Questions by Cavan (Tohrazer), Onrpg Writer
Answered by Ales “Toxin” Ostanek, leader of one of the world’s best World of Warcraft Guilds
I’ve gotten in touch with Toxin, leader of Incorporated Guild; and I’m going to pick his brain…
One of the oldest World of Warcraft guilds going, Incorporated, have recently had an influx of new star players, to bolster their already strong lineup. The guild is looking a strong contender for those World top 10 kills, and has secured itself a sponsorship deal, meanwhile we’ve secured ourselves the exclusive story behind it all..
Onrpg: Can you tell us more about the guild, is there a story to tell?
Toxin: The guild has existed for 4 years now and the current aim for this expansion is being a guild to be reckoned with in PvE and PvP. With Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) coming and us being able to get quite a few members from the world’s top guilds and getting sponsors as well, our goals are now as high as it gets.
Onrpg: Sponsors? Can you elaborate on that? We want details!
Toxin: Our main sponsors would like to stay invisible for now. The sponsorship however was made public and after displaying such effort at the start of WotLK, the whole guild is getting a bonus. Everyone is getting rewarded for the effort they put in the guild. Basically the motto of our sponsors is “We will make sure that anyone who puts effort into the guild gets something in return as well”.
Onrpg: I’ve also heard the incorporated name linked with Steelseries recently, would you care to comment on this?
Toxin: For now, we’re still in talks with Steelseries, however we will be appearing on DreamHack 2008 Winter as the main event. We will be raiding on the big screen from the Steelseries booth. I look forward to working with them in the future though, as I believe there is a lot of perspective in a possible future partnership.
Onrpg: I don’t suppose you could be more specific with regards to members being rewarded, are we talking hardware, promotion, money?
Toxin: We’re talking money, but it’s not limited to that in any way. There will be other rewards as lotteries within the guild, rewards for special achievement and such. For example the first person within our guild to reach level 80 was rewarded with a Spectral Tiger mount.
Onrpg: Lotteries? What are the prizes up for grabs?
Toxin: We’ll be awarding some people with a new year present. I can’t tell what it’s going to be yet though.
Onrpg: Ok fine.. keep your secrets! But what’s this I hear about an influx of ex members from top guild such as SK gaming, Nihilum, and Forte?
Toxin: It’s true, we have quite a few members that have played in top guilds before. Some of them came with being invited, some of them are old friends from previous servers, but all in all, they’re still hardcore people that understand the game and wish to rise to the top again.
Onrpg: Sounds promising! Now, whilst the consensus amongst the hardcore raiding community seems to be that Blizzard is catering for Casual gamers at the expense of deep and challenging gameplay, it could be argued, on the other side of the proverbial coin, that catering for the Hardcore raiders would alienate the majority of their subscriber base, what are your thoughts on this?
Toxin: I don’t believe that the content will remain as easy as it was for the start of Wrath of the Lich King. They remade Naxxramas for level 80 which is a move I really liked since a lot of people didn’t see Naxxramas in vanilla WoW. It was in my opinion the best instance ever made. I hope that they realize however that the content they did release now actually was too easy and I hope they implement some feature so raiders can choose a difficulty of the instance or something similar. They need to make some content for the top guilds to compete on. Casual players indeed couldn’t do Sunwell Plateau but they still were keeping track of progress of the top guilds and it’s still a drive to the community on what the “real hardcore players” are doing.
Onrpg: What is your opinion on the leveling content on WOTLK, did it live up to your expectations, and Blizzard’s usual high standards?
Toxin: Yes it did! I liked the way they made Northrend, it’s an impressive sight. I especially liked the feature they implemented that a certain zone changes for a person that is on a certain quest, allowing people to be leveling in the same zone while not getting in the way of each other.
Onrpg: Could you go into a bit more detail about this feature?
Toxin: They did something we call “phasing”, I don’t know if that’s an official Blizzard name for it, but what the thing does is for example: when starting in the Death Knight zone, you are told to speak to a certain NPC which will start an attack on Light’s Hope Chapel. You partake in that battle, fight with the death knight forces and it’s a really long “role-playing” event. At the same time the event is going on, someone not on the quest does not see the player doing the quest or the mobs that are fighting. He can be doing quests at the same time in that zone without actually interfering with the event or being bothered by it.
Onrpg: That sounds pretty neat, so I take it you guys are aiming to pose a serious challenge to the #1 spot over the course of this expansion? That’s obviously a long term and lofty goal.
Toxin: Indeed that’s our aim. We know however that the road is long but we’re ready to deal with the challenge.
Onrpg: Great, we’ll be looking forward to seeing more of you in the future, is there anything else you would like to add?
Toxin: For now, thanks to everyone who’s stuck with us from day one and hopefully, we’ll have this conversation again when our goals are reached!
Onrpg: Thanks, it’s been a pleasure!
Toxin: Same to you sir! Anyways off the record now?
Onrpg: Well, not yet.. we are now :P.
It will indeed be interesting to see how it shapes up over the course of the new expansion. The SK-Nihilum merged “Ensidia” are without a doubt something else to think about right now, having secured private sponsorship from a Dubai based business. Being an Ex-SK member myself, I will be pulling a few strings and trying to secure an interview with the Ensidia leaders at some point over the next few weeks, stay tuned! and thank you for reading.
