In the late 1990's the game to play at the time was Diablo. The place to play it was Battlenet. And the place to hang out was The Black Lodge Channel for players level 30+), as most of the "legit" (meaning non-hacked) players were there, for it was assumed that the hacked players would hang out in the HellsCaretakers channel, which was restricted to those characters level 40+ and all the flash-in-the-pan hackers wanted their characters to be level 50 (or more if their trainer allowed it).


The Black Lodge was a very social channel of largely mature gamers and most of its "regulars" spent just as much time socializing in channel as they did playing. TBL (The Black Lodge) was one of the more accepting channels and only people that came in to cause trouble or were obviously unsupervised 13 year old nincompoops on daddy's computer were shunned until they either left the channel altogether or became more socially mature.


When Diablo II was released, most of us bought it and were soon barred by Blizzard from TBL (as it was intended to be a strictly D1 channel). So our rag-tag group headed to the D2 channel "Starting Strategies." Our numbers kept growing as we met more friends on battlenet either in channel, playing in public games, or by word of mouth. There came a point when you could pop into Starting Strategies (or otherwise knows as "SS" or "The Strat") and see 30 people you knew at any one time. Many of us were in a clan at that time (formerly known as Ravenwulf) that had disbanded shortly after D2 was released, due to incompetent leadership and constant infighting. Many left battlenet altogether, while others either found other former members or went into deep isolation and played with themselves. Those of us that had found one another after the breakup of Ravenwulf still hung out in SS (ShadowRaven D2 players can still be found in channel Starting Strategies).


Since the webmistress (Enchant) for the Clan Formerly Known As Ravenwulf was my gaming partner and a good friend, (and I have a mischievous nature), during one conversation I mentioned that it might be kind of funny to resurrect Clan Ravenwulf with a parody of its original site, with tongue-in-cheek officer descriptions, and rather than "recruiting" members, we would simply draft members without their knowledge. We unveiled the site April 1st, 2001. It went over great! Our membership climbed and instead of people getting drafted, we had new members asking to be admitted. The only problem was that Ravenwulf was only a website (though humorous) and a forum. It was not an actual growing active clan.


It was at this point that "The Idea" for ShadowRaven was formed one summer night on the back porch of my house while discussing the "unclan" Ravenwulf. We had a handful of people that wanted Ravenwulf to be an actual clan and to do clan things…and there was no substance to Ravenwulf. It was merely smoke and mirrors. It was stage background with no players. I wanted to create a legitimate clan and Xod (eventually) talked me out of continuing to use the Ravenwulf name, and he, Enchant, and I brainstormed the new name for a good while that night before we came to an agreement on the name "ShadowRaven." For the next week Enchant and I ironed out what I wanted to see on our website and she made all this you see here happen. From time to time I tell her she does a great job. We dropped Delphi forums that we were using (they wanted a membership fee from everyone that used it) and Xod went on a mad hunt to get a new forum up we could use. I told him he did a good job, too.


We set up clan inventories for Diablo2, and its mods. We ventured into other online games that didn't require a monthly fee to play, such as Dragon Court, Ambar, Dark Forces, Counter-Strike, Warcraft, Ragnarok, Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, even Chess (for our two members that enjoy playing it online), and as some of our members were separated from the rest of the pack by fate, we included a section in our forum for console games. A side note in regards to Dragon Court: I am proud to brag that Enchant, as the Dragon Court division Clan Leader, has brought ShadowRaven up to a commendable rank in the DC clan list with the support of her DC crew: ambassadors Nemisis, Linsha, Araness and GooseChase, as well as SRC Armorer Wurmsmasher, and our private Zookeeper, Foamstone. We are determined to progress further in the rankings and are actively recruiting for this division of SRC.(Update: Since March 2003, ShadowRaven has been the #1 ranked clan on Dragon Court. Upon achieving the top rank, Enchant resigned as head of the DC division and turned it over to Foamstone, under whose leadership the division has continued to grow and prosper.)


Why did we find friendships in ShadowRaven? Because most of us share one thing in common: we are cynical, condescending elitists that also enjoy having a good time and play a lot of games. We do not look at a partially filled glass and think, "This glass is half full" or "This glass is half empty", we think "I could wet my throat with this and then use this glass as a weapon." or "If I mix some ipecac in here, do you think _____ would notice any difference till after they drink it?", or "Unnngh. Glass. Sharp. heeheeheeheehee." The most common question we tend to ask ourselves is, "Can I get away with it?" It is amongst these like-minded people we found ourselves and recruited from.


Your Humble Clown,
Shadarak