HISTORY – PAST ERA
Guild history - Past Era
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Written by Consolamentum
In a distant past, Dark Blaze and his friend White Dragon decided to create a guild called The Flames ! It was the first Fire/Flame guild to be created on Graal. I also believe it was the first guild to start with "The". Before we had our (The Flames) guildcode registered, our nicknames looked like this : Nickname ~~~ The Flames~~~ ***Rank*** (Dark Blaze and I later on dropped the ranking system.) When I joined, the most active flames were probably Dark Blaze, Neo Gold, Kjeldoran, Darth Maul, Shab, myself and a few others. Upon my proposal, our hidehout became the big building in Hippie Ville. For anyone whom this may interest, here is how I ended up joining The Flames. In June 2000 (when we were on Main because it was the only server available), I was trying to get the 4 Graals. As I was staring at the door of the lonely guy who never pays his taxes and wondering how I could get him to open his door, a recruiter for The Flames named Kjeldoran along with a new recruit (I unfortunaly forgot his name) came by. He told us how to get the Graal and led us to some fullhearts. He then asked me if I wanted to join The Flames. I accepted the offer and became a soldier. I certainly was not expecting to become a leader in the future! The Flames was the first guild that I ever joined and will be my last guild. Numerous guild members are wondering what the guild's foundation date is. Sadly, only Dark Blaze or White Dragon would know. However, I do know that the guild was a few months old when I joined it. Therefore, we can guess that The Flames was founded in early 2000.
On July 4, 2000, Shab and I planned to quit The Flames. Indeed, we never saw guild members online anymore: we had came to conclusion that the guild was dead. So Shab, DA_SAKrifica (a real-life friend of mine) and myself held a meeting in Hippieville's mansion. We intended to start a new guild, but the idea never got off the ground.
On July 6, 2000, The Flames leader finally appeared online and contacted me with the following message: "hey put the flames on ya name if ya want we arent dead just that it I was fully back in The Flames, along with Shab and a few others.
On the 13th of July, 2000, the leader informed me that The Flames was now an official GraalOnline guild (I'd say since about July 10, but I can only speculate.) We moved our unofficial HQ to the Kain&Apple Mansion. Many screenshots on the snaps page were taken from there, for these days were quite pleasant.
At some point, Playerworlds became available. At that time, Main Server was sickening me (and many other Flames) for two main reasons: its sempiternal lag and the arrogance of its players. It was time for a change. Therefore, I decided to check out a player-managed server called Lostworld. I quickly became familiar with Lostworld and its players. Soon, I invited Flames members over to that server. I built a guildhouse and got it uploaded. The Flames soon became a strong presence in this community-like playerworld.
On december 2, 2000, at about 23 o'clock, Dark Blaze, the creator and leader of The Flames, informed me that he was going to give me leadership. That was a sad shock for me. I had always seen him as an all-around great person, and he held the spirits of The Flames (fun, freedom & respect) very well. Here was his announcement on our main page: "hey guys i know i havent been on for a while and that's why i have decided to make consolamentum the new leader of the flames 🙂 i will be here bouncing from server to server dominion evolution lost world and rarely N-Pulse other than that i will be working behind the scenes learning how to make NPC's so i can make the guild have some kick ass weapons (The Way It Was Intended) so people have a good evening/day
When LostWorld shut down on December 9, many of us became worried : where would we go now? I went to Coasta de Agua and successfully got the guildhouse uploaded. However, after a few incidents, I ventured the playerworlds in search for a new home for our headquarters.
As soon as I logged on Celestia, Vincent Valentine, a member of our guild (who happened to be a staffer with FTP access) offered to upload the guildhouse. I quickly agreed. The Celestian times were very similar to the Lostworld times. The guild grew quickly, and we enjoyed ourselves quite a lot. Unfortunately, the Playerworld was shut down in the beginning of 2001.
Not long before Celestia was taken off Graal, the Guild Control Panel was shut down for "security reasons". Basically, no guilds were able to proceed to the addition and deletion of members anymore. Celestia was then destroyed, and I ceased going to Graal as much as I used to. I even planned to quit Graal if the GuildCP would not return. Fortunately, it returned to its full functionality in March. The Flames had survived.
The Guild Control Panel was back, but the guildhouse was not, since Coasta de Agua and Celestia (the two playerworlds which were hosting the guildhouse) were history. Our search was hard and frustrating. The guild members split apart and appeared on servers such as Graal2001, Main, Bravo Online and Mithica.
As soon as Enigma was put up, I tried it out and found an awesome guy named Cyanide. At that time, he was Enigma's Head GM. After reviewing The Flames' guildhouse, he hastily agreed to upload it. Guild members soon began flocking down to Old Enigma and the recruiting went very well.
On June the 4th, Warcaptain, owner of Enigma, declared: Enigma is going Pay to
Play. I know you all dont like it but it is really a good thing. Stefan is getting on as soon as I tell him to to do
everything. If you have an account Enigma_something, then you can get
on and play for free. We hope that everyone here who doesnt have a pay account
gets one and returns to Enigma for more exciting fun. |
After Old Enigma died (that is, when it became Pay-to-Play), we sadly agreed to meet on Dino Valley, a playerworld which had originally been designed as a home for the guild Yoshi Tribe. I got lucky enough to find one of the few hard working staffers, Alzabo. He uploaded the guildhouse in the southeast corner of the world. Most of us did not enjoy our time on Dino Valley. Let me explain how Dino Valley is setup. Most levels are made of ugly grass. The majority of them are noplayerkilling zones. In other words, it is a dream land for neophytes (newbies.) As The Flames grew, so did the amount of enemies we had. It was sickening. I was receiving insulting PMs all the time (my ignore list was quite lenghty.) It seemed like every minute, a jealous leader of a fake guild would declare war on us. The funny thing is that most of them were in fact poor fighters (to put it nicely.) Near the end of our time there, Madman, admin on Dino Valley and leader of Yoshi Tribe (now dead!), became jealous of Flames' success on his guild's playerworld. He began messing with our guildhouse. He removed our sacred guild NPCWs (the Warp Ring and Dancing Boots) and added a humiliating sign outside the guildhouse which basically said: "Fix the errors in your guildhouse and make the inside look cuter, or we will take it down." Obviously, he was disregarding the fact that The Flames had by far the best guildhouse on his server! It only had minor errors. While the other guildhouses were pathetically messed up, they received no warning. We quickly understood that Madman was discriminating us - as in finding excuses to humiliate and weaken us. Additionally, he even stole the graphic we use for our Warp Ring and used it for his own purpose - without asking us.
Not long after the Madman events occured, Warcaptain released New Enigma and made it free. Most Flames gladly returned to Enigma, although some stayed on Dino Valley. New Enigma was and is not as good as Old Enigma, but it is Enigma nonetheless!
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GuildCP problems once again: guild scattered (Mid-June,
2001 - Early August, 2001)
In Mid-June, the GuildCP became extremely hazardous. New guild tags often took ages to work. The guilds system then completely went down, disallowing us from recruiting new members. As I am writing this (October 12 2001), it is still down. Many of us became discouraged. Those who wanted to join were not able to. I once again lost interest for Graal and stopped playing it as much. The guild's size diminished. Many members joined other playerworlds and were never seen again.
Based mainly on New Enigma as a local guild (Early
August, 2001 - March 3, 2002)
Due to the guild utility not working correctly, I finally agreed to accept Warcaptain's offer : from now on, we would be based on Enigma, and our guild tags would only work there. It was still possible for us to use the guild manager in order to add Classic and 2001 Flames tags, but few members played on those servers. We then played on New Enigma for a long time, until...
The End (March 3, 2002)
The end of the guild on Graal Online.