The History of Disciples of the Darkhand in Everquest 2
Darkhand formed up again in Everquest 2 on the Nagafen PVP server. EQ2 offered a polished game that had been out for over a year before PVP servers were implemented. At server launch, the PVP raged. DDH quickly began leveling under the banner of Qeynos. At the time, Freeport vastly outnumbered the Qeynosians, which gave us ample targets to slaughter.
After a few weeks on the server, DDH was becoming well known as a PVP force to be reckoned with. Qeynos was generally a meek and pussy faction, but
Cifu sought to strengthen the guild through recruiting the best of the best that Qeynos had to offer. He became aware of another small Qeynos guild which was leading the pack in PVP. This guild was called
Vindication. Led by
Hax,
Vindication included some of the members who have become the core of todays DDH. Once the merger was complete, Darkhands ranks were swollen and we were ready to dominate.
Now at full strength, we stained the docks red with the blood of anyone who dared challenge us. Darkhands PVP kill stats skyrocketed and were totally unrivaled. Our members included 7 or 8 of the servers top 10 PVP'ers. DDH had some of the highest PVP titles on the server and Freeport Dreadnaughts pissed their pants when they saw us coming, and headed for the nearest cliff.
As our members all leveled up to 70, the stage was set for the end game. DDH began some light raiding to stay competitively geared. Qeynos guilds lacked important raid classes but we were able to advance through Labs and began farming good gear. This started a long list of Qeynos server firsts and were the undisputed leaders of PVP and PVE for our faction.
Cifu promoted
Exelyon to raid coordinator and
Pheelin,
Ubak and eventually
Wraath rounded out the Officer positions at the time. We mastered techniques of causing grief and pain on our enemies, such as our patented carpet blocking in Sinking Sands, Our sneaky tactic of placing portals over the cloud pads so that no one could escape from our groups, and coordinated air drops from the highest islands in the Kingdom of Sky to land behind our enemies. Shirtless pvp was also invented here as well as the legendary camp fire. Shirtless pvp was later perfected by
Jeff Malone who we proudly raised into a complete badass later on in exile.
Some epic rivalries began to form on the server. A guild called
Havoc became the first guild go into Exile. This gave them access to all the games classes and they quickly started to excel at PVE content. They became a dominant force on the server, taking down many contested mobs and getting very powerful gear. DDH rose to meet them and epic confrontations ensued. Many will remember the constant tug of war battles for Cube Mobs.
Freeport was generally an unorganized newbish zerg who would run blindly into our finely honed groups. It wasn't rare for us to defeat forces 2 or 3 times our size and come out nearly unscathed, but a few guilds became well known PVE raiders and put up some opposition in PVP.
The Kraken and
Talisman were guilds of considerable strength but they were more PVE centric.
Onyx was our biggest Freeport rival at the time and we met them on the battlefield almost daily.
DDH began to feel disillusioned with Qeynos. Other guilds in the faction seethed with envy for our #1 position and never came to our aid against the vast hordes of Freeport. A few pussy upstart guilds in our own faction, like
Art of War, would claim to be our “arch enemies” even though the game mechanics didn’t allow us to fight them.
We had enough of their shit and decided it was time to follow Havoc into Exile.
The first night in the cave was one of our most memorable. The freedom of true FFA pvp was incredible and we scrimmaged for hours against ourselves and
Havoc. A friendship between our two guilds formed and we began to assist them by blocking for contested mobs.
A small force of Darkhand invaded the city of Qeynos shortly after we exiled. It was time to get some revenge for all this shit talking we'd endured from our own faction. Five full groups of Qeynosians rallied against our two groups. We utterly destroyed them, holding the city hostage for almost 3 hours until we finally suffered a few loses and retreated. With Darkhand gone, Qeynos was officially a joke. It was monthes before
Homicide finally took up the banner of Qeynos and really started fielding decent PVP groups.
Havoc fell on hard times shortly thereafter and soon was disbanded, leaving us alone in exile. With all classes at our fingertips we began raiding PVE in earnest and became one of the servers top PVE guilds.
One of our more interesting members was an Asian plat farmer named
Blackcat XIII. He didn’t speak a lick of English, but was a deadly PVP’er who always came to our aid when we needed him. He had a nasty habit of clicking on everything and messing up raids so we had to leave him behind in PVE.
Blackcat eventually got banned for plat farming and we caused a riot on the message boards flooding every thread with shouts of “FREE BLACKCAT!” Most of us ended up getting suspended for spamming.
At this time a new PVP mechanic was enabled which gave out tokens for kills. These tokens could be used by Freeport and Qeynos players to buy extremely powerful PVP gear. However, exiles did not receive the same benefit.
The cave was feeling a little lonely so we began talking to Onyx about exiling.
Onyx was basically the only guild on the server we liked and respected. They were savage PVP'ers and didn't run or evac from every fight like the rest of the server. They were sick of their factions shit and decided to join us in Exile. We became fast friends and allies and worked together to completely dominate the server in PVP for a long time. Qeynos and Freeport were in sorry shape with
Onyx by our side. We dominated all contested mobs and the factions cowered in their cities as we ran rampant. Some of our members flowed back and forth between the two guilds, which caused some friction, but overall we stayed on good terms with
Onyx.
Around this time, one of our most memorable battles transpired at the contested Three Princes. Later, it would be called “The Night of A Thousand Kills”.
Kraken had recently bounced from Freeport to Qeynos, and finally landed as our unwelcome neighbors in Exile. A force of Darkhand met an equal number of
Kraken players set on stopping us from killing the mobs.
Kraken flew into our defenses time and time again only to be utterly destroyed. One of their healers who we had been courting actually disbanded from their guild mid fight and came over to Darkhand. By the end of the night, we all had received upwards of 1000 kills on their members, their titles had been stripped and their guild was nearly torn apart by internal strife.
Another memorable day occurred soon after when new Warg mounts were released. DDH completely dominated the NPC’s that offered the quest by placing an impenetrable wall of druid portals around them. As players ran in to try to get the quest they met with a swift death.
A few months after EOF had launched many members began to lose interest in the game. The state of pvp was at an all time low and simply logging in was becoming a chore. With no other games but WOW around many of us were stuck in a rut. Sony attempted to liven things up with a server merge but all it managed to do was add further stupidity to the already awful state of the server.
With PVP gear starting to flow freely on the faction sides, the reality of being out geared by almost everyone on the server started to wear a lot of us thin and we started to lose some of our old school core. PVP gear was so unbalanced that it allowed a bunch of no talent ass clowns to actually stand up against us. This was a rough patch for DDH and our raiding began to suffer as fewer and fewer people were logging in. The guild became a shadow of its former self and while many of us still played, the motivation was all but gone.
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