Looking for info on 12 Prophets EQ guild, Alann, & Athrex

[eva311]

I'm a journalist attempting to track a convicted pedophile named Marc Collins-Rector who was an active member of the 12 Prophets guild on Vallon Zek from 2000 - 2002, and I write this in the hopes that some of the OG PVP players on these boards might be able to point me in the right direction. The reason I'm looking into them is because of the rape and pedophilia charges currently being levied against director Bryan Singer. The guy who's accusing Singer also sued Collins-Rector and Pierce back in 2000. At this time, Collins-Rector and Pierce were hiding out in Marbella, Spain, founding IGE.

Here's what I know so far: Collins-Rector was living with Brock Pierce and another man named Chad Shackley in Spain (after fleeing the U.S. and federal pedophilia charges) when they all started to play Everquest. They joined Alan Debonneville's guild 12 Prophets at some point during 2000. According to what I've seen, Debonneville moved down to Spain to found IGE with them after they all met while playing EQ. I have found sworn statements confirming that Collins-Rector was heavily involved in IGE, although his name was carefully kept off the company's records.

I know that Brock Pierce = Athrex and Alan Debonneville = Alann (super creative). I'm trying to figure out who Marc Collins-Rector played as.

Collins-Rector was last seen in London in 2007. He has zero internet presence, so I'm hoping to get some possible usernames and internet history through his gaming accounts.

Thank you in advance for any information, anecdotes, and anything you can remember about 12 Prophets and these players. If you'd rather email, you can ping me at <!-- e --><a href="mailto:ellie.hall@buzzfeed.com">ellie.hall@buzzfeed.com</a><!-- e -->.

[Donions]

So funny if Blizzy.

[Breand]

this is his pic on wikipedia:



2000-2002 would be like the second string of 12P...like Athrex wasn't a founding member or anything.

[Vllad]

Almost everyone here in Purge hated the people in 12P. Hate isn't too strong a word in this case. We were rivals not friends. I will however put out some feelers to people that played against us in EQ that were known to fraternize with 12P.

[Breand]

Almost everyone here in Purge hated the people in 12P. Hate isn't too strong a word in this case. We were rivals not friends. I will however put out some feelers to people that played against us in EQ that were known to fraternize with 12P.

Yep they were basically disgusting examples of human beings playing a video game that turned out to be true in RL as well.

[Jakensama]

Wow, that picture shouts child molestor quite loudly.

[Flab]

They were low lifes in the game and irl it would seem. I'll bet Jhihad has info about these turds. I'll be Seretogis knows how to get a hold of him.

[Moristans]

Who else ran with Alann at that time? You'd figure they'd be as close in game as they were out. Athrex multi-boxed like a mofo, but I don't remember if Alann did. Anybody remember who was on their A BoTB squad? It was Alann, their two SKs and a healer for sure, but I just don't remember any game tags.

I know there was a wizzie account that I do believe Alann used a lot as well.

[Breand]

These are 12P names I remember off the top of my head.

Platr, Boda Bing, Taag, Warhound, Stogey, Nanak, Blizzy, Elektrum, Alann, Athrex, Graym.

I know it couldnt be Graym because he showed up at a RL meet and was a teenager.

[eva311]

Thank you so much for these and any other names you can remember. I'll let you know what I find.

[Diggles]

Here are some 12P corpses I have screenshots of...

AAqaz, Badz, Dinkie, Drizzlin, Durga, Dynin, Elicia, Faandar, Foxe, Gazellen, Kodor, Lilemor, Mestema, Milkey, Palamides, Pitebaf, Pylioa, Rodhan, Shammu, Shma, Taelon, Tarni, Tricky,

[Slamz]

^ of those, I recall Aaqaz being an in-game inner circle type. And maybe Drizzlin....was that a dark elf necro or wizard...? Thought I recalled one of their higher ups being a finger waggler with a name starting in D.


Shma was actually a member here for a while (we found out later who he was -- he used kynloadz on the forums here). We kicked him out. He hasn't been here since 2005. He lived in California and I don't recall him being much of a ranking presence in 12P.

[Karne]

Drizzlin was a wood elf rogue. He and I were actually friends and grouped up alot mid 20-30's or so when were in Sect of Silence. We had an obvious disagreement about him joining 12P's. He was an good guy till he threw in with that lot.

[Maren]

I remember Aaqaz and Taelon being inner circle types. Warhound, Taag, and Nanak were also pretty close knit with them (I think they were 12P officers), but were nice guys (unlike Alann, Athrex, Aaqaz, and Taelon who were big dicks).


I seem to remember Mestema, Dynin, and Kodor being part of that Japanese power guild that was a precursor to 12P.

[OrsunVZ]

Pretty much everyone associated with that guild were absolute scum bags. I can't think of anyone that wasn't a late addition to their rank and file ('phile?) that wasn't. Rules, fair-play, and law didn't apply to anything they did. So much so, that the dynamics that shaped and governed our server were hugely influenced by the need to counter the overwhelming toxicity of its membership. Vallon Zek developed a culture very specific to the server, and the reaction to the 12P was central to it.

I think many us had such a deep personal connection to that game in part because those we played against in 12P were very real villains. And the sense of obligation we felt to our guildmates to be there to back each other up reverberates even now. This guild <The Purge> is largely comprised of people who fought each other very competitively in EQ on VZ. There was one thing we would drop our rivalry for though every time. 12P.

I felt then as I do now: you cannot be that disgusting in a game and be a nice, rational, respectable person when you log out. These guys were rotten to the core, and not a single one of us with any extended interaction with them would say otherwise.

I wish you the best of luck in tracking him down.

[Breand]

Aaqaz might be a good guess. An asshole, inner circle, and i don't think he was there from the beginning.

[eva311]

I'm looking into all of these names and I can't thank all of you enough for passing them along to me.

If you don't mind giving me a bit more detail, what exactly did the 12 Prophets do to make everyone hate them so much? What sort of behavior? I didn't play EQ, but I invested a few years in WoW and I've never seen a guild that's attracted this much of a bad rep.

[Diggles]

Well besides being scum with no honor, the biggest part was breaking the spirit of the game/server. We played on 1 of 2 'Racewar' servers that divided the races into 4 fairly equal teams: Dark (Darkelf, Ogre, Troll), Shorties (halfing, Dwarf, Gnome), Elves (Woodelf, High elf, Halfelf) and Humans (Human, Erudite, Barbarians). This was great concept but within months the 'light' races had an unspoken truce and it turned into dark vs light, probably because at launch Dark team had larger population than the other teams.

SoE did not have anything in place to keep people from guilding or grouping with enemy teams, so 12p were the first and most powerful 'mixed race' guild. They made very good use of the 'invunerable healer' which was someone on the DARK team that was a healer that we could not attack or harm in any fashion, since you couldnt hurt/harm people from your race's Team. So when fighting or attacking them, we often had to deal with someone that was able to not only heal for them, but also scout, read our zonechat, etc etc.

I'll leave someone else to fill you in with some of their other scummy tactics and behavior.

[Breand]

Think of it as if 4chan had a guild on a poorly designed PvP server. With no morality, code, or honor, and then a financial opportunity with item loot sales, they broke every rule that the code would allow, to control areas that had the highest amount of financial gain. Some people just wanted to play a video game, or follow the intent of what the server was built for, but 12P had no interest in doing either of those. They were the equivalent of someone walking up to a friendly card game and flipping the table over, laughing, and walking away.

[Vllad]

If you don't mind giving me a bit more detail, what exactly did the 12 Prophets do to make everyone hate them so much? What sort of behavior? I didn't play EQ, but I invested a few years in WoW and I've never seen a guild that's attracted this much of a bad rep.

They would run cheats while playing:

For example; they were the first botters I had ever seen in gaming, they would also run speed hacks and resist hacks. Latency in those days made targeting difficult so speed hacks created real pvp challenges for those that didn't cheat.

Pylioa and Shma would run scams on newer players. In EQ when you died you had to recover your corpse. All of your gear was on a dead body left behind where you died. Typically you died because it was dangerous therefore trying to get back to it while naked was difficult enough. As higher level characters Pylioa and Shma would tell people who died to give them permission and they will help by dragging their body to a safe place. Players would give persmission and then Pylioa and Shma would steal all their gear and leave their body there.

12P would also run trade scams. They would advertise selling an item. They would get people interested then run a trade scam. They would put the item in the trade window and do item swaps once the trading partner activated the trade. Alan had his people doing that in every city zone in bulk to turn over lots of game cash.

I could name a few more scams but the bottom line is they used peoples naiveness to run con's on people in game. MMO's were new then and Sony had no protections for those people whose gaming experience could be totally ruined by people in 12P. The aspect of getting conned in a game was totally uncomprehendable to many gamers at the time.

I can't prove it but I am convinced 12P had bribed GM's in EQ. I suffered multiple 24 hour ban's from GM's when trying to stop some 12P stealing scams.

They abused game mechanics to make the gaming experience so miserable for players that players would just up and leave. This tactic was very popular if 12P wanted to farm an area for gear they could sell. Some examples of abuse are hiding under the earth to attack you where they can't be attacked, trains, cross-teaming exploits and other assorted bull shit.

Basically they were players that would go to any extent to ruin the game for other players in order to advance themselves. Their were no lines they wouldn't cross to cheat, steal or harm other people on the server. What is worse is they bragged and did nothing to hide their behaivor and Sony did nothing.

Unltimately for those that stayed on Vallon we turned into players that crossed similiar lines in order to harm 12P and police ourselves since Sony wasn't going to. We developed our own abusive tactics like Red Shirting, Iggles Treatment or Collision exploits to stop 12P. Ironically Red Shirting may have done more harm than anything 12P ever did.

I am sure you can imagine that 6 to 8 months of two opposites sides logging in every night and trying to ruin the playing time of the other side can become quite volatile. In the end 12P was solely in it for the money and we were in it solely to harm 12P. Eventually our methods got in the way of 12P's ability to make cash so things started to turn for the better.

The last time I talked to Alan in game he was bragging how they were doing better on some other server under some other name. I assumed they took their act somewhere else where they had less contention. A few 12P stuck around and joined other guilds but core assholes moved on to greener pastures.

[Bach]

Back then there were no mass Chinese gold farmers yet to drive the in game gold markets or rules to prevent its real life sale. In game gold was sold on eBay etc.. By players like P12 for money. The faster you could amass in game gold the more real life profit you could make.

I once new a guy in the mid 1990s that lost his job and ran x6 accounts in Ultimate Online selling gold. He was botting gold farming with 6 accounts. He once told me he was amazed that it brought in about $10,000 per month for the time he was doing it.

If this guy just pulled up roots a fled the country then he probably had no ready income at the time. He and his P12 buds may have been doing this to actually pay for living in Spain and develop they're next game/con. It would explain the drive to not only be dicks but to amass in game gold while doing so. It might be a long shot, but if you can find any eBay records of EQ gold sales back then and tie them back to the guys P12 character name you might find some info on his real life persona at the time.

[eva311]

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone here who pointed me in the right direction. I found the guy. Here's the story. Thank you again!

[Vllad]

What a fitting story for such a giant asshole.

[Breand]

Congratulations on finding him, great and bizarre story. Why we as a society allow pedophiles to roam free, I have no idea. But it sounds like he is in his own personal prison now. I think Brock Pierce's life could be made into a movie, but no one would believe it is real. I think Pierce is a lot more of a guilty party in all this, he is just smart enough and rich enough to avoid scrutiny.

[OrsunVZ]

Karma.

Well done, I've often wondered if you had been able to take this further.