In a galaxy far, far away, after a long night of drinking vodka shots and playing Rock Band on Play Station 3, a guild was born. Grammatically incorrect, Deaths Desires (recently renamed Zergadins) was the brainchild of Quwell, Calgore and Pugna. At its start in August 2007 these intrepid founders had one focus in mind – RAID!!
Chapter 3 – The Burning Crusade: The Story Begins
Calgore, the Guild Master, was formally an Alliance player that rerolled Horde to play with Quwell. The two of them decided to play a Paladin and a Mage respectively. The knowledge that Calgore gained from being an officer in his former Alliance guild proved to be invaluable when running Deaths Desires. Like most communities, they began as a small group of tight knit individuals: Calgore, Quwell, Felonius, Pugna, Kankaro, Illslayou, Bxthra, Wiredshut and Strycnine. Over a short period of time the group flourished into one of the largest, most well known guilds on the Uther server. At their peak they had two 25 man raids and three separate 10 man raids running weekly, which included Karazhan, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. Even still, Deaths Desires hadn’t quite made it onto the elite list and was considered a fairly low end raiding guild.
As months passed, the tightly knit community became a thing of the past and somehow the guild lost its face. Eventually, Calgore grew tired and stressed out and decided to call it quits. After appointing a new Guild Master, DD found itself under a new regime but did not flourish as it had before. The community eventually fell apart, and the guild members were gradually absorbed into other groups. The final disband date was August 2008, exactly one year after the guild’s original formation date.
After a three month hiatus Calgore returned but with a new paladin this time. Under the name Panzer he recruited Pugna and Quwell to help begin the rebuild effort. Shortly after putting the DD tabard back on, the trio joined with players Dooj (Blarghe) and Kildara, which sparked the foundation of the new Deaths Desires. Wiredshut, a former co-founder of the original Death Desires, offered to help build a new website with Panzer and was instrumental in bringing what you see before you today! Blarghe and Kildara dragged a kicking and screaming Rumpbumper into the guild, and within a few months the fledgling Deaths Desires decided to start tackling raiding; their mark would be the 10 man Obsidian Sanctum. This endeavor turned into quite the nightmare as Panzer had never actually tanked a raid. June 29, 2009 marked the new Deaths Desires first raid kill, which also started the gallery section of the website.
After the first raid, things started to progress fairly quickly. With their success in Obsidian Sanctum they decided to take the handful of players they had and called in some help from the pug community to try to tackle Naxxramas (the first serious raid with multiple encounters). Within two months DD managed to have the instance cleared up to Sapphiron and the new recruits were starting to flow in. Things were looking very good for Deaths Desires.
It was around this time that Panzer was spamming Trade Chat for new recruits. His friendly ad caught the eye of a mage named Sarya. Over the course of several conversations with Sarya and her GM, Niles, he learned that her guild (Gear of War) was frustrated with the lack of raiding amongst their players. Panzer invited Sarya for several runs in their Saturday morning Naxx raid and she was quickly hooked by the guild’s welcoming and fun nature. She joined DD with the hopes that the rest of GoW would move players over. When that didn’t happen, she sadly left DD and returned to GoW, but had not forgotten them.
Then a new member named Palin joined. Palin was a paladin tank that for a time replaced Panzer as the guilds main tank. Panzer returned to playing Calgore to keep the guild moving. Palin brought more players in through server transfers and helped build Deaths Desires memberships resulting in less help being needed from the pugger community. They started work on Ulduar, and near the end of August 2009 had managed to down bosses up to and including Kologarn. This is when Trial of the Crusader was released.
The guild confidently strolled into the new instance expecting that their crack team of players would have no problems… but unfortunately they did. After many attempts at the Beasts of Northrend, they managed to take him down August 23, 2009. The second boss, Jaraxxus, proved to be completely undefeatable for the crew, and a lot of discouragement was seen throughout the guild. So much in fact, that their shinny new main tank Palin decided to take his crew of players and find a new home… which took away 1/3 of their raiding core… Deaths Desires was officially crippled.
Azylnne, a former Deaths Desires member back in the Burning Crusade days, offered the ragtag raiding crew a chance to join with her newly formed guild named Inconceivable. The demoralized Panzer decided for the best interest of the community that would be an offer he would accept. Every serious raider in Deaths Desires was moved over to the new guild and began raiding again, though Panzer never officially shut Deaths Desires down, which was good because within a month Panzer knew that this new guild was not a good fit and returned to the broken Deaths Desires to continue recruiting and building the guild back up.
This is when a message that would prove to be the revival of DD came to Panzer. The sojourning Sarya wanted to return with most of GoW in tow, bringing skilled players such as Hareynas, Shammypants, Mirion, Kenin, Mappy and many others with her. About this time, Undeadchade, who had nothing better to do also joined DD. This was one of the pivotal moments in Deaths Desires. They had their manpower back!
By the end of November 2009, Deaths Desires was beginning to regain itself again. ToC had been cleared, most of the players that went to Inconceivable had returned, and things were beginning to look healthy once more. Unfortunately Pugna, one of the founding members, decided to call it quits and return to school. (The impact throughout the guild was massive and his absence will always be felt.)
Chapter Four – Ice Crown Citadel: The Saga Continues
December 14, 2009 Ice Crown Citadel was introduced, and DD’s members were eager to take it down. After just a couple weeks inside, the raiders had managed to tear down the first wing of the new instance. This caught the attention of Grokk, a player that pugged in as a tank in Panzer’s stead. Grokk was a former member of Voodoo Posse, another guild of roughly the same size that had recently fallen apart. Grokk officially joined DD’s ranks, and with him followed many other recognizable players such as Twomoons, Kahuna, and Ruze. Now, with enough backing from its 50 odd members, Deaths Desires began to push multiple 10 man raiding groups lead by new members Grokk, Hareynas, and Shammypants. At this point, the guild was ready for anything that Blizzard could dish out! More new blood poured into the guild – raiders such as Serawk, Azhriaz, Roritor, Twomoons and Genobee, joined the ranks. Consequently, in February 2010 a 25 man group was formed and began mowing down ICC with their mark set on the Lich King himself.
Things were looking pretty good for Deaths Desires. By March 2010 the guild was successfully running three separate 10-man raids, plus a 25 man raid each week. Progress was very steady between all three groups. By pushing forward, all three teams managed to clear the first three wings of ICC by June 2010 and began work on the final bosses of the instance.
The Lich King proved to be quite a challenge to our fearless band. Under the now famous “”zerg it” strategy, Panzer rallied together some of our most accomplished raiders like, Kildara, Undeadchade, Shammypants, Hellwolf, Darkmuscles, Serawk and Kathya, and blazed the trail to the end game content for their fellow guildies. From that point, over long nights filled with copious amounts of alcohol (or caffeine if you were a lightweight), Panzer herded anyone desiring the final feather in their cap through ICC. In the end, almost everyone in the guild walked out of ICC to proudly strut around town with the coveted “Lich Slayer” title. By the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Deaths Desires had accomplished that which many of the Horde server had not: Deaths Desires rose to # 4 on the server for progression, guildies had their sweet sweet epix, and 20 lucky guildies became the owners of a Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher!
Chapter 5 – Cataclysm: Ensuing Insanity
Cataclysm began with an explosion of excitement and new content for all the players to love! Many hit the new level cap of 85 in a matter of days, with Fatalpastry being our first 85. Over the few months following Cataclysms release, new players such as Vasago, Sunimod, Zirp and Hownowcow joined the ranks and helped carry DD through what was proving to be a more unforgiving and grueling challenge than expected.
The first Cataclysm raid, Tol Barad – Argaloth, was run in December 2011. Immediately the new raid team saw how much of a steep curve there was going to be with the new content and Pànzer began to rethink his raiding strategy. Players were finding out that just running Heroic 5-man instances were quite a challenge; steep gear requirements looked to keep just about everyone who wasn’t a hard-core player out of the raiding experience. In February 2011 the first 25 man Cataclysm raid was run, and the group did manage to take down Halfus — the first boss in Bastion of Twilight. It took 2 hours and afterwards Panzer and the officers began to see that 25 man raids were going to be a bit of a challenge!
Our fearless leaders decided what this guild really needed (besides major brain surgery) was a second 10 man raid. Mappy and newcomer Hownowcow were asked to head this new group (aptly named Mappy Sux) to run alongside Panzer’s Team Zerg. Not to be outdone in the naming arena, a third group led by long time member Darkmuscles (under the name Fuzzymuscles) formed up the enterprising Team Sparkle Pony Adventure Squad (SPAS) and thus Cataclysm raiding had gone into full swing.
Progression and competition between the three groups was fun, fierce and all three competed to spin through as much of the content as they could. By May 2011 Team Zerg managed to down the final boss in Black Wing Descent bringing Deaths Desires back on top of the progression charts placing them at # 2 in the 10 man raid bracket! New life sparked in to Deaths Desires and progression on the heroic modes would serve to keep the group alive until the next content patch.
Deaths Desires history is that of most guilds; a lot of trial, error, success and failure. According to DD’s Guild Master Panzer, “What separates us from most Warcraft guilds is that we continue to evolve and grow no matter what comes our way – we don’t quit – and we are a community of enthusiasts and players from all ranges of skill who have learned successfully, through trial and error, to work together to accomplish common goals … and have a ton of fun while doing it”.