I have tales to tell! Take a seat, make yourselves comfortable.
Our story begins back in 2005, when I "discovered" a world called Azeroth in Blizzard's World of Wacraft. This game was not my first MMO, however it was the one that captured my imagination and drew me in, like no other had to that point. Little did I know what would take place over the coming years.
I hear you ask how did "HoJ" come about? When did all this start?
"One fair Azerothian day in ealy May 2005, Pedesvir noble Dwarf Warrior, was meeting with his his "brother", a Night-Elf hunter by the name of Tiberius, when a fair maiden chanced upon the meeting desperate for help. Now Tiberius was ever one for a pretty face and he helped her out by doing as she asked. Turns out it was all a trick, she got him to join her guild, then made him leader and left. Pedesvir realising his brother was in a bit of a jam, offered to join and keep him company..."
That was merely the beginning...
"I never really knew what I wanted to achieve with this guild in Azeroth, but what happened over the years, surprised even me"
Circumstances dictated, and my ego to an extent, that once I joined Hands of Justice to "save" my brother I become the "leader" of our little two man guild. I am the oldest after all.
However, just the two of us was not enough for me. So I applied the knowledge of gaming communities I had garnered over the years, and setup a forum, a few ingame macro's (holy wall of text batman!) and began recruiting people to Hands of Justice. It was slow going at first, but I worked at it and over the summer of 2005 we slowly grew to a group of 30 or 40 people all levelling away in the content that Blizzard had given us. Players like Elviott, Thugwar, Taithras, Kurtt, Dourin, Daikini (<3 Goatboy), Tanequil, Frozzone, Blued, to name but a few all helped make the guild what it had become. We even overcame the bugbear that haunts most levelling guilds in pve MMO's, we actually retained players when they reached the level cap - 60 at the time.
As more of us hit 60, we started to run the pre-raid dungeons to gear up and to experience some rather good questlines relating to them, all the while contining to recruit, but increasingly we found ourselves recruiting the friends and family of our members, people who just seemed to fit so well. Which led to us ONLY recruiting such people going forward, creating the sense of community that we have today, and that is found in various successor guilds around innumerable gaming worlds :)
Anyways, back to us all beginning to reach the "vanilla" level cap. We formed the Pax Justitia raid alliance with The Drakan Templars, a like minded guild who were also looking to start raiding. Once this was up and running we started on the old 10man variants of Scholomance, Stratholme, BRD and of course 15man LBRS & UBRS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTKySZgMmVQ
Eventually we found ourselves - that is Shallow (GL of DT), my officers (Whom at this point included Fian, Amulas, Poisednoise, Valismar, and Kurtt to name a few), and myself - in a position that we could start with the "entry" raids of Zul Gurub & the Ruins of Ahn Qiral (AQ20) while gearing up more people to hit Molten Core - Fire Resistance gear was an entertaining "grind" as was getting people in full tier 0 or equivalent!
We started the main raids in Zul gurub, and good times were had - I fondly remember sitting in the pool in IF following a nights raid dividing out the Bijous that we had recieved during the evening and just discussing nonsense on voice communications. A guildie of the time, Ashaar (Hunter) made videos of several of our boss fights from all instances. Here is a few from ZG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5soGisaL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9-Hd351xTU
We started MC in July of 2006 and it went well, we had the numbers and were we didnt we went anyway, and mobs still died :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM_P2qn2CU4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pql7rqKSDOs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euxXH15SgMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGSy4d_qugw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c58fMbCH7TA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fyJskdGuk
Spring & Summer 2006 was a golden period for all involved.
A personal highlight for me wasthe celebration of Pedesvir's (my character at the time) first year as Leader of Hands of Justice. This celebration took the form of a grand karnival, involving an ingame Black & White Ball, parade of mounts through Ironforge, a city raid on Thunderbluff and a fireworks display:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCvn-SGM4tM
Alot of HoJ attended as did several Drakan's and randoms from across the server. It was fun and the video really shows it off.
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News then came to our brave fighters of new worlds to be conquered, one upon which the very fate of Azeroth rested, and a Middle Earth with new mysteries to be solved and evils to be vanquished...
"Outland. A ravaged world, torn by deamonic corruption and endless war. A place for new heroes to make themselves known, to help save what was left of this world from the evils of Illidan and his minions."