The Untold Story From One (Uncredited) Creator of Phoneix Rising

Kings of Chaos is a multi-player, online role-playing game. It's not a "virtual" game, like the Sims, where you cause things to happen on the screen. It's more a game of imaginary gold, that you can't really see or touch, but you know is there, and an imaginary army which earns you this imaginary gold. And I helped create it.

If this game sounds bizarre, it is. It's a game that starts off as a bunch of numbers that really mean nothing on a screen. But, for some people, a lot of time and emotions get wrapped up in the game, as you'll begin to see.

The basics: you have a character. Under you, you may have some officers. You have a unique link, and when it is clicked, it earns you another soldier, and therefore more gold. Gold buys you things which helps your status grow, and therefore, makes your rank grow.

Kings of Chaos is in part, a multi-level marketing game. Anyone who understands that is going to do better in this game than someone who does not. You want to be the person on top of the pyramid, and have lots of people under you. As those people work hard for you, you get a trickle up effect. Hard work is done by clicking unique links. The more people below you get their link clicked, the more you will prosper as a result.

Now that we understand this, let's go back to the beginnings of Kings of Chaos. I started in age 1. In age 1, there were really two clans of great importance: Relentless, and Elite. Along came a new thing, recruiters. Recruiters allowed strangers to click your link and in turn, you would click theirs. It was an automated system, that tried to insure that if you clicked 100 links, you would get 100 links back. The Archangel Recruiter was the first and possibly the greatest of these link clicking systems. I was in the right place at the right time, because I volunteered to help moderate it.

Being at the helm of Archangel Recruiter gave me a certain degree of power, especially once Bruno, it's creator, went MIA. I knew that in order to achieve greatness in the game I had to ally myself to one of the big alliances. Archangel was a recruiter that anyone could use, regardless of alliance. I even stayed neutral when Relentless accepted me into their alliance. Of course, that couldn't last forever. I brought everyone I liked into Relentless. The other admin of Archangel, Chloe, or Gizm0 as she was known came along with me. We brought over Gem-, Remco, Denny, fury, and Errtu. It felt like every week I was convincing the group to bring another one of my friends over. It was good to have new blood, however, because the people who had been in Relentless were starting to bore with the game. Not only this, but there was a snitch in the group. Everything we discussed in private was leaking out. It made for a lot of tension, accusations, and fights.

The top account of Relentless was being passed along from age to age. No one liked being at the top for long. I got a taste of it later, and I began to understand why. But at this point, it was all I wanted. It was why I logged into my account every half hour and "banked" my gold, searching for a higher and higher rank. When the Orc00 account went up for grabs, we talked about it in private in an irc channel. We thought a vote was the most fair way to go about giving the account to someone. We thought nominating people and then voting on the ones who had been nominated, would be the best way to assign the new account.

People who had not shown their face in months got wind of this, and came back to haunt us. MADD, Lakerfan, and some gender confused individual named Lovi, that none of us knew, because he hadn't been around since Age 1, all came back. They insulted everyone who had been nominated for the top spot in the alliance. They took our democratic process, and called it a sham. They said that none of the newer members were Relentless. We were incensed.

Our private channel was invaded, and we could no longer talk there. They had insulted fury, who had the Recruiter that was keeping the game so popular. They insulted Denny, who was the leader of TNA, which was a large alliance. They insulted Errtu, who was the leader of NOO, another large alliance. And they insulted me, because these were my friends, whom I brought into the group. They insulted my friends who were helping to run the alliance. They threw insults, even though none of these insult-hurlers themselves even had accounts in the game.

So, we did what anyone would have done. We began sending one another PMs saying we could do a better job than them, that without us, they were nothing, and that we had all the keys to the successful alliance, while they had nothing but a has-been account. I was the common denominator behind these PMs. I linked all the players. I egged everyone on and encouraged us to meet up and start our own alliance.

We met in a secret channel, and began thinking up ideas for our alliance. We were taking away Relentless' forum. We were taking away their recruiter. They were truthfully our property anyway. Denny owned the forum and fury owned the recruiter. We were taking away their members. I felt out all the upper and middle-level players within Relentless, and figured out their intentions. I knew who would come with us if we left, and who would stay with the dust of their former alliance. We thought up a name for our alliance. We made ranks. We made rules. One of the biggest rules was that once you were inactive, you left. This was to prevent another situation like we had just been through. We also had a rule that whatever was said in our highest channel, #annihilation, would always stay a secret. That was one of the biggest causes for strife in Relentless and it wasn't ever going to be tolerated in our new alliance, Phoenix Rising.

We staged a very dramatic exit. We prepared a statement, which I pasted into the Relentless channels, and told everyone where to find the new great alliance. And like "wildfire," the majority of the people followed us. I posted a thread on the Kings of Chaos forum, entitled "From the ashes of Relentless: Phoenix Rising." From the moment we formed, we were huge. It was amazing.

Relentless was now full of "old" players who weren't interested in playing, but were interested in keeping the power. They had thrown away their "new" members, in favor of really new members. They sputtered along, and eventually came up with their own forums and their own recruiter. The "old" players eventually faded off into the sunset again. They just wanted the glory and none of the work involved.

As for PR, the amount of work we created was a huge mountain. I don't think any of us were prepared to handle the massive undertaking. It became very stressful. Eventually Errtu quit. Next came fury. Then it was time for Denny and I.

Eventually Errtu decided to rejoin the game, and wanted to revive his alliance, NOO. He brought back the logs from the start of the channel #annihilation. Denny and fury didn't mind much, but I did. I wanted everything that was ever said there to be kept confidential. That was one of the rules from the beginning. This meant nothing to Errtu, who used the log as propaganda to show that he "couldda been a contendah" too. I hated the shameless way he exploited our words. I let him know every opportunity I had. Eventually he erased everything I said, as if that was going to appease me.

So now, I'm written out of PR history, even though I was very much a part of it. Which is fine. I kept my ties with the alliance, and still idle in the upper channel. I try never to interfere with current leadership, as I don't want to do to them what was done to us in Relentless.

That's my story of the beginning years of Phoenix Rising, and how we came to be. To anyone who is just starting out, I caution you that if you want greatness in this game, it's a lot more work than you'd imagine. To anyone who doesn't understand this game now that I've explained it, well, I guess you'd just have to be there and let it wrap you up in it to understand. It's just a bunch of numbers on a screen. It's all what we put into it that makes it more.