by Donna Fallesen

Created on: November 18, 2008

My first guild experience was in Everquest Online. It was a guild that I stuck to for my entire duration of EQ, which was a good many years and I enjoyed being able to come on the game and have a schedule of who I knew was coming on to do what at when. I was sure that I would not be running around the game solo, and if I found something exciting I could share it with the "class".

Of course I did get tied down a lot of the time, and when I wanted to solo it was hard coming up with reasons why I could not come to a certain raid or group experience, but looking back now I have no idea what I was complaining about. Since joining up in World of Warcraft, the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), I find that guilds are made up too easily compared to how Everquest guilds started.

In World of Warcraft you get ten people to sign a charter you pay ten silver for. In Everquest you get players to send in petitions, meet up in a chat room, and wait around hours maybe even days for a Game Master to show up and approve of your guild. If you get approved, you still have to wait, and if you don't get the clear you have to go back to the drawing board.

The entire point of the quickly made guilds is that there end up being too many which spreads the WoW population too thin. Joining a guild lately, Alliance side, has been as follows: Join up, try and get some conversation started and getting ignored or simply not enough people to answer, leave. I am not saying I am entirely against the quickly made guilds though, because I personally love starting up a guild name for my alt after forking over a few gold for fast signatures. I guess I am really only trying to explain why my guild experiences have been so bad lately.

The first time I join World of Warcraft I was so excited to join a new guild, and I found a good one which had over fifty active players, but it ended up not being the right fit after many issues with different game play styles. I left it quietly, no drama attached, and kept it light. Ever since then it's been hard finding something that fits with so many "noob" guilds forming. It's not the people, it's the emptiness. Sometimes you wonder if it would be better off having a self made guild name since you don't hear much from your fellow guildies anyhow. It all sounds so needy, but I would rather have it like it was back in the day where you could hardly keep up with guild chat spam flowing by.

So I guess my Pros and Cons are as follows:

PROS: You will never be lonely in your game. You can have access to raiding, grouping, world player versus player battles. Advice from more experience players. Someone to back you up because they know you.

CONS: Your time won't be your own. Overcoming guild cliques. Getting bossed, told how to spec and how to play.

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