Greetings! I felt like I wanted to write about Aeonic Doom and its story as I've been in Aeonic Doom for quite a while now and stuff's happened. Problem is, I have, as far as I know, only got one reader of my blog (♥ Zeddy ♥) so I figured I'd post it on the forums. Taken from my blog and reformatted in HTML, here it is on a way too high word count of a bit more than 2000 words:

Disclaimer: this post is entirely based on my experiences on Cradle. I’ve done my best to not offend anyone with this post and I apologise if it does. I’ve left some stuff out to avoid drama for obvious reasons. Kindly avoid trash talking in comments or wherever it might be posted.

To my dear Aeonic Doom guildmates: if I’ve gotten anything wrong regarding the order of events, sorry! I’ll do my best to correct it if you’d be as kind as to inform me.

I went without a guild for a long while in Spiral Knights. Why’d I want one? They were just glorified friends lists with extra competitive prove-how-small-your-manhood-is modes that you could play once a century because assembling a team of six guild members is hard. Getting two guilds to do it is even harder. Of course, Aeonic Doom could usually assemble teams often enough, but that was quite a while ago.

The first guild I ever joined was Templar Knights as I figured there was no reason not to when I was invited. I didn’t really get to know the other members, though. Why? Because only one was active and that was the GM and we made no attempts to get to know each other. I’ve noticed that Templar Knights has grown quite a bit since I was in it. That was about one and a half year ago or so now.

The early days
I joined Aeonic Doom when Scottish-Archer asked me during a game of Random Lockdown if I’d ever considered changing guild. Considering the activity levels of Templar Knights, I didn’t really see a reason to not do so. Half a minute later I was a recruit in Aeonic Doom. Those were some nice rounds of Random Lockdown I had with Myrtle and Archer and I had no idea how much it ended up affecting my career as a Knight.

I remember that I talked Zeddy into joining Aeonic Doom as well. He viewed guilds the same way I did before we joined Aeonic Doom. Glorified friends lists. I wouldn’t say we were wrong, though. There wasn’t really more to guilds than /g and /o chat as well as guild PvP before the guild halls were updated. Truth to be told, the new guild halls didn’t add a lot, though. I mean, what was really added? A nice place to hang out in, ultra expensive training halls, monstrously expensive statues that show just how much your guild grinds the various bosses and Mist Wells. Mist Wells did a lot for the game, I’d say, but that’s another story.

To be plain honest, I don’t remember too much of what my buds and I used to do in my early Aeonic Doom days. It might’ve been grinding (actually, must’ve been), it might’ve been sneaking around in Random Lockdown trying to cap stuff without being noticed by the enemies and running as fast as I could (sadly not faster than strikers) when they did see me. I wasn’t the best Ash Tail with a DVS, no.

By the time I’d joined, three GMs were already inactive. I’d never gotten to know them. Their names were Stormface, Yia-Unreal, and Pronto-Zors. Despite that, the guild wasn’t decaying. It was doing very well. We’d occasionally do Guild Lockdown and get our butts kicked by guilds that, if I remember correctly, often refused to play on the European servers which was the preferred location of the majority of Aeonic Doom members. Rigorous and Impervious were the guilds we fought the most, I believe. Painful but lovely.

The branches
Aeonic Doom was like a tree. There have been three guilds branching from it in total. First of all was Cartel. I don’t really know Cartel or how active it is nowadays and I only know the name of a single member of it, none other than Banaanana (somewhat unsure about the spelling), who was a member of Aeonic Doom once.

The second branch was Best Guild Eu, founded by Dreffbuilder, Tohlevi, and Zan-Killer. Tohlevi and Dreffbuilder were in Aeonic Doom, though Zan wasn’t. I have my alt, Sir-Kittyfluffball in Best Guild Eu and I can tell it’s more active than Aeonic Doom. I’m not awfully familiar with Best Guild Eu though, as I don’t use my alts an awful lot. I do believe it almost lives up to its name, no matter.

The latest and probably last branch of Aeonic Doom is Shard Squad, founded by Zeddy and Darkbrady. Dedicated to hisptery and science, it’s probably the coolest guild on all of Cradle. They were never really aggressive in their recruitment though, and the guild most certainly doesn’t appeal to a lot of people. I believe the guild has around 50 members although not the highest activity numbers. The relation between Shard Squad and Aeonic Doom might be small but I believe Zeddy said that he thinks Shard Squad is indeed a child of Aeonic Doom and no matter how much he might try to resist it, Zeddy is one of Aeonic Doom’s most beloved ol’ veterans. He won the “Rookie of the year” award during Aeonic Doom’s first anniversary and no one deserved it as much as he did!

The migration
Some three months or so after I’d joined Aeonic Doom, it was decided that we’d migrate from Aeonic Doom to our alternative guild, Shadow A D which had earlier been used to play Guild Lockdown with ourselves when we had the ability to. The reason was that Aeonic Doom needed a fresh start and three inactive GMs were a bit problematic as Aeonic Doom always keeps only four GMs.

When we were restoring our ranks after moving us all, I jokingly stated that my rank was Veteran and not Member. Myrtle actually promoted me to Veteran and I quickly noted that it was a joke. It turned out Myrtle thought I’d been a Veteran all along so I got to keep the rank. At this point, I truly felt like I was a real part of Aeonic Doom, someone most of the guild knew. It was awesome. Was this the peak of Aeonic Doom, I wonder. I do not know because all the time I’ve spent with the guild up until a few months ago have been bliss.

The party
I believe it occurred a while after we’d migrated to Shadow A D. Aeonic Doom turned one year old. Because of this, Myrtle and Pepeh had arranged a party for the guild. It had to take place twice so that both EU and US players could join. We mostly hung out but we also played several games. We had a treasure hunt throughout Haven (which was very unfair, hehe), a tournament of dodge-the-shufflebots-in-advanced-training-hall-while-holding-vials-and-be-the-last-man-standing, a spinning competition, a dancing competition and more. Notably, we had several various rewards in various categories in which members had voted on the forums. In the end, Myrtle won half of it, perhaps because she simply was so well known in the guild. The prizes were donated by various guild members. I believe there were three Hunter Prize Boxes donated by Zeddy and I was lucky to win one of them when I won the spinning competition. I sold it for 300 000 CR and that resulted in the most CR I’ve ever had.

The last paragraph probably didn’t say you a lot if you weren’t there. The party was no matter amazing really showed how people in a guild can get as close as we were. We were there for hours while doing a single thing: being social and having e-fun. Truly amazing indeed.

Just a side note, if you ever need someone to arrange a party, Myrtle is the best in the business.

The decay
I don’t quite know when it started but somewhere along the road, Aeonic Doom tripped on a banana peel. All our GMs got inactive. Myrtle and Prophe got bored of the game and started playing Guild Wars 2. They were also busy with stuff grown ups do like work and looking depressed all the time, if I’m not mistaken. Grandmoffpuppeteer got busy with real life matters too while Masterboss started playing Tera along with Evilrux who was promoted to GM because of the predicted inactivity of the other GMs. Ironically, he too went inactive which left us with five inactive GMs. But these weren’t the only inactive members, of course, and neither were they the sole reason Aeonic Doom fell.

I can most certainly say that I did not do well with recruiting. I was promoted to Officer somewhere along but in the end, I’ve recruited very few, if not only one member who went inactive. I regret this a lot but the fact that I generally don’t like running with random people remains as probably a third or so is a bunch of jerks who get mad about you spending an extra four seconds smashing lamps for an extra heart or a bit of crowns in Firestorm Citadel. I’m plain happier running with one of the 110 people on my friends list or one of my beloved guild members.

There were indeed several other members in Aeonic Doom and although I don’t blame them as anyone may do as they wish, a reason that Aeonic Doom fell was that a huge amount of members went inactive. As a result of this, many left the guild. The most notable departure was probably the one of our dear Officer, Xxdragneel, who left for The Fallen. A few others went with him.

It was probably around that time I felt the most doubt in Aeonic Doom. There was little reason to stay as more and more of our active members left and less and less of the guild remained. I considered applying for Best Guild Eu, Shard Squad, and The Fallen but in the end, I never left.

Had I joined any of those, it would probably have been The Fallen as, although I feel like I am closer to Shard Squad and Best Guild Eu which I have alts in (Jawkob and Sir-Kittyfluffball, respectively), I found The Fallen interesting as I’ve got a ton of their active members on my friends list. Their participation in GLD also interested me and they’re overall a bunch of nice people.

Before I decided to stay, I also wondered if The Jempire would have been a guild for me. I know some members of it and I have talked to several of them and despite all the hate they seem to get from a lot of the playerbase, they are, as far as I’m concerned, a pretty nice bunch. The only problem I would have had with The Jempire is that they’re mostly American players, which would lead to latency problems for Swedish me. I’d also be concerned with a lot of people possibly being cross with me for joining The Jempire. Of course, if any of my friends would seriously be mad at me for that, I’d hardly call them friends anymore. Lastly, there’d be the problem with actually getting into The Jempire. I don’t really know how they recruit, apart from the use of the guild Jempire Waiting List. No matter, I figured that I’d probably have a good chance to get in with several friends in the guild if I were to ask, hehe!

The revival
Aeonic Doom probably reached the bottom a few weeks or months ago. I haven’t kept track. Luckily, things are changing. Hitsublast, ex Guild Master of Aeonic Doom had been busy with real life stuff but he plans to return to Cradle once he’s done. As Myrtle is still online every once in a while and cares about Aeonic Doom, we’ve been able to change Guild Masters and are almost set with it all. Although I am heading to the far east for two weeks quite soon, I’m sure it’ll be a summer filled with Spiral Knights and the revival of Aeonic Doom. In addition to Hitsu, we’ve got a few other Officers working on the recruitment. Those are Crowwkd, Deltikon, and Pluige. We might even have to make two of them Guild Masters as the Aeonic Doom custom is to have four and we only have two active ones for the moment.

But to be honest, I’m working towards something bigger. Much bigger than rebuilding Aeonic Doom. You know what that is? Getting a guild big enough to do Guild Lockdown as Myrtle said she’d totally do Guild Lockdown with us!

Interested in joining?
Do go ahead and contact me or any other Officer of Aeonic Doom. Maybe we’ll put up a recruitment topic on the forums or something, in which case we’d be delighted to hear from you there.