Guild:Freedoms choice (Greymane US)

= Quick Info =

= The Mission =

Freedom's Choice is now similar to what it once was: A very small guild consisting of a few active members who prefer to play in peace most of the time. Stillgar was the last known GM.

= History =

This guild has been around for a long time, more or less since the inception of the game. The original founding GM was Sev. None of the other founding members stayed long, but Sev held on with a desire to form a guild of friends that loved to play together. After a time, a core of people developed, consisting of Arch, Runa, Tren, Con, Slake, Gabe, Mel, Who, Rah, Red, Mija, Mijito, and a few others, most of which were friends in Real Life. The current GM, Ham, joined while this core was still the majority of the guild, around 7 months before The Burning Crusade.

Slowly but surely, we grew powerful enough to start assaulting the level 60 instances like Strat and Scholo, often having exactly 5 levels 60's available at all. It stayed this way for a time, growing very slowly, until shortly before the expansion was released, we ran our first almost-entirely (brought in 1 external player) guild UBRS run. Downing the entire zone on the first attempt, this was a huge achievement for our small guild, and a ton of fun for all involved too!

While I measure our growth in instances, we were also growing in our core and our general size. Shortly after the expansion, there was a boom in membership. No one is quite sure what caused it, but in the course of a couple months we grew from around 90 members, including alts and banks, to 320 members! We were happy to have them, but it invariably lead to conflict and hard feelings, and eventually to a change in leadership from Arch and Runa to Ham and Who.

We had people join from everywhere... A merger with a guild that was going under, called Blood-Stained Hands, people leaving high-end raiding guilds like Excusia and Seraph, people inviting RL friends and family. We have entire families in the guild now, many couples, kids as young as 8 or 9, and folks so old you don't ask how old they are :P It's all one big family.

With the population boom also came talk of real end-game progression. So, attempting to maintain the environment the guild was made to be, we began raiding ZG and AQ20 to get a feel for large-group dynamics, and to have fun kicking the crap out of the old-world bosses :P We recently started Karazhan, but with more people available then positions available, especially with our general lack of healers and tanks and large amount of DPS, tempers grew hot and conflict arose. This lead to a guild falling-out that threatened to split us. Harsh words were said and the leadership was passed on, but we prevailed. Many members were lost to a new "get away from the drama" guild called Runa's Army, but friendships were maintained.

Things went "smoothly" for a while, as we steadily progressed into Karazhan. Eventually, talks began with the GM's of other guilds that were in a similar situation of progressing in Karazhan, but having little to no hope of entering a 25-man instance. After many talks and debates, it was decided that Freedom's Choice would merge with Asino Di Scosa to form a new guild capable of raiding all content. This new guild would be called Bastion. In the long run, this has proved a great move. The officerships were merged and, after initial misgivings, most members began to forget their different beginnings and think of themselves as Bastion.

Ham passed on the GM-ship of Freedom's Choice to long-time member Stillgar, who was not interested in raiding or joining the new guild. At that time, FC was, in a sense, back to it's roots with very few active members and those the casual type that like to chat and group occasionally but mostly play in peace.

Many of the members of Runa's Army have joined up with old friends in Bastion, bolstering the guild more.

= Progress =

As of December 2006, we are working towards getting the core members their tier 0 gear, consistantly running instances such as Scholomance and Stratholm. Recently, there has been a boom in new members, most of them at low levels, but could eventually propel us into end-game content, especially with the upcoming reduction in raid limits in The Burning Crusade.

December 30, 2006:

The guild's first UBRS run! Well... almost. The run was successful, with no complete wipes (2 were prevented). However, only 9 of the 10 people running were from the guild. These were: Arch, Con, Tren, Ham, Vall, Red, Who, Rox, and Kath. Thanks go to NetterBetter for completing our group! This run did, of course, include an ode to LEEEROOOOOOOOY JEEEEENNNKINNNNS, but only triggered part of the room and thus not a wipe. This run was a ton of fun and statements to the fact didn't end until everyone involved logged off many hours later!

January 31, 2007:

Congratulations to Kath for being the first guildy to level 70!

June 2007:

After finally completing the attunement quests for enough members, we stormed Karazhan first boss Nightmare/Attune the Huntsman. We took him down on our third try and looted some awesome tanking bracers for Toby and a DPS neck for Gaur. Toby also got some BoE epic tanking boots from trash mobs during an earlier, unofficial run that didn't make it to Attune.

May 2008:

This page has obviously been neglected for some time... FC was eventually able to down all bosses in Karazhan except Nightbane and Netherspite before merging with Asino Di Scosa to become Bastion. Bastion has since cleared Kara, Gruul's Lair, Mag, and the first few bosses in SSC and TK.

Progression in OL is monitored via a thread in our now unused forums here.

If you wish to see Bastion's progress, you can check it out at their forums

= Guild Banks, Resources, and Other Stuff =

None of the previous information in this section is relevant after the merge with Asino Di Scosa to form Bastion.

= Recruiting =

This guild is no longer recruiting.