Colonial Space Marines

Who is CSM?

Colonial Space Marines (CSM) is, literally, a guild on the Destromath server in the game World of Warcraft. The guild has an extensive history on the server, and is typically regarded as a 'founding' guild, that is it has existed since the creation of the server with the launch of World of Warcraft in November of 2004.

More broadly, CSM is a collection of typically level headed and easy going mmorpg gamers from across the world who drift in and out of a thirteen year old community, not just in World of Warcraft, but across a range of other games as well. It is the hilarious memories, shared experiences, trolling jibes, grueling hard work, triumphant successes, and colossal failures of a group of friends separated by distance but kept together by purpose. It is these memories we attempt to capture with this wiki.

Also there is some weird wigger shit going on? I mean look at the picture in the navigation bar on the left, it's not even close to what the guild membership is like. Except for maybe Heaton and Shimmer.

Guild History

Vanilla

Colonial Space Marines was formed on the second day of live servers, November 24th, 2004. This makes it the longest running active guild in the history of the Destromath server. There are a few other guilds on the realm that have existed as long, but none have maintained a presence in progression for the entire history of the game. CSM was chartered by Alys as GM and Sylphiel and Paradox as her officers. They came to WoW with some other friends from Planetside, Final Fantasy XI, and various other MMOs. The name Colonial Space Marines was, at least to the writer's knowledge, not a nod to Warhammer 40k, but instead just a name that they chose because it fit in Planetside and was carried into other games.

In the early days of CSM they started to assimilate other guilds of like-minded players, interested in conquering the hardest content WoW had to offer. Some of these early mergers included defining excellence (Zelf, Ell, Popp) and Amish (Red, Jody, Killswitcher, Bibafatty). CSM's roster leveled up and then began farming Scholo, UBRS, and Strath for their Dungeon Sets to prepare for raiding. Some honored traditions of these times include: Zelf AOE'ing before the tank had aggro on huge packs and getting murdered ("THE SACRIFICE HAS BEEN MADE!"), Ell Mind Controling mobs and using abilities that would get the group killed instead of healing, Golfballer and Drewbie Shift Clicking everything before anyone else had a chance at looting.

MC

Destromath's first few forays into MC were more of PUG groups than any guild sanctioned raid. A couple of these were led by Elude. Although these runs did not slay any bosses or acquire any loot, CSM's officer core recognized the need to fill a raid with their own people to avoid possible drama (loot and otherwise), and continued to recruit. Council of Shadow (Magy, Drewbie) and Equals D (Rudger, Kabal, and the rest of the Ohio Crew) were recruited as CSM began to venture into the Molten Core as a guild. During MC progression many other guilds were assimilated including Carnage (Kendoch, Airion, Reapor) and eventually CSM started to poach people out of our rival progression guild Tilt (Finite, Infinite, and Tilt's GM, Covet, would eventually join). Throughout the rest of Vanilla there were many other mergers, acquisitions, poachings, and random people joining. CSM even received a bunch of recruits after Blizzard opened up free transfers from Mannoroth, an overpopulated server. Throughout the entirety of Vanilla there was a steady stream of recruits from [[| Tempest |]] and Ascension and the other Zerg guilds. Despite the huge amount of recruiting that had been done, the Main Tank for all early CSM raids was actually never a guild member. Machao blew other tanks out of the water in terms of threat. He was actually spec'd Protection (which was pretty rare at the time) and used crazy tactics like queueing up Heroic Strikes while hitting other abilities to dump rage. Both Machao and Dalamar were diligent raiders throughout all of the first tier of WoW raiding, neither missing more than a handful of raids. However, they never left THEIR GUILD??????.

The first few CSM raids into MC resulted in little to show for the time. Clearing trash to Lucifron took hours and progress on the boss was slow. The run back was oppressive. If the group fully wiped with no recovery everyone would have to make the ghost run across the Searing Gorge and make their way back down to BRD. Once inside BRD they had to run all the way to the portal to MC, which would probably have respawns along the way. Once back inside the raid instance there were always at least Molten Surgers back up since they had a respawn of about 15-30m and often Corehound resapwns too since they had respawns of 30m-1h. Basically a full wipe with no recovery (Battle Res or an Ankh) was not an option. Back when repair bots did not exist yet, a favorite technique to repair was employed. Players could release spirit from within MC and spirit res at the graveyard in Searing Gorge. They could then Hearth to Orgrimmar and repair. After repairing the player would take off all their gear and jump to their death off the windrider tower. Once the player was dead again, a player within Molten Core could cast a resurrection spell on the corpse that was still in the raid and when the player accepted it would take them back inside. However, despite all of these struggles CSM lost the realm first kill on Lucifron by about 10 minutes to the Alliance guild Masquers. The only loot from CSM's first ever raid boss slain was a Choker of Enlightenment. Killswitcher won the roll on the item, but then passed it to Alys as a gift to the GM.

CSM would repeat this kill 4 times before having enough Tomes of Tranquil Shot and be able to muster a realm first kill on Magmadar (Magma-FUCKING-Dar). In the time of farming Lucifron for Hunter books CSM was also putting some serious time into Onyxia. The first couple of ventures into the lair provided very little progress, but within a week the guild was regularly making it to the final phase, despite "More deep breath" shenanigans. After the first Magmadar kill, progression exploded. Over the next week CSM downed Onyxia for the first time. This was probably the first instance of nerd screams heard on Vent as the kill was many weeks in the making. This first kill of Onyxia dropped not only a Tier 2 hat but also a Boots of Transcendence, the Priest Tier 2 boots. Gehenas, Garr, Baron Geddon, Shazzrah, and Sulfuron Harbinger. Sulfuron Harbinger, like Onyxia blessed CSM with a Tier 2 item drop, Bindings of Transcendence. The hardest part of the mid portion of Molten Core was honestly the Lava Packs. Having enough warlocks un-AFK to banish was just a really hard task apparently. Golemagg took CSM a couple of weeks to down mostly on an account of lack of heals. The boss actually hit reasonably hard and healing strategies had not really evolved past "Spam Flash Heal" yet. Majordomo Executus also took about 2 weeks for a kill. As the guild farmed the earlier bosses and worked on the latter bosses recruitment continued. One such recruit was Gorr. Gorr joined CSM equipped with not one but TWO Lifestones and TWO Flury Axes. He claimed that he did not buy gold, but everyone knew he did. It was unreasonable to farm enough gold in those days to afford that many BoE epics, even if they were strictly worse than many max level blues. Gorr was never particularly good at what he did but he did do something well. On repeat kills of Gehennas we found that the pull was the hardest part of the boss. Often the Main Tank would run in to pull Gehennas and would get stunned by all the adds and get trucked. The eventual solution to this was the Sacrificial Tank Pull. Gorr would charge in, get obliterated and then the other tanks would pick up their targets and the boss would die. Gorr filled the role of sacrificial tank well beyond when our gear had trivialized the fight. He was very enthusiastic about his job.

CSM's progression on The Firelord was slow and grueling. After our first night of attempts some claimed the fight was "impossible" (despite other guilds having already have killed him on other realms). We pooled guild resources and crafted FR gear for the tanks and some of the more ambitious raiders got some FR gear of their own to try and lessen the raid healing needed. Once we started to feel like we had a handle on all the mechanics of the fight it was time to step it up. On the evening of June 1, 2005 CSM first made their way into UBRS so that the Priests could MC a mob and grant unto everyone a large FR buff. We then rushed down to the Core and prepped for the pull. Some of the wealthier players even invested in flasks (which did not persist through death and were insanely expesive to craft). Other exciting consumables employed included non cooked deviate fish. These had many possible buffs, but the one that we were interested in was the casting speed buff, which cut casts in half. Rag got OBLITERATED (EXTERNAL LINK TO ALYS'S VIDEO), dying before the first set of Sons even spawned. The only fatality on the kill was Kabal who got knocked into the lava and his computer was so fucking shitty that he was lagging really bad and couldn't jump out. Notable loot from the realm first Ragnaros kill included the Leggings of Transcendence (which had +shadow damage and no +healing stats) and the Essence of the Pure Flame (a shitty thorns trinket that Hrangar won for min bid). Later that evening we learned that this kill was achieved on Keith's birthday. It quickly became a guild tradition to wish Keith a "Happy Birthday" any time a new boss was killed. Eventually it devolved into when anything happened, including nothing. Ross once made a calendar invite on every day for a few years for "Happy Birthday Keith!".

Molten Core gave birth to CSM's first loot distribution system, Open Bid DKP. For this system attendance was taken per boss killed and points were awarded. These points were tracked in a simple database that Galdregar somehow fucked up in the Killswitcher DKP Fiasco. When loot was to be distributed an item would be open for bid. Players could spend as much DKP as they felt an item deserved. In theory the system was fine. In practice the system was a nightmare that bred loads of drama. Casuals could come in for a raid and go all-in on rare or powerful items. Some classes chose to game the system and work out among themselves who would get what tier pieces in what order to keep all tier bids at a min so that they could be better poised to win bids on weapons and trinkets. Some players would use the system to bid up people on items they knew the person wanted even though they had zero interest in the item themselves. There was also quite a bit of deceit. People could claim that they were going to pass on certain items to other players and then just totally go back on their word.

Other great memories from MC:

• Xireth out bidding Alys on the first Azuresong Mageblade
• the Half a Handle Incident
• Crave wearing green FR gear on Ragnaros
• Out of combat res'ing
• Perfect going AFK to floss every night at 6PM.
• Ahazi rage-quitting during Ragnaros and hoping that we wipe (we then won and Alys G-Kicked him)
• Ross getting the Living Bomb debuff on his Felhunter during Baron Geddon and dismissing it. Later resummoned it in the Orgirmmar Auction House and killed like 60 people
• Stormcrow and Scorpion using The Judge's Gavel on Molten Giants to banish them with giant chains and making everyone rage.
• Redcoast going AFK to make a sandwich while tanking one of Golemagg's adds. He came back and was still alive and the add was still on him.
• The 11 month grind to finally obtain a Thunderfury.
• The eternal grind to never obtain an Eye of Sulfuras.
• Boogaloo heals somehow being worse than Carine heals, but hey at least he OOC res'd.
• Perfect refusing to help with learning Rag 3.0 because he was "saving money for his epic mount" and being G-kick'd.
• Cascading MC with ODM's Raid
• Killswitcher stole my bike

At the end of MC progression CSM had gotten realm first kills on every boss except Lucifron which we had barely missed.

• Vanilla Raiding History

machao -> nutso -> jody

BWL / Demono Dema / Fallen to Fahlen / Razorgore Woes / Vaelstrasz Woes / Machao MT -> Nutso MT -> Jody MT / Vanilla server downtime Extra Curricular Activites and other servers / Eggsploits / Boar joining CSM

AQ / War effort lotto / guild farming / Starship troopers / Scarab Lord Zelf / Eranikus / AQ progression / twins woes / Cthun woes

Naxx progression / millions of warriors /

Another large acquisition during Naxx was the Firetree refuges CAKE (Churagar, Vtwo, Jumanjii, etc).