Mightydar wrote a nice background story on his first guild last week, and I thought that was a great idea so at the risk of turning this into a meme, here’s mine. This has actually been several days in the making, between my work schedule and having to contact other people to refresh my memory a bit.
My first subscription to an MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies. Being a Star Wars fan, I was immediately entranced with the ability to create my own character and live a life in the virtual vistas of various worlds from the Star Wars lore. The cities were so alive with various characters, both player and non-player. It was a magical experience; one of those moments in life you feel you’ve arrived at something of greatness.
My friend Daniel and I started SWG together. I’d never played any MMORPG and SWG was recommended over the others at that time by a co-worker who’d done them all — EQ, AO, E&B, and pretty much everything else since at least 2001 — and said SWG would fit my gaming preferences. Daniel was a “recovering EQ addict” as I (not so) jokingly called him then, and approached the idea of getting involved with an MMO again with both excitement and trepidation. Shortly after we started, my brother-in-law Mark also joined us on the Bria galaxy (server).
None of us can remember exactly how we met the fine folks of our very first Player Association (SWG’s term for guild) but needless to say, we became very active and social members of Alderaan’s Revenge within a short time of starting the game. Eventually player cities were added to SWG and AR combined our resources to create our first town, also called Alderaan’s Revenge, on the dangerous fringe planet of Lok. Lok is a dry, barren planet with plenty of dangerous wildlife, and the planet is a bit off the beaten path of the normal travel routes, so traveling to the various planets was a bit on the expensive side. However, Lok had the awesome background music, so that’s where we went!
As AR grew, so did our town. Eventually we were able to add our own shuttle port (not sure, but I think we were among the first few guilds on Lok to do so) to catch a quick ride to the Star Port at Nym’s Stronghold. We regularly had guild meetings, electing new officers and a mayor for our city, and other social functions. We had several master craftsmen as well as master entertainers and doctors, and soon our little out of the way guild town started getting popular with other players as a place to get high quality items and buffs.
Eventually I gained enough confidence, and my character’s skills high enough, to go along with the guild to the high-end planets like Dathomir, hunting Rancor (Jabba’s pet monster in Return of the Jedi) and Nightsisters, Dark Side force-sensitive women who tamed Rancor and enslaved men. Despite having some lore from a Star Wars novel, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if one of Raph’s guys hadn’t watched Amazon Women on the Moon one time too many back in the day and created the Nightsisters. 
At the time of the “Rancor runs” my character was gradually lowering her skill as a Creature Handler in favor of becoming a Bio-Engineer so she was always seeking those runs to Dathomir in hopes of acquiring the highest quality DNA samples from the Rancor, which were very difficult to get but which some of the best engineered pets.
AR also ran SWG’s first instanced dungeon, the Corellian Corvette, though I only managed to make it in there a few times due to schedule conflicts. At the time, CC was very frustrating because despite being high or maxed at combat skills it seemed we were rarely able to touch the enemies, so often the pre-dungeon excitement turned into post-dungeon bitching after getting repeatedly spanked. Hard.
To this day, one of the most memorable things we did as a guild was to offer our support defending a Jedi padawan friend — who was not even a guild-mate — and defense from three maxed-out bad-ass Bounty Hunters. One of our guild leaders gave the Jedi access to her house so the Jedi could enter and hide, while the rest of us sent out the call throughout the galaxy. Everyone in the entire guild dropped what they were doing immediately and paid the travel costs back to Lok to defend this poor new Jedi from imminent permadeath at the hands of the Bounty Hunters. We took to the streets where the Bounty Hunters first attempted to negotiate with us to let them have their prey, which we promptly refused, then the BH’s began threatening us as well. AR didn’t back down, the BH’s called in several guild-mates of their own and the situation escalated into a full-on battle in the streets. AR took a beating, certainly, but we eventually won the day and the eternal gratitude of our new padawan Jedi friend as well as her entire guild.
Eventually Daniel and I left SWG, though Mark stayed for quite some time. I’m told some major drama and in-fighting broke out and Alderaan’s Revenge imploded upon itself. Most of them wound up in another guild called Alderaan’s Exiles, though the key members split yet again when the drama followed them to AE. A Google search leads me to believe a guild exists again on the Bria server with the name Alderaan’s Revenge but as far as I can tell, it’s an entirely new guild with no relation to my former family.
In the end, I look back fondly on those days, and I will credit AR with providing me a key element I seek in each new guild in each new MMO: a sense of family. Every guild I stick with in every game, I put that friendly, helpful, family feeling as a top priority over content progression. Content is static, it will be conquered in time; developing new relationships, making new friends you remember over a lifetime is a much more dynamic and rewarding process, and I’m pleased to say that the guilds I’m in now provide exactly that.
Tags: MMO Gaming, MMORPG, SWG
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Very cool, I had no idea that SWG let you build towns and stuff like that. When I tried it in beta it was uninteresting and sort of buggy beyond belief. I tried it again a couple of times after that but couldn’t really get into it.
I use to think that SWG was a great game but I realize more now that it was really all in that first guild.
Great writeup, like you said tempting to make a meme out of it and write one myself as the first Guild I ever joined in Ultima Online is still the guild that I’ve remained with for over 10 years with the same core group of players.
We may not always be able to stick together through every game (the change of MMO’s to favor playstyles like hardcore raiding is a big issue) but everybody has always remained part of the family and community of our original guild. Its almost like”Cheer’s” and everybody knows your name, ala the “Norm” effect. It’s great to have that and members really thrive upon it.
When you’re really lucky to have found such a group, like myself, and you, it becomes really obvious once you realize how the right bunch of people made a fair game such a great experience that you’ll remember for years to come.
Go for it, I’d love to read about yours! I occasionally hear about those guilds you describe that become such tight friends they stick together through multiple games. That would be awesome! Each of the guilds I’m in (well, I haven’t decided about the new GW guild yet…) is so excellent, but are all single-game guilds, with the exception of Karen’s Revelry and Honor which has both EQ2 and Vanguard branches.
So, I guess I wouldn’t mind someday finding a group of people who I click with enough to stick together in multiple games. It won’t be EQ2, however, I just can’t take that game…