Massively interview: Elysean Council captures Divine Fortress

Keeping our eyes on the Aionosphere, Massively applauds the accomplishments of fellow gamers. At the end of June, Daevas were introduced to the Elysean Council during an interview with NCsoft; this group from Trineil was heralded as the first to capture the Divine Fortress on any North American server in Aion. In their interview, leaders in the council chimed in to give their fellow Daevas a glimpse of this ground-breaking experience. Interested in diving more in-depth with the Council, Massively had the chance to speak with one of the leaders -- Nightroad -- about the siege, and what's been happening since.

Read about it after the cut.

Massively: Especially with a task such as taking definitive control of the Core, numbers factor prominently in the equation of success. Can you tell us how many legions are in your Council total, and how many individual members are in each legion?

Nightroad, Elysean Council Siege Leader: Haven (72 members), Kaithiels Vanguard (82 members), Covenant of the Fallen (79 members), Revelation (54 members), Providence (50 members), Tribe (58 members), Hjouse of Spjank (59 members), and Penguin Killers (23 members) are council members of our alliance, while Sunshine (71 members), Knights of the Divine Order (88 members) and Deviance (70 members) have been working closely with us as well.

Can you tell us about the government structure of the Council? If your government structure is democratic, did you use this method when making decisions about the attack, or was one person elected to be commanding general? What, if any, affects did your governing style have on the raid?

Our council is just that, a council. The legion leaders have their input where myself (Nightroad) and Kaithiel make most of the final decisions. During raid time, however, I am essentially the Elyos' unofficial siege leader. I do like to see others give input, and it is taken in to consideration as I plan what to do next. Even though everything doesn't always go as well as we want it to, the attack on divine was virtually flawless.

You noted in your previous interview with Aion Online that your siege started with approximately 300 Elyos. Percentage wise, how many do you think represented your Council, and how many were recruited from the general Elyos population?

I would say around 70-75% of the initial raid represented the council and cooperative legions. Everyone definitely made sure everyone was out there that could be. The general Elyos population brought out a good amount; I was actually very pleased with the turn out.

Communication can be vital in this type of endeavor. We know that some factions on servers have a Ventrilo server dedicated to just raiding the forts. How did you coordinate the attack? Were specific people disseminating information to the different alliances involved, or did you utilize a voice program, or both?

The raid leaders were together in Ventrilo. I would let the raid leaders know where they should be and they would delegate that information to their respective alliances.

We know you said previously that you did not want to give your tactics away for fear of spoiling the fun for the Asmodians. However, can you share a few specific details with us? For instance, how many rank 5 officers and above used Deity scrolls? You spoke of managing the additional mobs that appeared -- did you give them any special attention?

During the fight with Ereshkigal's Claw we used no transformations. Add management was important I had a separate legion group helping keep the additional mobs off the rest of the players; I believe a few others may have been helping with that as well. With all honesty though, the only "difficult" part of this fight is 50%-20% because of the reflects and sleeps combined with the AoEs and additional mobs.

Any idea how long the siege lasted, from vulnerability to capture?

53 minutes.

Looking back at the raid, what is the one thing you'd say went better than expected? If you had the chance to do the raid over, what is the one thing you would do differently?

Looking back I'd say the execution went a lot better than I expected. Everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be during the entire raid. One thing I would do differently? I'd definitely plan it more than 24hours in advance, to hopefully get more people and be slightly more prepared.

Since the capture, have you had to defend against any serious attempts to remove Divine Fortress from your control? If there were any, can you describe for us how these attempts went -- how close did the Asmodians get to capturing, or have they captured it already?

Since the capture the only defense we have had to do was against the dredgion, which at this time only drops about 2 waves of elite mobs. Unfortunately, I don't believe the Asmodians have any drive to actually attack it, so we won't get the opportunity to see what defending it is actually like.

How soon after the impending server merges do you plan to take Diving Fortress again? How do you think the impending server mergers will affect your Council?

At this time I am unsure when we will recapture Divine Fortress; however, it will be before the upcoming 2.0 patch. These mergers bring great opportunity for our council. I hope to expand the council and its purpose to all of the new legions that we will be joining in New Zikel.

Thanks so much for your time!