiences a long period of relative stability and growth. Progress and advancement within The Soul was determined in this period by experience, influence and power. This age saw the coming of members who would shape the guild in the second Era; Allort(later a high officer and guild trek master), Beepe(later a guide and leader to the guild), Tantalos(later a high officer and a guild launcher wielder), Waylanda(leaving to form his own guild, later Soul guild leader and thereafter guild battle master).

• The Soul first claimed its long term home and stronghold in the Outpost of Woodburn in the Flaming Forest, deep within the Desert Realm in Northern Atys.

• Passing of the mantle of leadership of the guild to Erbauer. Under Erbauer’s leadership the guild sees its first and last open election of High Officers and the election of a new leader, Abscool.

• Passing of the mantle of leadership of the Guild to Abscool. Under the leadership of Abscool the guild saw its first steps in its core governing evolution in the establishment of guiding principles and Code of Duty, Respect and Honour. In the latter days of Abscools leadership he was regretfully drawn further away by tasks in RL, leaving the guild without leader for long periods. During such time those in the guild who sought power attempted to gain leadership of the guild, causing discord and disruption within the Guild.

• Time of sore trials. Nevrax declares bankruptcy and the threat of the closing of the Ryzom servers and the end of Atys. Then High Officer Beepe, who stood as the last remaining active member of the guild council, resolves that measures need to be taken to ensure the future of the guild; In consultation and blessing from old allies and past council member and High Officer Baffos; Waylanda, then Leader of the guild: Mercenaries of Atys, was approached and offered the mantle leadership in the merging of the two guilds as equals. Following months of negotiations and the merger was agreed upon.

• Passing of the mantle of leadership of the Guild to the stewardship of Jasmi from Abscool who returned briefly by the long request and labour of Beepe.

• Thus ending of the First Age of The Soul with the union of The Soul and Mercenaries of Atys, the new guild would retain the name: The Soul.

The Second Age – Reawaking of The Soul

• Mantle of leadership of the New Guild, Soul, given to Waylanda at the gathering in Pyr, 23 December 2006.

• Beginning of the Battle for Woodburn. The Soul, holding the last lvl 250 outpost for the Kami, came under repeated attack in the Karavan’s effort to dominate all valuable resources. The Outpost was attacked successively by different elements of the Karavan in an effort to break through the defences and the spirit of The Soul and its Allies. In each battle The Soul and her allies were outnumbered, but there strength and determination was unmatched by the attacking forces though the attacks continued for 7 weeks.

• With the extrodinary valour and dedication of The Soul and her Allies we retain ownership of the Kami Factions only level 250 outpost. It’s production for the duration of the 7 week wars is delivered to the Kami Faction.

• New battle training and techniques thus unseen in the lands enable The Soul’s forces to out manoeuvre and out match its foes. In acknowledgement of The Souls skills in battle, it is granted free movement at all battles under Kami lead, filling gaps in the lines and performing flanking manoeuvres that severely hindered the enemy armies. The Soul becomes renowned as Shock Fighters, and called on by all Kami in the greatest of battles, and expected to stand at all costs.

• The Soul trades Woodburn Outpost with an allied guild for Loria Stronghold. Unbeknownst to The Soul the Karavan had a long planned assault ripe to unleash on the stronghold. Unsuspecting and unprepared the Outpost was attacked, overwhelmed and lost with no chance of holding it being far outnumbered beyond even the skill of Soul’s fighters. The defeated ranks of the guild return to the Kami lands with bitter feelings.

• The Kami Alliance agreement undertakes to combat the unmatched domination of the KA over the lands of Atys. A renewed effort to win back lost Kami outposts from the Karavan leads to a few victories, but the superior Karavan numbers rallied at each turn to retake almost all of the won lands. One of the outposts won, Zo-Kain, was for The Soul. The war for Zo-Kain lasted three battles but finally The Soul and its Allies broke the Karavan hold on the valued Jungle outpost.

• The Soul seeks to return to its home at Woodburn Outpost and arranges a trade for another lvl 250 Outpost.

• The Soul trades Zo-Kain for Woodburn, under an honour agreement that that the defence thresholds of the outposts be preserved and not raised, thus forcing a fair and equal trade and not prematurely invoking the wrath of Karavan.

• The Soul sets in motion the first secret council of the Allied Kami guilds, an effort achieved only after months of negotiations with the guilds by Waylanda and Beepe. Under this council, the Kami see the allied guilds communicating and co-operating in a manner that greatly benefits all the alliance.

• Gameforge-France takes ownership of Ryzom. Closing of the Cho servers, players relocated to Arispotle server.

• Passing of the mantle of leadership of the Guild to Beepe. Waylanda is forced to step down from the guild leadership due to RL pressures; he remains Battle Leader of the guild.

• A new battle plan is hatched by Waylanda & Beepe causing The Great War of Atys, later dubbed Atys World War 1 (AWW1), and the fall of the might of the KA over the Kami Lands by the valour of the Kami Alliance. The Kami take the Karavan forces unawares striking at 10 outposts, who then struggle and then fail to counter attack. This leads to the greatest number of outposts won in any week from any server and for the first time in more than 2 years balances the control of outposts between the two warring factions.

• As expected at the time the assault upon the Karavan in such a way resulted in bitter disputes between the Karavan guilds. Many accused there allies of not helping each other, those who retained their outposts where blamed for not helping the guilds who lost theirs. The political back lash broke the Karavan faction which had been ruled by a dictatorship of Karavan Alliance leaders no longer able to control the member guilds with threats of force or loss of outposts.

• The Soul losses Woodburn Outpost to a bitter Karavan assault which sees the ultimate betrayal of a once close Ally The Pyr Militia (TPM) a Kami guild as they join the Karavan forces in conquering the outpost. The cause of the defection being down to TPM not being able to gain a max level outpost (of which their are only 4 in the game and each hotly contested).

• The Last Battle for Woodburn Outpost in the second Era, Soul’s home in the Flaming Forest of the Desert Realm is secured until the passing of Arispotle[E2]. The Soul and its Allies retake Woodburn in an epic battle that sees the defeat of a fallen guild from the ranks of the Alliance.

• Gameforge-France declares bankruptcy, the threat of the closing of Ryzom rekindled. Failing of the Ryzom servers that sees great losses suffered by all guilds as the world population plummets. The Soul presence continues despite the inhospitable conditions, The Soul continues its efforts to locate a new home.

• The great trek of the Guild in the search for a new Home. Many Souls depart on their own journeys and many remain to continue to journey together and explore the foreign worlds of: Tabula-Rasa, LOTRO, Istaria, Light and Dark, Vangaurd, Guild Wars,… {this is a long list}; in an effort to find a refuge.

• Restoration of the Ryzom servers and the gradual return of members to the Atys homeland, but the search for new lands continued as the future of the Ryzom world remained very uncertain. The guild continues to grow with returning as well as new members.

• A member of Soul discovers and raises Guild attention to a new world, DarkFall. The guild makes preparations to lead an expeditionary team to the new world.

• 29 January 2008: The Soul celebrates its its 1000th anniversary in a grand festival in the Fyros City of Pyr.

• Arispotle fails and its closure announced along with the fate of the remaining servers. The Soul, now refugees with much of the remaining population of Arispotle, embarks on an effort to continue

• Arispotle fails and its closure announced along with the fate of the remaining servers. The Soul, now refugees with much of the remaining population of Arispotle, embarks on an effort to continue its presence in Ryzom on the Anrio server.

• Having being welcomed and aided greatly by local Guilds and by the labours of its members The Soul begins to prosper in the universe of Anrio.

• Monday 11 February 2008: The Ryzom Anrio server goes dark, access to the Ryzom universe and the world of Atys closes with any return being uncertain.

• The Soul welcomes many friends from Ryzom guilds in the united efforts to open a portal to the realm of DarkFall.

The Third Age – Wanderlust and Uncertainty

The coming of the third Era is forseen in two possible paths: a third age of Ryzom (heralded by a new game owner) or the passing of the guild in to a new world, most likely Darkfall. Time did tell and below is a recounting of our activities away from our game of origin.
The Third Era – uncertainty and new worlds

Timeline:
With the failing of Ryzom to another company The Soul migrate to the newly released Darkfall.

• Darkfall – 2009
• Kingdom Heroes – Early 2010 to late 2010
• Global Agenda – Late 2010 to 2012
• Return to Ryzom – 2012 to 2014
• Various small multiple games

Darkfall:

• The Soul migrates from Ryzom to Darkfall filled with hope for an engaging game with the same depth, freedom and challenge as Ryzom.

• For a year The Soul engages in battle in darkfall a truly thrilling experience due to the full loot pvp system.

• The Soul owns a city and villages for the majority of our time in the game but the game was lacking in a depth with the primary focus of the game on PvP and very little on anything else. Exploration was needed to find anything to hunt with vaste areas of land completely devoid of anything bar a few trees or rocks.

• Darkfall was also not very welcoming to new players as the only Mobs near your starting city being 3 to 4 goblin camps and those being very well known by PK’ers you would end with high level players attacking the goblin camps to steal the limited resouces from new players. This drove a lot of people from the game.

• In addition to the general unwelcoming introduction to the game for new players, the limited activities available for current players the game also unfortunately suffered from many hacks and cheating with little assitance from the developers with hacks ranging from teleporting anywhere on the map instantly, near invunerability and overpowered attacks the game become a plaything for those using the hacks and an annoyance for the rest of the population and limited if any punishment handed out for those hacking the game.

• In the end our time in Darkfall was fairly short though some stayed for some time after the majority grew wary of the repertition.

Kingdom Heroes:

• The Soul’s first Free to Play MMO an experience not to be forgotten.

• The Soul joined Kingdom Heroes at its very beginning which also grants you a good footing and with our guild structure already well entrenched from previous games we landed on our feet and quickly grew.

• Kingdom Heroes was a three faction game potentially allowing for some interesting politic’s and three way battles which it most surely did.

• The Soul was the first guild to reach level 5 (highest guild level) once you reached level 5 you could create a nation chat which most of our factions guilds joined this allowed us to communicate better. Even though we were the strongest guild in our faction and the most progressive we never use that force other guilds to fall under our banner we strongly believe that every guild big or small in your faction adds something to it and as such should have a voice in what happens.

• With only 3 major guilds in our faction and a number of smaller guilds we hit a point of contention with the other 2 major guilds we strongly believe that ALL guilds large or small add to the whole faction and having all guilds with a voice as to what we do creates a stronger community this view was not shared by the other two major guilds who wanted to rule the other guilds.

• The Soul took the city of Runan its home and the city quickly prospered and grew far beyond that of any other guild in any other faction. Our time in the Ryzom universe and the world of Atys had taught our members unrivaled patience; collecting resources and goods for the guild to progress rapidly and within a few weeks resource routes were established where the majority of guild members could collect resources then drop them off, speeding resource gathering immensely. By the time another, rival, city had managed one upgrade, The Sould already had added four.

• At that point we found ourselves released from the burden of trying to look after the faction as a whole and engaged in the wars for our own amusement. It is nice to fight without having to worry about protecting cities, borders or factional interests. From that day until we left the game we indulged ourselves in unfetted war.

• Our favourite pasttime was taking our one of our battleships sailing it round to the back of the other factions territories and taking the port then heading straight for a city. For 3 weeks we held a border city between the Wu and Wei factions fighting and killing both factions armies in thrilling battles frequently in the cities very streets even the odd three-way battle as both Wu and Wei factions breaking through the gates and defences at the same time. Those where the kind of battles you love, outnumbered 2 to 1 sometimes more but with efficient precission killing off both enemy armies.

• Beyond the wars though the game really had little to offer, levelling was done while away from your keyboard using the 6 soldiers you had to kill mobs while you sat back and did nothing this lead to the lot of people online but no one behind the keyboard. In addition to this the game restricted equipment levelling to cash buyers allowing those with a large wallet to progress much faster than anyone else and have equipment that was vastely surperior than free players.

• With a rapidly deminishing game population and bordom setting in The Soul decided it was time to call our experiment into free to play games completed and consider if we would attempt such again in the future.

• Again the search begun for a more engaging game with depth beyond just PvP looking for a game where we can once again find the same level of enjoyment as we had in Ryzom and the longevity the game had provided us.

• Unfortunately our success along with our views on factional leadership were also responsible for our downfall in Kingdom Heroes while we worked tirelessly to help protect our factions territory the two other major guilds wanted to rule our faction in a dictatorship something we would never allow as this is counter to our belief that all guilds of our faction should have a voice. For the majority of the game we managed to find a medium with these two other guilds but their selfishness cost the faction dear in many battles.

• The cost of playing free two play games verse subscription games is frequently at the expenses of the quality of the community. While in both Ryzom and Darkfall players respected honour, dedication and working towards a common goal those in Kingdom Heroes only wanted domination. Most wars were fairly well balanced with any one faction advancing and declining along their border cities frequently except at Runan which was our factions border city.

• However with the generally limited population of the server the wars where easily tipped when both guilds abandoned the our faction joining the Wu faction for 1 war, when the war was over every city was owned by the Wu faction and both guilds then returned to our faction. After that the remaining guilds joined them. Many players like to join strength but strength without honour or loyalty isn’t for us.

• With the end of Kingdom Heroes we decided to try something different and joined Global Agenda a First Person Shooter (FPS) MMO.

Global Agenda:

• Global Agenda allowed for 4 member teams to join instanced missions to level up, you could also engage in a number of PvP events, capture the flag, team deathmatch & control location games. Much later into the game they released Survival PvE missions and opened the domes allowing you to go outside.

• Then you had the Global Agenda world map battles where guilds (or agencies as they were called) could capture locations on a hex-map the Agency vs Agency 10 vs 10 combat is highly enjoyable and hugely competitive.

• At The Soul’s peak we held 20 territories in each territory you can build facilities to begin with your limited to mining, lab or engineering facilities but with your lab researching better level 2 facilities and those later researching level 3 facilities you are introduced to an ever expanding list of equipment and facilities that you can produce from shield facilities to missile facilities and equipment from deployable turrets to power/health nodes and even mini tanks and mechs with the ultimate weapon being the deployable nuke.
  Global Agenda:

• I would love to say we entered the game with the same professional fighting skills as our other games but I can’t. The Soul was a fair bit above average but when fighting the best guild in the game you could see the difference between the pro FPS players and everyone else.

• We could hold our own against almost every Agency except 1 which walked over every other Agency in the game and won the map numerous times.

• The game had limited crafting for minor goods and weapon upgrades and the ultimate goal of the game was to direct you to the AvA gameplay which only has a limited lifespan. Thankfully Global Agenda had updates which prolonged the lifespan of the game for awhile with the open area’s, 4 v 4 PvP games and the 10 player PvE survival games.

• However after a year or so and again population decline we started looking for another game but found nothing that had the right mixture of engaging PvP, PvE and the freedom to create your own game content.

The Fourth Age – Patience

• This the fourth Era of The Soul is one of patience as we both wait and search for a new world to bring our banner to.

For the time being we have returned to Ryzom as it is the birth place of The Soul however we are restless for a new adveture in a new world with new challenges and this new challenge rests now with Elder Scrolls Online.

• Elder Scrolls Online has a great deal of the features we have come to enjoy in games mostly freedom to choose what we do, when we do it and how we want to do it. Although ESO is not so much a Sandbox MMO it does offer the best hope of a new home for The Soul compared to all the other currently available games.

• We are still watching, waiting for a place to call our own and below are two other games we are keeping a close eye on.

• We have our hopes resting on future game releases as well primarily with The Repopulation a game that for now appears to hold all the potential we could desire as a game we can really once again sink our teeth into and spend many happy years gaming in.

• Our other hope is Star Citizen although this is somewhat different from The Soul’s traditional style of games we have a large number of members who will be adopting this game as their home and as such we will look at taking our banner to Star Citizen as well.

We wait patiently…

• Elder Scrolls Online has exploded into The Soul’s lives with many inactive members returning to the guild and once again taking up The Soul’s banner.

• With 23 active members on release day the guild is moving forward at a steady pace with many members already above level 20. We have already engaged in warfare in Cyrodil helping the Aldmeri Dominion successfully capture many resources and castles. Though our chosen campaign map is overrun by the Ebonheart Pact we are enjoying hard fought PvP. The odds are against us a situation we are both used to and prefer.

• We have found in the early stages of the game there is little reason or call for you to team with others or group as many quests are forced for you to be alone as they are storyline effecting however it does not take long before you are looking to enter Dungeons and the newly released Adventure Zones both are equally dangerous to your characters health and your equipment. The Dungeons and Adventure Zones are the first real call for teams and groups in the game offering a real challenge with bosses that each require a different strategy and advanced team tactics.

• We are looking forward to the challenges these Dungeons and Adventure Zones will provide.

• With the constant warfare in the battle zones and castles falling, capture, conquer and lost Elder Scrolls has provided a great deal of amusement for our guild, the game greatly lacks a sense of “Guild” though with so much of the game focused purely on levelling up and working solo the whole guild has felt the one key area to be more than a little worrisome as it creates an attitude in players that does not match with our guilds creed or ideals.

• The Soul continues to adventure and play within Elder Scrolls though it is now evident that this is not a perfect world nor wholly suiting our game style we have each other to play with and the company of our family and friends outlasts the longevity of any game.

• March 2015 The Soul losses one of her greatest leaders, Beepe passes and the guild suffers greatly at her loss.

Beepe, mother to the guild, who's relentless and tireless love of the The Soul is mourned deeply.

• The Guild returns to Atys, Ryzom, to hold a wake in honour of Beepe’s passing, many old names long since gone from the guild return for the wake. The GameMasters help setup the wake and earn endless respect and appreciation from a family in pain. With great sadness the guild continues remembering those we have lost and honouring their memory by upholding the ideals they helped create.

• The Soul returns to Elder Scrolls to push what bounderies can be found within the game, vowing to keep to our core ideals and continue to build a game that is an environment focused upon friendship and family.

The Fifth Age – Exploration

• Another period of exploration occurs we know that Elder Scrolls while providing an entertainment and a place to enjoy the company of our guild mates the core game mechanics focus on individual gameplay over working with guild mates all the way up to your first Vet Levels.

• We once again send our envoys to investigate and review the current offering of MMO’s. Many are found to be the same old games simply reskinned and replayed again. We seek more than the standard quick thrills of most MMO’s, we are hard workers and intelligent games we want something to challenge us and inspire us.

• Of those games available we have found none excepting Star Citizen which fires our imaginations again.

• We watch, we wait…