The earliest weeks of the recorded territory map, days after the era's closeJan 7, 2018 →

The early guild era is the least documented period of Wynncraft guild warfare: the continuous territory-exchange log begins only on 3 January 2018, no exchange-level war data was ever published for the years before it^[1], and the era is documented mainly by forum threads, a community-maintained timeline^[2], a first-person memoir written between 2018 and 2021 by Drew1011^[3], and two captures of the guild leaderboard^[4][5].

The first guilds (December 2014 – 2015)

Guilds and guild wars arrived together in the Guild Update — version 1.13, the "Wynnter Update" of 22 December 2014{{cite:https://wynncraft.fandom.com/wiki/Version_1.13|Version 1.13 — Wynncraft Wiki}}. The first foundings came that same week: Holders Of LE [HoL] by PillowPet and Nethers Ascent [TNA] by Francis12qwasyx on 21 December, Kingdom Foxes [Fox] registered in-game by LoveLusting on 22 December, Kangronomicon [Fuq] on 23 December, and HackForums [Hax] by TheDarkSoul on 24 December.^[7] Kingdom Foxes had existed as "the first 'guild'" since 2 June 2014, six months before the mechanic^[8]. Holders of LE described itself as "Founded upon the advent of the official release of guilds"^[9], and PillowPet was still a chief of it in 2018^[9]. Imperial followed on 14 January 2015 under darkbio99 and KnightOfValor [KnV] on 16 January under Nozomi.^[10]

The first alliance was Legio Praetoria, founded in early March 2015 by KnightOfValor, Imperial, Nethers Ascent and Kangronomicon; Imperial and KnightOfValor left it on 5 June 2015, and the alliance collapsed a month later "due to internal strife".^[11] Contemporaries gave the same diagnosis in 2016 — "Legio fell because of internal affairs"^[12] — and Drew1011 treated the split as the origin of Valkyrie: "much like Imp leaving Legio to create Valkyrie with Fox".^[13]

By mid-2015 two guilds held the map between them. "Kangronomicon [Fuq] and Nether's Ascent [TNA] were essentially the Hax of mid 2015," Drew1011 wrote^[14], and a June 2016 forum post named "the ancient guilds of 'The Nether's Ascent' and 'Kangronomicon'"^[15]. Kangronomicon, led by Spham and then by Dar_Krusos, ran a system of subguilds. Holders of LE became one in August 2015 and, during a period when "a major war glitch" prevented Kangronomicon itself from attacking^[16], took and held about fifty territories on its behalf.^[17]

Within six months of the Guild Update the era's most durable institution appeared: Valkyrie, founded on 2 June 2015 by Kingdom of Foxes and Imperial "not for the purpose of war" and governed by an Electorate of guild masters^[18][19]. It outlived every war alliance around it, lasting into 2022^[20]. It also set the constitutional template the period reused: internal affairs left to each guild, foreign policy pooled in a unanimous council of guild masters^[21][22].

'Visualized History of the Kingdom Foxes', an infographic timeline running January 2014 to December 2015: nine government sessions and their leaders plotted against the guild's founding, the merger and detachment of Nether's Ascension, the Wynnter War, the founding of Imperial in January 2015 and the incorporation of Valkyrie. Posted by LoveLusting in the Kingdom of Foxes thread.^[23]

Concordia and Ordo Malleus (autumn 2015 – March 2016)

The first bloc assembled against the Kangronomicon–Nether's Ascent duopoly was Concordia, founded by the guild Validus under Ezura, with a chief named tangler as its recruiter. It grew through the autumn of 2015 by absorbing guilds that resented the duopoly, destroyed "the remnants of Legio", and peaked in October 2015.^[24] The Concordia Wars began in late 2015.^[16] Contemporary opponents accused the Validus leadership of hostile conduct in game and on the forums; Drew1011, who was among the accusers, later wrote that he had campaigned to persuade another guild's leader that Ezura "was a bad person", and that he considered Ezura's conduct to have cost Validus allies.^[25] Nothing else about Ezura was recorded.

A territory map dated to late September or early October 2015, showing Concordia at its peak: Validus and Travellers hold most of the province, Holders of LE are reduced to a Detlas pocket, Nether's Ascent keeps its eastern block, and Kangronomicon appears nowhere on the map. From Drew1011's account.

The counter-bloc was Ordo Malleus, the Order of the Hammer, created on 6 November 2015 by seven guilds — Kangronomicon, Holders of LE, Ha Ha United, End of Everything, HackForums, ToastedPandas and Sinners — and, in Drew1011's words, "created for the sole purpose of defeating Concordia".^[26][27] It won by assigning each member guild a block of territories to hold, and Concordia was effectively finished within days: on 8 November 2015 the leader of Historical [UEZ], 3zPz, posted a thread titled "Concordia Disbanded", which Ezura contested in the thread itself.^[28][29] By February 2016 Ordo Malleus counted twelve guilds, bound by a single rule — "Don't attack the territories that ally guilds own" — and coordinating over Skype^[30]. It fell "from the inside because of guilds fighting"^[31] on 9 March 2016 — 11 March by the community timeline, which traces the collapse to "a chain of leaves started by Holders Of LE [HoL] approximately 2 days before"^[32] — with Holders of LE withdrawing on 9 March^[33].

Vesta

The last alliance of the period was Vesta, built by 3zPz out of what remained of Concordia. It counted fourteen member guilds — Historical [UEZ], Validus [Val], Travellers [TVL], TheNoLifes [TNL], Super Crafters [SPC], Wynn Try Hards [WTH], Da Classy Goats [CLG], NightStriders [CGO], BOOM [BOO], Frosted Pants [FPS], Omegamine [OMM], Silver of Anarchy [SOA], IceBlue Team [IBT] and Artifact [UPZ] — and was larger than Ordo Malleus at the time, but, in Drew1011's words, "Aside from a few small skirmishes, Vesta barely even existed." It was declared dead one month after its creation, on 10 January 2016.^[34] A Holders of LE member recalled that the guild "was at war with Vesta" before Gavel was released.^[35]

Both the community timeline and Drew1011 date Vesta's creation to December 2016^[16][36], a year late: 3zPz opened the Vesta alliance thread on 10 December 2015{{cite:forums-wynncraft-com-forums-guilds-72-prefix-id-82-order-post-date-direction-asc|complete census of Alliance-prefixed threads, page 1: "--vesta Alliance--", 3zPz, Dec 10, 2015}}, and Drew1011's own chronology agrees — an alliance built from the remnants of a bloc that died in November 2015, dead by January 2016, with Gavel's release following.

Gavel's release closed the period with a territory lock. Drew1011 dates the release to 21 December 2015^[38], the community timeline to 14 December^[16]. The whole map was frozen for roughly two weeks afterwards, so that guilds holding good territory when it landed kept it; ToastedPandas, which had captured the entire jungle days earlier, rose to guild level 51 during the freeze.^[38]

The alliance scatter (2016)

What followed Ordo's collapse was not another war bloc but a scatter of small community alliances, formed while one guild held most of the map and open warring paid poorly. The Astrafteri Affinity is the exception that mattered: founded around January 2016, apparently by coralialia, a former Holders of LE officer^[39], it appears from 11 February 2016, when HackForums' recruitment thread listed "Astrafterí-affinity" as its alliance^[40], and it only acquired a forum thread of its own on 3 April 2016, posted by LordMuttonChops rather than by coralialia^[41]. The rest were social: Halcyon (June 2016) paired ToastedPandas and Holders of LE in an "agreement for whenever help is needed"^[42]; Seraphim (August 2016) declared itself "100% community based" with "no intention of actively providing support for guild wars"^[43]; Lux Imperius (September 2016) was invite-only and refused applicants to stay small^[44]; and Aurelion (February 2017) gathered House of Sentinels, Hippies of Snuggles, The Dark Phoenix and Dragons Arise^[45]. Membership overlapped freely — Seraphim's rules expressly allowed guilds to belong to several at once^[43] — and Holders of LE was in three of them within five months.

The HackForums dominance

By 2016 the map belonged to HackForums. In June 2016 an anti-Hax alliance thread put the guild at 94 territories^[46]; by September 2016 Hax held 146 of roughly 332 territories, ahead of Libertas with 60 and UltimateXeons with 53^[4]. Hax was not acting alone. A June 2016 thread described a "rule of two" with Libertas — "The two guilds crushed all opposition and still rule with an iron fist"^[15] — and a member of UltimateXeons named his own guild as a third party: "our alliance with Hax and Lir (we are UXs)"^[47]. "Hax has not been a one man army in ages," a poster objected in August 2016. "They work with Lir and Bla in order to hold territories."^[48] With Libertas' 60 and Blacklisted's 22 beside Hax's 146, the bloc held 228 of the map's 332 territories in September 2016^[4], and Blacklisted's own thread stated the arrangement plainly: "We are allied with Libertas (Lir) and Hackforums (Hax)."^[49]

The bloc was never named at the time. A contemporary called it "a mutual land agreement" rather than an alliance^[50]; a Libertas member who asked his guild owner for "the name of our alliance" in August 2016 got no reply^[51]; and no Alliance-prefixed thread was ever opened for it^[52][53]. The name "Hax & Co" was coined only in retrospect: Drew1011 used it in a chapter written on 30 August 2018^[54], and its earliest public use is a July 2019 post listing "Federation, Hax & Co, Coalition" among Wynn's mega-alliances^[55].

Resentment was public and futile, and in June 2016 it produced two named alliances in three weeks. The Banhammer, opened by Mr_Robin_Hood on 8 June, argued that Hax "are too strong for a single guild to fight / and the only way for us to be able to beat them / is if all of the guilds unite!" and listed World of Crafters [WoC], The Wynn Guard [TwG] and MythicZodiac [MZS]^[46]; a Hax-side poster replied that "I will not stop till every inch of wynncraft is mine or my allies"^[56]. The Separatists, founded by Tapu_Fini on 26 June around the guild The Anarchy under supermariowifi, took open enrolment — "You could pledge your guild to The Separatists, and you way withdraw that allegiance whenever you feel the need"^[15]. "Right now there is 2 anti hax alliances," a Hax chief noted at the end of the month^[57]; both failed, as an UltimateXeons member had already predicted from the earlier attempts — "It didn't work, all those guilds no longer have any territory."^[58]

In March 2017 a thread demanding that "Haxforums Should Be Limited On Territory Influence" charged that Hax held "100+ territories" by "taking advantage of the broken guild system"^[59] and "cheat the game with there control"^[60]; the thread's respondents, including Drew1011, uniformly rejected the idea of a cap — "Their success should not be limited just because other people are upset"^[61] — and one asked pointedly "are Lir, BLA, UXs somehow exempt?"^[62]. Drew1011's diagnosis was that Hax's position was an artefact of the era rather than of strength: "The reason that Hax is able to hold so much is because, to put it simply, nobody is trying to challenge them."^[61] By May 2017 a forum thread title was asking why Hax had "MORE THAN 300 TERRITORIES", and a 2020 recollection put the peak "closer to 350", "when they owned the whole map"^[63].

2017: Emperium, War Syndicate and the Coalition

The Emperium of Wynn, founded on 21 April 2017 under Emperator Nitrogen2Oxygen, was the era's most elaborate institution: twelve member guilds with named leaders, a High Council of guild representatives, portfolio leaders for war, community and economy, judges whose word could not be over-ruled, and an oath for incoming members^[64]. It fell on 17 October 2017, with Angry_will as its last Emperator^[65], the day after Drew1011 held the title of Emperator for a single day^[66]; the sequence was never explained.

War Syndicate was created on 17 July 2017^[16]; its roster and leadership were never published, and it had no thread of its own^[52][53]. In October 2017 Kingdom Foxes, KingdomPhoenixes, Gilded Sparrows and House of Sentinels founded the Coalition^[67]. It took control of the Wynn province on 23 November 2017^[68] and ended War Syndicate that December — "They wiped ws off the map on Christmas day", a veteran recalled in 2020^[69], while another insisted the two blocs instead merged^[70] — entering 2018 with full map dominance.

The state of the record

Nothing like a war log exists for these years. Archived 2015-era guild pages on wynncraft.com carry no territory counts, and 2016–2017 war events survive only as forum-thread imagery and written accounts. The two leaderboard captures — September 2016 and April 2018 — bracket the era^[4][5]; everything between them is narrative. How HackForums fell from roughly 350 territories to the 111 it held in February 2018 is recorded in no contemporaneous source: no thread names the attackers, the dates or the sequence. The end itself, however, is dated. A 2020 participant called the fall of Hax "probably the biggest event that happened in 2017"^[70], but a contemporaneous thread of 22 February 2018 records that "HaxForums has lost all its territories" and that the largest guild on the map then held only 43^[71] — placing the fall about two months later than the recollection, in the week after the Federation was founded. The era closed in mid-February 2018, when five guilds split from the Coalition over map disputes and opened the Coalition Civil War, beginning the Federation era^[20].

The single largest addition to the record for these years is a memoir rather than an archive: a serialised chat history posted by Drew1011 between February 2018 and February 2021, covering January 2015 to June 2018, written by a participant in most of what it describes.^[3] He set out his own standard for it — "I strive to tell a factually accurate story, with no lies or complete falsities. Along with this factually accurate story, I interweave my own perspective and opinions… If you ask others who were here, they might give a completely different perspective"^[72] — and his own limits, writing of the rise of HackForums that "even my timelines and knowledge of guild history has its limits, and I know no exact dates for any of this."^[73] Where his dates for late 2015 and early 2016 can be checked against the forum-thread census, several of them are correct to the day; his 2017 and 2018 dates are from memory, and he says so.^[74]