Guild Thoughts

12 December, 2006. 760 words.

I’ve been thinking about Guilds a bit lately. Mostly because I’ve been sick this past week and have had no choice but to play WoW just to get through the bleary, dopey, medicine-filled days. No, really.

My Hunter has now reached level 41 and I’m still not in a guild. At first, I thought being unguilded was a cool thing, because of the reverse-pride factor. By that I mean that most people are proud to get into a guild, but I think of it a little backwards. People that join guilds generally get a lot of free hand-outs that make the game easier. So, because I’m not in a guild, that means I’ve worked hard and earned all of my equipment all on my own, with nothing but pure gaming skeelz. That’s a matter of pride for me.

Until I found out that it costs 72 gold to buy a mount at level 40, that is. Yes, 72 gold. That’s two digits: A seven followed by a two. Suddenly pride doesn’t seem so important anymore. My wife thinks I play way too much already, and the maximum gold I’ve ever had is about 20, which I think is a staggering amount, considering my average bankroll was about 6 gold before I started making a concerted effort to save more money in my late 30s. So, yes, part of the “pride” of being unguilded is having to run everywhere on foot. :) (At least you know I haven’t been buying gold from a Korean farming service.)

Besides having to pay for everything yourself, another side-effect of being unguilded at level 41 is the virtual barrage of inquiries about whether you want to join someone else’s guild. Almost every time I enter a town, and even a lot of times in the wilderness, somebody whispers, “hey wanna join my guild?” It’s gotten so that I inwardly groan whenever I see a guildie walk up beside me while I’m waiting for a boat, because that’s usually when they pounce.

Here’s another unwanted side-effect of being unguilded: I saw on the Casual WoW blog that people sometimes frown on unguilded players because they think they’re just power-leveling with Korean leveling services and bots (ie. cheating) to get to level 60 before officially joining a raiding guild. Such people stay unguilded because they don’t want any prospective guild-mates to know their dirty little secret (which is basically that they can’t play). I’d like to think my playing patterns refute that argument (I don’t grind in one place very much and I don’t use the “DND” flag), but now I try to make small efforts to make extra sure nobody thinks I’m a Korean power-leveler. Like for example saying “no thanks” to guild invites instead of just ignoring people, and occasionally helping somebody that’s obviously struggling with a monster. And, of course, running around on foot after level 40 probably helps, too.

My point in this rambling is that I’ve been wondering whether it’s time to find a Guild to make my life easier. The main attraction for me right now, obviously, is getting a mount. At this rate, there’s absolutely no way I’m ever going to have 72 gold anytime soon, but any raiding guild worth its salt probably has thousands of gold to give away to new members for just such purposes.

The problem is that it has to be the right guild, and I’m not sure such an animal exists in today’s modern gaming world. From my Quake days, I know there’s a big difference between a fun guild and a stressful guild. I started in Ungrateful Dead, which was stressful, and exhibited all the classic signs of a dead-end, self-destructive clan, and frankly the vast majority of Guilds I see today also fall into that category. I recently read some “guild drama” stuff on Tobold’s MMO blog that was almost identical to the drama I saw in Ungrateful Dead and much later in Western Alliance with Tribes. So there is the very real danger that joining a Guild will actually make my life worse.

And that danger makes me wary about the whole Guild thing. It’s not really so bad running around on foot, anyway. :) And really, it’s only taken me a few levels to get from 6 gold to 20 gold. Surely it won’t be that many more levels before I can put together 72 gold. I just wish I could put a fake guild tag on my name so people would quit asking me to join their guilds.

Teloiv

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