LotD Official Guild History

LotD Summarized History




Click here to download the full written LotD History


Brief History

LotD was founded in 1995 and has dominated multiple MMORPG's over the years. The guild is a mixture of quality hardcore and casual gamers whom we have retained over the past 24 years. Lords of the Dead has garnered respect for its successful history of PvP in every game it has played.

Darksun Online:



Lord Hades founded the guild between the Old NWN and the DSO gaming era. The guild rose to prominence as the premier PVP guild in the game by 1996. LotD was known for controlling PVP zones, charging access fees to uber areas, and success in organized PVP events. Outside of the safe City of Athas, LotD owned all the prime end game lands.

Once, the entire server organized to dislodge LotD from those areas, and it resulted in a 6 hour straight server brawl. When the smoke cleared LotD still owned all its lands, its treasury was still strong, and no one challenged the taxes we charged for for nearly a year. Lord Hades was the #1 single combat champion, and was still in the top 5 two years after LotD left the game.

Ultima Online:



LotD played on the Baja Server and was a founding member of the Player Killer Circle (PKC). LotD had over 200 castles, keeps, houses, that we used for supply and tactical travel for lightning strikes on our opponents. Ultimately the PKC won the Anti vs PK wars, and LotD moved on to other games. Hades Hall of Warfare on the Stratics network served as a central focus for the Warhall PVP portion of the site, and LotD served as a PVP representative to the UO Devs during the two and a half years LotD played UO.

Asheron's Call:



LotD made a brief stop in Asheron's Call while waiting for Shadowbane. Shadowbane got delayed, so Lrd Hades and some LotD ended up building a monarchy with close to 1,700 followers until he departed in 2001. At the time this was the fourth largest monarchy on the server, and was involved in several PK wars over its existence.

Everquest:
LotD gamed with Sinister and others in the Dark Coalition on the Sullon Zek PVP server. The Dark Coalition was the #3 ranked group on the server during the time it played.

Dark Age of Camelot:



LotD has been a Top 10 Faction / Top 20 Server guild on the Merlin server, and LotD was a core guild in the effort for the Midgard faction to take all the server relics from the other two factions. Our alliance held all the opposing faction's relics for several months, and allowed them to use of RVR zones once many of our alliance guilds left the game to beta test Shadowbane. LotD returned to DAOC a few years later, and became a top 50 Guild on the classic server (Gareth).

Shadowbane:



LotD initially played on the Scorn Server in a powerful nation (Rolling 30's) made up of the most elite old school guilds. The Rolling 30's became the dominant nation on the server, and began to have issues with keeping its member guilds together. After a disagreement LotD split from the Rolling 30's, and then founded LAPD with three other guilds. LAPD went on to destroy the Rolling 30's by using a continuous and concentrated battle plan, 24/7 attacks and sieges, and with LotD often serving as leaders in the attacking forces.

Star Wars Galaxies:



LotD was a major force for PVP on the Flurry Server. After a lot of hard work, LotD founded, defended, and controlled the first PVP city on the Flurry Server. Mostly it was squad level PVP in SWG, and due to poor game mechanics we opted just to move onto a game with a better PVP focus. After a series of unpopular updates from the SWG developers and a lack of real competition, LotD moved on to another game.

Guild Wars:



LotD competed at a top 10, 20, and 40 level throughout Beta and six months of Retail. By the sixth month of retail LotD had been playing Guild Wars nearly a year and a half (beta+retail), competed at the top levels, and won several Halls of Heroes, and decided it was time to move on to a new game. LotD later returned in 2007 for about six months, and got back into the top 100 before moving on to another game. In all eras of Guild Wars there were thousands of ranked guilds, so being in the top 10 to 100 was an accomplishment.

City of Villains:



LotD fielded a large contingent of villains for this game, was a top influence earner on the Freedom Server, and had a fully equipped guild base. LotD became known for its skill at zone control, winning guild vs guild base raids, and later competed in multi-server organized PVP tournaments. During its time in COV LotD was nominated as the 2006 PVP guild of the year, and ranked by the player community as one of the top 5 arena guilds across the entire game.

World of Warcraft:



LotD was the #8 Alliance guild on the Mug'Thol server prior to the 2.4 sunwell patch. In U.S. rankings LotD was a casual raiding guild, but still managed to rank in the top 5% of all U.S. guilds. Due to serious exploits involving arena point farming and WoW having no guild rankings for Battlegrounds, LotD did not PVP seriously in this game.

After the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, LotD returned to WoW and became a pure 10 man raiding guild. As of August 2009 our 10 man guild rankings listed us as #1 on Mug'Thol, #8US, and #16 worldwide when compared to all other ranked 10 man guilds.

Fury:



In retail LotD was always in the Top 5 of rated guilds across all warzones, and took the #1 spots overall. LotD placed #1 in Vortex Team Matches and in Elimination (Deathmatch) on several occasions. LotD also had several people rank in the top 30 for individual ladders consistently while the game still had a healthy population. On the Fury Challenge event, LotD ranked in the Top 10.

 

Age of Conan:



LotD rose to power as the dominant PvP guild on the Deathwhisper server. LotD successfully played the game of thrones on the FFA server by turning its enemies upon one another, and then using the distraction to deliver strategic fatal blows to other enemy guilds. LotD was able to lock down entire high level PVP/PVE zones in the game at will, burned several prominent guilds PVP Battlekeeps to the ground in sieges, and never lost a siege defense while the guild was actively gaming.

Other things of note are that LotD won AOC's world's first siege, was a server first for burning a PVP battle keep to the ground (Sinister), and completed the server's first full tier 3 guild city and tier 3 pvp battle keep after four months of continuous hard work by LotD members. While actively playing AOC, LotD never lost a defensive siege and won most offensive sieges.

Warhammer Online:



LotD initially played the Order Faction on the Azazel core ruleset server. While there LotD attained the #1 guild rank leading all other guilds until the Azazel was shut down in February 09, and was the #3 renown point earning guild throughout the server's active life cycle. Renown points were amassed by killing players, and capturing PVP battlefield objectives such as fortresses, keeps, etc. LotD founded the Law and Order Alliance, and worked with other quality Order guilds to dominate the server. Law and Order destroyed the initial wave of Destruction guilds, and then beat back a secondary wave of IN-Transfer guilds who came from 27 source servers.

Once the Azazel server was decimated by our forces, LotD transferred to the Dark Crag Open PVP server and played as the Destruction Faction. LotD formed two alliances on Dark Crag, and helped turn the Destruction faction from a defeated horde to a fighting machine that made 20 City Invasion attacks over the course of 4 months. While there LotD attained Guild Rank 40, and amassed over 110 million renown points. Less than 20 guilds across the entire game of 300,000+ subscribers attained Guild Rank 40, and our combined renown for LotD's warhammer career exceeded 225 million renown. By any measure, LotD ended its Warhammer career in the top 1% of ranked Warhammer guilds with its standing as the #10 world ranked and #4 server ranked guild. At the time of this ranking there were over 24,000+ ranked guilds.

Darkfall:



LotD immediately took control of the southern half of the North American server as a founding member of the Cairnivore Alliance. Over the course of the coming months, LotD waged a successful war against "The Red Army" who was the largest alliance on the server. The political dominance over the server was firmly established with the decimation of TRA and continued as long as LotD maintained an official presence. Credited as having the "Biggest server impact of 2009" and for the creation of the widely successful "NEW" guild, which helped sustain the server population, LotD remained the major server power until our exit from Darkfall.

AION:



LotD entered AION in 2009 when it launched its westernized version of the game, and the guild played the Asmodian faction on the Marachutan server. The guild quickly began leveling, and launched a large PVP raid on the Elyos faction in short order. The game initially had good faction based RVR, but after 8 months other game mechanics turned most servers into ghost towns. While LotD played it achieved several accomplishments such as being a consistent Server Top 10 and Faction Top 5 ranked guild, a consistent Top 2% world rank standing, and a consistent Top 1% world faction ranked guild. LotD was also the first guild to capture the entire Lower Abyss PVP zone by controlling all PVP forts and PVP objectives, and LotD was continuously competitive in the Upper Abyss PVP zone.

Rift: Planes of Telara:



LotD played on the Deepstrike PVP Server on 2011 on the Defiant side. During our time on that server we ranked #1 Faction, #2 Server, and # 22 World for guild progression. Unfortunately Rift did not have ranked competitive PVP at the RVR level or instanced Arena level, but LotD did have a majority of members at the maximum PVP rank (6). World PVP during our time there was sporadic and not very lasting because there was no territory to control, and most people fought in the instanced PVP areas where there was no ranking. With no real PVP in sight for Rift, LotD opted to leave the game and wait 3 months for SWTOR to launch.

Star Wars: The Old Republic:



Lords of the Dead began preparing for SWTOR early in 2011. We started on the Helm of Graush server which was later merged into Prophecy of the Five. By the 30 day mark, most of our members had reached max level, and we had 3 groups clearing all endgame PvE content on a weekly basis. Our PvP department ran guild practices weekly and saw daily success in Warzones as we waited for a ranking system to be added. We continued to clear all endgame PvE content as it was released. Nightmare Operations for Karagga's Palace, Eternity Vault, as well as new Hard Mode Flashpoints kept us active.

LotD was excited for patch 1.2 which promised the introduction of the pre-season for ranked warzones. Ultimately the PvP ranking system was delayed for months. Combined with a lack of content due to a dysfunctional open world PvP system and limited end game PvE content, the overall population of the game rapidly declined. LotD continued to progress in all available endgame PvE content until August of 2012.

Guild Wars 2:



LotD maintained an active presence in GW 2 from early 2012 through 2013. Our extended 6 months alpha and beta testing laid the groundwork for GW2 to be an amazing experience. We quickly established ourselves as a flagship guild and helped create a game dominating coalition that solidified the Blackgate server as a consistent #1 North American ranked server. In GW2 the server vs. server matches lasted a week, at the end of each week a winner was declared and winning servers advanced in rank. PVP coverage had to be organized 24/7 , and the server with the most skilled and organized PVP players were the ones to advance to the North American Top 3 each week. The LotD guild archive are full of videos from GW2 showing our dominance in the game. We also maintained an active ranked arena team and even enjoyed success on the PvE side of things with high level fractal groups and world boss raids in the PVP zones.

ArcheAge:



Lotd’s time in Archeage was filled with some truly Epic gaming moments. We had a North American first ‘Guild Plaza’ where we launched attacks throughout the game, helping to conquering our very own castle and killing the Giant Kraken - as well Morpheus, the Pirate Dread Lord. Within just the first 24 hours of launch, LotD owned 75% of our home zone (Halyconia) and hunted down numerous illegal farms, then took what we wanted by force. Soon after, we built one of the largest naval fleets on the server consisting of dozens of clippers, 10+ merchant ships, over a dozen galleons and a couple of Black Pearl Elite Pirate ships, all by end game. We always played Arcehage the way we wanted to - killing, pillaging and stealing what we wanted - and in the process made the entire server hate and fear us..

Competition on Ollo was fierce but most guilds were so terrified of us that only a handful of mega guilds, with the support of an equally large alliance behind them - put a real bid on our castle scroll to try their luck at siegeing us. Probably the worst decision any of them have ever made and that's just a small part of the success we've enjoyed there and what made our time there so awesome. We were 1 of the original 4 guilds to conquer a castle (and never lost a defense against enemy forces - for the duration of the chapter) Archeage was LotD’s largest chapter to date (2016) with over 250+ active, dedicated members at its peak and maintained an active presence from 04/2014 through 10/2015 (18 months)

 

WildStar



WildStar was a Carbine developed (with many ex-Blizzard vanilla WoW team members) and NCSoft published sci-fi MMO catering to both PvE and PvP players (hence PvX). Infused throughout with goofy humor, it launched with a solid reputation among gamers, and a 82/100 Metacritic rating. Game features included a novel telegraph combat system, instanced housing, throw-back 40 man hardcore PvE raids, ranked PvP battlegrounds, and a 40 man instanced PvP warplots.

LotD continued to gain momentum through Genetic Archives, avoiding the pitfalls of server merges and player attrition, and pushed hard into the second tier raid of Datascape. This hellishly difficult content separated the casual from the hardscore, and we made our mark by breaking into the top 20 world rankings for quality progression!

Over time the rated arena and battlegrounds saw a number of problems with shrinking size of participant pool, gear balance, repeated resets or lack of resets when needed, and it finally became evident that Carbine had little interest in continuing to support the small but passionate PvP community. LotD pushed the issue by instigating a PvP town hall with the eminent players from both Exile and Dominion negotiating with the Carbine team. Promises were made, but Carbine fell short of making the necessary changes in time to keep the serious PvP playerbase in WildStar. It was a long and bitter fight, and LotD single-handedly propped it up for months on end. Eventually competitive PvP withered and died, and LotD ended a two year run with the game.

Black Desert Online



Black Desert Online was another virtual world MMO that lasted quite a while for LotD. The chapter was engaged in the typical PVE, PVP, and siege warfare end game, and LotD was able to push itself into the top tier of competitive guilds in BDO. In 2017, LotD was ranked as one of the Top 5 Guilds, and owned several land based properties.

LotD had a lot of fun, kicked a lot of ass, made our fanboys cry, and left after doing everything worth doing. Now, we wait on Crowfall!!


National Coverage of Lords of the Dead

GW2 LotD Podcast on GW2 Junkies Network
2009 Austin Game Dev Conference-Guildmaster Panel
MMO Gamer Magazine
Beckett's Massive Online Gamer
LotD On Guildcafe.com
Age of Conan Vault Interview
WoW Insider Guild Profile