Guilded

I've mentioned in a few of my posts about Classic that I am in a guild. This guild has no relation to any guilds that I've previously been a member of in WoW or SWTOR. In fact, I didn't go into Classic with any plans in regards to guilds at all.

Nemi however, one of the two friends with whom I rolled up on launch day, went into Classic with the intention to raid, and therefore immediately set out to find a suitable guild, before launch even, which is why we ended up in <Group Therapy> on Pyrewood Village.

She picked them mainly for their raid times and for the fact that the core group has previously raided on a private server, something she saw as a promising sign of dedication to the game and assurance that the guild was going to be interested in Classic in the long run.

While I have no plans to be a raider in Classic myself, I was happy to join as well since they do accept social members, and I do like the thought of maybe getting to join one or two raids on a casual basis later on if the opportunity arises, just to see what it's like. Plus it has been my experience that it's usually a good thing to have some friends who are better at/more into the game than you are and for whom it's no big deal to help you out with something that might seem challenging to you but is pretty much routine for them.

So we signed up to the guild's Discord, agreed to the guild's rules and that's been that. I have to say I'm old-fashioned in that I still find it strange to conduct a guild's organisation entirely via Discord, as I prefer something that feels a bit more tangible, like an actual guild website. That said, Group Therapy's is probably the most organised Discord server I've ever seen.

I did run dungeons in guild groups a few times during the first week, and everyone seemed nice enough, but this has dropped off over time simply because most people have levelled up quite quickly and are already at endgame while I'm one of only a small handful still bumbling around at level thirty. I don't mind too much though, as I'm quite happy to pug, and I'm sure the guild connections will come in handy once I reach the level cap myself (whenever that might be).

I also have to admit that I have what you could call a professional interest in seeing how a guild this large functions, as the biggest one I was in before that was maybe half of Group Therapy's size. It's clearly not an easy task to manage that many people, as I've already seen various mini dramas break out in guild chat, usually about some supposed cliquishness among certain members. That always makes me roll my eyes a little because of course little cliques are going to form in a guild this big; you can't be equally good friends with a hundred people!

I admit that there's a certain fascination in watching these conflicts play out in guild chat, especially since I'm somewhat detached from it all myself and usually don't even quite know what's going on, but as a long-time officer of much smaller guilds I sure feel for the guild master who's supposed to keep all these people happy.

After years of holding various officer positions myself, it's also kind of nice to just be an unimportant face in the crowd again for a change, just watching the green text scroll by with no responsibilities other than to behave like a decent human being when dealing with other players.