The Enclave
 | |
| Formation | 1998 |
|---|---|
| Founder | BuzzCutPsycho |
| Website | enclaveoilrig |
History
(The following was taken from The Enclave's now defunct forums)
[ 1998-2001 » Rainbow 6 ]
The Enclave was first established in 1998 as a Rainbow 6 gaming clan on MPLAYER. The founding members of the group were close friends outside of the gaming community. Together, they assembled a group capable of climbing to the top of 5v5 TDM tournaments. During their gaming tenure, The Enclave held multiple championship titles; both in Rainbow Six and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear after a transition in 1999. The style of game-play and use of tactics in the Rainbow Six Genre appealed to many members of The Enclave. The group enjoyed an indisputable dominance until 2001, when MPLAYER was closed down after being purchased by GameSpy. Due to the complete lack of competitive clan support offered by the GameSpy Arcade, The Enclave felt it necessary to move onto a new game.
[ 2001-2002 » Team Fortress Classic ]
After their complete subjugation of the Rainbow Six genre, and motivated by their disgust of MPLAYER's sellout to GameSpy Industries, The Enclave explored Team Fortress Classic as their next gaming challenge. However, The Enclave failed to achieve the instant success they had with the Rainbow Six property. After a few months, the decision was made to join CLQ in order to gain access to highly desirable competitive tournaments. The Enclave developed profound strategies for TFC's many maps: Well2, NML, CZ2 and others regularly played in the competitive scene. In addition to this, The Enclave was responsible for creating several of the most popular maps in TFC tournament history: the Wstland series (1, 2, 3 and 4) and the infamously self-titled "Enclave" map. The latter scenario was used by nearly every single league after the fall of the CLQ.
The pinnacle of The Enclave’s success in TFC was their victory in the 10v10 CLQ championship match against “DNoD”. Their group was the top tier clan from QTF and the former 2000 champions from CLQ. Many considered this the most controversial championship match of the CLQ as The Enclave prevailed on a map made by one of their members. After successfully defending their CLQ championship title for a year, many members began to suffer from severe burn out. The ranks eventually thinned and some former members were never heard from again. The lack of dedication and passion eventually lead to the Enclave becoming, according to many of its members, a shell of its former self. The clan was disbanded and thought to never return again.
[ 2003-2004 » PlanetSide ]
After The Enclave’s departure from TFC, the clan essentially became a glorified chat-room for the remaining TFC members. All that remained from their twenty man roster was the founder, his second in command, and three loyal followers. For a solid year The Enclave just jumped from game to game and played titles at random. No competitive level was sought and casual entertainment was the only goal. One night, during a Natural-Selection game, the second in command mentioned a new game coming out in 2003 that might interest the remnants of The Enclave: PlanetSide.
Their effect on PlanetSide became The Enclave’s irrefutable claim to MMO fame. The Enclave quickly became the most effective, yet controversial outfit in all of Emerald/Konried. The outfits’ reputation for simultaneously being brutally effective and culturally uncouth spread across multiple communities. Their legacy has been forever imprinted upon the remnants of the PlanetSide player base.
The Enclave pioneered and refined the most tried and true game-based tactics and strategies. Their methodology was unquestionably practical on both a global and planetary scale. In its prime, the outfit’s numbers swelled to over three-hundred, allowing them to coordinate the most effective combined arms operations in all of PlanetSide. Simply put, no other outfit was capable of duplicating their daunting effect upon the theater of battle.
Unfortunately, the introduction of Battle Frame Robotics (BFR’s) during the Aftershock expansion in October of 2004, coupled with a lack game development, attributed to developer neglect, lead The Enclave to decide it was time to move on to the "next big thing". Thankfully, they did not have to wait long.
[ 2004-2007 » World of Warcraft ]
World of Warcraft (WoW) was The Enclave’s first experience in MMORPGs. The Enclave initially played on Bleeding Hollow and later, migrated Mug’thol. During its early game play, The Enclave achieved numerous milestones: becoming the first guild to be formed on Bleeding Hollow and becoming the first Alliance guild to win a 40v40 AV on the server.
The Enclave focused almost exclusively on PvP. However, in less than a year, The Enclave realized that in order to compete in the game’s “endgame”, they had to partake in raid instances. The Enclave eventually moved on to raid encounters and became the first guild to enter and successfully clear content in Molten Core. Many members lost interest as a result of deviating from a PVP agenda, but the leadership pressed onward. The core of the guild was determined to make WoW a lasting campaign and refusing to surrender to apathy.
[ 2007-2008 » World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade ]
The Enclave continued with its WoW campaign as “The Burning Crusade” (TBC) expansion was released. The guild renewed their in-game commitment, and fortified it with a promise to not leave or burn out. Tragically, Bleeding Hollow was gutted as a realm due to multiple transfers and many guilds falling apart. While the majority of old members returning for TBC rolled new characters, many transferred from other servers to rejoin the guild on Tortheldrin. This turned out to be a fresh realm, set up during TBC expansion. The Enclave took the realm by storm and brought World PvP back to the game. Even though the server was massively Horde dominated, The Enclave succeeded in killing all faction bosses during prime time play; a feat that many claimed was impossible. True to form, The Enclave quickly became the leaders in both the PVP Arena system and PvE Raiding content. The latter was due to the guild being the only Alliance guild on the realm capable of doing Black Temple.
[ 2008-2010 » World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ]
After enjoying a year of complete dominance in TBC, The Enclave was looking forward to something new. WoW's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) was released and the highly anticipated expansion was hopefully slated to be the breath of fresh air that the guild, desperately needed. Unfortunately, Tortheldrin was suffering from the same malaise that struck Bleeding Hollow a generation ago. The Enclave decided that in order to enjoy WotLK to its fullest, they would need a new, more populated realm. The vision was to draw upon a larger pool of potential higher-quality recruits for the new content. The guild settled upon Andorhal. Progress and passion languished during this period of time verses the guild accomplishments during pre-TBC WoW and post-TBC WoW. This could mostly be attributed to the complete lack of PvP development as well as trivial PvE content that had very low levels of challenge. The game was becoming very boring very fast. It was recognized that after only one year of play, something drastic needed to happen in order for the guild to remain active in WoW. This all lead up to their final crusade in the World of Warcraft.
The Venture Co. was a RP-PVP realm on a better battle-group with larger player base. Additionally, the realm boasted a supposedly legendary World-PVP community and most importantly possessed a vastly disproportionate Horde to Alliance ratio. The real cornerstone of the server however was its community. Even though it was mostly unremarkable, it was the only place in the entirety of the World of Warcraft where you could find decent World-PVP. This campaign turned out to be The Enclave’s finest and for a solid year they dominated every Horde guild on the realm. The "Dread Horde" alliance was unquestionably destroyed. Horde guilds, that took years to build, were shattered in a fraction of that time. The only way to describe the end to this crusade was “The Enclave won.”
The server nearly became regulated, as their force dominated the Wintergrasp open PVP zone. The territory was held all day, every day, during prime-time hours, and on a server with half as many Alliance as Horde. True, there were a few exceptions to their totalitarian control. A handful of battles were lost out of hundreds, but they certainly never lost due to the effort of a single enemy guild; it was unsurprising. Enclave members never experience the shock of great success as victory is their tradition. Their political and military dominance of the realm was unquestioned, even by their most ignorant enemies. It was their finest year in WoW.
Unfortunately as time passed, it became clear that The Enclave’s agenda and goals for WoW did not mesh with the evolution of the game. They had essentially created a mini-game for themselves. Promises of rated battlegrounds, guild PVP objectives, and rewards beyond stupid and benign “achievement points” slowly transmogrified into outright lies. Finally, after a long and satisfying campaign on The Venture Co., The Enclave decided it was time to stop playing WoW and looked again towards a new frontier. This decision was destined to lead to a new chapter in their collective history.
[ 2011-2012 » RIFT ]
The Enclave set out to play a new MMO after the fall of WoW and RIFT was decided to be it. Despite not having high expectations, The Enclave went into RIFT in full force and it was not something that was expected. Many of our old World of WarCraft tactics were used to great success and our enemies came to fear us on their shards. Playing on the Guardian faction, The Enclave ensured that whatever shard we were on was completely dominate in both World PvP and Warfront PvP. Defiant raid rifts were attacked and camped daily, their PvP rifts shut down on every occasion, the Defiant city of Meridian was sacked and their leaders killed - A feat that no other Guardian guild in RIFT was able to accomplish. During our buildup to RIFT, The Enclave participated in about three months of BETA testing and six months of actual play. This brought RIFT to a total of nine months of organized guild operations, becoming our second longest played MMO in history right behind Warcraft and right in front of PlanetSide. Our PvP accomplishments can be found in various videos and for our PvE accomplishments, while not world firsts, were nothing to scoff at either.
Unfortunately due to a complete lack of PvP progress, content and direction, The Enclave decided that it was time to leave RIFT and begin playing Battlefield 3 to pass the time.
[ 2012-2013 » PlanetSide 2 ]
In November 2012, PlanetSide 2 was released and The Enclave stormed it in force. The Enclave's presence in the game grew quickly, much to the dismay of its enemies who were beaten on a regular basis. Playing on the most competitive server: Mattherson, the achievements in the game quickly racked up: The Enclave became the most effective large outfit on the server as accepted by both the players and recorded in the game's official stats. BuzzCutPsycho became the best PlanetSide 2 player in the world both in score and kills by a large mergin as recorded by the game's official ranking site. He also hosted the number one PlanetSide 2 Twitch stream (by viewer count) which enshrined The Enclave's fame within the game.
The Enclave was unique amongst PlanetSide outfits both for its organization and effectiveness, but also for how it achieved that. A strong command structure, led from the top by Buzz but backed up by strong squad leaders allowed members to experience large scale operations, but still with a small-scale TeamSpeak experience. Members were required to obtain certain certficiations and weaponry, much to the chargrin of the "unique" snowflakes in the PlanetSide community. Enclave troops marched into battle with TMG-50s (long range LMG), Strikers (all-purpose anti-vehicular weapon) and Flak Jackets (to protect from explosives that would otherwise be deployed against a large group of players). This alone was overwhelming for some, leading to calls for nerfs on whatever weaponry The Enclave was using at the time (due to its use en-masse). Combined with a general high talent of Enclave players, this led to utter domination of field fights, with enemies crumbling under suppressive fire. Upon closing the distance, The Enclave would then switch to shotguns (also a required weapon) to storm a tower, causing utter terror in the defenders who were cut down in the close quarter fighting. A choice of hard-hitting specialized weaponry was the strength of the outfit... backed up by Buzz's iron-will. This combination was not available to other outfits, and it showed.
While PlanetSide 2 was another high watermark for The Enclave, it was destined not to last. A number of poor decisions by the game developers began to weigh heavily upon the members' enjoyment of the game. Obvious balance issues, and the continued lack of meta-game beyond TDM 'farming' eventually took its toll. Despite the collective desire for the game to be great, it was accepted that this would not be the case for a long while, if ever. The Enclave decided to call it a day on a high and retired from the game. Buzz's farewall Twitch stream saw thousands of views, and most in the wider community empathized with the reasons for leaving.
[ 2014-2016 » WoW and GW2 ]
After taking a brief break to play a number of games, a call to arms to return to World of Warcraft was issued. Settling on their home server of Bleeding Hollow, The Enclave resumed activity under their original guild tag, one which was created back during WoW’s initial release on November 23, 2004. While the guild reemerged during the final months of Mists of Pandaria, it did not stop them from achieving a number of accomplishments during the expansion. With numerous rank 1 Rated Battleground players, a dedicated Heroic Raiding group, and a complete dominance of the much more heavily populated Horde side, The Enclave enjoyed a steady stream of successes throughout their stay.
While there were high hopes going forward towards Warlords of Draenor, the expansion proved to be a massive disappointment. With further stagnation of both PvP and PvE content, along with Blizzard’s stance against guild activity, it became clear that World of Warcraft would finally no longer be able to offer the sort of environment that The Enclave needed and thus closing the door (for now) on WoW.
The Enclave enjoyed a brief but eventful campaign in Guild Wars 2. Despite the vast majority of members never having any prior experience with the game, The Enclave managed to establish itself as one of Yak’s Bend’s premiere World vs World guilds. Fielding dozens of members a night, The Enclave quickly managed to adapt to the World v. World environment and domesticated its rival Tier 2 servers. It became commonplace for Yak’s Bend’s rival Tier 2 servers, Fort Aspenwood and Sea of Sorrows, to team up against Yak’s Bend, as neither server could hope to wipe The Enclave individually. So effective was the campaign that within a few short months, Fort Aspenwood and Sea of Sorrows could no longer field any guilds to fight The Enclave. Without a proper fight in the foreseeable future and with a crippling amount of doubt in the Guild Wars 2 development team and expansion pack, leadership decided that the time was right to move on from the game. A mass chargeback scheme was instituted, and a majority of The Enclave’s members received refunds for the game and expansion, effectively safeguarding their wallets from the treachery of ArenaNet. However, thanks to The Enclave’s help in the World vs World scene, Yak’s Bend was able to propel itself from its Tier 2 PvP Realm status into becoming a Tier 1 PvP Realm.