This month I feel I have hit the jackpot and my levels of stalking have surpassed my own belief. Encouraged by Obs the Omen PR Manager supreme, rather than rolling an alt to discuss this interview with Omen’s GM Darcuri, I faction changed my level 80 Resto druid, and as yet haven’t looked back!

With an aim to balance Emerald Dreamers to provide neither a Horde or Alliance blog, but a blog for the server, I bring to you this month the leading Horde raiding guild of Emerald Dream…. *drum roll* Omen!

I want to thank Darcuri for taking the time to discuss the Guild and progression with a dirty ex Nelf, Aka’Magosh, Omen and /salute.

The serious bit

I always try to do my background research for my interviews, but after searching the internet for some hours I have drawn a blank on the origins of Omen. Could you tell me a little about how, why and when Omen was formed?

Certainly, Omen is a merge between two guilds, being The Stealth Shadows and Total Control. Both those guilds existed from when WoW was released.

I was a guildie of Total Control, foolishly – they made me an officer in that guild. This being my first MMO I ever played, I found myself trailing quite a few people and guilds who had MMO experience from the likes of DAoC and Everquest before. I quickly noticed that “all the cool kids” were running places like Molten Core and such and I wanted a piece of the raid pie!

So I worked on a merge between the two small guilds to see if we could pull something like that off. In February of 2006 we founded Omen and that’s how it all began.

A guild name that has come up again and again is Mortalis. Back in Vanilla they were fighting tooth and nail for the server firsts with the Alliance Guild Ashes. They seem to have been a large factor in pushing many other Horde guilds to better there accomplishments, do you have any memories of this time you would like to share?

Yeah, some memories, although Mortalis left the server eventually as you know. For me personally and I think that goes for Omen as well, we were more influenced by guilds as Infernal Legion and Nocturnal Fear. Both those guilds still have a foundation in Omen today, in fact, after various cross server ventures for both guilds we were able to welcome several great people from those guilds back to Emerald Dream as raiders and socials in Omen.

Before we start talking about raiding, we would all like to know about how you recruit. Most people are aware that the Horde community of Emerald Dream is quite small, is it a case of quality over quantity Horde side or do you have any cunning recruitment techniques you would like to divulge?

Recruiting on Horde side of Emerald Dream is indeed not an easy task. With the smaller player base here, there’s simply less skilled and able players to choose from. We keep posts of our recruitment needs on the various fora on the net and actively pursue good ones we find on other servers when they put their self-advertisement up.

The advantage we have is that we’re “top of the food chain” on horde side, so that has some appeal and we are building on having a good reputation and results in raiding to back that up.

It’s even more difficult for the other guilds on the server like The Firm, Anastasis, Outlaws Torn, Arctic Vikings and such to get good players who are there to stay.

The function of having people from alliance side crossing over is helping us as guilds in some ways now, but to be really helpful and regain some sort of balance, we would still need to see quite a few players or guilds cross over.

Relating to the above question how do you find guild member retention, on Alliance side there is perhaps a “Guild hopping” culture, I imagine you don’t suffer to much with that Horde side, perhaps you could enlighten us?

There’s no guild hopping culture on horde side as far as I know – we hardly ever experienced it in the almost four years we’re up and running now, so I presume that goes for most if not all guilds here. We still have many people here that go back to the very day we started with Omen and were part of the original merger.

Omen are a Hardcore raiding guild but with some of the social aspects of a more casual guild. What do you believe separates a casual guild from a hardcore guild?

My my, you have done your homework well – Yes, I am very proud of our social atmosphere in guild, we’re not a guild filled with people who are just there to raid and then log off again. We like progress and beating raid encounters with some passion yes, but not at the expense of everything and anything.

I consider my guildies as my online family, who I enjoy spending a lot of time with, having fun and frolicking about, reading our guildchat daily makes me believe we are all likeminded souls in that respect.

Omen I believe completed 2/6 of Sunwell before the patch 3.0.2 nerf, how did you feel overall with your accomplishments in Sunwell and what would you have done differently if you had that time again?

Sunwell came at an impossible time for us, we had cleared BT and were geared for it yes, but the exam and summer time hits ED horde side extra hard.

The already small player base sees a lot of it’s players have less chance to put as much time in the game as in the rest of the year. Quality per raider wise we could have done better, number wise we did what we could.

Done differently? No, we chose our path and it went as it did, of course we all still learn of such things, but the idea is to look ahead of us – for example we try and maintain a quality body of raiders now that can also survive more trialling times for raiding guilds on ED. Relying on a small group of core raiders, like several guilds on alliance side can do, is not an option for us.

Which hard mode so far has taken the most total hours to learn and defeat and which have you found the most fun to learn?

Firefighter and Yogg-Saron hard modes have taken us the most time to master and are also amongst the most fun ones, but we’re still working on Anub’arak trying to get the last phase done. We have an excellent healing roster though, so I am confident my boys and gurls will get the job done.

So far are you guys satisfied with the endgame that you have played through? How would you rate it against the pre-WOTLK endgame?

Like we learn how to do certain things, I think Blizzard does just as well.

Ulduar is an exceptionally well designed raid instance, with the addition of having hard modes for different difficulty settings it’s almost impossible to go back in time and compare it to pre-Wotlk content – also nostalgia plays a big factor in looking back.

TOTC sadly has felt too much like a “filler”, although the encounters itself are not bad in design at all, it just doesn’t have “that feel” to it. I sure have high expectations for ICC though, can’t wait to start cracking at the heroic version!

How do you feel about the gated progression we have seen with both Sunwell but more recently with TOTC and very shortly Icecrown Citadel, is a good or bad thing and why?

Hmm, well I like the principal of having to unlock the heroic mode. For the 1st wing in ICC they’re using a 28 day unlock period, but that’s just due to the holidays that are coming, if they stick to a week after that, then I don’t see any problems with it in them extending the content a little bit. Until I run into any possible disadvantages it may have for us as a guild I’m indifferent about it I guess.

I read Shell’s soapbox article on your blog – I don’t particularly agree with her view that it can create more rivals for progression and more competition. I think it will only, at best, create the illusion of there being more rivals, specifically for Emerald Dream the heroic mode of ICC will tear the guilds and progress apart and gating will have very little influence on the whole.

Lastly for this bit, how does it feel to be the leading Horde guild on Emerald Dream and what aspirations do you have for the future?

Oh it feels good, I’m very proud of my team and my guildies for being where we are for as long as we have been. And we’re not done yet, we have been working on restructuring our raid force since before the summer and it’s close to being done and ready just when ICC is here. We’ll be looking to really represent horde side raiding in full in ICC heroic progress.

Our raiding goal for the coming year is to become the 2nd raiding guild on Emerald Dream after Bridgeburners, we are just not in a place yet where we can compete with them, but they can be sure we will take aim once we are getting them in our sights of course.

If we can establish that I think we can be even more proud of what we have achieved for a raiding guild from such a small community.

The fun stuff!

Many people may not realise you are a lovely girlie, both myself and Shell share this trait with you but of less hardcore guilds. How do you think this reflects on your guild leadership? Are there, in your experience, pros and cons of being a female GM of a hardcore raiding guild?

This would be a good question to ask my guildies I think – they could probably answer it better than I can, but I’ll give it a go!

I’m not sure there’s things you can really call pros or cons, but especially in the beginning I have pressured myself to be the best I can be at my class. Be it my old main warlock or now, for quite some time, as a paladin just to make sure I got the respect of the mostly male community. If you have the respect, you can get things done.

In the end I think it’s more your personality that defines you in regards to leading a guild than your gender.

I see you’re sporty a shiny legendary item, most of us get at least a little bit excited from a new epic… but a legendary… wow. How did it feel throwing the pieces at Yoggy and receiving it and more importantly how was it decided that it was to be you to wield it?

Of course getting a new cutting edge item is nice, but for me the real feeling came through my guildies thinking I should be the one to wield the mace.

We as management had put some ideas forward on how to select the person getting the mace, we posted that on our forum and let guildies respond to it and share their views. I myself stayed out of the whole thing as it made me highly uncomfortable, but I can tell you that reading some of the forum posts and getting tells from guildies was a truly heart warming experience, more so than getting the actual item itself.

You have a number of larger than life characters in Omen (I gather this from your message boards!) Its there any one person that sticks out in your mind for this and why?

I could never single out any one person, we just have so many great people in guild that influence all aspects of our guild on a daily basis. Forcing to name one would not be fair to others. I do try and make it my job to make sure everyone knows they’re appreciated for who they are and for what they do, in fact, let me take this opportunity to thank all my Omen-ers now – Guys and gals we could not do this without you!

When your not raiding what do you and your guildies get up to? Do you spit roast Gnomes for example?

I’m a self-confessed achievement junkie, so I spend a lot of time outside raiding getting as many of them done as I possibly can. Other than that I love to PvP in arena and BG’s.

And while on this topic – Fiver, if you’re reading this, stop hiding behind your zillion smelly friends in WG and come forward so I can smash you in da fais!

Have you ever played Alliance? and can you tell me why you picked a female Blood Elf Paladin for your main?

I managed to level a paladin to 53 on alliance side, but was much more taken by horde side which made me focus there and I have never regret that for 1 second.

Why a female belf paladin…well, funny story…for some…I actually played a male belf paladin named Ucuri, but I was so fed up with the character in voice, animations and graphical displays that I rerolled female belf last year, of course this meant I had to do EVERYTHING over again, rep grinding, quests, achievements etc which has taken me looooaaaaads of time…and then Blizzard introduced… gender changes… much to the amusement of my fellow guildies I might add. I still get teased with this now and I even suspect someone telling you this and suggesting you ask me this question /shakes fist.

If in real life you could have one ability from any class, what would it be, and how would you use it?

I’d have to say Hammer of Justice – cause some people really need to wake the f*ck up!

Where do your guildies come from and do you ever meet up in real life for beers (I’m going to ask this question until I get a bloody invite!)

All over the place! We have quite a few Dutch people here, but also a lot of English, Greek and Scandinavian based people. Slovenia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Poland all countries represented in Omen – I’m sure I am still forgetting some now.

We’ve not had an official get together yet, although I know some people met each other in real life, but if we do set such a thing up you’re more than welcome to come along for some drinks.

Just be sure you have something with you to smack Althfo with – you are warned.

Finally Darcuri, thank you for agreeing to take part in my mini grilling, is there anything you would like to add for the players on Emerald Dream.

It was my pleasure entirely, thanks for selecting me for your interview and preparing such nice questions.

My message to the players of Emerald Dream – let’s restore some balance!

Horde side guilds need YOU!
FOR THE HORDE!!!

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