Guild:Soldiers Of Thunderstorm (historical)

Soldiers Of Thunderstorm [SoT]
Territory	Europe
Language	Russian
Faction	Kurzick
Type	PvP
No. of members	~15
Guild Hall	Warrior's Isle
VoIP	Ventrilo
Webpage	SoTZone.ru
Time zone	GMT+3

  Reign of Thunders

Founded as a clan on the 18th of May 1998, Soldiers of Thunderstorm is one of the oldest Russian PvP gaming communities with its own bright history and traditions.

We started our everlasting online conquest as a small family of PK-oriented players in Diablo on Battle.net. At this scene, the whole Russian community quickly witnessed the glories and strength of the clan in 1v1 and 2v2 duels. Frankly, many of our opponents didn't like what we were doing, because the clan's keystone philosophy has always been, "Kill All and Loot Everything!". In our opinion, this motto reflects the best way of playing any online game.

Blizzard's Starcraft is the second game we seriously played with a set number of guildmates. This squad battled for 1.5 years. During that period, we were proud to have such famous Russian Starcraft players as Pangolin, Yak, Asmodey, Soul and PB as our clan members.

After that, we were actively engaged in netcafe Quake 2/3 3D action movement where the majority of the games have been performed on LAN networks in the gaming clubs of Saint Petersburg. Most of our guildmates, especially those who have joined the clan in 2000-2003, are coming from Saint Petersburg, along with our country's capital - Moscow.

The bloody adventures in Ultima Online are surely the largest and the greatest chapter of those in our clan's battle chest, starting from 1999 and finishing in 2005. Lostfort was the first Russian UO shard where SoT began massively fragging people. Eventually, this drew the attention of the Game Masters and shortly after, they banned the whole guild out of their estate. They banned us simply because we were killing every hostile player that moved into the town =) After that, there have been dozens of Ultima Online domains where we've left tons of impressions and haunted memories, as well as tears shed by our enemies.

From that time, it became SoT's tradition to split the clan's projects and assign them to the in-game squads led by a Guild Master. Guild Masters are responsible for the life of the squad, its official in-game interactions and PK activity. It's worth mentioning that many Russian PvP-oriented players are still seeing the false "SoT" clans created in Ultima realms here and there. The newcomers are eager to share a part of the legendary fame we've gained in that world by mercilessly slaying our opponents.

After Ultima Online, the Diablo 2 squad became the second PK dream team formed by those who has been in the clan since 1998. These members knew that creative thinking along with "diving into the game code" doesn't smell bad if it helps to defeat the opponent. During the year of that fantastically successful e-life of the team, we killed thousands of our opponents, collected the same amount of high-level, Virtual Ears, won a few Russian-hosted Tournaments and then departed from the game silently as a result of the feeling there were no worthy enemies left to defeat.

  Riders on the Storm

Anyway, enough of the old, prominent exploits - let's move to the date when we had the delight and pleasure to step into the world of Tyria, and that is the Guild Wars World Preview Event held in 2004 on October 28 through 31.

The initial impression of the game for us at that time was: "Look, there's Tomb of the Primeval Kings (the early Heroes' Ascent) and the Guild vs Guild mode, and that's all the madcaps like us need". Of course, our five Fire Elementalists with bonding Monks as the support didn't "pwn" all of the enemies we met, but still we were hoping that one day our guild will reach that sacred and admired-by-all top #1 rank in the Guild vs. Guild tournament. Therefore, we've tried to prove our best, especially after we've lost a match to Legion of Exile - the first guild to ever appear with an organized Elementalist Air spike in GvG. Obviously, we've had a lot of tricks to learn, and, apart from the Observer Mode, the old Heroes' Ascent has been the best place to test things out.

We finished in the top 150 GvG guilds at the last Beta Weekend Event hosted prior the launch of the game. And afterwards, we started considering a Team Build which would raise us to being competitive with rather a casual roster of players gathered by that time. The choice settled at the Earth Ele Spike Build, mainly because of the way Obsidian Flame deals the damage. If all of the casters stood under the effects of Mantra of Resolve, the chances of killing the target instantly were sufficiently high. Though, we haven't had the opportunity to climb the guild ladder higher than top 200 with this build because of the high ping in the voice server we've used.

Nevertheless, our former guild leader Light Friend has done every possible and impossible thing in order to improve the way we perform, especially the strategic parts of the GvG scenarios. An example is where the team needs to decide whether to keep the pressure, hold the center or get back to the base. One of the most common mistakes the guilds commit on a daily basis is not falling back to the base after the first two or three casualties on their team, and this usually leads to a quick assassination of the entire party and the death of the Guild Lord due to the pause between the resurrections provided by the Resurrection Shrine. Clearly, there are many measures which could be done by the caller to make the party fall back, but Light Friend's orders were one of the most polite words to address the matter.

The philosophy, during that period of development, was to find a build that all of our players would feel comfortable with. At the time, our highly-tuned Ranger Spike Build seemed the most logical choice since each team member was assigned a particular task like purging conditions, the removal of enemy enchantments or providing a timely speed boost when necessary. These build features, combined with the flexability of having three Monks, allowed our Ranger Spike Build the ability to split in various ways while maintaining a sufficient damage ratio.

Using this Team Build, we climbed into the top 100 GvG ranks within the first few days and then we strictly kept wiping all bars on our way to #1, acquired and upheld in the February of 2006. This was sustained until the top 20 teams started bringing 2-3 "Shields Up!" skills into their templates. Naming the guilds who have earned our respect, we could definitely stop at Esoteric Warriors, and we wish we've had more luck scheduling matches against opponents such as War Machine, but alas, we're living in different time zones.

Presently, we're oriented towards the balanced builds that are capable of splitting all the ways we might need and aren't favoring the use of the gimmick builds, chiefly because we've gone through one in the past. But still, no one could make a strong bet there will be no deadly Rangers on the Observer Mode again, just as soon as we'll want to reclaim the heights where we once were at...

Do we play PvE? Yes, to a slight degree. One of our guild members has got a character wearing high-end items on advancing Legendary Survivor with over 3 million experience, yet again, this is not our clan's significant priority. We're doing PvE just on our spare time.

Besides Guild Wars, SoT is always supportive of the other reliable MMORPG projects, like Lineage 2. If you're interested in learning more about our guild, you can reach us at http://forum.sotzone.ru, where we'll gladly answer all of your questions or assemble a chat in Teamspeak.

Additionally, we would like to express a big gratitude to our ex-clanmates who contributed to the achievements of our GvG team in the second half of 2005 and in the first quarter of 2006. This includes: Sanka (Orders ftw, man!), Valin (a huge kudos for all the base saves), Invisible (his arrows flew faster than the wind), Xeleron (the Monk with a PhD in Healing), Kusok Marazma (kewl & timely heals), Madblade and Niko.

Example PvP Builds - enter here.	PvP Game Discussion - read here.
Member Information - view here.	PvE Builds Discussion - click here.