Jolly Rogers Syndicate / JRS

This is a history of my personal experience running a large (and small) organization of players.
It’s an immersion breaking record, so stop reading now if you want to stay in context.
Consider this my resume, for those who rightly wish to question the legitimacy of the leader before deciding to apply.

1999 – 2000 (Detreitus Ravenmourne): I played in a dedicated role-playing guild on a player-run server for Ultima Online. We were kept segregated from the core player base in a town called “Trinsic”. I’d never played any sort of online game before this, and it shaped my expectations in a wholly unconventional direction. Overall I think this was a good experience, even though it ended badly.

2000 – 2003 (Detreitus Ravenmourne): A friend created his own player run shard for Ultima Online. We had great fun together, but eventually he grew tired of the demands it placed on him, and his partners that ran it also lost interest. I was sad to see this server shut down, so he gave me a CD with all the game content, and presented it to me as a birthday present, so that I might continue on. I did so, and learned to code for the game, and worked tirelessly to fix patches and bugs, and balance gameplay mechanics. In the end, the world was solid, and practically bug (and abuse) free, and absolutely no one wanted to play it anymore.

2003 – 2004 (Axelay): I found a game called “Eve Online” and joined up for beta, and bought the game for release. I played with a character named “Agent Zero” and my wife. We joined a mining corporation on release, and took up positions in their “security” role. These people ended up having some sort of drama or another (I’m honestly not sure what) and somehow “Agent Zero” was involved in this drama (and he didn’t know how either) and because I was “friends” with Agent Zero, I was banned from access to the corporate banks. They demoted me to the lowest rank. I begged and pleaded for them to reconsider, assured them that whatever had happened I had nothing to do with it. Eventually they kicked me out. Agent Zero offered to take me with him to a new group, and I accepted. Before leaving, I logged on to my Wife’s account, which somehow was overlooked in all of the banning and kicking, and stripped every bank on every station bare, and the three of us hauled all the cargo off to our new corp. We then joined their security roles, and Stavros, Agent Zero, and the rest eventually had to leave, because our actions had drawn too much heat. They needed us to split off from their corporation and continue to work for them discretely. That didn’t work out very well, and so we all ended up joining m0o. In m0o we DEFINED that game. We forced more changes than any other group. This brief experience as a pirate remains one of my most epic and proud gaming moments. 9 of the top 10 most wanted players on the bounty board were m0o. At one time, we had a visit from a GM telling us that 50% of all tickets in the help queue were players complaining about our actions. The developers logged in to talk to us as we camped the gates at Mara, and ask us how we were doing it, and pleading with us not to pod-kill new players because the game publisher was going to force them to drastically alter the game otherwise. Behind the scenes, we all really just wanted a fight. Many pledged to wipe us out, but every attempt fell flat. The GMs came in and fought us, which we all thought would be suicide, but secretly we were hoping they were actually going to play somewhat fairly, so we sent out one of our own to test the waters. He was instagibbed, which was a disappointment to us all, as we had hoped to have an epic battle, so we all docked and waiting for them to go away. We eventually found the fight we were looking for in RUS. If you really want a challenge, you’ve gotta go eastern block! While this was all epic fun, and I was #9 on the most wanted list, it was clear that the game was going to be massively changed to stop us. I was very bitter and resentful about all of this, so I sold my account and moved on to WoW.

2004 – 2006 (Slaag): I joined the WoW beta, and joined a guild with my friend who gave me the UO shard for my birthday. We called ourselves “Forsaken”. Shortly after reaching level 60, we met up with some other players from “The Path” and decided to team up to raid together. I actually coined name for the guild. “The Path” and “Forsaken” were joined to form “Forsaken Path”. We leveled to 60, raided molten core, etc. Grummath, our main tank and guild leader, went MIA shortly after the guild formed, within about 6 months things were falling apart. My UO friend left and went to another server to start fresh. Forsaken Path eventually regained control of the guild with GM assistance, and restructured under new leadership. My position as a founding member didn’t warrant any respect from the new group that took over, and things gradually started devolving as it became more and more clear that I was not valued. There’s a lot of VERY typical wow drama, involving a boyfriend/girlfriend, and a guild master that bought a plane ticket… No point in going in to it all.

2006 (Chitsu): I left the server, and joined up with my friend that had given me his UO shard as a birthday present. As a member of Six Feet Deep I was able to help share my experiences in the dungeons that these folks hadn’t seen yet, and was able to help get them in to MC and start raiding. I did, of course, have to level a new character, so I did much of this training while leveling. Walking the group through their first encounters over teamspeak. This greatly offended many of the veterans, I recall a great deal of friction because of it. In the end, they were successful, and with a few exceptions, I had earned the trust and respect of the other players. Shortly after MC, we moved quickly into BWL, and on to AQ. Shortly after the release of AQ my UO friend (and guild master) quit, and passed the reigns to me.

2006 – 2007 (Chitsu): I renamed the guild to “Jolly Rogers” and reformed the player base after AQ. Partly in preparation for Burning Crusade, and partly to help clean the slate, as there was a great deal of holdover drama from the events surrounding the departure of my friend.

2007-2011 (Chitsu): I lead Jolly Rogers on an ever increasing rise to glory, sacrificing many great relationships in the process. With Wrath coming to a close, and one more exodus of the ever elusive and highly critical “5 players” that we’d spent the last 3 years rotating in and out, I was tired of the endless treadmill of recruitment->success->drama->departure. I’d fired most everyone that I’d ever loved in a stubborn pursuit of fairness and focus, and there was almost nothing left in the game that I found any pleasure in. The few remaining, loyal, dependable, and loved members of my guild were transferred to Khaos, in a deal I brokered with their leadership. We raided with Khaos in the next expansion, and after I was confident that I was no longer needed, I faded away. (mostly due to increased job schedule).

I do not miss world of warcraft. I miss the people I played with, and the people I cut loose along the way. I will not make that mistake again.