Server:Dragonblight Europe/The Three Musketeers

=General= The Three Musketeers (T3M) were a raiding alliance between the guilds Most Wanted Postals, Resurrectable and The Revenants; all three of Dragonblight EU server. The primary purpose of the Alliance were to progress through the game in joint effort, whilst having as much fun as possible!

=History= The Three Musketeers started out in the early summer of 2005. Back then, the three guilds were SWE, Blue Moon and The Revenants. SWE and Blue Moon later went on to form Resurrectable, and Most Wanted Postals is a splinter of Blue Moon, so the people are the same, though the names have changed slightly.

The Three Musketeers was started with the sole goal of raiding, as the three separate guilds had neither the member-base or the activity needed in order to raid successfully. The conception of the idea came about as a result of dialogue between The Revenants Officers and Blue Moons leaders and officers, and an unofficial merge was declared around Mid-April of 2005, at that time the alliance was only known as BMSWEREV (the name Three Musketeers was coined by Phase, on the unofficial Dragonblight Forums), the then tentative alliance began to get to know each other with raids to the lesser level 60 instances such as Stratholme, Scholomance and UBRS.

During that time period on Dragonblight, Molten Core was only beginning to be cracked, there was only one raid group on the server which had the organization to attempt it, this was spearheaded by the guild Kindred (now known as Aternus) with the help of various other players (many of whom were from T3M's guilds).

As time passed, The Three Musketeers alliance grew and by late June decided it was ready to take on Molten Core as well. The first few raids were difficult, as none of the players had experience in the organizational issues posed by 40-man raids, help was gladly received from other guilds who at the time were all eager for a piece of the endgame action, however, we overcame the number problems quickly, and due to the experience and knowledge gained by members who had already raided with Kindred, and the high quality of players from the respective guilds, progress through Molten Core was swift, Onyxia was beaten too, and by early August Ragnaros was ready to be tackled.

During our progress through the first few Molten Cores, we had as yet no DKP system, and loot was distributed by rolling, this was changed when Chaspal decided to take the lead in coding our system, the template was borrowed from Kindreds, though it was a crude affair and a horrible attempt at Zero-Sum which wasn't, it relieved the problem of rolling, however, it also created the DKP inflation problems that the alliance is experiencing a year later.

Ragnaros, the firelord, took the alliance two weeks to master, and can be remember as one of the three musketeers finest moments. During our attempts on Ragnaros, Blackwing Lair was released, and after the firelord was down, this became the next target.

As with Molten Core, the start of Blackwing Lair was exceptionally bumpy, and this was a real testing point for the alliance, as the first Phase of Razorgore proved exceptionally difficult to master, however, in the end it was done, and a few days later, Vaelastrasz fell too. Broodlord Lashlayer, despite being dubbed "Lootlord" by other guilds, proved not so easy for our Alliance, which for some time struggled with 1-shotted tanks, even with health buffs, this could partly be attributed to server lag, but also gear, and that proved to be a stumbling block for a period of time. After Broodlord though, progress through the lair was extremely swift, and in mid-january 2006 the musketeers brought Nefarian down. The kill and hard work in order to defeat the final boss of Blackwing Lair was celebrated in a movie created by Lyara.

Somewhere during Blackwing Lair, a new DKP system was designed and implemented by Thaleb, Kell, Shevlyn and many other hard workers, and a new portal site and forums were brought up by Shevlyn and Death, who also provided the hosting.

Still, there was no rest for the raiders, as the alliance moved straight on to prepare for the upcoming Ahn'Qiraj. This involved gathering of Nature Resistance gear, mainly by way of killing the four Green Dragon world bosses that blizzard had introduced. At the point of finishing BWL, the only other guild actively preparing was Kindred (Aeternus), but that soon changed as more and more raiding forces brought Nefarien down, and competition for the dragons was fierce, however, the musketeers managed to get more than their fair share of kills by being organized and quick off the mark.

During the wait for Ahn'Qiraj, Blue Moon and SWE merged to form Resurrectable, originally, a merge for the whole alliance had been planned, but due to a majority vote for the opposite in The Revenants, the motion was not carried.

Finally, Ahn'Qiraj was here, and eager as always, the alliance dove straight in, foregoing the laggy opening event, and proceeded to clear the trash with some hilarious results (encountering an Obsidian Destroyer for the first time, anyone?), we made it finally to Skeram, also to wipe hilariously (huge mind-controlled gnomes!) and called it a night after a few "testing the water" tries.

Skarem fell in the next serious raid, and we charged along to kill The Three Bugs too, and progress was quick as usual until Princess Huhuran was reached. Though due to the fact that many raiders felt Ahn'Qiraj 40-man was an uninteresting instance, there was some tension hanging in the alliance due to overpopulation, and the fact that several of the raiders who had in the past contributed to BWL felt not the need to help with AQ, however was still invited on the BWL raids in order to get the items that they desired, leaving new people to fill their spots for the "wipe" raids.

Huhuran took the alliance some time to master, and after that, the Twin Emperors took even longer, by this time, the alliance was embroiled in people problems as a result of overpopulation, and also other problems such as the DKP system. This led to a lot of bickering, especially over the invitations of the raid, and finally it led to finger-pointing and accusations of the officers from The Revenants] and [[Guild:Resurrectable (Dragonblight EU)|Resurrectable favouring members of their own guilds when inviting for raids, this, coupled with increasing tensions between those officers regarding the interest of their own members, led to a fairly uncomfortable atmosphere during quite a few raids, and some fairly nasty incidents. During this period, Most Wanted Postals, a splinter guild of Blue Moon led by Mahina and Rokwylder, joined the alliance, and there were once again three guilds in the alliance (in order to justify the name "three musketeers" of course).

These repeated clashes eventually resulted in several meetings called by the officers of the alliance, in order to identify the various problems which the alliance was experiencing and to identify ways of solving it. After the meetings, several plans were put into effect, however, progress was still slow. By this time, the raids seemed to be very disorganized, and progress on C'Thun was non-existent, as people were demoralized, and attendance for tries on C'Thun was low. The pressure was very great on the officers to steer the alliance out of what appeared to be a slow collapse. This collapse was at first blamed on the World Cup, and then the summer (everyone needs to take holidays), but it was then apparent that this was just a denial of the truth, which was that the members of the alliance were losing motivation, and morale, and the will to raid, something had to be done.

Sometime in this period, Blizzard released Naxxramas, the new raid instance. Half-hearted attempts were made on the first few bosses, but no significant progress was seen.

This pressure led to the eventual acquittal of Death, an Alliance Officer who had been working hard for the alliance since October 2005, and the then GM of Resurrectable, he moved away from Dragonblight to play on another server, and Shevlyn took his place. This seemed to be yet another nail in the coffin as Death shut down access to the alliances web infrastructure. Luckily, he restored access to it and gave us assistance in moving it to another hosting solution. At this point, Mahina also began to get involved more in the decision making process, as guild leader of MWP, and things began to slowly take a turn for the better, at least on the administration side, as Mahina was deeply dedicated and definately knew her stuff, one could say she "whipped the administration into better shape". It was at this point though, ill-timed as it was, that Lyara (an Officer of The Revenants) had a holiday to China, this might not have been that significant if it weren't for the fact that Lyara had been deeply involved with the alliance and the running and administration of the raids, from its conception in 2005 to the present day. However, Aldassia stepped up from her role as Guild Officer in order to fill the role of Alliance Officer, and things continued to become better.

This culminated in the alliance taking C'thun to Phase 2, and then finally getting their teeth into Naxxramas with kills of Instructor Razuvious and Anub'Rhekan within 2 days of each other.

Sadly, after his great (but short) spell as Guild Master of Resurrectable, Shevlyn who will always be remembered, stepped down and handed his position over to Hildaa one of the main tanks and now Guild Master of Resurrectable.

After a promising return to form, with the killing of C'thun, things began to deteriorate again, as the alliance could not seem to repeat the feat successfully a second time. Many members began to get despondent, and this had a profound effect on the spirit and moral of the alliance, all of which were felt keenly by Aldassia, who had taken upon herself the task of motivating the alliance to succeed. Unfortunately, as her fervor and passion were not matched by others, as was shown by a month of no progress, canceled raids and general unhappiness, she had had enough, and made her exit from the Musketeers.

However, whether intentionally or not, this began a chain reaction which ignited the spirit and passion of the members once again, a great resurgence of the fire and fervor which was present in the old days, this fire carried the alliance on towards some of its most succesful raids in many months, and Aldassia, harangued and persuaded by many eager members, retook her place at the helm of a re-awoken T3M, Naxxramas bosses began to fall like flies, with Noth, Patchwerk, Grobbulus and Maexxna all down within 2 weeks, and the alliance poised to unleash its full fury on the rest of Naxxramas.

After successful raiding with many server firsts to show in BC, The Musketeers arrived at Black Temple with poise and fire. Sadly, the Raid Leading Squad across the three guilds got the "real life flue", and despite Zacker's heroic attempts to keep the raids together, The Three Musketeers put their raiding gear on the shelf.

Consequently and by a miracle, Most Wanted Postals quickly saw an influx of new members which now houses many of the old day members. The Postals still raid, though on a much smaller scale and can be found in the 10-man dungeons of Northrend

=Important Members=

Aldassia: Evul queen of The Revenants. Carries sharp pointy sticks which are rumoured to be daggers. The author has it on good authority that she once ate a gnome, then used the bones to gouge out the eyeballs of Tib, causing him to walk the path of light (or at least stagger along it) for many millenia.

Splinter: Lootwhore-gnome who is generally loved by all and wears a cute set of Netherwind pajamas.

Poag: Believed to be the offspring of one of the members of legendary 1980s band The Pogues and evil ninja-warlock Gogorian, Poag once kited Firemaw to Redridge Mountains, causing much hilarity and ruckus. He has also been credited with soloing such creatures as Hakkar, Chuck Norris, White Kitten and Arthas.

Turin: Unstoppable druid rumoured to have more hitpoints than Ragnaros and more dps than Xtravaganza (this is likely). When entering cat-form, Turin is believed to take on the characteristics of the rare-spawn Biqbad and become compelled to worship the God(s) of DPS-meters. Such fervent prayer is often answered with aggro, although the #1 slot is never reached. rumor has it, that Turin has been secretly seen dating Tib

Panther: Not to be confused with the Chinese variant (Lyara), Panther is an advanced healing bot, which spontaneously provides commentary, advice and amusing anecdotes. He is rumoured to be saving points in order to by a full set of Nemesis pyjamas, so that he can pretend he is a warlock.

Hildaa: Was once one of the main tanks for The Three Musketeers, aware and mobile, though recently has become some what of a DPS-Freak. He is now Guild Leader of Resurrectable and plays a major part in leading on some raids.

Zacker: Built like a brick wall. Zacker is rumoured to be immortal and often takes part in Player versus Player combat, as well as being a main tank for The Three Musketeers.

Chaspal: Guild Leader of The Revenants and has been around since the very start, carries around a fish, looted from Frank, that he claims can do a lot of damage and a weird sword he picked up from the corpse of Chromaggus. Chaspal is a born leader and knows how to motivate people, but often picks the wrong target and ends up tanking it.

Nuadia: The all knowing Pally (or so he likes to think), that loves to make "bad" jokes and make fun of people. He normally ends up making more fun of himself in the process! His favorite food also includes small Gnomes.

Death: Leveled a Night Elf rogue to 60, and then decided he actually liked gnomes more (the horror) and proceeded to level another rogue (gnome) to 60. Quickly worked his way up the hierarchy and became chief raid leader in early 2006. Famed for his drunken MC runs where he would be...err...drunk, and no bullshit straight-talking attitude, he piloted T3M until the end of August, where due to the pressures of the position and internal conflicts between officers he decided to quit and move to Twisting Nether, where he can be found today.

Aragornestel: Made his name by combining two other names, says it all really. Has been leading and co-leading T3M since early 2006. Is famed for his complete inability to get annoyed at anything, and also being reasonable at all times. Is rumoured to actually be a saint, and actually enjoys playing his paladin even though he has been doing it for over a year now, does not have any alts exceeding level 30. Is weird!

Lyara: Once co-founder of T3M and the leader of the alliance for about a year. Took the alliance through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, and most of Ahn'Qiraj. Left at an unfortunate time (when the alliance was troubled) to go back to China. Since returning has admitted he is now only a casual, having to do stuff in real life, whatever that is. Is actually a girl, despite what he says.

=Progress=