To understand the events over the past year, one must first understand what KGB is. Traditionally, KGB has been about the weak banding together to defeat the strong. KGB has been about fighting players who would impose their will on innocents. We have never been the best PvPers, and in fact KGB has always ranged in PvP skill from mediocre to downright newbies for the most part. However, we have done our best to play to our strengths rather than our weaknesses, and we have had a great deal of success in the past by utilizing our superior numbers and organization to defeat our more skilled competition. Although many players consider our style to be cheap and label us as gangbangers, I have always felt that it is acceptable to revisit grief tactics upon grief players. It might not be as impressive as a small elite guild who can take on and defeat double their numbers, but we’ve done the best with what we have and have been among the most powerful guilds during the prime of our runs on Siege Perilous and Pacific because of it. 

Our greatest successes came during our various runs on Pacific. During my tenure on KGB-Pac, we had little trouble defeating our enemies and were widely respected (Although of course we still had our very vocal detractors) because of our clear moral standards. Personally, I attribute our success to the clearly defined good and evil on the server, as well as the relative weakness of our rival guilds. As hard as it may be for some Siege players to believe, I often had players come up to me on Pacific and tell me how grateful they were that KGB was killing all of these evil players who had caused them so much grief. These were not PvPers which for the most part dominate the Siege landscape, these were miners and newbies and roleplayers and people who didn’t have the slightest inkling of how to fight, and were just happy that someone was sticking up for the little guy for once.

We came to Siege Perilous roughly one year ago, full of optimism. The guild initially came in fragments; most of our older players and craftsmen made the move while our more skilled PvPers such as Binbs, Seija, Darius, Juha, and myself, stayed behind on Pacific where we already had established characters to fight with. While our Pacific force dominated our enemies back home, our Siege crew struggled against guilds that had gotten a jumpstart on us and were more skilled combatants. Eventually, amid much hype and circumstance, our top players began the move to Siege in force to consolidate the guild and make a run at GC and UDL and the other top PK guilds.

We made many mistakes in those days, most notably writing checks that we could not as of yet cash, as well as the infamous scroll-bug. Being the proud and successful group that we were (especially those coming from Pacific) we boasted that “soon” we would be dominating the competition, even if at the time we simply weren’t capable of putting up a fight due to the ROT system. Upon hearing that there was a scroll-bug that other guilds had used to get ahead, we sought the easy path to competitiveness and some of our members tried it out. Although we quickly abandoned using the bug after it proved to be too tedious and inferior to regular training, OSI had put in special code to catch people using it and every KGB who tried it even once was caught and banned. Although no one gained more than a point or two, which is all but insignificant at 50 magery, we had several (5, as I recall) accounts that were lost.

With most of these players quitting UO in disgust, KGB again was left with a fragmented Siege force and continued to struggle. Disorganized and simply not skilled enough to fight the other powerhouse guilds on Siege, KGB left many promises unfulfilled and yet was too proud to admit it. Our pride cost us the respect of a large percentage of the Siege population, and got us saddled with the “in training” reputation. More than anything else, this is the mistake I regret most. KGB on Pacific was a proud group, but a noble group as well. We didn’t make promises and proclaim our future greatness; we simply went out and won our battles. However, that pride carried over to Siege where we had yet to earn our stripes, and were up against for superior competition - which ultimately has continued to come back to haunt us even now.

For our second big run on Siege, many of our top PvPers came back and we recruited many of our friends from Pacific. We worked hard over the course of a couple months and KGB finally began to turn the corner. However, we grew too quickly and soon became an unwieldly force. Our internal conflicts heated up, but were covered up as best we could due to our shared desire to make KGB #1. Although these Pacific players were friends back home, many of them simply didn’t fit into the KGB mold. Many of them didn’t care about our roleplayed idealism or honor, and were simply interested in taking over Siege and saw KGB as the best means to accomplish that. Again, our pride got the better of us and we allowed problems with exploiting, noto-Pking, and grief play to persist when we should have simply started showing these people the door.

Although we ultimately became, albeit for a relatively short while, the most powerful guild on Siege in my opinion – the cost to KGB was great. With our reputation damaged and our internal issues becoming too serious to ignore, the guild started to tear itself apart. With the coming of Diablo II, many KGB left UO for greener pastures and many quit out of frustration. Those who were left were forced to pick up the pieces of the problems that we created, which ultimately caused us to kick out numerous members as well as see some old and respected faces retire. Despite claims by our enemies, KGB was not banned en masse for duping, although we did lose a couple of players who were either already kicked from the guild, about to be kicked from the guild, or caught up in the “ban by association” crap that went on in Pacific. I’d like to stress that NONE of the bannings had anything to do with any activities on Siege, and that our housing and town were built entirely out of legitimate funds.

Our initial demise on Siege was due to forgetting what KGB was really all about in order to grab success as quickly as possible. Although it was fun for a time, winning truly is not everything and, in my opinion, certainly was not worth the problems that it caused. I would much rather be in a weak guild that is liked than in a strong guild that is despised. To a certain extent, I feel that our failure is due to the nature of the Siege community – everyone wants to straddle the fence and no one wants to really be evil. However, for the most part our problems were entirely our own creation and we have had to pay dearly for them.

KGB is again making a return to Siege. Gone are the exploiters, noto-PKs, and problem players. We are not recruiting all of our old friends to make another run at being the top guild on the server. We are not making any promises of future greatness. Our goals are simply to have fun and to restore some dignity to the KGB name before we move on to Shadowbane and leave Ultima Online behind us. For the most part, KGB is comprised of average players with average connections and average skills. We have some players left who are still skilled PvPers, and some who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. We should be fairly easy pickings for an organized crew of high caliber PvPers, although we will still give it our best.

I don’t expect any love from the Siege community, or any forgiveness. I can assure you all that KGB will do its best to get back to the idealism that we once had, and that we are implementing systems to promptly deal with anyone who breaks our rules. You will not see KGB exploiting or PKing or causing any problems in the future, rather you will see players having fun and getting their butts kicked on the battlefield. It is my sincere hope that we can earn the respect of the Siege community and our former allies once more. And hey, if you made it this far, thanks for listening!

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