I won’t say it is the end, but as Kali posted on the Set AoC forums, it is time for many in Pestilence to move on either in Age of Conan or elsewhere. With factors such as technical issues, new MMO’s, burnout, poor server performance, et al., raid attendance has been an issue as of late. We no longer have the active force to continue raiding as a result. The guild itself will not be dissolved nor will the web site or Ventrilo be shut down, however Ventrilo will not be renewed. Current and previous members are welcome to continue to post on the forums or get on Ventrilo to hang out and discuss things. The bot will continue to operate as long as I have a subscription as well, so anyone using it for AA timers may continue.

I want to thank everyone, past and present, who has been a part of the guild for their time, dedication and friendship over the nearly four years we have spent raiding in Age of Conan. Without the effort and hard work put in by you we could not have accomplished the feats we did all while maintaining a casual policy towards raiding. Also, thank you to those non guild members who would show up over the years to help fill our raids when our numbers were low. We met a lot of great people outside of the guild that way.

I created Pestilence along with Kali on the first day of early access on May 17, 2008. I made sure to rush to level 20 that day just to be able to do this. My initial thought was to just create a guild that we and our friends could join to hang out in and level up together. I thought we would eventually all go to some already established guild for raiding later on, but as it turned out we became the established guild. We ended up having an awesome run at raiding and playing through the content of Age of Conan.

A small reminder of just some of what we accomplished over the years:

• Tier 1 raiding completed
• Finished all raids in one night and started BRC wing 1 when most guilds could not complete Tier 1
• Killed bosses before the many nerfs they received
• Killed Kylikki the correct, harder way as was originally intended
• Tier 2 raiding
• Finished all raids in one night
• Crafted Ibis weapons
• Killed bosses before many nerfs
• Tier 3 raiding
• Killed all bosses in one night with no wipes
• Never gave up even if progress stagnated on some bosses
• Khitai Godslayers all successfully finished
• Guild City totally finished
• Guild renown level 20
• Achieved rank 1 for guilds on Set
• Held battle keeps multiple times
• Never resorted to exploiting to complete an encounter
• Always came up with our own boss strategies instead of seeking outside help

As mentioned previously many current members are choosing to move on to other guilds in Age of Conan while some are leaving for other games. While I am not personally endorsing any guild or game as an official location for Pestilence members to migrate there are a few that I see come up. Many members are moving to Furious or Prophets, listed alphabetically and not an indication of preference, guilds in Age of Conan. The one game I mainly see mentioned is Star Wars: The Old Republic. More information is in various forum posts for those interested.

I want to call out some people specifically for various reasons. Most recently I just want to say thanks to Megladon for trying to keep things running as well as possible and stepping up to lead raids in spite of the poor turn outs. Not an easy task to do by any stretch of the imagination. Next I want to thank a list of people who I can say were around more often than not over the years. These people have attended over 200 main raids during the time I was tracking: Agra, Apollyon (yes I am thanking myself), Feisty, Caedamon, Kali, Nytteblade, Roxxana, Somber, Villirad, Zoltanaz. It is quite possible I missed some people, so I apologize if I did. Lastly I want to give another special thanks to Kali who co led the guild, led raids, helped with the web site and just in general kept things running smoothly. Without her help we would not have achieved the success in raiding that we did.

I want to close out this post on a more personal level I guess you could say. As I mentioned before I did not really plan on leading a raiding guild when I created Pestilence (Hell as it was known in those early days on Dagoth before we did a name change to start focusing on raiding and recruiting). Kali and I essentially worked out a system where she would be the face of the guild, lead raids and talk to people, and I would be more in the background and handle some pvp aspects. This worked out really well because, let’s face it, no one wants to listen to me tell them what to do when they could have Kali doing it instead. That being said, I have been mostly in the background doing administration, bot implementation and site maintenance, but always involved in bigger decisions. Mainly in game I would show up and do my damage. Even so, I just personally want to say it has been a privilege to lead all of the great players we have had in Pestilence over the years. I am not technically leaving the game, but will be fairly inactive most likely due to work, hockey, etc. That being said, you never know when I may happen to appear in a raid out of nowhere. I wish everyone the best in their future endeavors, and don’t hesitate to contact me (send me a forum pm if you need the info) in the future.

–Apollyon, Chaos-lord