Easily Distracted

Easily Distracted at a Glance
Midnight Ocean
Last Captain	Crispix
Senior Officer(s)	Cairi, Lillywhite, Scottish, Treebranch
Politics	Oligarchic
Shares	Even
Flag Affiliation	Silver Dawn
Founded	27 October, 2003
Merged as of 26 October, 2006

Easily Distracted, founded on October 27, 2003, is a now-defunct crew of the Midnight Ocean, formerly of the flag Silver Dawn. The crew merged into The Cartographers on October 26, 2005.

History

The Lost Souls; fine crew of Azure

The crew was founded in 2003 on the Azure Ocean, captained by Madcowz. The initial members of the crew included Captainjimmy, Diamondsky, Bonnyrambler, Wenchcrystyn, Firemonkey, Artica and Brimstone. During an early Lost Souls crew meeting. Madcowz appointed several mates (Bonnyrambler, Brimstone, Firemonkey) to be senior officers and for all intents and purposes, left the game due to real life issues. Wenchcrystyn also left the crew to form her own crew Feh's Revenge with friends from another MMORPG, Asheron's Call. Feh's Revenge allied with Lost Souls under the flag of Mad Marauders.

Shortly after this time, the pirate known as Spuggy joined the crew and was mentored by Bonnyrambler and Artica, rising to the position of officer and becoming actively involved with the crew. However, the crew was somewhat stuck in stasis, as the absence of their captain Madcowz meant that important articles could not be changed and flag-based decisions could not be made. The eventual return of Madcowz saw the promotion of Captainjimmy to senior officer, also appointing him and Firemonkey to the position of flag royalty. It was agreed that the Mad Marauders should seek to recruit new crews and thereby allow the flag to grow. Captainjimmy gradually rose to the position of monarch of the flag, despite Lost Souls still encountering logistical difficulties due to having an inactive captain.

Mutiny and the birth of Easily Distracted

Captainjimmy finally managed to track down Madcowz, who against Jimmy's will, promoted him the captain of the crew. Jimmy discussed this with the other senior officers at the time, and he appointed Firemonkey as the crew captain as he was already the monarch and did not want all the responsibility in his own hands. Some time later, Madcowz made a return and was greatly disgruntled with the changes. Following some difficult discussions regarding their former captain's behaviour, absence and return to the game, the senior officers resolved to split off and form a new crew, known as Easily Distracted. It was decided that Captainjimmy would be the new crew's captain.

In the move to Easily Distracted, all current officers were promoted to senior officers; pirates including Artica and Spuggy reached the senior officer rank as they had defected to the new crew. At this time, a pirate known as Halfbeard, a real life friend of Captainjimmy and Spuggy's joined the game, and worked his way up quickly to an officer position. Brimstone left the game due to personal reasons, yet the crew numbers continued to be bolstered with the addition of new officers including Slider, Sephy and Seelferboo. Growth among pirates and cabin people continued to grow, with crewmates such as Foolio joining the rancks of the Easily Distracted roster.

Prosperity in Azure

Azure was the time of dominance of the likes of Old Spice, Rudder Revolution, Nueva Revolucion, and Crimson Tide amongst others. Some of the crews in Old Spice had over 200 active members and had been established in the era of Alpha Testing, circa 2002. PoE was as readily available at this time, reflected by the fact that sloops could be bought for as little as 5,000 PoE. Cleavers were regarded by many as the best weapons and ran for 15,000 PoE, at a time when a Poinard could be aquired for as little as 700 PoE. There was no concept of true war, where ships could be sunk and even the dominant flags were not at arms with one another. Guava, Spring, and many of the islands of contemporary Midnight were owned by these flags, who won them through auctions with Three Rings.

Easily Distracted was a smaller, humble crew who worked hard together. Their crowning achievement of the period was winning the deed to a distillery on Winter Solstice. This introduced a completely new demographic to the game for the crew, as attention from pillaging, to providing the shop with wood, which was becoming difficult to procure. The shop marked Easily Distracted doing well for itself, as essentially a stand-alone crew with no real flag support.

The end of Azure

The close of beta-testing on Azure Ocean was a sad time for the crew, as many friends and crew-mates would leave and not return after the introduction of subscriptions. There was, however, a renewed optimism that everyone would be starting from scratch, and that Easily Distracted would have as good a chance as anyone to prosper on the new ocean. After some goading from Artica, the crew was proud to have eight pirates make the transition over to Midnight. Captainjimmy, in a conversation with Jacksparrow, somewhat boasted this number, only to have it slapped back at him as Jack's crew was returning 40+ mates to Midnight. Nevertheless, for a small independent crew, eight was considered a fine number.

Unfettered, Easily Distracted sought to make the best of their last few weeks on Azure. We, like many others, used the glory feature, spending large amounts of PoE, resulting in the crew proudly gaining a respective slot on the glory memorial on Alpha. Easily Distracted participated in the countless number of events that the Ringers threw and crewmates such as Spuggy began to socialize with non-crewmates, Jimmy and Firemonkey previously being the social members of the crew. The crew decided upon orange and navy as the crew colours to mark the transition to Midnight.

Midnight begins!

A new server, a new crew, and a new start. Everyone started from scratch, with nothing but the rags on their backs. The Ringers took out several brigs and frigates when the ocean opened, but as Captainjimmy and Spuggy were forced to work during the opening, by the time they were able to arrive the larger flags already had brigs because the Ringer's pillages were so profitable. Inevitably there was some bitterness over this development. Undeterred, however, the crew got to work on Navy ships, as jobs were difficult to come by due to ocean-wide competition. Several members of Easily Distracted worked countless hours on the Bilging, Sailing, and Carpentry stations, to try to amass the 5,000 PoE that the Ocean Masters were selling boats for. Soon, Captainjimmy, Halfbeard, and Spuggy were left as everyone else had to sign off the game. They were fortunate enough to obtain a job for a short while on a boat, where they earned around 1,000 PoE collectively towards the fund. After 12 hours of puzzling, the crew finally had enough to purchase a ship! Captainjimmy and Halfbeard reaped the rewards immediately as they took out the Old-Fashioned Grunion for the first time; she served the crew well until being lost in the War League at a later date.

Following the purchase of their first vessel, the crew slowly began to build up their fleet. At this time, new pirates were recruited, including Arghlita and Katsumoto. Things were going well, and Easily Distracted remained flagless as they pondered over their various options in this regard. Join an existing flag? Try to build up their own? Remain flagless? All questions we considered thoroughly, but the decision was not rushed. There was, however, some inner conflict about how the crew should be run, given the variety of backgrounds that the constituent pirates had come from.

The Sexy Cursed Badgers: Humble Beginnings for Easily Distracted

The differing ideologies of the crew finally came to a head at an Officers meeting in November. Bonnyrambler wanted to leave the crew, start up her own crew, and unite with Easily Distracted beneath one flag. Captainjimmy and Spuggy were against the idea, as they did not feel as though the crew was big or established enough to split. Furthermore they hated to see Easily Distracted split after so much time together, and as commands such as /fo, /fbroadcast and /royalty had not been implemented, communications outside of crews was difficult. This was exacerbated by the lack of hearty lists; effectively there was no good way of communicating with one another aside from /tells and constantly checking using the /fwho command. Bonnyrambler, however, had her mind set on this decision, so rather than fight it, Easily Distracted decided to support it and hope for the best.

This led to the departure of several crewmates in November 2003; Bonnyrambler left and formed The Legends; Firemonkey created the Evil Monkeys and Wenchcrystyn founded Death Becomes Her. The concept was that the separate crews would perform specific activities for the flag, with Easily Distracted being the administrative crew of the flag.

At this point, Spuggy began to get significantly more involved with the political aspects of the game. A simple post on the forums, and self-appointment to the positions of flag Treasurer and Crew Pursor placed him into a position of responsibility. The flag was created with the name the Sexy Cursed Badgers, but unfortunately growth among member crews was stagnant. As this was a period prior to wide advertising for the game, it was extremely difficult to recruit new players to the crew. Arghlita made a significant contribution by bringing her real life friends Sahin and Lynxthered to the crew. This, and her increased responsibility within the crew warranted her promotion to senior officer.

Renewed growth

A week or two before the game went gold, there was a discussion on the main forums from the Ringers as to what cheap forms of advertising they could use. Spuggy suggested that a post on Slashdot might be an effective means of doing so, as that was what caused Captainjimmy to get involved in the game originally. Spuggy made the story submission on slashdot; it was accepted, and suddenly there was an influx of new pirates on the docks of Midnight. Captainjimmy, Arghlita, Sahin, Halfbeard, and Artica were constantly out on the seas, whilst Spuggy and Jimmy often simply stood on the docks and recruited various mates. Those recruited at this point include: Bredbeard, Scottish, Rouge, Wizkiddo, and Alvilda amongst others. As a result of this work, Spuggy was also made a greeter by Mnemosyne. This sudden growth meant that Easily Distracted was in business and built up enough to be considered a real crew again. By this point, Wenchcrystyn and Firemonkey had decided that running a crew was not for them and they both joined The Legends. So the flag was essentially reduced to Easily Distracted and the Legends, with another small crew or two thrown into the mix as well. The Legends also experienced healthy growth during this time period; however, relations began to sour quickly between the two crews of the flag.

A parting of ways

Several idealogical issues contributed to heated discussions on the forums, and many hard feelings developed between the two crews. Easily Distracted's goal was always to attempt to own a shoppe, meaning all of their efforts and finances went into fund-raising for a shop. The Legends were of a differing opinion, and protested the agreed upon flag tax of 5% of the various crews of the flag. Relations deteriorated further when Easily Distracted purchased a war brig in order to host some larger scale pillages; The Legends countered with an even larger vessel. At the same time that a round of shoppe auctions was approaching, which The Legends claimed that they had no PoE to contribute to the auction for.

This, and several other differences led to the eventual dissolution of the Sexy Cursed Badgers flag, and a parting of ways with The Legends. The time period was not entirely fraught with bad news however, as several former crewmates returned to Easily Distracted, such as Wenchcrystyn, Seelferboo, and Katsumoto. Firemonkey also returned to the crew, after moving around several other crews, unable to settle on one. Easily Distracted was independent once again, searching for a flag and renewing efforts to fund raise for shop auctions.

Shades of Winter

Round after round of shoppe auctions passed without Easily Distracted managing to secure a shop. Irrespective of how much PoE they generated, the crew found it difficult to compete with the larger crews and flags of the ocean. However, after great diligence, the crew amassed a fortune of over 650,000 PoE, between no more than 15 mates of the crew, with contributions from everyone. Soon enough, during the Winter Solstice and Gaea auctions, Easily Distracted finally accomplished their goal and won an apothecary shop for 500,000 PoE. Easily Distracted have since sold their shoppe, Shades of Winter, for over one million PoE (between the actual currency and the value of goods received), but it was a defining moment for the crew. They recognized that they were able compete with larger crews, despite not being one themselves. The prestige, experience, and capabilities that the shoppe provided Easily Distracted with during its tenure with the crew proved invaluable.

In search of a flag

During the same time period that the crew were fund-raising for a shoppe, the issue of joining a flag emerged. It was thought that whilst independence was enjoyable given the crew's previous experience of flag relations, it was limiting with regards to some game mechanics. Easily Distracted were potentially cut off from a vast majority of mates and limited in participating in the colonization process. Therefore, the search began for a flag. The crew interacted with several different mates throughout the game, such as Jacksparrow, Daedra, Barnaghby, Steel, Quixaroo, Dittemuzz, Diamondblade, and Emmy and heavily analyzed each of the relatively known flags on the game. Gradually they began to narrow down their possible choices.

After significant amounts of discussion with several different individuals, Easily Distracted unanimously selected Silver Dawn as their flag of choice. Spuggy was selected as the crew's Royalty representative, so that he and Captainjimmy could more effectively manage the crew and their relations with the flag.

In August, 2004 the former Silver Dawn crew The Unmanageables merged into Easily Distracted bringing along its captain Bigw, and senior officers Cairi, Crispix, and Lillywhite. Later, in October of that same year, Spuggy was elected as new king of Silver Dawn causing him to relinquish his captain's hat. Following an election, Shizzo was voted in as the new captain. Late 2004 saw the emergence of Notorious Fandango and the loss of many valued Silver Dawn members. Long time crew member Carribean, and former captain Spuggy both left to join Fandango Familiars. This was a period of great drama and transition within the flag and ED was no exception. This period also marked the loss of the former Unmanageables Bigw and Lillywhite. In February 2005 Shizzo announced that he had to leave the game meaning that a new captain needed to be elected. Taking over was long time senior officer Seanicus.

An end of an era

For the next 6 months ED was slowly leaking members without plugging the holes with new recruits. The final blow came in August 2005 when Seanicus announced he would be leaving the game handing over the captainship to Crispix. By this point, the crew had been reduced a handful of active and semi-active SOs, and a couple of pirates. After a few failed attempts at recruiting and rebuilding the decision was made in October 2004 to merge the crew into The Cartographers also of Silver Dawn. As a final act, the crew's Grand Frigate was renamed to the Distracted Alewife to forever mark the seas with the image one of Midnight's oldest crews. Easily Distracted remains a highly significant crew historically, for launching many influential pirates out into the oceans to form their own flags and crews, and for their own achievements both within Silver Dawn, and in their days as an independent force.