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"Thank god, you're on! We're about to start a raid. We need you in Ogrimar, NOW!"

"Yeah, I'm nowhere near there at the moment. I was hoping to get some farming done tonight"

"You have to be there, man! It's my only chance to get that really great drop that only happens once a week!"

"Yeah, but I don't need anything from there. That raid is about ten levels below me and I won't get anything useful from it"

"Dude! You have to get here. We told you that if you were going to be part of the guild, you'd have to be available for raids every weekend! If you can't join us, then you might as well find another guild"

Conversations like this have been head more times than the average gamer can count in many Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). They're usually what happens when a guild is set up for one reason, but just turns into another microcosm of actual social cliques.

In MMORPGs, you can create an organization that ties a large number of players together to create a Guild/Kinship/Family/whatever that helps to bind the wants and needs of that group together. It can have both good and bad points:

Good

Fellowship

Unless you're someone that just enjoys playing the game all by their self (in which case there are plenty of single-player RPGs for you), it give you a constant social circle to hang out with. It's more than just a chat room because you're actually doing something while chatting with each other.

Resources

If someone in a group has an item you need, they will often hand it to you for nothing more than the promise of you returning the favor some day. This can really help out when you're grinding through the early levels. Also, having someone willing to give you some online currency can save you from having to spend endless hours farming for little to now profit.

Advancement

Another way to help get you through those early levels is if you have someone with you of a higher level willing to do some of the killing for you, or just taking away some of the heat from the many "MOBs" so that you can quickly grab that one item you need and return it for whatever quest you're on.

Impossible Missions

Some quests are designed for lots of players. They offer some of the best rewards in the game and they're virtually impossible to solo. This leaves you the choice of hanging out praying that someone will offer to let you join their group, or of begging enough random people to join you. If you're in a well-established group, you can generally put out a call and suddenly

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