What happened to "Knights Who Say Ni"?

[Carkle Jackson]

Originally Posted by DinoTriz2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I remember being angry when a new guild, "Kittens Who Say Meow" sprang up in a mocking fashion

I ended up joining Kittens for a couple of years after I left Anonymous. It’s really an amazing guild. The people are some of the nicest, most fun people I have met on this server.

[DarkwingDuck]

Forget knights, what’s about bregan d’Aerth... BDA?

[jolanar]

Originally Posted by DarkwingDuck [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Forget knights, what’s about bregan d’Aerth... BDA?

Read this and get back to us in a few months when you are done:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=241907

[myxomatosii]

Well this is a bit surreal to read. I founded the Knights. Carkle was the best officer ever. I was really proud when they broke off and formed another guild, disappointed of course because they were my best people and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the time spent with them. But I wasn't giving them the time and effort that they needed and I was in a transitional state in my life between university and work. I also was moving around the country fairly regularly. Lived a short while in the northeast, then on the west coast, some time was spent in the south as well.

I'd be glad to answer any question about the guild, our history, or any events (that I'm aware of) throughout our history, but Carkle's word is law as far as I'm concerned. I trust them as far as I can throw them, and I'm strong as fuck. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[myxomatosii]

And for the record I loved Kittens Who Say Meow. I literally laughed out loud the first time I saw it and always made a point of chatting with them. Great folks.

[myxomatosii]

Originally Posted by Tunabros [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Just curious

I founded the guild, ran it for a few years, it got to the point where it ran me, I realized I needed to dedicate more time to my offline life, the guild kept trying to pull me back in, some officers started to organize.. honestly kind of "above me", I was little more than a figurehead and representative, I got the news that they wanted to form a raiding guild, I wasn't sure that we could even do that with our population but I watched in interest, eventually they splintered, from that day onward the guild wasn't really the same but it was the catalyst I needed to transition out of the game, I sort of faded away slowly, and after that I haven't really kept up, I don't know what happened to Anonymous after my former officers founded it.

Originally Posted by Kendir [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They are now known as The Knights Who Say Ekki Ekki Ekki Pitang Zoom Boing.

I can neither confirm nor deny.

Originally Posted by GnomeCaptain [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ni

Ni.

Originally Posted by ScaringChildren [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I still have an alt that's in their guild

That's really cool, I hope it's been a positive experience but the guild is a shadow of it's former self. I have no idea why it even exists anymore. A relic of a time gone!

Originally Posted by Dillusional [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I always assumed they became "kittens who say meow" ...

No, they came after. It was after KWSN was medium-large that someone decided to make a satirical guild. I appreciated it and don't believe I ever spoke to their founder, only members. I never had a problem with them.

Originally Posted by Zemus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Kittens who say meow was a splinter guild of knights who say ni!

This could be, I don't know who founded KWSM but I am doubtful that this is true. If it is, I am only learning about it now.

Originally Posted by LadyRae [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I saw one like two days ago. I know they're around.

Some of us are even asquare.

Originally Posted by kyrobo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't think that's true. Nimthir, the founder of Kittens, was never in Knights. I've asked.

As for what happened to Knights ( from what I remember: )

Toward the end several years ago, Knights had a growing corps of end-game-level members. Carkle ( I think?, ) a prominent officer, was frustrated at the guild leader's absence and refusal to allow Carkle to take the reigns and transition Knights into a raiding guild. So, Carkle left and took some folks with to form Anonymous. Knights slowly died out after that.

I wouldn't say refusal, but generally this is accurate. As soon as I stopped playing the population seemed to decline. I admit I was surprised, I had no idea that I was so impactful in driving the guild to what it had become. I underestimated my role in the guild.

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm no expert, but I thought Anon existed before that? I was under the impression we were one of the older guilds actually. I do remember having Carkle as our guild leader, but I don't think he was the first, I think he just joined Anon and became the leader.

I can't say who created it, but they came from the ranks of my most dedicated officers. It's been years, and while I knew at the time many of the memories have faded. I have to admit I'm learning a bit myself in this thread.

Originally Posted by kyrobo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm 100% sure Anonymous was formed by a disgruntled Knights officer. I was around / talking to 'em when it happened. I'm less sure that it was Carkle. It was a while ago.



By my reckoning Anonymous is the 3rd oldest active guild on the server, behind Kittens and Azure Guard (by far the oldest now.)

This is truly incredible information. I had no idea the server's guild scene has changed so much.

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Stembolt was leader of Knights Who Say Ni. He is/was a great guy. He promoted me to be an officer. Shortly later, he disappeared. Stopped logging in. We communicated via e-mail. In one e-mail, he said he had no intent to log on until Velious dropped. Mind you this is several years ago... Years before Velious. Velious was not even on the horizon at this point.

It was a huge guild (largest on the server at one point). It turns out there were many officers but not enough who wanted to lead, organize, or even let other people know they were officers. Most officers were appointed to be invite bots. So I started stepping up and trying to organize the chaos. Most people responded favorably to it. They liked having an active figurehead and somebody who wanted to "put them to work". I started organizing raids and helping people with their epics. I had this belief that we could have a casual arm of Knights and a raiding arm of Knights. However it did not work as well as I had hoped.

The end of my time with Knights came when an individual popped up and started giving orders to the guild that were contrary to the instructions that my fellow active officers and I had been giving the guild. He said he was an officer. But I had never seen him before. I /guildstat-ed him and sure enough he was an officer. I realized that even though the guild recognized me as the leader, I still had no real power beyond the will of most of the people. The will of the people is important but if somebody can invite those of a different mindset to the guild or kick those of the my mindset from the guild, then all of our plans for the guild were threatened. This made it feel like "fixing" the Knights was too daunting of a task. So I quit.

Knights reached out to me in droves. Asking why I left. Asking where I was going. I told them why I left and that I was not sure where I was going. They asked me to start a guild and that they would join it. With me as Guild Leader. I agreed to do so. I named the Guild "Anonymous". People speculate that we were named after the cyber-terrorism group. Not true. At the time I created it, I had never heard of them. I wanted to be a different kind of raiding guild than I had previously seen on the server. One that just gets in and gets out and gets the job done. Other raiding guilds enter the zone. Find the mob dead and have no idea what happened. An "anonymous" guild killed it. No trash talking in /ooc or /shout. No forum wars. Just anonymous.

Running a guild quickly became more than this husband / father / employee / student had time for. So after a few months, I stepped down and handed Anonymous over to Hawkai/Oteso.

Running a guild quickly becomes a guild running you.. I have no doubt that your experiences and achievements as a guild leader was more than I ever accomplished. I have nothing but the utmost respect for what you and our fellow officers created. I met so many of you when it was your first days on the server. If I had even the smallest hand in making your experience more positive and helping you to get to the places you reached, I feel my time on the server was well-spent.

Carkle's recollection of the events leading up to the fading of the Knights is likely the clearest of anyone's. I still have all of the officer's from KWSN contact information in my smartphone to this day, years later.

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And to answer your original question. Within a month of the founding of Anonymous, roughly 50 to 60% of the Knights were recruited into Anonymous. 30 to 40% moved to other guilds. Maybe 10% max stayed with Knights.

From what I heard, Mezr was able to talk Stembolt into transferring guild leadership to him. And the population of Knights just gradually dwindled away.

That sounds about right. It was a passive granting with the hopes that someone would carry on and form the guild in their own image, but the effort required to do so is.. more than most expect. I'm not surprised that nothing came of it, but I am still a bit disappointed. Life goes on.

Originally Posted by Fendolyn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Dreadra did make the dark elf guild (named Teir Dal), but it didn’t last long. I was in it for a bit before she changed it to Kittens. She made Kittens as a mockery of Knights in a way because she was determined to treat her guild members better than Knights treated her (Don’t know any details on that).

That's unfortunate, this is my first time hearing about this. I feel like the out-of-touch CEO hearing watercooler stories years later.. a shame. If Dreadre ever reads this, I apologize for your experience in my guild. I had a singular focus when I made the guild.. grow grow grow. I wanted to connect every new player on the server into a single network of helpfulness. I didn't think it would work so well. Once I realized how easy it was to grow, and once /who all GUILD was returning "too many players" at 3am regardless of the day of the week.. I knew I was at the reigns of something insane.. I have no doubt there are countless other bad experiences that I never heard about, but I believe there are also countless positive experiences that I also never heard about. I'll take the bad with the good and just know that I did my best.. if you look through my post history there are a few nuggets of me doing some officer work on the forums, heh. I don't know if I'd even remember half of it..

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don’t blame her. Knights had become a cesspool before myself and a few other officers cleaned it up. Mouse/Snick and I tossed several people out of the guild for their lack of respect to other guildmembers.

And that's why you all were awesome. That and countless other reasons.

Originally Posted by MilanderTruewield [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I remember after Carkle and company left Knights, I was made an officer in Knights, tried to do some things with the website and such, and gave up and joined Anonymous [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The website was an afterthought. I never wanted to be a website guild. I wanted to keep the "overhead" and management as minimal as possible. In hindsight I approached it wrong. I gave in to demands from too many directions and never set a clear goal for what the guild was trying to be.

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

By that time, Knights had already (figuratively) collided with the iceberg. You made a valiant effort but there was no saving the old girl.

Lol, yeah. Captain was asleep at the wheel (me).

Originally Posted by Meiva [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I drunkenly petitioned for guild leadership of Knights a while ago. Nothing came of it of course, but the guild lives on! There are still Knights.

Hahaha.

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I saw Mezr within the last two weeks. Stem eventually gave him leadership of the depleted Knights Who Say Ni. Mezr was sitting in EC tunnel. With his Knights guild tag proudly displayed above his head. I did a /who all Knights. Only Mezr.

Same experience I had upon logging in once.

[Carkle Jackson]

Stem... Wow! I am so glad you posted! I am a little in shock. I always thought you would hate me for what I did to Knights. I am proud of <Anonymous> (although I deserve very little credit their success) but I have always felt bad for my hand in changing and then killing your creation. It doesn't sound like you hate me for that like I had feared. In fact, you seem to still like me. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Please let me know if you're ever in game. Come level an alt with me. I enjoy spending time with you.

[Jimjam]

An elegant guild for a more civilised age. Not as clumsy or random as a Zerg.

[Thugnuts]

Be me in 2012.

Create first P99 character.

Yay imma Gnome!

Stembolt sitting at the Steamfont rings.

Less than five minutes on the server, instant invite to KWSN.

Still rocking the tag today on that character.

Once KWSN collapsed, P99 plunged into a Dark Age from which it has never recovered.

[myxomatosii]

Originally Posted by Carkle Jackson [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Stem... Wow! I am so glad you posted! I am a little in shock. I always thought you would hate me for what I did to Knights. I am proud of <Anonymous> (although I deserve very little credit their success) but I have always felt bad for my hand in changing and then killing your creation. It doesn't sound like you hate me for that like I had feared. In fact, you seem to still like me. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Please let me know if you're ever in game. Come level an alt with me. I enjoy spending time with you.

Yea, my brother has started to play again so I was going to act as his support on occasion, and it gives me a reason to revisit the old nostalgic places. Beyond that I don't have many plans. We'll see if I start playing some again, perhaps once I change jobs.. interviewing and talking to recruiters is taking all of my time right now.

As far as hate or like, I have no ill-feelings toward anyone and never did. My primary emotion throughout the whole process was guilt at not dedicating the time required to the guild I was responsible for. But yeah, it all came out pretty positive with the spawning of new guilds and new goals.

Look for me online in the next few weeks, I'll likely leave Stembolt idling a lot in-game starting this weekend. My character list is in my sig but I typically sit on Stembolt until someone requests one of my other chars or depending on what I feel like doing. My current feeling when I logon is just an overwhelming confusion with how little I know about Velious and what to do [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

An elegant guild for a more civilised age. Not as clumsy or random as a Zerg.

If I may paraphrase Roland the gunslinger I would inject, "But that was before.. since then the world had moved on."

Originally Posted by Thugnuts [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Be me in 2012.

Create first P99 character.

Yay imma Gnome!

Stembolt sitting at the Steamfont rings.

Less than five minutes on the server, instant invite to KWSN.

Still rocking the tag today on that character.

Once KWSN collapsed, P99 plunged into a Dark Age from which it has never recovered.

I never got tired of helping and surprising new players with some starting plat and an open dialogue of question-answering. I was probably a lot of player's "first friend" just because of how much time I spent going around new player areas and seeing how people were outfitted and if they were having a good time. I was like the guy at a party going around and making sure everyone is having fun, except the party was the whole server.. needless to say that is a lot of work and how I overwhelmed myself [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]