2001

Mystics really Start to grow

In 2001 Mighty Mystics really took hold on AOC and we were recruiting so fast it was difficult to keep track of everyone. I had to delegate jobs to our members and change the hierarchy to accommodate. The Hierarchy was as follows:

Ruler (Mystic God) - Leaders (Hun and Briton) - Controllers - Understudies - Honourary Members - Trainees

We had the following Job Titles:

Leader

Deputy Leaders

Battlefield Commander

Chief Diplomat

Team Coach

Tournament Co-ordinator

Assistant Diplomat

It was in this year that we started serious forums at the web site. We had Tryout Board, Team Forum, Promotion Board, General Discussion, Strategy Board. We also had a rank for each member. This rank was given by me when they were recruited. The bottom rank was villager (for a trainee) and top rank was knight, with Militia, Long Swordsman, Two Handed Swordsman, Champion and Cavalier in between. It was possible to get promoted, but you had to beat someone higher than you to get up.

There were a lot of arguments about this system and one member in particular, Mystic Mayan, always thought he was better than everyone else and caused everyone a lot of headaches because he was dis-satisfied with the system.

We had a aweful lot of Greek members, indeed nearly half of our clan were Greeks.. we also recruited quite a lot of Hungarians, and we even had a foreign language forum to support these members who couldnt chat with the rest of us.

We started clan games in this year and I programmed the web site so that a database could be used to store all our match reports. recorded games could also be uploaded and I assigned two deputy leaders to help Hun and I with the organisation. These deputies were Mystic Viking (Oscar from Norway) and Mystic Saracen (James from Ohio USA). One was European Deputy and the other American Deputy to cover the tow different time zones.

This year we became a truely international clan, having members from all 5 continents! We also upgraded the website to a dot com. Mysticteam.com was our site address and it was very busy. We had a clan game league which gave a medal to the member who beat the most clans in any given month. I can remember as many as 50 Clan wgame wins a month for one member (Mystic Byzantine)

Towards the end of the year I changed the hierarchy again.

I introduced a ruling body of my most trusted members, who at the time were Mystic Mongol, Mystic Saracen, Mystic Viking, Mystic Hun and one more - can't remember who.... The ruling body took over from the previous "High Council" and would make decisions on the clans direction.

The hierarchy was now: Ruler - Leaders - Deputy Leaders - (Ruling Body) - Trustees - Controllers - Recruits - honourary Members -Trainees

In April 2001 I introduced a system of trial membership - called recruits. MysticR would be their name, for 2 weeks trial, because at the time we had a lot of trouble with a clan called Myll and in particular their leader Myll Slaughter and also Myll Piemaster and some others, tried to get into the Mystics to sabotage our clan because they didnt like us! This trial membership gave us time to get to know the recruits before giving them access to our "members area" where they could do more harm to the clan. A couple of Myll members made it into the clan, but all were spotted (by me) within a couple of weeks and booted.

As far as I know, we were the first clan to introduce this recruiting trial period and a lot of clans started adopting this idea soon after we implemented it.