Samurai History

Tags: English

Samurai created on July of 2006 from Lykaios.

Lykaios / Lefteris have worked since 2000 in 2 of the biggest Gaming Communities in Greece (Gamenet, Gamecity / Filecity) and then founded gamers.gr which was bought 2 years afterwards from Germanos Group of Companies where he was appointed as Content Manager in the new company.
As he was already a player in various communities like Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, Quake and Battlefield through the gaming communities he worked and the gaming servers he created, he decided to create a guild in the world of Warcraft. Prior to this, he managed to play since the beta of the game on the US Servers, as a Dwarf Paladin (yes we know, bliax!!) and progress the Vanilla WoW till Nefarian and BWL

"That period was very valuable, as i learned what were the flaws of an international big guild and also managed to have an in depth view of the whole community from my various trips abroad to cover Gaming Events like E3 at Los Angeles, GDC at Germany, Tokyo Game Show at Japan or other countries as well like UK, Ireland, Italy, France, Cyprus, etc"

Samurai created as a solid Greek Guild, in a period where Greek Hardcore guilds were very few and a national guild was very difficult to succeed (ofc nowadays, with Paragon this is not an issue anymore and well done to the guys !!)

At first we played on Genjuros Server, (or we may say Greekjuros) during Vanilla WoW, up to Zul'Gurub and little Molten Core. Burning Crusade was released and we started playing as all at Karazhan Instance and started building again a raiding team. After 8-9 months on Genjuros, we decided to leave the server as the lag was very high and there was a general shortage on specific classes.At Genjuros except the Vanilla clearance of ZG and some kills at MC we managed to finish Karazhan.

We arrived on Twilight's Hammer where it was the center of Greek Guilds at that time with 3 big guilds making good progress like Order of Guldan, Circle of Nerzhul and Angels of Wrath. We continued building our Greek Guild with players and we advanced through all the instances that existed at that time (detailed kills info can be found in our Kills Section) up to Black Temple (pre-nerfed everything ofcourse).

We killed Illidan as 3rd Greek Guild (after 1 hour of the second one, Con - AOW were already defeated in progress terms since SSC) and we continued to SWP where we managed to top the first place among Greek Guilds, after our 1st Greek Kill on Brutallus.

At that time also, we managed to be the first one (and sole one till now) Greek guild that got a sponsorship agreement with Hassler & Miller, a computers & Electronics company in the Balcans and also Cannibal, the biggest Font Creators in Greece.
In the next months, we continued kill first in Greece bosses at Naxxramas (we were moved to Karazhan as the lag was again an enemy on TH), Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity and accomplished achievements that no other Greek Guild managed to do (and few International) like Immortal.

That period, while we were playing already for 3.5 years, we started an internal talk whether its good or not to continue play as hardcore we were playing at that time. (these 3.5 years passed with many months playing 7x7 and spend 10-12 hours per raid, numbers that except the Greek First position, gave us 250 ranking among guilds in World).
After some thought, Lykaios decided to stop raiding and his decision was followed by the main Raid Leader and officer of the Guild Vagouras. Lykaios thought that was not the right move to let the guild continue without them, and stopped raiding all together, kept the guild as inactive and said everyone to find a new guild.

"After 3.5 years of hardcore gaming, i thought that enough was...enough. A lot of the players were not ... students anymore, my work needed at that time more hours to spend to it and ok Greek are not Finnish to play like them. I believe trully that Finland and Greece are very different countries, i will analyse this further and with more details in the next months maybe, in a blog. We had 2 options at that time, either keep the guild with other players + raid leaders and have the opportunity for me to play in the guild as long as i want whenever i want and therefore have my loots, my epics and whatever i need and the other option to stop raiding for some time at least. I thought that leaving our child -> the guild, in other people hands at that time, was not the right thing to do, so i decided the second option was more right, and stopped everything at April 2009"

Many raiders stopped the game entirely, others joined other high end guilds or created their own.

On February 2010, we were back for a second try. Many people that played with us all these years agreed to join us and reform the guild on Executus Server. At that time, the server was a Medium Population Server, with 3 good alliance guilds and 4-5 Horde guilds, and we thought will be ideal for our come-back!

At first, the results showed that was the right server to start playing again, and managed to create a solid 10-man team (cleared it in Heroic Mode) and a good 25-man team (almost cleared everything in Heroic Mode, except Arthas). Cataclysm released in Decemember 2010 and we continued building our team, at first with 10-man instances, with further plans to go fully on 25-man instances.

The 10-man process was more than succesfull as we managed to kill everything on normal mode, second in the server and then started doing 10-man Heroic Modes, where we managed to go up to 3/13 before...the "fall".

THE "FALL", WHAT IS THAT? 

The "fall", resulted to stop the game, again...Lets analyse a bit what were the factors:

• In our logo, you can see that we have a tag that is writing: "Retired Harcore WoWers". In the past we played in a Hardcore way as we were young
  and it was pretty easy to devote only on the game itself. The years passed and most of the players that still playing with us, are above the age of 30.
  This means not so many time to devote in World of Warcraft and also other obligations to attend to. 
• The Server population went from Medium to Low and proved that our choice to start again in Executus...was wrong. Most of the guilds are still playing here are doing 10-man instances, which wasnt our goal, as we had many players from the past, that couldnt just hang on and wait for us. Wasnt ethical to do, so we can advance more in 10-man Heroic Mode. There wasnt a point in this really.
• As a result, we decided to press forward for 25-man instances, and in the same period we had many of the core team stopped the game entirely (it doesnt see to be their intention just to leave the guild, as they never played again since then) and with others we disagreed as they wanted to kick everyone and continue playing 10-man Heroic Mode. Yes, it crossed our minds, but in the end we didnt felt it was the right thing to do. 
• The Economical situation in Greece, were most of our members play from is getting worst day by day. Many people lost their jobs and things are not so ideal anymore to continue playing World of Warcraft and not care of whatever is happening around us.

"Its better to stop the game and not preserve the continuance of the guild, by kicking many members and stick to 10-man Heroic Mode?
To answer this, you have to understand that Samurai is a band of brothers, playing with most of the members, since 2006. All these years, we had the chance to get to know each other better, creating many gatherings all over Greece, spent even holidays together in Greek Islands and the bond between us, is very strong. It was for me so very much NOT ethical to think like that and kick "whoever is not equipped as we liked", just to kill some more bosses and advance in the game. 
The goal was to start playing 25-man and as this couldnt be achieved (after the loss of many people that either stopped the game as explained in the above or they choose to be 'mongols' as we say often in Greeece, and left the guild) the right choice was to stop the game. Before doing that, we searched other alternatives like merge with smaller guilds, change the officers team and myself included with people with more time to devote or even change servers, but at the moment all these options, didnt appear as valid ones for us.

The plan is to re-evaluate the situation in the coming months and decide to re-start in a new server, maybe from September again and forward. Dont stick on that though, as its not so sure at all. If we manage, you will surely see it in our news. Till then, we will keep our main site and forums just to communicate with old members, and organise gatherings. For now, the wolf is not in our hearts...is resting in the shadows"

And ... We are back!!

One more year passed. Many found the opportunity to have a full rest from raids, many other married (lol), became parents or met their unique love. Many things happened but on April 2012, Cerberos decided to return to World of Warcraft and slowly reform the guild. Where? To the server that our myth had begun...to Twilight's Hammer !!

"Its not just one year rest, as the last time we have returned wasnt so sucessfull for us, so its like we were 2 years away from the game. All this time, i had various talks with many people, friends of what plan we could follow if we ever wanted to return. There is an old saying in Greece, that when you make plans, god laughs but there is a master plan that we have in this return and we will follow it till the end. More details for it, i will analyse it to our Philosophy page"

So we returned on April 2012, cleared DS HC with one group and on Pandaria started raiding with 2 groups, following the master plan we have for the expansion. Things go smoothly till now, both groups have the same progress and we are constantly testing people and try to improve the quality. Till the time that these lines are being written (October 2012), we are focusing on that. 25-man Raid is absolutely a target, but only through the way we want to develop the guild. We shall see !