Guilds

GUILD:

an organization of persons with related interests, goals, etc., esp. one formed for mutual aid or protection.

In the online game of World of Warcraft a person can join a guild. I have belonged to three types of guilds:

Personal – family – bank: This guild is created by getting ten signatures on a guild application (charter). You name your guild and kick everyone out except yourself or the peeps you wish to have access to the guild bank. This type of guild is usually only held for extra bank space in order to keep more in game stuff. You might be the only one in it. It is up to you. I belonged to one at the very beginning of my gameplay because when I first created my “toon” another character ran up to me and whispered “you wanna be in my guild?” (In the game a whisper is a form of communication that only the whisperer and the person whispered to can see.) The name of his guild had something to do with The Lord of The Rings and nothing to do with World of Warcraft. At the time I had no idea this was considered “un-cool”. Anyway I said “Sure!” and poof! He promoted me to guild leader and left. I was the only one there. LOL. I imagine him saying to his friends, “Yeah I dumped it on a noob in Northshire. (Noob is a word that means New to something … Newbie … thus noob – I think).

I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the guild, so I invited family members to it and we used it for extra bank space. Eventually a GM in WOW made us change the name of the guild. It didn’t matter to us, we didn’t name it to begin with.

In the cities with banks and mailboxes you can always find characters around that are called “bank alts”. What that is, is a toon that created just to have extra places for holding stuff. Lots of times these bank alts create a guild just for the purpose of purchasing guild bank space. In order to do the bank alt guild thing, you find 10 people willing to sign your charter and then kick them out of the guild once you have it. (Please let people know this is your intention.) Some indication that a character you see standing in the bank, auction house, or at the mailbox is a bank alt with a guild is sometimes the name of the guild. “Stuff Box”, or “Bankie Doll” or other names like that. It makes sense that a lot of people dress their bank alt in tuxedos or pretty dresses. Those toons don’t usually ever leave the city to enter the grubby, dangerous world of quests and fights.

Role Play Guild: I remember very well the day I was running through the main square of the trade center in Stormwind and someone whispered me, “You want to join a role play guild?” I stopped and looked around for the character that sent me that “tell”. (When someone whispers to you, their name is attached at the beginning of the sentence so that you know who is speaking to you.) I saw a tall night elf druid standing there with a voodooish wooden type mask on. His name was Olwei. I whispered back, “What is Role Play?” He explained something I had already been doing without realizing it. Whenever I interacted with others on the game, I always tried to “be” the character I was. Not the real me, but the female dwarf (at that time Nanaive).

I joined the guild. It was amazing and fun! Within the hour one of the leaders of the guild (I believe it was Adrahan) found me and brought me some very nice big bags to replace the tiny ones I was using to hold my stuff. (He didn’t have to, he just did.) I was so grateful I almost cried. I was new, someone other than my family asked me to be part of them, and then amazingly they encouraged me immediately by introducing themselves and chatting.

When you join a guild, there is something called a Guild Chat Channel. You join the channel for your guild, and everyone in the guild that is online at the moment can “talk” to each other – no matter where they are in the huge world of WOW.

I learned a lot about role play. There was a guildmate named Alastyr and whenever I accidentally said something that didn’t fit into the rp category he would sort of tease me into doing it the right way. For example, I was running down the road and saw a character that had been killed (either by a wild animal or a mob (bad guy) or even by a Horde – ((oh boy, we’ll talk about the other faction later!))

I said in the role play channel, “Oh no! There is someone here named Sillyboy dead in the road. (I don’t really remember the name of the toon) -- Alastyr immediately typed OOCly – out of character – “Um, how did you know this dead persons name?”

Please note: If you are role playing, you actually aren’t supposed to know anyone’s name even though it is listed with his character when you look at him -- unless you are actually introduced or the character himself tells you his name.

I quickly joked, “Well, didn’t you know that people have begun engraving weapons with their names? – His sword is laying right here with him.” Anyway, point is there are rules to role play and belonging to a role play guild is a challenge. There are usually role play events scheduled and lots of fun in the chat channel.

Raiding Guild: After making a lot of friends and some enemies in the game, I found myself needing to leave the world of serious role play for a while. I wrote in an earlier post – Emo means emotional – part of the reason I found myself guildless one day.

As it happened, I had known the leaders of The Illuminati before there was a guild by that name. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but I asked Vowain for a home. I just needed to be somewhere safe, and have the comfort and joy of guildchat. I was very nervous to make the change – and at the time – I was very discouraged with the game. The Illuminati graciously allowed me to be a part of them. I am so blessed and as time passed I found that the guild fit me like a very good bra. Necessary and supportive without being restrictive. AND – They did stuff I hadn’t really done much of, something called “raiding.”

I had never had to think about my gear before, or my talents, or my enchants, or my glyphs, or my gems, or my base stats or . . . anything that had to do with being an asset to a group - fighting a good fight. Whew.

I have learned a lot. Some of the questions I asked seemed so basic now, but the patience of everyone in the guild came through. I had NO idea what I was doing. I wrote stuff down. I watched others, I listened.

“FLEX”….

GUILD: an organization of persons with related interests, goals, etc., esp. one formed for mutual aid or protection.

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