Reading a recent entry over at Rao’s Gestalt Mind, I was struck by a thought. It isn’t a new thought, it’s one I’ve known and thought about many times before, but it seems I should make an entry on it, here, just to put it down.
Friends are undoubtedly the reason all of us continually log in to an MMO. Oh, sure, the gameplay, graphics and art style, class choices, spiffy gear appearances … that all plays its part, but I am speaking about years of play time, not just a week or a month or even a few months. What keeps us all logging in day after day, week after week, month after month, YEAR after YEAR … is the friendships we form.
Now, I am using “friend” as a loose term. I suppose a better term would be “relationships.” Some of us have strong rivalries that keep us logging in, some of us log in for the contests and the attendant drama that goes along with various verbal sparring matches, and some of us log in just to chat with friends and be our goofy strange selves (I mostly fall into that last category). All of these factors, for the sake of simplicity, I am lumping into simply a group who I will refer to here as “friends.” Be they rivalries, acquaintances, antagonists, love interests, or genuine friends.
To this end, GUILDS play a HUGE part. Particularly in an aged game (which I am going to define as any game beyond its second year, when the player base has leveled, for the most part, and the game is a stable incarnation of what it will be for the forseeable future). Being in a guild is like walking into a house where your friends, and even sometimes your family, are all gathered. Except, instead of this being only at holiday time or during special occassions, in a guild, this event can occur nightly! That’s a pretty amazing thing, when you think about it. It’s not very often that we can, in real life, gather together in such a way very often, let alone, every night of the week!
So it’s no wonder, that when a guild breaks apart, falls apart, dissolves, or otherwise disbands, that it can be quite traumatic to its long-standing and regular participants. For example, if the leader of our guild were to quit the game tomorrow, I don’t believe that the guild would remain intact for very long. We have many strong and longtime members, but, our guildleader, whether he would ever be willing to admit it or not, or whether he is coherent of the fact, is undoubtedly the GLUE that holds our guild together; quite literally, the guild’s pillar and its foundation. Now, around that, of course, there are several senior members and officers who, although not logging in or actually ‘leading’ in the standard sense, are a source of comfort – on a subsconscious level – for our members. They see our faces regularly, and they know that, for lack of a more appropriate phrase: “All is well.”
The ebb and flow of time, however, has an effect. Sooner or later, we ALL must face the inevitable end: all things do play out, and eventually, all guilds, as they currently exist in that moment, will dissolve. What to do when this happens? Some of us look to join other guilds. This, in my experience, usually ends up unsatisfying – especially if the guild you previously existed in defined you to such a great degree that in leaving it, you feel as if you have lost a large part of your in-game identity and persona. It can almost feel as if you’ve gone through a total identity change, and your life has been flipped over completely! I’ll take an example from my own gaming career in EQ2. When I began the game, in November of 2004, I created my first character, named Marrick. Marrick grew to level 47. During that time, he was the tank for our guild all through tiers 2, 3, and 4. Unfortunately, sometime in tier 4, our guildleader quit the game — or at least, he quit his current character; effectively leaving the guild. As well, 2 of the officers departed for our rival guild at the time.
(I’m going to totally diverge for just a moment, because I enjoy server histories: for any who may read this, my guild was located on what was then the Lavastorm server. We called ourselves The Fury Council, we were the first guild on the sever to reach the then-cap of level 30, and we were one of the first guilds to take down a number of raid encounters, probably our biggest achievement at that time was taking down a Meeting of the Minds – affectionately called MoM to those who recall. Nowadays this is ancient history and the very few people who are still around and who had raided in Tier 5 will recall the true difficulty of raids in those days before we had achievements, uber gear, and crazy bonuses to everything! Our main competition — and for several months the ONLY raiding guild on the server who could claim anything, was The Downward Spiral. I am sure the CRM at the time — a rather interesting woman named Faarwolf — locked more threads on our server forum than at any other point in this game’s history.)
After the departure of myself, our guild leader, and two of the other founding officers, the guild continued on for quite some time, under the leadership of tha last remaining founder. Unforutnately, for one reason or another, it did not maintain its status, and eventually dissolved. (Incidentally, our rival, TDS also dissolved not long after KoS was released.) It goes to show just how important solid and consistent leadership is, in a guild. Not so different from a business! A topic for another time, though.
Once I had departed, I moved to two other guilds. I was seeking something less of a grind, more casual, not quite so demanding on my free time. I joined an upstart guild, thinking that I would help this one grow as I had my previous guild, but the magic just was not there. Maybe it was because the game had lost its lustre of ‘newness’ by that time; maybe I felt like a little bit of a turncoat after knowing that my prior guild had lessened after the founding officers abandoned it. I joined another raiding guild that was prominnent at the time — and not long after I joined, and after more server rivalry with several other guilds, the leader also left! Again I was in a guild that had no solid leadership! About this time, the servers dried up. EQ2 was in its darkest stage — mid to late 2005, not quite ready for DoF, and none of its current amenities in place. For those who will recall, this is when the server mergers occurred as people made an absolute EXODUS.
I made a drastic decision, then. I gave up on Marrick, and I re-rolled on a new server entirely (Antonia Bayle) as new class, entirely. I was now a WARLOCK — and I began to seek out a guild that would match the persona I wanted to create. That guild ended up being Vermin. Fortunately, for me, and how strange it is to relfect upon, Vermin ended up being a very solid, long-standing, unique, fun, and all-around fantastic guild. I still think on it to this day, how is it that I ended up in such a situation — and it makes me think that there IS such a thing as fate in life. You do end up, one way or another, where you are supposed to be at!
Luckily, I have made many long-lasting friends in my current guild. I often imagine that if I had not ended up in it, I would not have been able to remain a subscriber! Not because of any real issue with the game — I love the game — but let’s face it: playing alone in an MMO is like walking into a room full of people who have all developed their own groups and cliques, and simply staring at them wondering where you fit in! Getting in is very, very important in MMO’s, just like it is in the REAL WORLD.
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