http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3770
It's long, I know! I got a little carried away reminiscing about my guild experiences.
Anyways, here it is, wall of text!
Well to properly tell my tale I have to start in Norrath instead of Azeroth. In march 2000 I picked up my first MMORPG, Everquest, right around the time that the very first expansion had come out. That game was NOT easy at all back then, in fact it sucked how hard it was and I barely played for the first couple months, attaining a level maybe every other week. One day a random person invited me to their guild, having no reason not to join, I did.
For the life of me I cannot recall the name, it was something generic and random like "Western Legion"
Anyways, my starting zone was a very isolated area, similar to Teldrassil, and one day I announced in guild chat that I was making the treacherous journey through the plains to get to the east commonlands, the most populous area in game as people sold their crap in chat there. (AH or worldwide trade chat did not exist, the trade spam was insane sometimes) They made me an officer to invite people on the way. I lost 2 levels (you lost XP as a death penalty) and it took me about 12 hours of gameplay to make it, but I got to the east and was promptly invited by some level 20s to join their guild.Being inexperienced to MMOs, and having barely any contact with my guild ever, I gquit and joined the new guild.
One day our guildleader Suria quit, saying she was going to join a better guild but would be back after she got gear to help us all out. So off she went. We were all in mid 20's and she was the first to lvl 30 (60 was the cap at the time). I become an officer for organizing some events on weekends.2 months later she rejoins, with gear, but expects leadership back when we have had competent leadership(for a newb levelling guild, she threw a big hissy fit and gquit, so we reformed under a new name just to spite her and delete "her" guild.
I transitioned into the vice-guildleader. I think my actual title was "man-at-arms" as I was to (politely) discipline people and ensure our rules of courtesy were followed. We blossomed into a decent sized guild of mostly level 40's. Another guild approached us about a merger, and the guildleader and I agreed it was the best way to advance quickly and level.
Under the merger all officers from KoE were grandfathered in. Only a couple of us stayed on as officers as the guild successfully made the transition from levelling guild to raiding guild-albeit with alot of blood sweat and tears. It was like a second job running our forums and webpage to teach players strats and info about game mechanics. I think the majority of players back then didn't use strat webpages at all. Internet+game just didnt compute, as soon as they'd think to lookup stuff about it, they would just login instead.
We did some decent raiding with alliance guilds and progressed, very slowly, but dammit we did it.
One day, our guildleader Kipani/Redew announced he was leaving the guild to join Legacy of Sorrow, the biggest most elitist guild on the server, and at the time one of the top 3 guilds in the game worldwide. (The core members went on to form Depraved on the Deathwing server, one of the top WoW guilds ever as well.)
Anyways, we were crushed, as most run ins any guildmates had ever had with LoS members were negative, there were lots of nice players in LoS too, but the real jerks were what stood out the most and it was like our guildleader had just left us to join the enemy.
2 months later he sold his toons and wasn't heard from again.
Morale was an alltime low, no one barely logged on and we dissolved the guild.
RIP, MoC - Wicked graphics, eh?
Guildless
I was guildless for about a year. The members from MoC went all over to the different allied guilds we used to raid with, I went sometimes but was kinda bummed out for awhile. I teamed up with an enchanter, Nadziona, and we were like a 2 man guild hehe. She and I became good friends in RL and have travelled to visit twice since then--I am in BC and she is in NYC so it's a far visit, but we are friends for life. The 3rd expansion came out in October 2002, Nadziona's toon was in crazy high demand because the level cap went up to 70 and enchanters were part of the holy trinity of EQ, Tank, Healer, Enchanter. She always saved me a spot and I got to meet alot of awesome players from raiding guilds and had my pick of which to join.
Veil of Shadows
awesome sig!
My love of the game was renewed, lots of great new friends, I had no role of leadership and just played for fun.Nadziona had to quit and left me her account, I 2 boxed with a program called EQWindows-which enabled me to tab back and forth between chars and I raided playing 2 toons at once. We backtracked pretty much all of the raid content in game up to the present stuff so I got to learn alot about raiding, but the problems began when we started edging up on the couple of guilds that were the true hardcore raid guilds.
They cockblocked us to no end. They would kill content we needed to progress and get keys into new raid zones (like how BT used to work) just so we couldnt edge up and be competition. We got tread on quite a few times and flame threads with 1000+ posts on the server boards were not uncommon. So we got tough and did everything back at the other guilds, as well as treated the guilds below us the same way, stealing their kills to block progression so we could compete with the top guilds.Well since the 3 or 4 guilds ahead of us hated us from our friction when we stepped up to become a raid guild, and now the guilds vying to become raid guilds were being stomped on by us in the same manner we had grown up---we became the server scapegoat on the flames boards.
Internal drama over how our guild treated other guilds tore us apart, but not before we cleared all content in game up to planes of power expansion (although technically we got the last boss killed a week after the next expansion) but it didnt matter, it felt like we had beat the game.Raiding the next expansion became tedious.
The guild retired from raiding and went casual with about 10 people online sometimes, down from over 100 people online sometimes at the peak of our raiding.Instanced raid zones were implemented to compete with WoW's looming release.Most of the raiders on the server took a break waiting for WoW, the lack of guild to guild competition that instanced raiding brought changed the game significantly and I think the most bitter players left simply for lack of something to fight over, and some of them really enjoyed drama and strife.
I raided with VoS from late 2002 until late 2004, I adamantly defended my friends, guildmates and officers on the server message boards, even though I strongly disagreed with some of the decisions that had been made. I logged in one day mid 2005 and found I had been guild kicked, despite many "retired" players being allowed to park their toons in the guild forever.
Despondant, I took a break from MMOs, very disappointed overall in my experience, but having learned alot about social interactions in MMOs but with still many friendships made and good times to look back on. I still keep in touch with some of the players I levelled with as a n00b and ended up raiding with.
2007
Late December, out of boredom I pick up a 10 day trial account for WoW, vowing not to involve myself like I did with EQ. I started a NE Huntard, as my toon in EQ was a Ranger and I figured they would be similar. I got bored of it quick, and tried out some of the free hack servers out there, which were likewise boring. (You'd spend 3 hours setting up your toon and then realize there was nothing to do)I started another 10 day trial in January 2008 and played a NE Druid, bought the game at the end of the trial and decided to try playing the "new" races, as historically, anything "new" in an MMO is usually OP. My BE Hunter became boring after a few levels as I was tired of bows and arrows, and the starting zone was a bit of an eyesore. So I tried out a spacegoat shaman, levelled to 21 in a week and completed every quest in the spacegoat starting area.
I went solo and refused many random guild invites. I never needed help with quests or levelling and trudged my way to the Outlands by March. (I have no sympathy for people that whine for instance runs or beggars, if I could do it all solo so can anyone else.)
One day while levelling to 62 in Hellfire Peninsula, I get asked to join a group to heal Ramparts, my very first instance run ever in WoW. I say sure but that I am an enhancement shaman. I dunno if they just didn't know, or didnt care, but off we went. I healed the instance just fine as enhance, I had been gearing for health and mana the entire time I levelled, and it was mainly my huge mana pool that enabled me to heal--that coupled with my experience healing in EQ, I shared account info with a longtime guildfriend that played a Cleric, so I would raid heal when he was not raiding, or use his toon for dungeons if we needed heals.
That first run was with Elinea, Loozah, and 2 others from Harvesters of Sorrow (I forget who exactly, neither stayed with HoS for long)They wanted me to join but I said not, not interested in a guild. (I was gonna hit max level and join the top raid guild at the time, Honor's Wrath)
A couple days later they invited me to run another instance, underbog I think it was, we did well and I finally caved to accepting the guild invite.
After a couple weeks, I was promoted to officer. I can't remember why, but we didn't have enough of a structure that it mattered or worried me. We were still a "levelling" guild at this point, mostly doing PVP for welfare epics. (Hell, I ended up doing Arena solely for welfare epics--the s5 gear was better PVE gear for enhance shaman than anything coming out of instances or Kara, I used to pull just under 1kdps in full s5 and the 2 badge fist weapons at the end of BC, topping meters 90% of the time)I met alot of good people that I still talk to often, (6 or 7 of us are even still guilded together now) Matchstick(formerly Bobmaccab) and his wife Vitas(formerly Elinea), Loozah, Bloodwynd, Cailitia, Laneus, Espirtu(Padislis), Ezmoth, Valval....I'm forgetting someone I know it.
good times in HoS
Slowly but surely we all made it to 70 and alot of the players in the guild learned tremendous amounts about game mechanics once we started using the ingame voice chat. It was the first time I had been able to speak directly with my guildmates and I attribute alot of the fun in WoW to this. So much used to get lost in the translation with EQ from type chatting or forum posts.Over the months, I stepped up a bit more as an officer, as did some of our other officers, we recruited enough good people to try a Kara raid, to which we promptly wiped repeatedly on the trash heading to the animal boss. Back to the drawing board.Soon we began raiding with ally guilds, mostly the now defunct MishMash Crew. One day our guildleader disappeared indefinitely, the remaining officers (myself included) made the choice to merge with MishMash Crew.
This was a "family guild" that now had a core of raiders that hit up Karazhan every week. It felt good knowing that the majority had NEVER raided before. I could be wrong but I think I am the only person that had ever raided before at this point. We eventually cleared Kara, but the guild had typical "Raid" growing pains.People that logged on twice a month expecting raid slots for their green geared lvl 69 toon, or people that did log on alot but simply never put in the effort to improve.As it were, I develloped a friendship with a shaman, Cereniti, from another guild,
One day I brought Cereniti to Karazhan with us to finish up the bone dragon Nightbane. She also play a priest, and was trying to help out a priest in our guild that was the guildleader's wife. Well our priest was spamming Circle of Healing or whatever and not hitting ANYONE with it because of the range.
(LOL!!)Cereneti politely offered some advice, mentioning she too plays a priest and was actually told to F-off.It was a good thing the talents for 3.0 were out at the time, I topped the dps meter that fight and came in second on heals using every Maelstrom5 charge I had on chain healing the raid to pick up our priest's slack.MishMash was taking 3 days of raiding, sometimes 2 to clear Kara and were just starting to break into ZA because of always having 2 or 3 players not focused enough to remember the boss strats week to week. Guardians of Apocalypse were taking 2-3 hours to AoE clear Kara and 2-3 hours to clear ZA, and they were not much better geared so it was frustrating experiencing the difference, as I would go to GoA raids and join their Magth and Gruuls runs every week.So I joined. I still had great friends in MishMash but I was having most of my fun ingame with Guardians of Apocalypse --- not because of raids, because of the humour in vent and sick jokes.
I did not know what I was getting myself into. Lets just say the personal drama in this guild escalated daily. With the young sense of humour this guild had, came young sense of morals. Everyone was close to 20, some younger, except for myself and 2 others.WotLK came out and we stopped raiding to lvl, and people couldnt get along even while levelling. I took off solo mostly, hit lvl 75 within 3 days of the expansion coming out and was on course to be on of the first 50 players on the server to hit 80, I figured it would take a week. The drama from the guild, and the lack of inclusion on running instances left me feeling alienated and I took a break, giving up the race to 80.One day I login and there is no one in guild, they all joined a different guild, Phase 3 so I choose to part ways with that bunch. 2 weeks later all those from GoA left P3 and formed Facepalm. Nuff said for those who know Facepalm.Guildless I go again, with a sour taste in my mouth from a guilded experience...
I levelled to 80 solo, skipping doing any instance runs. I never went to Howling Fjord but I cleared every quest from all the other zones solo. Even the 5 man group ones, and yes, every single one. Enhancement Shaman are probably the easiest classes to level besides hunters. Earth/Fire pet + Spirit Wolves + insta cast self heals + heroism makes alot of things possible that other classes can't do.I attended my first Naxx10 raid a couple weeks after hitting 80 with the MishMash Crew. I missed my friends there, so I rejoined
Well I was back "home" with my buddies and it felt good, but home was not to last long. Tensions over who could raid and who couldnt were splitting the guild. The same people that whine for help were whining for help with group quests (despite there being hundreds of other players actually DOING those quests already)One day I was explaining to Cailitia about the post office losing my passport and making me cancel a trip to NYC to celebrate my 30th. in describing my emotions, I said I was "Hella pissed" and oh boy was that a spark that ignited a big fire.A rogue in our guild snapped on me in guildchat. I responded with an apology and a request to make future outbursts private whispers. She /gquit, logged onto all her alts, removed them, and did the same with her husband and sons toons, about a dozen toons all told.While the gquit messages were flying by in guild chat there began an arguement over wether "hella pissed" is a swear or not. I was under the impression that anything on TV during prime hours was ok, a PG-13 language filter.Well the frictions that been develloping exploded with some 20+ members quitting the guild.Again, I was bummed out on MMOs and took a short break, I logged in about a week later to find I had been kicked from mishmash crew, but didnt really care as all of my friends wound up forming a new guild
One of the Good Guys
I came back to find many familiar faces from MishMash had now joined OotGG.
I was very, very surprised to see the Guildleader from MM was now also the GL of OotGG, as he was a major proponent of the language rule and I was under the impression that we wanted to do 2 things differently in this guild ; raid and swear.I was made an officer one day because the Gl had noticed my hefty contributions to the guildbank.Slowly but surely, history repeated itself. The guild had one basic rule only. We are a raid guild, no alts.But it was just a rule, not a reality. As an officer among some 12+ officers (I think nearly half the guild was officers at this point) I was one of the few to step up and get some shit organized. Mostly it was Matchstick researching ideas to distribute loot and establish some rules but the bottom line was we had "too many chiefs, not enough indians".At every corner of progress we were met with resistance from some people that just didn't get it. There were some things I did not 100% support, but I only 90% supported. No one knows this until now because I am not gonna bring up a useless pointless discussion on something that is hardly important, unfortunately not everyone wants to avoid nitpicking in the interest of simplicity and progress.
OotGG became MishMash v2, we even got some morons whining for raid spots in their green quested gear, and people whining for help with quests.
One day a couple of the core raiders quit and the rest followed suit.
The MishMash exodus had also repeated, but this time we were prepared thanks to Matchstick, our guildleader now..
Matchstick set up guild rules that cover all the bases from previous issues and basically implemented all the ideas people had been mulling over in OotGG.
Funny how once the rules were there and it was accept them or dont join, we've had pretty much zero issues on the rules, and no nitpicking on details just for sake of voicing an opinion.
At first we had issues with numbers, and filled raid spots with friends from a few other guilds. One such guild crumbled and merged with us.
We now have a successful raid guild with 30ish adults, we have many that have played together through thick and thin from guild to guild. It's nice to have the family guild atmosphere, but a raid guild work-ethic. I couldn't ask for a better group of people and one year ago I would never have believed it would be possible to be in a raid guild with such nice people.
me(left) trying not to laugh at how tiny Matchstick is (TEE HEE!)
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