First, Red Nails comes from a short story authored by Robert E. Howard. You can read the story here. Being a Conan nerd as a kid (and I'm still a Conan nerd) I thought the guild would be a good fit for me. I was right.
The amazing thing about Red Nails is it was a very small guild, a couple guys holding on, joining pug raids and slowly obtaining gear that eventually grew into the number 1 renown producer on the Tyranny server. When the Cimmeria/Tyranny merge took place, the guilds started bumping heads like crazy. It became two servers battling for dominance of Tyranny. So many guilds began to get sucked up by Cimmarian guilds, but only three guilds remained of Tyranny. Red Nails, Mercs, and TaW.
Red Nails led the charge of being targeted because we produced the most renown. We gained the nickname "Red Fails" by our fans and we soon were sieged every single week. We brought the pvp to Tyranny. We were the favored enemy of all other guilds. This was the best thing that ever happened for open world pvp. We were out geared, out manned, couldn't even complete t3...but we were never about raids. We were primarily interested in the pvp aspect of the game.
Many of our membership didn't like the constant sieges, the fact that if you wore the Red Nail tag, you would be attacked...by everyone. Our only ally at this time was TaW. We then befriended the guild Unforgiven...and they promptly betrayed us during a siege with the power-house guilds of Cimmeria. (Unforgiven ran to a pve server shortly afterwards heeheehee).
The battles though were healthy and fun. Sure people would get frustrated, but it was lively because you never knew when pvp would erupt in your questing routine.
Here is an awesome pvp video made by Acebane. Req Nex wiped. Subscribe to his page.
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| Run from the Red Nails vanity cape :) |
When SWTOR came out the aspect of the game changed. Everyone started doing their own thing, and the population suffered for it. Red Nails took a big hit, losing our raid leader and many of our other people. We weren't the only guild to lose out, but we were never able to recover and become a "powerhouse" guild that everyone wanted to kill in open world.
We did grow from that, but it was never the same. We started having good numbers again, regular pve content, and we played mini games. The open world was never the same because the sieges completely stopped. We started to lose members when Risen and Req Nex merged themselves. About six of our members went over, including some long time members which hurt us in a lot of ways. From that, half our officers went and joined the Aco's, while another raid leader quit the game altogether.
We were dealing with this issue when...our entire guild split in half and the Iron Maiden guild formed, vowing to kill Red Nails. It did open up sieging again, but because we easily won, the Iron Maiden guild soon disbanded. The remaining members went to Sentinels.
Soon after we were forced to enter a raid alliance with the mercs. We started doing t3 raids. Our accomplishments there is we had the bottom floor on farm. There wasn't any open world pvp hardly. Some people attempted but could only get...2 or 3 of us. Sometimes the opposition wouldn't be there or we would get zerged down. In any case, it was a large difference.
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| We be raiding son |
Once GW2 came out, we thought it would be a good idea to form the Red Nails on the Sorrows Furnace server, hoping that we could retain some of our membership and keep the guild alive. We formed the guild, started building the members up, but then I went back to AoC, passing lead off to Dag. The people that stayed with AoC...simply quit the Red Nails, joining either Acos or Req Nex. Only a handful stayed playing minis with Red Nails tag.
New Dawn and TaW moved to Set because Tyranny died. The two mega guilds ruined all hopes of open world pvp. All that is left is the pve content, and mini games. To get that you have to play on Set server. So I went and joined the TaW guild, a former ally of Red Nails.
The game isn't dead though, and neither is Tyranny. I moved three toons to Set, but have 2.5 accounts still on Tyranny. The server can be revitalized if people either come back to the game or some form of pvp flagging system is established and they unite the last 3 US servers. I see no other way the former glories of the game to be truly experienced.
The fact remains, you can never have as much fun on a pve server compared to a pvp server.
From the AoC forums, a little history from our GM of the guild:
ReplyDeleteOriginally Posted by Blitzkreigg
Our first BK was the old “Immortal” BK. They were leaving the game and we were a small upstart guild, maybe 10-15 players on the “old” Tyranny server. 2x sieges to take the Immortal BK; first battle they showed en-mass (Some Immortal, and a lot of other guilds). 2nd Siege the BK was undefended because they had left the server.
Exodus immediately placed us under siege via “The Masons” (Munchie took his orders well) and we defended a T1 BK (Caelnach) with 24+ players. 1/3 of the players defending were Usual Suspects, the rest Nails. The T1 survived without a single hit from a trebuchet.
Exodus came with Last of a Fallen Legion (2x tries), Masons (2nd try), Mercs (1x try) and a handful other guilds, even "Curse." All of Exodus’s efforts against us had a slight to significant edge in numbers, but the attackers clearly had more experienced players and better geared toons. All the tries failed except for when Exodus used their own PVP points to secure the right to siege and finally burned our BK with all their confederates. Because Exo had their own BK and could not claim ours, we rebuilt.
Eventually the BK was upgraded to T3 (again) and remained standing/untouched for months until the last couple of weeks on the original “Tyranny” before the merge with Cimmeria. The server had been decimated by RIFT’s release. Rift killed the Mason’s (#1 renown guild at the time) and hurt every other guild on the server. Curse also disappeared at about this time and Exodus held Carnage's old BK with an alt-guild.
Exodus seemed to weather RIFT better than anyone else on the server. Exodus went on, what I called their “World Tour,” and burned every single BK on Tyranny. The Red Nails BK was the last to be burned and our 15-20 players got smacked down rather quickly. It was the 2nd time Exodus burned us down.
Basically, the rest is history. Exo helped us siege the Sentinels 2x times on the “new” Tyranny, which became a Cimmeria vs. Tyranny effort that Tyranny lost both times in the final moments, when we couldn’t knock their BK down the few remaining points.
Weeks later Exodus was no more, gone to Star Wars. Their remaining players went to Acos, now even Acos are gone to SET. Before most of Exodus went to Star Wars, they helped the Red Nails in 2 out of 10 sieges in which we went 8-2 defending our Kush BK. The attacks on our Kush BK were orchestrated by the Sentinels guild and a handful of other mentally disturbed players.
It’s been fun reading this thread. Thanks for keeping the blood boiling with these former/current players Rag. Some of you are so full of crap and lie so much your eyes are brown; however, you’re all missed here and I think we all had some really good times trolling and beating each other up in a video game that, at least for me, allowed a temporary escape from the vigor’s of real life drama and allowed me to literally vent.
Now back to my graveyard work schedule.....joy.