From BA Wiki

The Begining: Planetside

Founders

In the spring of 2003, a group of friends joined together in an innovative new game called PlanetSide and formed an outfit. PlanetSide was a massively multiplayer FPS where three armies battled together over an enormous sci-fi world. They chose the futuristic Vanu Sovereignty on the Markov server. The founders played in the closed Beta under the name The Taken. It was only when Open Beta was looming with a server wipe imminent, that a new name was sought and Bellum Aeternus came to be.

Some of the many founders (And Legates of the Day)

• Voltaire
• Destrider
• TheNino
• SaintPeter
• EvilDave
• CalmTerror

( List of members, arranged by join date )

From the beginning we were a well-organized force. Where other outfits were running disorganized squads, BA was having members lead multiple squads, coordinated over voice chat, into massive battles. A foundation that would serve the outfit for three years was steadily established: required TeamSpeak usage, new member orientations, an extensive officer-training program, a professional-looking site, forums filled with combat strategies, and many other developments.

Bellum Aeternus became the most respected outfit on the server. Our tactics were elite, yet we were not elitist. All the other outfits emulated our tactics. We had many, many a good Centurion leading our charges. We became the backbone of many Vanu alliances, where we would host the allied Outfits on Teamspeak and coordinate gigantic worldwide assaults.

Bellum Aeternus Gaming Community

Eventually, our members felt the itch to expand to other games. So the Legates worked out all the details and we became a Meta Gaming Community.

Final Fantasy IX

FFXI was founded by our first actual 'Governors':
de
Parslip

Many of our RPG loving members flocked to our first province outside of Planetside. Unfortunately, due to a key fallacy in the game surrounding 'link shells' (worn items that allow you to talk to others who equipt like shells...basically a very very loose guild) the province had a hard time keeping new recruits. While BA was looking for dedicated players the game mechanics allowed anyone to 'come and go' from the guild at will. Eventually it was shut down. But we learned many important lessons on making new and successful provinces.

The forming of this province was full of many firsts indeed. Key among them was if we should even 'dilute' our members passion for PlanetSide with a second MMO. At that point in our history Planetside had seen the near complete fizzle of its first add-on, "Core Combat" and there was a general sense of apathy beginning to form in the guild. Some players felt Planetside no longer met their needs while others thought that offering support for a second MMO would tear players away from the well-knit guild, in effect turning a highly focused group into a ghost of itself. In the end it was decided that maintaining friendships was paramount and the Final Fantasy XI province was opened for business. You can read more about the thoughts and concerns regarding this by following this link. In some respects, it is eerily how close the concerns and time-line played out.

http://www.bellumaeternus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=2265/highlight=FFXI.html

While our involvement in Final Fantasy XI was short-lived by Bellum Aeternus standards, it did very clearly demonstrate how not to set up province. A lack of clear goals, mis-communication, and game dynamics that were not condusive to BA's style lead to a slow wasting loss of members and guild resources. It was closed by de shortly before WoW beta testing began.

City of Heroes

CoH was founded by:
SaintPeter
Who else?

World of Warcraft: Kel'Thuzad

WoW was founded by:
Aravel
Vidguy

We started out with a good presence in the WoW beta. Aravel and Vidguy created the initial documentation and drive for the game. Soon after release, they both stepped down and were replaced by ThirdParty, Sandtyger, Voltaire, and later Chaz. Upon release, the server Archemonde was to be our home, but due to server issues, a server that Chaz and a few others were already on was chosen: Kel'Thuzad.

The WoW:KT province soon grew to be a huge guild that embodied the principles of BA and over time we saw that the all-inclusive mentality traditionally exhibited in BA provinces was not going to work in WoW. As we split our efforts between helping the younger players level up and quest and trying to push the guild's level 60's into end-game content, we soon realized that we were were not excelling at either. At the time, we had a relationship with a guild named Caledon and we relied on them to provide content for our level 60's and slowly they began to poach our top players. Within a few weeks, we had lost over 15 of our top players and more were threatening to leave, and thus began the painful struggle out of which Bellum Victoria was born.

Sandtyger and Nytebyter spend hours discussing the options with the other officers, and after another painful defection of great players, we made the hard decision to leave Bellem Aerternus as our casual player guild and create Bellum Victoria as our raiding guild. This allowed the officer core to focus on their specific goals without feeling the strictures of the traditional BA all-inclusiveness. Nytebyter and Pivit and Staban would push BV into Molten Core, while Sandtyger and Juzmomma would focus on creating that family of Bellum over in BA.

In the WoW enviroment, this was the best decision for the WoW:KT province. Today finds the two Bellum guilds stronger than ever. BA is still a large guild that caters to the more casual player who does not have the time to commit to regular raiding, but due to her relationship with BV, a lot of BA still get to experience end-game content on BV raids that is not available to smaller guilds. BV is a very balanced and focused end-game raiding guild, who experiences the benefit of having the BA guild to help fill spots in BV raids and train up the new generation of raiders.

BV, along with BA, is a top guild on the Kel'Thuzad server, having proven themselves to be a force to be reckoned with. Currently (08/2006), we have relegated Molten Core to a trivial encounter, we have Black Wing Lair in Farm Mode, we are working on C'Thun in AQ40, and have made our first forays into Naxxaramas.

Since The Burning Crusade expansion for World Of Warcraft has come out the members of Bellum Aeternus have once again proved themselves. Ranking 3rd on the horde side for raid progression. Bellum Aeternus and Bellum Victoria have since then also combined into 1 guild to bring the members closer together. Currently (09/2008) Bellum Aeternus has gone all the way from Grull the Dragonkiller to the Eradar Twins in The Sunwell.

Everquest II

EQ2 was founded by the governors:

• SaintPeter (Peter)
• Spawnstriker (Valoryke)
• BrewSki (Brewski)

...and later joined by...

• Ibex
• Kyrhie/Linissa
• ChazyB (Chazie)

Excitement and anticipation for EverQuest II started early in Bellum Aeternus as information about the game was announced. A sneak invite for 25 members to join the beta by PlanetSide's Community Manager (and BA member) Sporkfire sealed the deal. The guild was formed on the Beta 1 server under the "good" Qeynos faction. A vote was held to choose the server of choice, in which "Guk" won, with 3 votes. On the game's release in November 2004, Bellum Aeternus was formed as the fifth guild on the server.

One of the cool features of EQ2 is guild level, where guild members get access to special items, raid encounters, and an expanding guild bank by doing special "guild writ" quests. BA is one of the most favored of Queen Antonia's guilds as we have worked together to raise our guild level from the very beginning. Many founding members can remember the early days when writ groups hunted badgers and darkpaw gnolls in Antonica as SaintPeter serenaded us with his songs.

An early goal of the guild was to become of the premier guilds without resorting to forced playtimes and required raiding. After a few months of playing many of our members were in the upper levels of the game and BA began to raid regularly. Around this time Ibex, an especially devoted centurion and EverQuest raiding veteran was promoted to governor to assist SaintPeter with leading the guild, especially with raiding in an MMORPG. This marked the beginning of period of heavy raiding focus in BA. This period included regular raids, alliances with other guilds, guild poaching, reduced interest in lower level characters, and the development of a DKP system. However in the end BA did not make the transition to a full-out raiding guild as the game was encountering a downturn in interest and several members decided to leave EQ2. And Yea There Was Guild Drama.

The next evolution of the EverQuest II province brought it to the state it is in today -- a more "casual" focus and events of all types, from raiding to playing alts of all levels, to tradeskills. As of September 2006 we have over 100 players in the province.

World of Warcraft: Proudmoore

WoW:PM was founded by:
Ombra
Redemption
Parslip(Advisor)

They started out as people who were uncomfortable in the PvP Horde that BA:KT was. Alliance on a PvE server was chosen to fit their playstyle. They were slow to grow over the span of a year.

A Move to Khaz Modan

Proudmore was a hugely overpopulated server. Blizzard eventually offered for free transfers of characters to Khaz Modan. The decision was made to move to Khaz Modan. Recruitment skyrocketed. They almost instantaneously became a raiding guild and advanced a reasonable distance into the endgame instances of WoW.

Due to personality differences, the leadership of BA:KM made the decision to move to an independant guild called Veritas. We wish them well in their future endeavors. All of the members will always be welcome back to BA:Meta.

EVE Online

EVE was founded by:
Staban
Sanadorn
2Clueless

Current Leadership: Talon Lead Kaimelar

The EVE Province was first founded by some of the senior members of BA. They showed and trained most of the senior staff as it stands now.

The Corp has moved around quiet abit and has been allied to both sides of the current war[Northern & Southern Coalition vs. The Alliance] before it started.

Proto Provinces

Some provinces have not quite made it past the test to become a enduring province.

Battlefield 2

BF2 was founded by:
Chaz
ThirdParty
CalmTerror

Battlefield 2 was immensely popular upon release. BA did not get into the Beta, and started it's development after release. This hurt recruitment vastly. The game was independent server based, so BA got a server of it's own. But due to it being a FPS like Planetside, we were able to adapt many of our old tactics.

Due to the game developers' changes, the game had a huge downward spike in player interest. BA players also got bored of the game and moved on to other games. Effectively ending this proto-province.

Guild Wars

Guildwars was founded by:
Blackscrapper (Larry)
Cenary
Wye

Guildwars was our first attempt at a free MMORPG. Many players lost interest very quickly, and recruitment was nearly impossible. The proto-province eventually faded away.