Dark Legion / DARKLEGION

1998 – 1999

This is the beginning of our history. In 1998, our clan was originally called “Royal Legion.” The name of our clan was changed to “Dark Legion” sometime in 1999. Dark Legion was founded on July 16th, 1999. )2ascal was the owner of our website for a few years and held the rank of Commander.

During this time we were the pioneers of clanning on Battle.net; other Battle.net clans did not typically have a clan website. The clans that did have a website were poorly designed or were amateurish. Dark Legion created clan scripts that were unique; a system that came up with the idea of using a login system for its members. This was unheard of in the ‘90s. This system helped leaders determine who was active, and who was not. It also helped to encourage clan activity and increased participation in clan events. Military rankings were used to structure our ranks, and have been used during the majority of our existence. This idea caught on and was imitated for many years by various clans. It can still be seen today as it is used by a few of the remaining Battle.net clans on the internet. Some clan scripts exist today in an open source format that originally stemmed from our scripts many years ago.

2000

)2ascal was the leader of clan Dark Legion for most of the year 2000. During the month of September, Stone~Cold and Doctor^Evil took responsibility for leading Dark Legion as Commanders. In this era, most of the executive decisions were made by those who held the rank of “Commander” as opposed to those who held the rank of “General.”

During the autumn season, Dark Legion engaged in a clan war with a clan named ](o$ which was an acronym for “Knights of Shine.” This conflict lasted for close to one month. ](o$ utilized ASCII warring bots on Battle.net to attack our clan channel. These bots were programmed to flood users within the channel and disconnect them from the Battle.net server. As a result, this allowed the opposing clan to take over our clan channel. At this time in history, the first person to enter the Battle.net channel had privileges as a moderator to ban unruly individuals. Utilizing these bots, ](o$ was able to disconnect our channel moderator and take over the clan channel and gain moderator privileges.

During the war the war with ](o$, )2acsal created a squad that was named “Covert Ops.” This was a squad that was not publicly known, and spied on the opposing clan. Dark Legion members joined ](o$ in order to gain information about the clan and the bots that they were using to cause such distress and aggravation to our clan. A member named DARKDEMON learned useful information about the bots and tactics that ](o$ was using. In turn, these tactics were used against them and ](o$ ceased their attack on Dark Legion, and peace returned.

Also, an individual named Shraps was a ](o$ member that attacked our clan and flooded our clan channel. He later decided to join Dark Legion when the hostilities ended. He left Dark Legion in the year 2001 and became the co-founder of Clan Overdosed. The clan still exists today; it is one of the few Battle.net clans still in existence alongside Dark Legion.

January 2001 – April 2002

A member named Slider was appointed by )2ascal to be a commander of Dark Legion on January 13th, 2001. Slider was given this promotion over another member named VooDoo. They were both four star Generals in the clan. When Slider was promoted, he created a cabinet of members that served in his administration. He demoted many members, and promoted other members to higher ranking positions. Stone~Cold and Doctor~Evil did not get along with the new Commander, despite being Commanders themselves.

Stone~Cold resigned from Dark Legion approximately one month after Slider’s promotion, as well as Doctor^Evil. Stone~Cold went on to attempt to create a new clan which was intended to be what he envisioned Dark Legion to be. This clan was not a success and failed after a short period of time.

A member named $lipknot contacted Slider and presented new clan scripts to use for our website. He wanted access to our website in exchange. Slider did not trust him, and as a result this created a conflict that would result in $lipknot leaving the clan and starting a clan war that would not end for more than a year.

After these events, Slider stated that he would buy the Dark Legion website for $1500.00 from )2ascal. Supposedly Slider upheld his part of the bargain and )2ascal did not. According to )2ascal, Slider never gave him the money.

Unfortunately, due to the previous conflict with $lipknot, the attacks did not end. He continued to attack the clan in any possible way that he could. Our website utilized PERL code that was outdated and vulnerable to exploitation. Due to these shortcomings, $lipknot and his right hand man Sil3ntNigma were able to attack and cause damage to the clan website numerous times.

Clan Hi, an acronym for “Honor and Integrity” was created during the spring months of 2001. Dark Legion’s best players went to that clan. Dark~Chaos was the member who betrayed the clan and had taken on the new name of [Hi]Oblivion. Sadly, he was able to recruit many valuable members from Dark Legion to join clan Hi. These members competed against X17 and [cF], who were one of the more skilled clans on Battle.net that played Brood War.

Former member VooDoo created a clan named Dark Legendz. When he created this clan, many Dark Legion members joined this clan. This clan took more of an approach towards business; creating clan scripts that were called “Clan Tek.” VooDoo used Fusion Tek to market his scripts. These two entities merged together to just be called “ClanTek.” Netforce was a clan that split off from Dark Legion created by Smiley. This was a Counter-Strike clan with a ranking system that was unique to other gaming clans.

Netforce was a place that Dark Legion Officers and Generals could game in a fun environment. Smiley had recruited individuals such as Dakatana, Tall, Hellangel, Nemesis, Pimpmaster, and Ultimate for a time. These members held General ranks at one point in time. Netforce held values and rules that Dark Legion and its members had always wanted.

During this time, many of $lipknot’s friends attempted to enter the clan in an attempt to achieve a high rank to overthrow Slider. DARKDEMON exposed the individuals that were attempting to overthrow Slider and banned them from our website/clan channel. Due to DARKDEMON’s expertise, Slider was able to maintain his reign.

Slider also made promises to Dark Legion that he would update our website. According to Slider, )2ascal assured him that that these updates would occur in a timely matter. Unfortunately, they did not. The updates took months, and were never fully completed. This incident made Slider appear to be a poor leader. )2ascal stated that he was busy with real life issues, and stated that updates would occur; however, he wanted upfront payments for the ownership of the clan website before he would make any of these updates.

)2ascal stated that he never received any funding from Slider. As a result, no updates were made. This created a dilemma for Slider. He was unable to fully execute his power as a Commander without full access to the clan website. It also presented problems when our clan website was attacked as he was not able to respond to threats in a timely, efficient manner. DARKDEMON, however, did have access to the website to fix issues as they came up.

During this time period $lipknot and Shraps, leaders of clan Overdosed, offered Dark Legion members high ranking positions in clan Overdosed to betray Dark Legion. Overdosed was created specifically with the intent to harm Dark Legion. Our website was hacked numerous times by Overdosed and was taken down for two months at one point, almost killing the clan. This was a result of )2ascal having most of the access to our website. He was inactive due to real life issues that prevented him from being an active leader. Fortunately, our website was back online February 4th, 2002. When our website came back online, a resurgence of activity occurred and our growth increased exponentially.

Today, however, this old grudge is long forgotten amongst a majority of the members from both clans. Overdosed exists as a peaceful gaming clan with no ill will towards Dark Legion.

A clan named “Dark Passion” also broke off from Dark Legion amidst the chaos while Slider was a Commander and our website was not operational. Zimbi(DL) founded the clan, and DemonIce(DL) was a co-leader. This clan grew quite large as well, reaching levels of member activity that Dark Legion also had as the time.

April 2002 – December 2002

During the month of April, SSJ5GOHAN bought the clan website from )2ascal. )2ascal would give ownership of the clan’s domain name to him. )2ascal also said he would make modifications to our clan scripts to make the website more secure from attacks from hackers and exploiters. This raised suspicions regarding Slider’s integrity as Slider stated he had paid )2ascal, but )2ascal did not give Slider access to the website or domain name. Many concluded that because SSJ5GOHAN was able to complete this transaction without any resistance, that Slider was lying all along. Slider was then demoted to a 2nd Lieutenant, and later was disabled from our website.

SSJ5GOHAN was friends with a member named Nite~Wolf. SSJ5Gohan was heading overaseas, and promoted Nite~Wolf to Commander in lieu of his absence. A member named LordIcon was given the position of webmaster since Nite~Wolf was not familiar with maintaining a website.

Nite~Wolf was considered to be the people’s leader. He was quite popular and personable. At the time, a majority of our members liked him. He was considered a much better choice for Commander than Slider was. He provided stability to the clan, and $lipknot stopped attacking us. Clan Overdosed was still not friendly with us, but they were not proactively attacking us. Clan Overdosed experienced much growth during this time, enough to rival our own. Some of our own members joined them.

One of these members was named Xxpert. He was a General in Dark Legion. One month after Slider was demoted; Xxpert decided that it was necessary to restructure high ranking individuals in the clan. Xxpert was demoted, and this upset many high ranking members. This created a conflict that resulted in some of our members joining clan Overdosed.

Xxpert was considered a valuable member at that time. He was well known for being skilled in the mass recruitment of potential members. He was also looked at to be one of the best recruiters we had, at the time. Xxpert helped Overdosed recruit many members to help them become one of the largest, long lasting gaming clans on Battle.net. Xppert held the rank of Commander in clan Overdosed for many years. He was known as Chobo(OD). He was the webmaster and paid for the clan’s domain name.

After these events had taken place, Dark Legion was attacked many times on its website or in our Battle.net channel by Chobo(OD). Sadly, Chobo(OD) passed away on November 2nd, 2010. Sources that knew Chobo informed Overdosed that Chobo was in a fire fight with law enforcement due to a domestic dispute at his residence. Alcohol was said to be a contributing factor leading up to the events that had taken place that evening.

Many of the members who left Dark Legion when Slider was a Commander also returned to the clan. This created resurgence in activity during the summer of 2002. We had 500 members at this time. (V)u’l’e was a General and was considered to be an amazing recruiter. He was able to accomplish an impressive feat of around 100 active recruits. This number exceeded Xxpert during the height of his Dark Legion membership.

Dark Legion had many members that were at the Sergeant Major rank during this time. There were also many 2nd Lieutenants. The current Generals decided to introduce Warrant Officer ranks in order to spread out these ranks more evenly.

In the summer of the year 2002, Eternal Soldiers was formed. It was a clan that split off from Dark Legion and had various members, including high ranking ones. It was created because of a dispute between members. Another clan, clan Dark Side, was also formed by Slider in October of the year 2002. Some Dark Legion members joined Dark Side. Some notable members were former Dark Legion members DARKDEMON, Terran, Templ@r, and others. AOL also joined Dark Side and was a Lieutenant General there when he left the clan.

Dark Legion’s Generals decided it was time to restructure the officer ranks. Due to school starting those who were once active were not any longer. In order to determine who was active and who was not, members were required to contact a General regarding their inactivity by a certain date or they would face demotion.

January 2003 – March 2004

Warcraft III was considered to be Dark Legion’s strongest game during the year of 2003. The division was led by Zergorf, a Commander of the clan. Zergorf considered leaving the clan with his “DLWC” Division which was short for “Dark Legion Warcraft Division.” He wanted to start a clan that was strictly for Warcraft gamers. He felt that our community was too casual, and wanted to create a community that was more serious about gaming. Zergorf had a high approval rating amongst most members as a Commander, better than most. Once he lost interest in his Warcraft division other members did as well.

When the summer of 2003 ended, many members left the clan because of the obligations to their studies. LordIcon was still the webmaster of our website until the end of that summer. He then took a leave of absence. Mr.Mofo took the place of LordIcon as the webmaster.

The 13th Army was founded by former Dark Legion members Aether, TryonicX, and (V)u’l’e on February 3rd, 2003. These members were not satisfied with Dark Legion and it’s leadership. ColeraT and Mr. Mofo updated the Dark Legion website, in which both of them decided to take the responsibility as the webmasters. During the first half of 2003 Dark Legion was a Battle.net clan. At that time we had many members on our website, but most were inactive. Mr.Mofo and Smiley, as well as other Generals, decided to expand our clan towards playing other games. The rank structure was also reevaluated during this time.

Our clan was popular, and as a result other clans on Battle.net adopted similar ranking structures to our own. The Generals at the time were brainstorming ideas for a new ranking system, and had a test website for such changes. Many of the members that were supposed to be primarily responsible for this task did not put in a lot of effort to the task. Members were complaining about the lack of changes and effort being put into the project. SmileY, ColeraT, Zergorf, and other members finished the task later on.

Mr.Mofo and BoSS set up large tournaments called “BABTS” which was short for “Big Ass Battle.net Tournaments.” The tournaments were not affiliated with Dark Legion, but members were still able to participate and did so. Participants placed a one dollar bet to be apart of the tournament. Mr. Mofo and BoSS would take a certain percentage from the total dollars bet; the remaining amount went to the winner.

The funds collected by Mr. Mofo were intended to help fund various Dark Legion expenditures. Dark Legion was expanding towards other games; however, the Generals wanted to keep the Battle.net divisions alive. This was no easy task as Battle.net activity was declining. Dark Legion reached out to other games to recruit as a result of Battle.net’s decline. Unfortunately, Battle.net activity continued to decline from that point forward and has not been notably active since that time.

During the summer of 2003, Clan Dark Star was planning an attack on Dark Legion due to a discrepancy between its leading Commander and a few Dark Legion members. The clan was planning to take down the Dark Legion website, and obtain moderator access to the Dark Legion Battle.net channel in order to ban its members from the clan channel.

AOL was a commander of Dark Star at that time. He returned to Dark Legion because he had previous loyalty to the clan and did not want to see harm come to it. AOL was able to compromise Dark Star’s website. This action was able to kill the clan as its members were not loyal and dedicated. AOL also got access to the account “DarkStar” on Battle.net and was able to set the channel into “lockdown” mode. This banned all members from the Battle.net channel. Without a central place for communication, the clan was killed within a few weeks. This was not standard Dark Legion policy as we are not a warring clan; however, because Dark Star had such a large amount of members and a few highly skilled members behind them, it was deemed necessary.

Clan Dark Star split off into three smaller clans. Clan Exiled was one, and it was the largest. Clan Aftershock was another clan which grew to a considerable size as well. It was founded by four individuals; one noteworthy individual was named SnipeDragon. AOL also became a Lieutenant General in Aftershock before he left the group.

Shortly after the events of clan Dark Star, DARKDEMON provide scripts during the month of August to replace the Clan Tek 1.0 Scripts since they were outdated. ColeraT utilized these new scripts for an up and coming division: “DLMD” or “Dark Legion Minigolf Division.” This division was linked directly to the main site. These members would login to a separate website and update their record against other members in the division. ColeraT was also the leader of this division, and it was successful during the summer of 2003. It had twenty members, most of whom were active on a daily basis. ColeraT organized a tournament in August to determine who the best player was in Jippii minigolf. This tournament lasted 30 days, and it determined the top eight players. The tournament was a great success, however members got busy with school and the division died.

Unfortunately, the division never reached levels of activity like it did. There was a period of activity during the summer of 2004, however. Many attempts were made to get the division up and running, but a lack of interest was its downfall.

During the fall of 2003, Smiley began working on “Project Funny Hat.” This was a ranking system that had a similar design to a ranking system that was utilized in Netforce when he was a co-leader. Smiley headed this project, and was assisted by SuperSaiyan, Beldin, LordMega, ColeraT, Zergorf, Coachz, Rufuz, and others. Many alterations occurred, and the project was renamed to “Nebula.”

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction also reached its peak in late 2003. It had over fifty members led by NukerZ and LORD-TOSS. Zergorf also resigned as Commander during this time. ColeraT was chosen as his replacement, and Mr.Mofo later resigned to join 13th Army.

March 2004 – June 2004

On March 30th, ColeraT retired as a Commander to take on the position of an advisor instead. This position was treated like a General, and helped the Generals staff to make important decisions. ColeraT was still attempting to implement Nebula, but more traditional members did not want the ranking system to change. Nite~Wolf, Aether, and Nukerz were the highest ranking members against the project. ColeraT received much criticism because of this and stepped down. Scourge and LordMega were also four star Generals.

ColeraT made Nite~Wolf, Scourge, and (V)u’l’e the Commanders of Dark Legion after he retired. Nite~Wolf assumed the position of head Commander once again, even though it was intended for three members to share the spot with equal power. Mr.Mofo returned around the same time ColeraT resigned. He came back as a webmaster to help with the implantation of Nebula, and to help with the Clan Tek 3.0 scripts.

When Nite~Wolf was promoted to Commander, many of the current Generals did not feel that this decision was fair. Nite~Wolf was mass promoted from Colonel to Commander with the push of a button. LordMega formed the “ANWA” or “Anti NiteWolf Alliance. He headed this small group of people that included Genocide(Super), Rattle$nake, and Bloodhunter. These members were all Generals at the time, and the group existed specifically to dethrone Nite~Wolf.

Nite~Wolf was not fond of the new rankings. He went to Aether for assistance, and the two came up with a different system than the Nebula system. They called it Galaxy. This was a combination of the Nebula ranking system, and the USMC ranking structure. The USMC ranks would stay the same, except there would be small squads directed by each of the officers. LordIcon and ColeraT were advisor of Dark Legion at this time. They wanted to ensure the Nebula system would be implemented, as it had been worked on for many months without success. LordIcon gave the password to the web server to Mr.Mofo and Nite~Wolf only. The two agreed to keep the password between them.

Nite~Wolf needed help with the website and went to DARKDEMON for assistance. Nite~Wolf gave DARKDEMON access to the server of the original website. When Mr. Mofo realized this, he acted quickly to change the password to prevent DARKDEMON from having access to the website. DARKDEMON attempted to obtain the password from LordIcon, but he would not give it to him.

After these events, SSJ5Gohan and Nite~Wolf decided to take the matter into their own hands, so they created a new website owned by SSJ5Gohan. SSJ5Gohan gave orders to both DARKDEMON and Nukerz and locked down the Dark Legion Battle.net channel informing everyone to join the new site. Mr.Mofo obtained SSJ5Gohan’s password from the new site with LordMega’s help and destroyed their website. Nite~Wolf didn’t want a divided clan and realized this was causing much chaos. Nite~Wolf told DARKDEMON and Nukerz to stop what they were doing to the Dark Legion battle.net channel. Mr.Mofo demoted Nite~Wolf and the other members that were involved with the original site for security reasons. Nukerz was removed from the clan, Aether stepped down, and SSJ5Gohan was temporarily disabled. Nite~Wolf was promoted back to his rank of Commander after these differences were resolved.

Unfortunately, a sharp increase in BM (bad manners) was occurring on our message board after these events. There was much confusion regarding leadership disputes and the new ranks. As a result, a zero tolerance rule is instated in an attempt to make Dark Legion a friendlier environment for its members.

A vote was held to decide which ranking system Dark Legion would move to or stay with. The vote was between the Nebula system, the USMC system, and the Galaxy ranking system. Galaxy was unpopular, and was not implemented. The vote was a stalemate, so it was moved to the General’s forum. Many Generals believed that the Nebula system had the potential to be something great, and could grow members into future leaders.

Nite~Wolf decided to go ahead with the Nebula ranking system. ColeraT and Mr. Mofo set up the system on our website and moved the clan members to Clan Tek 3.0 scripts. This was a highly anticipated clan script; it was hailed as “the scripts of all clan scripts for clan management.” Unfortunately, we did not test the scripts before implementing them. This caused many website functionality issues.

The Clan Tek 3.0 scripts were far worse than Clan Tek 1.0 scripts. The scripts did few things automatically, made redundant log entries, and did things other than what the user specified. The Nebula system was not a good fit for these scripts. It was entirely different, and consisted of four squads: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. The Command Administrator was the Commander of Dark Legion. All of the Generals were changed to the rank of Assistant Administrator. Each squadron had a leader and co-leader that lead members underneath them.

This system did not provide an easy route to rank up in; in fact it was much more difficult. The former enlisted ranks were moved into the Nebula system with a rank of “Member.” Even new recruits shared this rank with someone who had been in the clan for an extended period of time. The amount of time elapsed did not increase a members rank like the former USMC ranking structure did.

The Nebula system’s purpose was to drive out inactive clan members. It also was implemented to promote gaming more so than the USMC ranking structure did. Finally, it sought to drive out those who just wanted to seek rank and rank alone. Nebula took about two to be implemented, and the moving of scripts was also a problem. Members weren’t able to login, so they left. Members also were frustrated with slow login times and this caused them to leave as well.

Once all of the systems were working and functional, things boomed. At its peak the Delta flight squadron was the biggest, boasting thirty members. Most flights had about twenty members, with a total of around twelve flight leaders. Dark Legion had around one hundred sixty members at the peak of the Nebula system’s popularity. After five weeks key leaders left the clan. CoachZ, Superman, Brothajim, Kaos, ColeraT, Nite~Wolf, and others were some of the members to leave.

This devastating loss made it hard for the rest of the flight leaders to maintain their responsibilities, as well as the tasks that the recently retired flight leaders had. Dark Legion hit a record low of eighteen members at the end of May. As a result, ColeraT held a vote on the message board to disband Dark Legion. Hope seemed lost and people were ready to throw in the towel. However, SmileY persuaded the rest of the members against this idea.

It was decided that the Nebula ranking structure was a failure, and a return to the USMC system was in order. Mr. Mofo was left with the hefty task of attempting to repair a clan that was torn, inactive, had administerial issues, and had less than desirable clan scripts.

June 2004 – December 2004

Shortly after the Nebula system failure, it was decided that Dark Legion needed a fresh start. The Generals had seen that the Battle,net division was in shambles. Dark Legion expanded to new games during this time, one of the primary ones being Continuum. ColeraT, who then went by the name “Denuo” started the division on new scripts. The Dark Legion Continuum website was linked directly to our main website for easy access. The DLc awarded separate medals to members within the division depending on what was accomplished within the division itself. A select few earned the Medal of Honor, including RiiStar, Shadowhand, and ColeraT.

Dark Legion also expanded to other games, such as Guild Wars, Xbox Live, America’s Army, Lineage II, Battlefield II, Gunbound, and Maplestory. Divisions would grow to around twenty members and then die off within a few weeks. Unfortunately, this was a common cycle for us over the next few years. Our member count also fluctuated to over two hundred members, and would then fall below one hundred members.

In order to keep members in the clan and not allow activity levels to fall, Warrant Officer ranks were reinstated. This rank was designated to those who wanted to recruit, and recruit only. Dark Legion members thought the Warrant Office rank was below that of an Officer rank, but began to realize the rewards that this recruitment structure brought to us. This effort resulted in an upward growth to around three hundred members again.

Dark Legion brought back the Broodwar division during this time as well. More members were coming back and playing the game, and it came back to life. Lineage II was another big success during the year of 2004. JROCK recruited a solid core of members that ended up staying with the clan for a long time.

Dark Legion’s website was hacked by ClanTek after these events. ClanTek created the ClanTek 3.0 scripts that Dark Legion was using. ClanTek refused to give Dark Legion updates for free since the scripts were encrypted and couldn’t be edited. Mr.Mofo acquired an unencrypted version of the scripts and spent several days fixing the scripts, and put them to use on our main website. Unfortunately, the scripts had a backdoor programmed within them. ClanTek took over the website, demanding money from Mr.Mofo.

After these events, DARKDEMON installed his scripts to get rid of the backdoor scripts. These scripts did not have all of the functionality we would have wanted, however. ClanTek 1.0 was used as a test for the new scripts, and a custom edition was spawned from them. DARKDEMON’s scripts were then removed in favor of the custom ones. During the switch, the Warrant Officer ranks were not re-enabled back into the scripts. The member count then dropped later in the year.

In November, Dark Legion established a World of Warcraft guild on Gorefiend headed by CoachZ, Superman, and Windforce1. Some members left the guild to form a new one, and then merge with a group called Deus Vult. The guild later came to be known as Deus Invictus. Inactivity crept back into Dark Legion, and some members left to join another clan.

2005

In January, Dark Legion merged with a clan known as “the Legion.” LordJubilint(L) and ASI were the leaders of the clan. They had twenty strong members. This was a helpful gain to us, as we were in a weak state in terms of member activity. Dark Legion had roughly one hundred members before the merger. After the merger, we retained our name. The members from the other clan were able to keep their “(L)” tag, but eventually moved to the gaming tag of “(DL).” Many other mergers took place throughout the year, most of these being clans that had ten to fifteen members. Some members left, others would stay.

The World of Warcraft guild was resurrected during the early to middle part of the year. It became a fully established division once again. The guild was named “DL Raiders.” Btgx, Scourge, Iginla, Cabose, Ranger, Gimpage, Critten, CoachZ, and Superman were very active members of the guild.

The WoW division became so large that a separate website was created for it. As a result, there were disputes between leaders of the division, and other members. The division left the clan because of these discrepancies. The World of Warcraft division was never as good as it was after it was brought back this time. The time, responsibilities, money, and other sacrifices that needed to be made to bring the division back up to par was not in the interest of most members.

Sadly, a member within the clan died during this time in a real life incident. Anti~Cripz was a member who had only been with us a few months, but the news was certainly a shock. Members gave their regards and sympathies, and wrote about how they missed Anti~Cripz. Mr. Mofo sent all of the prayers and messages to his mother and talked to her on the phone personally, and to send his own regards. His mother was touched by our community, in tears during the conversation.

After this, the Warrant Officer ranks were established once again in May. The Chief Warrant Officer 5 rank lead the recruitment efforts in the clan. The Generals decided that this person could stay at that rank, or be promoted to the rank of Colonel. This caused the Generals and other members to view WO ranks to be equal to the Officer rank. Dark Legion grew again like the previous year.

Prior to the year of 2006, noteworthy members who stood out amongst their peers were EdTheGreat, Raven, and Neo_Flamer. These three were responsible for recruiting as many as twenty members on average per month, even as inactive members left the clan. Our average member count for the remainder of the year was around two hundred as a result of the dedication to member recruitment.

2006

During the spring months, Scooter was the leader of the Battlefield II division. Scooter did not have a good relationship with Mr.Mofo, the sole Commander of Dark Legion, a rank he held since the summer of 2004. Scooter left Dark Legion, starting his own clan called sc0ot. He took the entire division with him, which was comprised of thirty to fifty members.

During August, Dark Legion was attacked by a random hacker not affiliated with the clan. They hacked the forums, a main function of the clan’s operations. This hacking event caused a disruption in our ability to communicate with fellow members. The hacker was able to attack our forums due to a lack of website updates. This happened because Dark Legion has historically been funded by the generous donations of its members. Unfortunately, funds were running low; therefore, the site was vulnerable.

This person decided to be friendly to use and let our leadership know of the security issue. Becca helped raise money from other members within Dark Legion to pay for the CS 1.6 server, and this lead to a dispute with Mr. Mofo.

September 2006 – January 2007

In September, Mr.Mofo was dethroned by the Generals. An incident had taken place on one of the servers between Mr.Mofo and Becca. Mr.Mofo apparently had stolen one of the members’ servers without their approval. He did this to take control of the server, and prevent it from being taken from Dark Legion once the division grew large enough to split off on its own. Mr.Mofo wanted full control of all the divisions in case leaders or co-leaders of divisions left. This would prevent the loss of entire divisions and devastating member losses.

Mr.Mofo was demoted to the enlisted ranks by EdTheGreat, his second in command. A vote was held by the generals, the vote was in favor of EdTheGreat’s decision by seven to four. Mr.Mofo had the rights to the domain name of our website for over two years, and at that time gave the Generals a few days to make the necessary adjustments from the old site to the new one.

After this, JROCK bought new forums for the website. Dark Legion switched to DARKDEMON’s new scripts as we had several times in the past, and everything was transferred to a new domain owned by Scooter. This later was changed in 2007 as Shade took the responsibility as webmaster, as well as the ownership rights to the domain.

The Generals decided to bring back a “three Commander system” as it had been done in the past. The main reason for this decision was to make things more democratic and less like a dictatorship. EdTheGreat, JROCK, and LordMega would assume command. JROCK stepped down, and Smiley took his place as Commander.

January 2007 – May 2007

On January 10th, 2007, EdTheGreat was asked to step down from his Commander position. He left the clan instead of joining Scooter’s clan. Several Generals left with EdTheGreat. Scooter’s gaming clan was changed to the name of “Xscape.” JROCK, angry that EdtheGreat had been asked to step down, abused his rights as the current website host & admin and promoted himself to Commander. He demoted LordMega to 1* General and put Kaos and Shade in the open Commander positions.

Kaos, Shade, and SmileY, the new Commanders, speculated about the possibilities of a forum based clan. However, the three Commanders agreed to keep things as they were. JROCK was not happy with this, himself, Smiley, and SuperSaiyan were promoters of a forum based gaming community. JROCK took matters into his own hands and demoted the other Commanders and made himself the sole Commander. Dark Legion then switched to a forum based clan. This system had three ranks: Administrator, Moderator, and Member. These actions were motivated by the fact that Scooter believed a clan should be structured this way, and SmileY and JROCK were dead set to bring Scooter back to Dark Legion.

Many members were opposed to this change. Kaos was one of them, and started his own gaming community called “Arcadia.”

Commanders and Generals that disagreed with JROCK were forced to do what he said, or else they would be demoted or removed from the clan. Several leaders, such as LordMega and Nukerz, who lead the highly active WoW and D2 divisions, stated that if JROCK didn’t step down that he and others would leave Dark Legion along with their respective divisions to recreate Dark Legion elsewhere. JROCK stated that his actions were to make Dark Legion a better place. Unfortunately, he was making things worse.

Dark Legion executed in a merge with Xscape. EdTheGreat wanted Xscape to merge with Dark Legion so he would be able to rejoin the Administrative team. Smiley and Shade were the only two leaders that were active during this time period. These two wanted the merge to take place so that our member count and activity could increase. The members of our leadership then consisted of Shade, Smiley, Scooter, EdTheGreat, Becca, Budsniper, Simpilot, and Herbzilla.

The merge appeared to work at first, however, there were squabbles over clan tags, cpanel access, server administration, Ventrilo administrators, and other issues. Xscape decided to break the merger, and it hurt Dark Legion.

In May, there was a large meeting that involved a few key people left in the Dark Legion community. Members were against JROCK and what he had done, and the trouble he caused. He stepped down, tired of receiving criticism. JROCK then announced he was going to charge Dark Legion to use his hosting and forums. Shade acquired new hosting, and moved the site with the help of DARKDEMON. They added the members that the Battle.net division accumulated, and added Dark Legion’s remaining members to the new website.

Dark Legion switched from the three rank forum system back to the Marine Corps structure once again. Nite~Wolf, SSJ5Gohan, and Shade became the new Commanders after this had taken place. Nite~Wolf and SSJ5Gohan were leaders of the Battle.net division. EdTheGreat later became a Commander once more.

May 2007

EdTheGreat and Nite~Wolf decided to merge with Arcadia. Most of the Arcadia members were former Dark Legion members or were from the 13th Army. Dark Legion’s member count rose from about eighty to one hundred sixty members, and this helped increase our activity temporarily. After this merge, Nite~Wolf, Kaos, and Simplicity ended up being the Commanders. EdTheGreat was promised a position, but he was not given the position as it was promised; therefore, he left once more.

Then, within a week, members started leaving. Most of the Arcadia members were never supportive of the merger in the first place. The merger was considered to be a complete failure, and most of these members ended up leaving entirely within two weeks.

Nite~Wolf and Kaos would take a leave of absence, Simplicity went back to the 13th Army, and LordMega and Shade became Commanders once more. These two held the position for many months. It was decided around this time that Dark Legion should go back to the old Marine Corps rank structure and start it over from scratch.

Saneless brought a devastating blow to the Counter Strike division when he founded a new clan called “Casual Assassins.” The division had close to forty members, and they all left to join his clan.

Nerrant and CacaStudent brought the Broodwar Division back to life during this time. Multiple tournaments were held, and the division was quite successful. Unfortunately, the success only lasted a few months into the fall months. Dark Legion continued to face member retention issues the entire year, and into 2008. Multiple divisions fell apart at once, due to a lack of leadership, and a lack of member interest in the success of their division.

During the month of December, the Generals decided to transform the ranks once again. They would become administrators and the officer ranks would be split up into divisions or squads for each game. The officer would be leaders or co-leaders of each separate division. The lower office ranks along with the higher enlisted ranks had the option of joining a division, or to be the lowest rank of civilian.

As before, this ranking structure failed, as Nebula had. Dark Legion went back to the Marine Corp structure as it always had before, and the member count was as low as thirty members at this time.

2008

Shade and LordMega were the leaders of Dark Legion during the beginning of this time period. Dark Legion’s member count struggled during the early months of 2008, ranging from as low as twenty five members to sixty members. Dark Legion seemed to be falling apart. Activity was dropping across all of the games we played. An attempt to kick start a Call of Duty IV division on the PC platform failed. A Diablo II: LOD division was also attempted to be recreated, but failed within a month. Members complained that the Generals were doing little to fix the problems in Dark Legion. In May, former Commander Slider caught wind of these problems. He insisted that if he were to come back, he could bring the clan back to its former glory and restore high levels of activity that Dark Legion once knew. Shade and LordMega gave Slider the position of sole Commander to fix the problems Dark Legion faced.

Slider insisted that we supported too many games, and that we needed to narrow our focus to just a few games if we hoped to increase our activity. Slider decided to switch from the Marine Corps ranking structure to a naval ranking structure. The system was similar, but the names of the ranks were different. When he took power, he removed all of our other divisions except for Battle.net, CSS, and Xbox Live.

One of the divisions that were removed was the WoW division, lead by Raven, a four star General. He was upset over this decision, insisting that this was our largest, most active division. Slider and a few other Generals thought a lot of these members knew little of Dark Legion, and did not care for our community. As a result, Raven left the clan.

During the later spring and summer months, Dark Legion’s member count increased to one hundred. More people were playing Broodwar like the days of old. Key members were returning to bring the division back to its former glory. These members included Lazeryth, Nerrant, LordMega, Sublime, GariMto, and CacaStudent. Our clan channel was full of members and race wars were being played for the first time in years.

Slider created a reward system titled “clan gold.” This was achieved by donating or performing various activities that helped Dark Legion grow. One could obtain clan gold by winning tournaments as well. Slider promised that if a person reached a certain amount of gold, that various prizes would be received by that member. Prizes were listed in the forums depending upon the amount of gold a member had.

Lazeryth, a four star General, and other members, doubted that Slider could follow through with his promises. While the idea was good, it would be expensive for Slider to follow through. Lazeryth tested the idea in good faith and made many contributions to Dark Legion in an effort to fund servers and the hosting of the website itself. He obtained enough gold to where he was entitled to a Playstation III from Slider.

Over the next few weeks, Slider’s weaknesses were exposed and he was forced to step down. He never came through on the promise to give Lazeryth the gaming system. This reinforced what some members already knew: Slider was a smooth talker, and an expert at manipulation. It was not the first time people across Battle.net and the clan suffered from his false promises and blatant lies.

After Slider left, an attempt to revitalized the CSS and Xbox live division was made; however, little effort was made by the division leaders to accomplish anything. Shade and LordMega would take the role as leaders once again, with Lazeryth entering the role as well. These leaders decided to switch back to the Marine Crops ranking structure once again.

During the summer and autumn months, the Broodwar division was active, but slowly declining. Members who were inactive started to become inactive.

Nerrant, ichobo, and other members decided to start a team within an organization called ICCUP. ICCUP was a gaming league for Broodwar, Warcraft III, and CCS. Twenty members joined this team through 2009. Members were gaming on a daily basis, and we even obtained new members from the league that were quite skilled. This league contained more serious gamers and was considered to be a more productive atmosphere to recruit new members. With the death of the USEast Battle,net server, ICCUP seemed to be a great alternative.

During December, our website went down and only the forums were visible. However, one could view the main part of the website if they typed “/main” after entering the name of the website in their address bar. Member ranks were dropped for a few months since our member count dropped below thirty. Most of the members still gaming during this time were from the ICCUP team.

KanYe, a member appointed by Shade, would take the role as sole Commander in an attempt to revitalize Dark Legion and bring it back up onto its feet. A vote was then held to see what kind of ranking structure was desired amongst members. It was decided that the Marine Corp structure was the tried and true system to stick by. At the time, we decided to stick with four main games: Broodwar, World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike 1.6, and Xbox live.

2009

Many of the members that we had recruited from the ICCUP league were not recruited officially on our Dark Legion website. These were members that enjoyed playing Broodwar, but were not interested in logging in. In an effort to keep our member count trackable, Lazeryth came up with the idea of only having a DSL system in place for officer and above. The enlisted members would not have to login to prevent themselves from being disabled. This would allow members who wanted to take a more serious role in the clan to do so, while others could have fewer responsibilities and just play the game. Division leaders would hold the responsibility of adding or deleting members that left their respective division.

Other divisions started to grow during this time as well, such as Xbox live, Broodwar, and World of Warcraft. Dark Legion’s member count grew from thirty to eighty in the course of just a few weeks during the month of February. The Generals at the time decided there were too many ranks for too few members, and that it looked inefficient to have such a large spread of members filling many different ranks.

As a result, Lazeryth came up with a proposal: to cut the existing twenty six ranks into eleven to twelve ranks. It was later decided that military ranks do not fit the theme and name of or clan, Dark Legion. The leadership decided something more unique and creative should replace the Marine Corps ranks.

In July, CoachZ was appointed by Shade to be a new Commander. He and other Generals decided it was time for a new ranking system, something that was original and different from other structures that we attempted to implement in the past. It was thought that twenty five or more ranks was an over abundant amount of positions for a member to be promoted through, and a low amount of members made a system with so many ranks look awkward and clunky.

Due to maintaining only thirty to fifty members, the Generals came up with a six rank structure for more efficient member management. The ranks included Praetor, Executor, Spartan, Centurion, Phalanx, and Initiate. Praetor was the equivalent of a Commander, Executor was the equivalent of a General, and the rank of Spartan and Centurion were the equivalent to Officers. Alternatively, Phalanx and Initiate were the equivalent of holding an enlisted rank. Most of our member supported this system.

During the later months of 2009 Dark Legion was as inactive as it had ever been. Members quit utilizing the website because the DSL system was not in effect. The members page held about forty members and most of them had not logged in for thirty or more days. Even our Generals lost interest in the community.

The hope was that Starcraft II would create a rejuvenation in activity across the former Battle.net community. Our website was down for two to three months because Shade felt nobody was interested in Dark Legion, so he didn’t pay for the website. Dark Legion was living in the past, putting most of its stock in a ten year old game that most members no longer desired to play. All bets were in for Starcraft II, with the hope that it would reignite an old spark within our member base. Some were skeptical that this game would help us, however.

2010

Dark Legion’s website was down until May of 2010, having been absent since December of 2009.The Starcraft II beta created a great deal of buzz and excitement, and members geared up for the release. The game was released July 27th, 2010, bringing back many of our senior members one by one. Shade and LordMega lead the clan as Commanders, with generals on the staff such as DarkDemon, HaX (WizzSky), CoachZ, RiotSniper, achzay, and Drizzt.

Many new members also joined us during this time, excited for the release of the game. Dark Legion went back to the Marine Corp ranking structure once more after another failed system, this was in response to a large influx from excited SC2 Players. LordMega spearheaded SC2 recruitment and lead the Starcraft II Division. We Increased our member count to over one hundred members, and it was nearing one hundred twenty five members in July.

After the release of Starcraft II, new members joined Dark Legion by the dozens. Our member count rose to one hundred fifty members in August. The Generals felt it was time to bring a DSL system back to encourage members to utilize our website or face being disabled. It was also decided that enlisted ranks would not be promoted by the website, and that promotions should be given by an Officer or higher. This was changed in an effort to reward those who were active and contributing to the clan. At it’s peak, our SC2 division saw 30-40 concurrent users in our Teamspeak. We had over 200 members on the website.

Unfortunately, Battle.net 2.0 lacked many things that the original did. Clan support and custom channels were missing, and in effect made recruitment and growth much more difficult. Members had to keep up with each other individually through a friend’s list, which was difficult with so many new members. This division died an early death, sadly. Blizzard made the wrong choice in the minds of many people across the internet. By removing clan channels, and certain chat abilities, they removed the “community feel” that made Starcraft a game that was prominent for so many years. It should be noted that many months after SC2’s release, they did bring back chat channels and eventually clans too, but by then the initial damage had already been done. Almost all of the Starcraft 2 players that had flooded into the clan quit the game and activity quickly diminished.

2011

2011 Onward is Under Construction.

Early in the year the clan was a mess. Shade had control of the clan as LordMega had resigned, disheartened by the Starcraft II division failure and lack of interest in the clan. This prompted Shade to send out the call to old members for a clan revival, hoping to rebuild the clan, spiking activity from old members still willing to contribute.

For much of the year, Lord-Toss took lead of the clan.

At the end of the year, Kaos approached Bloodhunter to help rebuild our clan again. The proposal was to move our website to the Enjin system. It was agreed that Bloodhunter would assume a commander position and in return build our website to help bring in new members.

2012

The move to the Enjin system was moving along successfully, and the Diablo III beta had activity. The Diablo III division was created as well. Diablo Launched in May 2012. Like Starcraft, the game launched without chat channels or clans, unlike the previous incarnation of Battlenet. Although the expansion and patches fixed many of D3’s problems, lacking initial features at launch impacted the clan’s activity.