History

SF has a long and proud history, much of it shrouded in mystery. Such is the current nature of the guild that none can say they have been there since the start. Great mystery surrounds the formation of SF. It is thought that it was born out of the remains of another guild, Soul Callers (SC) - by a former member of that guild, Sam, back in 1998. The early SF was plagued by constant inactivity from both the members and its leadership. Sam and his Queen, Acyd, led SF through till around February 1999, at which time Acyd parted company. Very few records exist of SF's history from that time. The game at the time of course, was Magestorm - designed by Mythic Entertainment, and run by Engage Games Online (which were owned by Interplay)

It was at around May 1999, in Magestorm, that some people took notice of SF and began to help to get it back on its feet. RomBurns, Phaedria and Evilkiller came to the guild under the new joint leadership of Sam and Adonis, to bring the guild back from the brink of collapse. However, this new leadership also proved to be inadequate, to the point where there was no leadership to speak of. RomBurns therefore took it upon himself to "take over" the guild himself, this was done with 100% of the remainder of the guilds approval. Sam did not approve, but by which time he had already lost control. SF was now in the hands of someone who would build it as a guild of success, but ensuring that it didn't take itself too seriously.

Upon taking control, a provisional council and constitution were constructed. The guild now, as then, follows these principles in its running and structure. While the constitution would set about in writing, the various regulations, the council would be in charge of day to day operations and following the princples that the constitution laid out.

Much of the core of SF is the same now as it was in those early days. We have grown together as comrades, but more importantly as friends. We've won together, and we've lost together. In tracing back some of our milestones as a guild, it takes in a great variety of different events, and opponents. While Magestorm was on AOL - we took part in the Magestorm Guild League, finishing joint 1st in the level 1 league, and reaching the playoffs of the 5-15 league. People started to take notice of us.

Magestorm left AOL in 2000, but was taken up by Mythics Game Service in 2001. A lot of us had been spending time in Ultima Online, keeping the guild name alive, and formed a small village on the Chesapeake server, simply named "New Folenn". When Magestorm returned, so did Strike Force, and we set out to do business from the start. We placed joint 3rd in the first MGL run in 2001.

2002 proved tougher for us as activity declined, but picked up again as the community geared up for the territorial based "Battle for Folenn". The most controversial, heated and ultimately community destroying event that could possibly be conceived. The event will be remembered as much for the controversial decisions from the Ops regarding game results, than it will be for the games themselves. Nevertheless, SF acquitted itself well during that event - finishing runners-up as the only other guild undefeated. The alliance we formed with Healers of Faith, led to their merger with us as they were defeated in the event.

It was during the BFF, that RomBurns finally stood down after 4 years of leadership. Xeeron stepped into the job as fearless overseer. Under his leadership SF were runners up in the 2003 10-30 Christmas Event (to FA), and third in the 2004 NSW League. SF played Magestorm until its final shutdown in January 2006, with a severely scaled back roster. We took part in the informal ladder until Guild Wars release, taking the top spot from LoH in early 2005. Only our relative retirement from Magestorm in April 2005 allowed others to compete for it.

In around April 2004, we began to become aware of a new game on the horizon called Guild Wars. We're a guild, and we've been warring for quite a while, so naturally many of us were curious, from its name alone. What we found during that E3FA event was a game that was very compatible with our style of gameplay, tactical combat is something we relish. It has been unsurprising therefore that a good turnout of people representing SF made its presence felt in the BWE's. We continue to follow the ideals set up from the start. Have fun, but remain competitive. We don't take ourselves too seriously, but hell, we love winning.

2005 was a mixed bag overall for SF. Our success in Guild Wars was very rapid. By the time of the final BWE, we were an established and successful top 20 guild. For a time into release, this success continued. Our successful play culminated in May with our participation in Arenanet's "Beat the Devs" contest - where we managed to "go the distance" against a team of developers playing on the floor at E3. It was unfortunate that we weren't given the time to get our win, as we were undoubtedly at the verge of doing so before the Dev Guild pulled out for time.

RomBurns resumed leadership of SF in July 2005.

It has been sad that our success has been limited since, as we quickly fell out of the top 100, and descended into obscurity. Various reasons contributed to it, none of which are really important to what we wish to do in the future. To get back to where we were. Many of us are determined and spurred on by our historical success. We will be back. Indeed, we have recently taken on many new members, and our drive to return to the ladder remains as spirited as it always has.

Outside of the game, we all maintain a great friendship. In April 2006 a total of 11 members were involved in our first ever true guild meet up, in Orlando Florida. Two weeks of insane madness that i'm sure most of us will never forget as a truly great experience.

Old news

Year in review of 2009

As we take a look back at 2009 for the production of Strike Force as a guild/team/family things have been pretty calm. Near the beginning of the year we were under new management within Guildwars, which is/was our prominent game that members are connected to on a single roster. The new management wasn't technically new, new, but a fresh set of eyes on the scene. Amy was the GM for the GW roster running players through dungeon runs practically having people beg to get on her teams due to her leading capabilities as a GM and skilled player in those aspects. So, this year kudos and thanks to Amy for her contributions as a GM for the majority of 2009.

We did experience some downtime in GW after players experiencing GW burnout, this was weighing heavily on members, which is fine, every roster goes through it. We also had the development of the PvP team in GW that was in full effect this year, Hoschi had taken over as a fine GM for the competitive roster. Hoschi was very clear on what his expectations were for the team and followed through even with rough times and limited resources to get him going. Hoschi as a GM for that roster gets a round of applause for leading and dealing with the stresses that come with the role of a competitive roster.

During this year we had a lot of development and revamping talk and implementation as a guild. We had the addition of more TF2, Left 4 Dead, Aion, World of Warcraft, Diablo 2 gameplay. That just lists the quick spectrum of what players have been involved in. By the end of December and opening of the new year the WoW roster is going more official and having a Strike Force branded PvP team that are looking for going for high rank. The captain of the PvP portion of the team has been announced as Standerd (Kyle). The GM/AGM combination for the game that has been announced is Standerd/Yarg (Kyle/Ben). Dan's projects throughout the year were to implement steam servers as a test to grow the SF population in other games, these implementations were to test and see what types of people we could be able to add to our community of SF. Another big project during this year was the LC putting together and working on the implementation on how we run SF as a whole. We want to become more diverse to expand the team in to different games and be more lenient on how our roster works to make the jobs of our own Game Managers that much easier.

During this year we did have a couple of downfalls as well, but who doesn't right? City of Villains/Heroes as a roster was implemented for a short stint through this year, now there is a skeleton crew representing the roster as it were in CoV. We also had periods or lulls in our GW roster activity, which has now just gone to the development of the weekend warrior program. The "program" was developed so that a lot of the older members/players can just get together and run GvG's non-competitively and still show that we have a face in GW. We also weren't able to essentially pull what we wanted out of the Steam crowd either, this is in reference to the possibilities of recruitment. Yet, we never went official within any of the steam games and had a guild/team setup that was dedicated. Although there may be a little negative, we generally were able to pull some good notes and positive from our experiences as a team.

Interesting facts for the year for the team is that we had a couple of get togethers as a team. A huge thank you goes out to Becca and Jeff for their hospitality for opening their home to our members and letting some of us stay there instead of a hotel and burning even more money. As we all know times are tight on cash >;). For them two to open their home and let us all stay together in one place makes things with everyone who got together more personal and it really did feel, from a personal perspective, like I've known everyone for half my life. Even though in some cases that actually is true. We all got to meet up at Texas De Brazil, the steakhouse in Shaumberg IL..I hope I spelled that right. The turnout was quite nice, we had roughly 9 members at the dinner. Quite personally, I think this guild LOVES the sausage, especially when one of the main meetup spots to stop at was The Brat Stop! We had also figured that we will no longer let IV (Scott) pick out restaurants to eat at. We had the lovely graces of Xeeron coming in to the states as well for a period of time and for dinner we got the lovely crappy service of the Italian restaurant that Scotty picked out >:). It's O.K. Scott you are still loved like a red headed step child. I'd also like to mention that we did celebrate 10 years as a guild, congrats to us on 10 years as a community and team and being able to grow in to fine dysfunctional family.

Year in review by Jed (Ted)

Guild Happenings for Jan 2010

• SF entering competitive PvP gameplay within WoW
• SF implementation of new structure depending on GM decision
• SF implementation of GM/AGM's within WoW making the team more official within the SF community