With the resounding bell, portals were opened. I stood there, along with my fellow guild members, wondering whether we were planning on entering the threshold to player vs player maps. I stood my ground; I was not going to go into a castle solo and end up getting killed. And so, for the first couple minutes of War of Emperium, Final Sacrifice was standing there in town wondering where the heck to go.
"Why aren't you guys going into the castle?" Tak, the guild leader, spoke. "For fuck's sake, go in already."
I flinched; I didn't mean to get Tak angry. I hurriedly ran into one of the portals, getting warped into Geffen's territory.
As usual, the castle we decided to hit was crowded with every other high guild out there. But, unlike those guilds, we were missing one essential part--numbers and size. So most of the time we just sifted through the larger crowds, breaking armors and lives as we went. (Of course later guilds started to target Final Sacrifice in annoyance.)
It was like this for a while; running into the same castle over and over again until my armors and weapons broke. Until my weapons got stripped. Until I was mobbed and I stubbornly resisted death--and unfortunately was not able to keep that wish up for long. Very often I returned back to the guild town, sighing that I was just running to my death.
Creed was numberfucking everyone, especially a small guild like Final Sacrifice. I shrugged and decided it was up to Tak if we were to switch castles. Even a party of 15 was hard to manage if I decided to go rogue and head off for a castle on my own. Not to mention I can't even break an emperium, let alone kill a person.
Of course now I came up with the smart idea on whether I could make a melee priest considering that you can do stat and skill resets on Essence. But I decided that as a full-support, it was important for everyone to know that I would be able to have all the buffs (and some debuffs for incoming opponents) and focus on my main VIT build.
In any case, Tak ordered us to keep running to our deaths (and the deaths of broken armor, which cost 5K per repair) until further notice. So we obliged. I kept up with the group to keep them running strong and others were more focused on killing others and not so worried about claiming a castle.
And we did claim a castle at one point (I think). But we lost it shortly after. It's what happens when a powerhouse guild runs over all the other guilds that are trying to have fun.
What a pity.
I remember once, while browsing the forums, someone made a note on how all the guilds were very serious about War of Emperium. In fact, I heard that some guilds were checking their attendance daily, kicking out anyone who didn't fit up to their standards. Not high level? Gone. Don't have suitable end-gear equipment? Out of the guild. Missed one WoE? Outta here.
On the other hand, it must be nice being in a guild where everything just works together.
Whole guilds are broken into factions, factions with smaller groups, groups with individuals. Each team was assigned the basics. The melee, the tank, the healer, the debuffer. And with all of the main classes come a strong team who stick together. I have seen this happen while fighting other guilds. It was pretty solid until Tak came around and started to kill everyone. Small groups are usually killed in moments with Tak's Ice Pick. They would need a pretty strong defense, but even I don't know how to escape Tak's murdering rampage when he has his sights on an individual. (And I have been stuck in that predicament before.)
But seeing how lax I am with War of Emperium, how I don't really mind missing Wednesday WoE (which is oh-so conveniently placed when I am in the middle of something else), I could never be able to join a "hard-core" guild like I've seen.
I had asked Josh why he had invited me to Eternity. He noted that it was because he thought that I was getting tired of Essence. Which isn't completely untrue... But I asked what if I found others who were tired of Essence; would he invite them, too? Pondering for a while, he said that he didn't want some people from Final Sacrifice to come and join Eternity. He said that Essence spoiled players, which is true. I was so used to being able to directly warp to the maps I prefer. I was so used to being able to reset my build on a whim, so used to knowing that I didn't need to do quests ritually, so used to being able to kill X mob and gain Y experience to gain Z levels.
And, if you would choose to go to Eternity, one had to give all those up. You walk to the fields and dungeons you want to go to (or pay Kafra a fee to warp just to the entrance of the dungeon and each Kafra only warps to specific dungeons), you get one chance to make the build you want and when you mess up you're just S. O. L., you rely on the quests implemented by Gravity because otherwise you'll become braindead with too much grinding, and the monsters gave such a small percent of the experience they used to. In fact, to level was a time consuming process on a low-rate server.
Josh invited me to Eternity perhaps on the reason that maybe he knew that I wasn't going to complain about missing everything. (And I did for the first day but I was also so excited to join a new server that I sort of didn't care, either.) And later I asked him about his guild there which was so intense apparently that there was a waiting list to get into the guild. I sort of want to attend their War of Emperium just to see how their priests act. They didn't even have third-classes implemented. So the skills they would be using would be the ones that I would have been intensely familiar with.
Heading back to Essence, War of Emperium ended with Final Sacrifice attaining no castle. Which was the usual case, unfortunately. Tak would have rather call Final Sacrifice a fun guild, which was much more enjoyable than a serious guild.
<3
