Or was that ‘lie’…

EQ is a social game and inevitably pan out to be like real society in the end. There are people who just interest in loot and will leave your guild if it does not gain the items they want.

To have fun you need to keep things in prospective as Monty said, it is just a game so enjoy it why would anyone play it otherwise.

I am in a "Family" type guild with decent raiding capabilities, we just broke into NToV. It took us about 1 year to build from up from none raiding "Family" type guild to current "Family" raiding type of guilds. We had two major crisis and don’t even know how many players we lost. However the fun of raiding is very different from the daily grind of xp group. I still remember first time we take Vindicator down, the rush of adrenaline to the head is heady to say the least and taste of victory is so sweet.

To achieve more level and gather more shinny tricklet are part of our human nature, even I who only play 2 to 3 times a week had strong urge for some piece of nice equipment from time to time. The difference is now I only admire them, but no longer driven to gather them.

To be in a right guild with right people around you greatly enhances your EQ experience, unfortunatly the reverse is also true.

I must say that one can play a game like EQ competitively, wanting to "beat" it, without being dishonorable in the process. You are correct, that there are many jerks in EQ, at all levels. But I know many generous, thoughtful, honorable people who play the High-End game.

My guild started as a "Family Guild" and still has that flavor. There is a desire by many to play the higher-end content of the game, and this should be expected. Some have left us to join hard-core raiding guilds, almost all of them with good will about moving on.

Discussions, sometimes heated, are taking place as to the direction of the guild. Like you, I do not see why a guild cannot have it both ways. Raid on boss_mob_01? Great! Post it, get it together, and do it! Does attendance need to be required? Do people need to be excluded from the guild because they are not sufficently leveled and geared? I say NO!

Klapton

I have a big problem on the roleplaying aspect of the game. One of my favorite characters is a Dark Elf Rogue. To play the characte believably, not as an extention of myself, but as a Dark elf, there will be no "family" guild. Not because im a bad person personally, but because the character should be.

Now the shame is that most players do not roleplay the class/race. Ive seen greedy paladins and clerics, Ive been saved in good areas as a dark elf by good characters. The distinction in the guild system of like minded players should really be like minded characters.

my 2 cents worth.

It absolutely is possible to maintain decency and still reach endgame raiding… I"m now in a guild that does.

We have /guildremoved people summarily for greed, for cheating, for mistreating others in *or* out of our guild. We maintain a sense of grown-up family– many of our jests are "adult" but not gross — we do not allow sexist, racist, or other harassment or insult. We *care* about each other in an ingame and RL sense.

An example: we have quite a number of husband/wife pairs in the guild. One of them has a son with some physical and psychological difficulties; they play EQ together as a family activity. The son became rather unruly ingame, to the point he got angry and /guildremoved himself for the second time. We don’t let ‘em back after 2 times. However, after a couple of months (and the son talking to several officers about his deep desire to play with his family again), we made the honorable "exception" and let him back in. We have *not* readmitted several others whose behavior was unacceptable toward others; this young fellow’s problems are directed at himself. But he’s *family* — our family.

So you can have a raiding guild that has a famiy feel — perhaps somewhat disfunctional but very loving in a lot of ways.

The reason you can have it both ways: because you can have a gathering of people whose real world values are solid but who *also* have the skills and interests to be a raiding guild member/leader. Our pixilated selves are simply costumes inside which we remain and behave as our real selves.

I play on TT also in a highend raiding guild. We crashed this weekend very hard. This article resumes most of the points that are so true about high end raiding.

What this article forgets is the drive of the "raid minded individuals’ to kick people that doesnt think like them. In fact, you know that if you remove one person you always remove more than one since this person has friends, and their friends have friends. Soon enuf there is mostly the persons that are the raid leader friends or people that think alike.

But when is the family guild turning into something not so family anymore? When some policies are put in place to back the ‘raid minded individuals’. Mandatory raids are often the 1st step, then raid attendance levels are checked and rechecked. When the drive to close down ‘chat’ channels is evident so that you better focus on raid orders.

This is all wrong. I still believe we can get somewhere without being nazies. I still believe a guild can pull through all this BS and go elemental. I want to believe you can get somewhere by being friendly. I want to believe you raise your head above the crass, and be better in some way.

Now im guildless, my guild broke up this weekend.

Marksos Aurelius Archon 65

Ex-Chain captain of Unbroken Promise

Terris Thule.

i have lead my familly / raid guild over 3 years now and in the corse of leading i have seen most every kind of ppl dirt , u can imagine…allies that drop u for greedy little gold rings, officers that u raised for years turning on guild , stealing from guild, forming own guilds, removing the whole guild in fits of rage.. ppl joining and paying lip service for what u can do for them …during my stay as a guild leader i have made many so called friends most end up screwing u some how or another for trinkets…and i have made many enmies because i stick to a strict guide line for my guild , my guild will never be the top guild on the server we may never see the elmental planes but i will sleep knowing my guild still has morals and interguity and that we have earned everything we have gotten with out compewrmising decant moral values perhaps if more ppl thought as i did and as the autor of this post does the real world woundt be such a lousy place…

be safe….

zeffner 65 epic sk

Knights Of Consuming Fury

a namelss server guild

Hug your guild tonight.