Don't forget to put in a request to join the Vigilant Addiction group on Facebook! Just do a search for us and, BLAM, there we are.

Not only is it the end of the year but it's also the time where poor StrikeS gets charged for the website hosting, domain hosting and Vent server! (Rotates every 6 months)

I'd appreciate some Holiday Cheer from VA Members if you can visit the front page of the website and click on the PayPal Donation button! Trust me.. anything helps!

If you've ever been Enlisted or a Member of VA then you probably have gotten an email or PM (maybe both!) from us here at Vigilant Addiction. We wanted to give everyone a chance to come take a look at the Aura System and see what it's all about.

The Aura System is something that we use as Founders/Officer to see who's available for promotions in the Ranks of VA in-game and out. One of our rule sets is that we want everyone to be active; that includes just lurking around on the forums if you're not gaming with us. As a Member of VA you will never be removed from our Ranks unless requested; so you'll always have a community to game with! VA normally always has a chapter in the big title games and there's a good chance that we're playing the game that you want to!

All you need to do to keep up a good clean status in VA is visit the forum once a week; take a look around and if you want to increase your "Aura" then just pop down a post or two here and there; you'll start to see your points creep up! What good is this system for you ask? Let me tell you!

As stated before it lets us track our Enlisted members so we can see who's gone the way of the ghost and just disappeared. This way we can keep our roster as clean as possible and not have 'bogus' numbers sitting out there. It also helps us send out messages to people that haven't been around for awhile. We do like to keep up with everyone that's come through our doors here at VA and this lets us do that!

Also, check out these upcoming games that VA will be playing:

Aion

Champions Online

...and more as they release!

In Warhammer Online, Vigilant Addiction is a laid-back, close-knit community of skilled gamers who play WAR to have fun. We are, at heart, a casual scenario and dungeon guild which values individual freedom and self-determination. In keeping with the spirit of our guild, we adopt few rules and have democratic rather than authoritarian leadership in which all voices are equal. We have agreements between friends, not compulsion. In battle, we are smart enough to listen to the most sensible voice at the time, which can belong to any member. All are free to talk since we are mature enough to know when to speak and when to listen. Our renowned success in scenarios and occasionally ORVR is a testament to how good gameplay and good teamwork flourishes in an environment of freedom and lack of restrictions.

So I guess its time I write some gibberish about myself! I'm Jeff, I live in Minnesota and have been here all of my life. I'm 24, soon to be 25 years old. I am currently unemployed, which the chicks absolutely love. I'm a bit (incredibly) random, sometimes sarcastic but not too often. I suppose its time for my gaming history. I'll try to keep it short!

My very first MMORPG was Everquest, I'm not entirely sure when I started playing but it was soon after launch as there weren't any 50s yet. I still remember what got me interested in EQ.. I use to play Quake 2 competitively, and one day when I was sparring with some people, 2 of them were talking about some stuff like "I found a place where you can buy some leather gear really cheap" and I asked them what they were talking about and they told me it was EQ and that it was really fun, that sold it for me. I still remember the giddy feelings booting up into Everquest, no game since has given me those feelings. I use to fake being sick so I could stay home and play Everquest for like 16 hours straight. Yay fun!

My time with Everquest was an interesting one, I quit the game probably 10 times. The first time was about a week after I started due to the fact that I was on AOL with a 56K modem, sporting a solid 2000 ping. I pleaded with my parents to switch to another ISP which I can't remember their name, and after that the game was tolerable. Anyway, I played mainly on Tunare where I leveled a High Elf Paladin up to 65. I personally enjoyed Planes of Power! I then switched servers to Bristlebane to play with my brother as a Erudite Enchanter, raiding with Club Fu, one of higher end guilds of Everquest. I believe the expansion was Gates of Discord, or maybe it was the one after, I just remember zones like Txevu and such is when I got extremely bored with the game and I quit right before another expansion came out and I haven't been back since, except for when the progression server launched. That was fun for a bit!

Oh jeez it’s already forming to be a massive post. I'm sorry everyone

All the while, in between quitting Everquest I played a not so popular game called Anarchy Online which is my 2nd favorite MMORPG made by the infamous Funcom. I played on Rubi-Ka 1, as an Opifex Fixxer, which I got up to I believe around level 150. Never managed to get any of that Matrix Armor . I then rolled an Atrox Enforcer and I played him up to about level 175 I believe, out in the Shadowlands, grinding and grinding and grinding off the same mob type (the big rock guys) for like 100 levels. Not fun. One of the things I loved about AO was the Implants system. You had to plan out everything ahead of time, get proper buffs, put on your Med suit, and pray that you had planned everything out right to get your Implants in and then into your beefy new gear that you probably just got. Oh and who can forget the Yalmahas I’m pretty sure AO has the first Flying Mounts in any MMO!

I tried DAoC when it launched, I had it pre-ordered and all, and I just couldn’t get into it. I tried going back to it a few times but it just never was able to draw me in. I didn’t like the setting or scenery I guess. I hated how you couldn’t cast if any mob was hitting you, and I really hated how the buffs faded when people sat down to rest, or left the zone, so opposite of Everquest.

I then tried Ultima Online as a friend recommended it to me. I could not get into this game either. I spent most of my time mining the sides of mountains and smelting. YAY!

Next up is Everquest 2, ah yes, good/bad memories with this one. I played as a Wood Elf Ranger. I met these fuckers here! The story of how I met these guys.. I was with some crappy group going into that cave in the middle of Antonica with all of the gnolls and such. I guess we got a bit over our heads in gnolls and I ended up dying a few times and most of the group survived and just left the cave and went on their own ways. That made me really pissed off because you had to go back and get your spirit shards or else you suffered stat penalties. So, I did a /who and checked for some higher levels. I believe the dude I talked with was Tucker but it could have been Tfactor.. I can’t remember now. Either way these guys went out of their way to come help me get my corpse back and I joined their guild ‘Fallen Ascension’ at the time, and have been here since. We blazed our way to 50, I think most of us were the first level 50’s of our classes on Najena. Too bad the game was incomplete like all MMO’s that come out now 

WoW, good old WoW. WoW never gave me those awesome feelings I get with games I absolutely love, but I still enjoy it a lot. It’s simple, easy to play and is somewhat fast paced. I started WoW alone, played a Human Warrior up to level 60 and quit. The guys at VA started playing on some server which I can’t remember and I joined them there and I quit at like level 20 or so. We started up again about a year later on Drak’Thul where I have 3 level 70’s now. We didn’t have a lot of people so we joined up with a larger guild. “Debauchery Inc” Oh Helvorkian.. that son of a bitch. We ended up raiding MC a bunch, and I got my Shaman a good bit of his T1, everything but the legs actually, they only dropped twice during my probably 50 odd times through MC. Great drop rate! Most of the VA crew got disgruntled with the guild we were in and quit, I kept playing and went on to raid in TBC as well. Didn’t manage to get to Black Temple but we got close. Downed every boss in Serpent Shrine but Vashj *sp* and Kael’Thalas in The Eye. I’m now playing WoW on Nathrezim with my girlfriend, and am pretty excited for Wrath of the Lich King.

After WoW came SWG which I played with these guys, not much to say here. I enjoyed playing as a Commando/Bounty Hunter using Flamethrowers and Rocketlaunchers, I didn’t see anyone else using those kinds of weapons so I felt unique. I never got to hunt any Jedi though, that could have been fun. I really, really enjoyed the space combat, though I beat all of the Empire missions within a week. That’s the end of my SWG story; I only played it for about a month.


After SWG with VA came Vanguard, which I couldn’t get into. I was really excited about this as it was made by the guy who did Everquest which I love so much, so I’m not sure why I didn’t/don’t like it at all. NEXT!

After Vanguard was Age of Conan and we all know how that went. NEXT AGAIN!

Oh it is WAR time now. Well, in a year or so, hopefully I’ll still be playing this and have a lot more to write. But for now, you aren’t getting shit! See you all in game!

My MMO history isn’t as long as Froren’s but I’ve been in it for a while as well.

My first experience with an ORPG would be Phantasy Star Online. It wasn’t a full MMO but it was still a lot of fun and I had a host of characters and ran a pretty successful guild called Ancient Symphony. Starting around sometime in the first semester of Junior year of high school I met Froren and he introduced me to DAoC and MMOin in general. After some craziness of xmas I ended up starting with a Hibernia Eldritch. Got him to around 15-20 I don’t remember exactly and then Fro decided to go back and playing Midgard again. So I rerolled a norsemen thane named Callak. We played for a while and I ended up playing alb for a bit :blech: After this Final Fantasy 10 and 11 came out after that so I was back on my JPRG kick and took a hiatus.

I came back right around the time EQ2 and WoW were due out and seeing as I couldn’t afford a high end computer to play EQ2 I stuck with WoW. My first character was a Night Elf rogue, who upon entering the game I immediately deleted seeing the other 5.509403 billion night elf rogues named Sephiroth, Separoth, and other shit like that. I rolled a NE hunter and got her to 55 which was pretty awesome until I got to 55 and realized I hate ranged classes. So after a bit of time I finally settled on a human paladin and thus began the love obsession with Paladins. She was my first 60 and I joined a guild that was on Aq40 when I joined. I didn’t do to much raiding then but I did get to see MC and BWL and eventually part of Naxx. My original account got hacked and so I ended up losing that account which blew ass but I ended up getting a new account and played yet another paladin. Guild Wars came out and that was a crap, I got a 20 elementalist and it was ok, but again crap. Off to college and back to DAoC. I spent about 4 months playing but this was when ToA was out and spending hours upon hours farming to unlock relics was annoying as fuck and a really bad gimmick. So again back to WoW.

Around this time VA was getting ready for some game I don’t really remember but I didn’t play it. But I hate been recruiting people for them so I was given on officer position because of it. So fast forward a bit and I had a bitchin ass computer and lots of free time on my hands. So I really go into WoW again and was living with Froren and Nuleren and Vanguard was coming out. Like Froren I loved Vanguard and still do. The world is massive and absolutely gorgeous. I started with a Bard and got her to 20, and had to quit due to work and school performance getting fucked up. I came back a few months later after everyone had quit and got a shaman to 22 and loved it. But at that time VA was playing WoW and I played with them for a bit, but couldn’t really raid so I just PvPed a lot with my shaman. BC came out and so I finally got to play a BE pally and rocked it. Got to 70 and raided for about year and a half. I have a tier 5/6 pally with experience up to and downed Illidian and have as of recently got into Lich King beta(which actually makes WoW enjoyable again). Of course I played AoC and liked it, but my fiancé came home from Japan and so like most of the founders quit because of lack of content and not being bored anymore.

I generally am a healer class, mainly off healing or in WoW’s case the main tank healer. I would consider myself a good healer and definitely know my class whenever I play them.

So months ago we had talked about making a post like this and I think the ventrilo meeting last night has sparked it into fruition. So I'll start it up and other founders can add.


My real name is Thomas and I'm 24 years old and I grew up in North Carolina and have recently moved to Colorado where I'm working on obtaining my Masters in Fine Arts in Studio Art as well as teaching a class of undergrads.

I started with MMO's probably with a game by Sierra called The Realm. I got a free invitation to the game in a Sierra Adventure game that I had bought so that was my first foray into the online world. Shortly thereafter I heard about Ultima Online and was avidly awaiting that. Since UO was in 1997, I was only 13/14 at the time and I remember buying the box to the game but my parents not allowing me to play it since I got terrible grades in school. Eventually I got to play it and fell in love with it. It's a hard choice for me to decide on my favorite MMO but Ultima Online is right up there. I really enjoyed the rush you got from open pvp with 'real' item loss. The dangerousness of the world was and is still really unparalleled in my opinion. Only EVE is able to come close to this. So I guess you could say that was my first PVP experiences as well. I did my fair share of PK'ing and PK'ing Pker's at the time and if you'd like me to tell you some stories about that I'd love to share.

While this was going on I was able to secure a spot in the last phase of the Everquest beta. I remember recieving the beta disk, which i still have somewhere locked away, and realizing that my computer did not have a 3d card. I had to go out and buy a Monster 3d video card so that I could play the beta. I created a Half Elf Ranger and killed bats and rats in Qeynos Hills till around level 7 before the game managed to release. Upon release I was on Tarew Marr server jumped around a lot, playing a halfling rogue to 20ish, a high elf mage to 20ish, a half elf ranger to 20ish before finally settling on a halfling druid. I got to 50 and went on tons of Fear/Hate raids (hate is my favorite). I stayed into Everquest until Planes of Power and since I was a druid, my teleporting income was halted and I was generally disgusted with the way the game was going. I loved the travel times and having people ask for SoW's and teleports, it was a great social dynamic. I have since gone back to Everquest probably a half dozen times and made clerics, necros, more druids, and most recently a bard. Everquest always has a special place in my heart and I'm very very excited about this everquest classic server that people are working on. http://www.eqclassic.org

I then moved on to the Dark Age of Camelot beta and was really interested in that. I did not realize the enormity of RvR in that game until later when I was able to get to 50 with a Norseman Warrior. I played on Bedevere server and started in a guild called The Red Hand. This is where I first met Strikes. He was a big advocate of Teamspeak even then (so his craziness about getting people on is not a new thing). I was one of the first to take Strikes up on the offer of joining his server and for a while we were often the only 2 on it because it was relatively uncomfortable for most people at the time. Strikes and I and a few others split off of that guild to create a more hardcore guild which we called Dark Legacy. After a while we got absorbed into a guild called Death's Roar where we stayed for quite a while. I really enjoyed that game, although I did not enjoy my tank roles after the new Frontiers went in. I went from being a great frontline stunner and defender of squishies to a ballista shooter. Trials of Atlantis and new frontiers ruined that game (but really it started with the inclusion of the unbalanced realm abilities). So we moved on.

During this time period we had heard about development of a Star Wars MMO by Verant, the makers of Everquest. Being an ENORMOUS Star Wars fan I was there. Strikes actually got an SWG beta and I never got one so he mailed me the disks after he had gotten a chance to try it out and we both started that game up at launch. I was an architect and he was a doctor. Being one of the first architects on our server, I was able to price set with other architects and we managed to gouge tons of money out of players for houses and guild halls, all the while moving with Strikes to wherever he could publicly charge combat players for healing in the 'hospital' i made him. I absolutely LOVE SWG. Had it not changed to the NGE, I would probably still be playing. It had, in my opinion, the best Skill System I had every seen, allowing for incredibly flexibiility with a character type. The space combat expansion added even more as my first every computer game was X-Wing and then TIE Fighter. Although the Jedi mechanic was flawed by creatin an alpha class, there were significant downsides to being a jedi and the bounty hunter/jedi mechanic was amazing. Never have I felt a rush so similar to that of UO except when hunting a jedi as a bounty hunter. AMAZING. Anyways, I'm also super pumped about the classic reversioning of that game as well: http://www.swgemu.com

Next was Everquest II. This was the first real iteration of Vigilant Addiction in the form of a guild we called Fallen Ascension. At this point it was myself, Strikes, Insindius/Azhreal and Nuleren who had formed this organization. We were pretty successful and popular in the beginning but after we rushed to 50 and realized there was no content the game quickly faded for us. During that time we did meet Sintrix though. Jolith has been a friend of mine since high school and has always been around throughout games, although sometimes he doesn't play particular ones. He had just been with VA for so long that he was made into a founder.

There was a stint in WoW I believe, but I did not play WoW until much later.

After EQ2 was Vanguard. Nuleren and I were super into this game prior to launch due to the fact that it was mainly from EQ developers and it was going to be the rebirth of the hardcore MMO. Well most of us know how that launch turned out, it was so damn buggy we just couldnt play past 35. Vigilant Addiction was around then as an organization and we had a good following and even attempted to take down a few mid level 'raid-ish' mobs. I love and still do love Vanguard very much, and if you've never given it a try, you definitely should. It's one of the few MMO's i can still pick back up. It has hands down themost incredible world and dungeons I have ever seen. And just today in fact they launched a new patch that I believe added a 'trial' for people to pick up for free. With Warhammer theres really no time, but after Warhammer dies down in a few months, everyone should definitely pick it back up. As Strikes mentioned the way the founders really operate is that one of us will kind of 'take control' of the guild in respective games that we're more excited about while Strikes and Insindius handle the 'paperwork' issues of website/forums/etc. So Vanguard was all my deal and Strikes didn't really like the game.

After Vamguard was a very brief stint in Tabula Rasa which Nuleren, Strikes, and I led. The game wasn't very deep so we didn't last very long but we had a nice sized guild.

After TR for me was Pirates of the Burning Sea. I loved my experience in Pirates of the Burning Seas and if you have never played you owe it to yourself to try it. Not in regards to server success, but in terms of guild unity and experience I think VA was incredibly successful in Pirates. Nuleren and I lead this split off of VA, which we called La Federation, since we were part of the French nation. Due to our very small server, there were only a few other french guilds and we managed to absorb or dwarf most of them so in the end we became pretty much the only guild on the french side on our server. This meant that Nuleren and I practically led an entire nation of people (roughly 150) into pvp, although never that many at once. While we couldn't manage to win that often in the large scale port battles in the game we were feared for our skill at 6v6 and we took great pride in our ability to crush everyone. Shwigetty can talk about this more as he was a part of that steamroll . The servers eventually merged to create more pvp and we were no longer the largest guild on the server. I got burnt out from the game because it basically became a job for Nul and I. We were on all the time and it drained me. So i took this opportunity to take a break from Pirates. Although from my understanding our guild has had a resurgence and is still kicking and is one of the top guilds, so I have great pride in the community and experience that I helped build in that game.

Next was Age of Conan. I was really excited about this game and after getting strikes and others into it we were all ready. I got to 50 and realized how little content and how buggy the game was and well I quit, although most of you know the guild kept trucking with Strikes until everyone else saw the light as well .

So here we are with Warhammer. I was not that excited about the game a few weeks ago but now I'm ready for launch with my White Lion. Unlike Strikes, I'm not the beta type. I enjoy getting to try the game out for the first few levels but I'd much rather wait till release when shit matters, so that's why you havent seen me around the game. As for my activity on the forums, I'm not terribly huge into forums. Although you don't notice that I do read most of the posts, I just don't reply. Warhammer is Strikes' ballgame and I was so burnt out from Pirates I just wanted to lay low for a while and not deal with guilds, plus I've been moving across country and starting school back up. Whether I'll take a more active leadership role in Warhammer is yet to be seen based on my time constraints.


All that being said I am very much looking forward to meeting and grouping with new faces and if you'd like to chat with me more about anything I'm always open (and i'm much more open-minded than most other founders, being an artist and all ). I wasn't able to secure a CE, so I'll be on Monday evening after some classes. WAAAAGHH!

That is all.

Vigilant Addiction has turned 9 years old!

...wow. NINE years. Where did the time go? Oh ya...

EQ, DAoC, Planetside, EQ2, WoW, Battlefield 2, TF2, Battlefield 2142.... oh FFS I can just list every Online Multi-player game for the PC.

Congrats to the following people for passing into membership!

Kalaamus
Bleuropa (Lace)