The Enigma Order

***sorry for any dead links. most of them should work***

Since the Enigma family is always growing, it would be nice for many of you to read a bit about our roots and humble beginnings.

Where it all began
The earliest hours of our guild is extremely vague. All we know is that it all started with an IRC channel called "Enigma" on a net called Freenode (?). The reasons for the uncertanty is that the creator of this channel was no other than the mysterious and enigmatic creature called "Gleep - The Boatlord", a player who would later come to play an important role in our BWL progression. As a friend of Gleep, Apox took the "Enigma" name with him when he started playing this new game called World of Warcraft. He, along with Cryonic, played Korean beta, and they can probably both tell interresting stories from these days. Through various connections, we were all gathered in the European Open Beta: Cryonic, Apox (Apolx), Denatus, Nemus (Lycoan), Windir (Eroahn), Ojisan (Erdalion), Miffentrop and Obscure (Obscuro).
Some daaamn old screens:
* This is the earliest screen I could find from TEO in Open Beta.
* This lvl 21 noob is hiding from lvl 50 elite dragons.

Stormreaver it is...
Not actually my first choice. But we saw soon enough that Burning Blade server was the wrong choice. Most of us created our characters 11 February, except Denatus, who ordered his copy on play. Smart move
Your guild was created a couple of days later. Apox founded the guild 15 February 2005. Im not sure if it was the number of players or the vast amount of coins needed that kept us from forming earlier. As a curiosity: Apox trying to recruit members on a norwegian geek forum: Link
Anyway, we started playing... Our way to 60 in pictures:
* Apox (then, Apollox, priest), with his panda. Cryonic also has collectors edition.
* Early shot of our guild tab.
* 75% of TEO strike a pose. The hunter, Ihsahn has an incredible story of itself. Read it here.
* Showing off our tabard
* Our ventures took us as far as the Barrens. No wonder we used ages to lvl 60 with detours like that. 
* More TEO noobing around.
* Obscure: "I want a mount too "
* TEO completes the ultimate task back then: BRD.
* Imba guys.
We levelled really slow and steady up to 60 and actually thought that the game stopped there. Obviously, there was more to the game than getting from level 1 to level 60.

TEO takes the next step! Molten Core
After the summer 2005, we decided to take the step from doing BRD to doing 40man instances. At first, we teamed up with a number of guilds to do MC, at the most, we supplied 1/4 of these raids. This was pretty much a disaster, and we found out the hard way that we needed to controle this ourselves. We started to build up our guild. This included inviting pretty much anyone who wanted to join us. Naturally, most of these players are no longer with us for various reasons, but all in all, most of our new recruits was good persons. We also sort of merged with another guild back then called <Shield of Stormwind>. I am to this date uncertain how many players from that guild we still have. We got several danish players, many of these are still in TEO and have included some classleaders.
Image of one of our absolute first raids as a guild. Notice that we had an alliance with a guild called <Norse Alliance>. Also notice the dwarven priest to the far left in full devout.
For a while we used rolling on items, but we figured that a DKP system was the way to go: Thread. And imagine the work had I continued with this.
More pics from early MC:
* Luci down.
* Magmadar down. Some time in July? Not sure if this was first kill.
* Killing Geddon late August 2005
* Sulfuron down. Notice the warlock hoping for Felheart.
* Onyxia also went down around this time.

Ragnaros down late October 2005
Some other views: Pic, Pic
The raid that took Ragnaros. (at writing moment 10/03/07, half of this raid is still active players in TEO)
Back then, we had a friendly, but noticable competition in the horde guild <Cosa Nostra>. We were always the same place at raiding progression, only we were a week ahead of them. This is the thread where they took Ragnaros. Look at the loot further down the thread. Notice anything?
Xzars made a movie that sums up our MC adventures, ending with our most imba kill ever. Rag kill #3; 15mins to server shutdown... Very recommended

TEO goes to Blackwing Lair
Our ventures in BWL was not as obvious as you would think. This was around Christmas times and our BWL experience suffered the fate of "VACATION". We downed Razorgore early in December 2005, and Vaelastraz didnt go down untill 15 January 2006 (we experienced similar stuff with Twin Emps summer 2006). But from this point on, BWL was easy mode. Nefarian Down 14 february. So exactly 30 days after our Vael kill.
* A great image of TEOs first meeting with Nefarian.
Some Xzar-films from BWL:
http://hosted.filefront.com/xzar/

TEO Celebrates 1 year as a guild
Even more noticable than our fast progression through BWL is the date. Notice that Nefarian went down 1 day before our 1 year anniversary. An event we celebrated with style!.
- We had a lottery for head of onyxia, wich Struiner/Nunb won with a marvellous "1" roll.
- We had a grand duel tournament, held by the frozen lake in Dun Morogh. 40 players attended, and the contest was won by our imba mage Enimusha, with Nemus, Sweter and Lydomina close by. 
- We ended the whole day with some raids in horde towns. Check Xzar's films for video of this raid.

TEO in Ahn Qiraj
We started in AQ some time in March 2006, and progress was not as fast as we had in BWL, but then the challenges were a bit harder too. We farmed all the bosses up to Cthun, but the old god himself proved to be too big a challenge for a semi-hardcore guild like TEO.

Our imba movie maker Xzar has compiled our AQ adventures here:
http://hosted.filefront.com/xzar/
This was the last thing that happened before our long summer break, a summer that was hard for many a WoW guild. But we survived, and hopefully we emerged even stronger than before. Cause there are still adventures to seek, and what better way to explore new content than in <The Enigma Order>?

TEO in Naxxramas and beyond...
There were still challenges to overcome, and even if we didnt get to take down Cthun before the expansion, we had a go in Naxxramas.
We took down three bosses, and had in general a good time doing it. We then took a raidbreak in order to recharge our batteries before TBC was launched. This was around november 2006, and the guild went into a hibernating state. Some players chose to leave TEO in this period, but most remained, wich left us with a group of good friends who understood that there was more to WoW than just raiding. It's safe to say that the mood in the guild got noticably better since the rather difficult descision to stop raiding.

Later, when christmas came knocking, the new pvp system was launched. This woke up TEO from its slumber, and the guild has ever since proven to be a solid contender in pvp, with constant premade groups trashing other premades in both WSG and AB. Not even when cheating would hordes have the upper hand, as proven here by Emerson. This new aspect of TEO will hopefully both continue and develop in TBC, where pvp is more relevant than ever.
Then... only two weeks before TBC, we entered a very good relationship with fellow Stormreaver guild Norse Elites. We had lost some players and would have had problems gathering strong enough raids, while they had suffered from similar irregularities in their 40man raids. But when we teamed up, we had an incredibly strong and motivated group of players, and we decided to revisit Naxxramas. Anub, Faerlina and Razuvious, bosses we hadnt seen for two months, went down like a house on fire, and the mood was electric.

TEO in The Burning Crusade
This is the next chapter in the history of TEO. We silently celebrated TEO 2 years, and went boldly into heroic instances and Karazhan. First boss, Attumen, went down 7. feb. 2007, and the progress have since then been very enjoyable.
Some notes:
- Webser was our first player to level 70, and also the first with the "epic" flying mount.
- Boltan (Bankropt) was our first shaman to 60, while Tanari (Ginny) beat him to 70.
- The guild is at this moment on roughly 90 accounts, where most of them are either 70 or getting close.
- Several players have rerolled, among them Denatus (to mage) and Windir (this time to a rogue named Bloodtrash. Keep up the good work, Windir).
- At the start of TBC, the guild management looks like this:
Leader: Cryonic
Officers: Denatuz, Apox, Windir, Obscure, Emerson, Amra, Enimusha, Webser
Classleaders: Mojorising, Boltan, Vonhankkija, Kelthalas, Solok, Elris, Chimp

Gruul the Dragonslayer died 16. april -  Screen1, screen2
Nightbane died 24. april  -  screen
Magtheridon died sometime in the summer.
The easter was used to revamp the guild a bit. New ideas, new members and a more hardcore direction. The result was TEO tearing through TK and SSC.
Christmas 2007 was celebrated with a small event. The Dragon's Gold. Read more about it here: http://enigmaorder.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=8254

Come 2008, the guild had cleared up to the final bosses of both Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Caverns. I think both Kelthas and Vasjh fell before our three year anniversary.
TEO celebrated it's third year as a guild 15 feb. 2008. Not many guilds can say this. As usual, we held an event, and this time it was the Gnome Race. Read more aobut it in Happenings and Contests forum. Three years! Who would've thought?

We had actually planned on completing Mount Hyjal and Black Temple before summer 2008, but lady fortune wanted it another way. Sure, we did some impressively fast progress, downing many of the BT bosses the first time we saw them. Bloodboil proved to be a tough challenge.
Then... it suddenly stopped. Finnish farmer Vonhankkija got wtfpwnd by chinese farmers, and the entire content of our guildbank got stolen. Only frozen runes and other crap that didn't sell to vendor was left. This halted our progression, and summer was closing in fast. Worth noting is that our forums went down at this time too. Luckily, we got our GB back, and started to craft SR gear. We cleared up to the Illidari council before summer and took Illidan late summer 2008.
TBC has been marvellous for TEO, with the guild having a large player base, a good community and several core players have stepped up to take bigger responsibility.
- By the closing of TBC, the guild management looks like this:
Leader: Cryonic
Officers: Apox, Ihsahn (Windir), Obscure, Joly, Mojorising, Namino, Vonhankkija, Elris
Classleaders: Boltan, Kalyptein, Mox, Tanduli, Lydo, Lamme

We are ready. For Wrath of the Lich King.

* And finally; Our founder, Apox, and our GM, Cryonic share a quiet moment.


Obscure - Archaeologist (really)

Last edited by Obscure (2006-10-12 16:37:23)