That Damn Role Player

Today I decided I wanted to share with others the story of my guild, Lost Virtue. We’re a fun bunch with some fantastic members and I wanted others to know about them and understand why I love them so much and why I work so hard to keep our guild a happy place. I also wanted to share some of what I do to keep it a happy place.

Over the years I’ve had a number of people sneer at the fact that Lost Virtue is such a small guild. I will not argue this point. It is very small. We’ve never had ideas of being large, of having 100+ members, having huge raids, all the highest end gear and what-have-you. We are the true definition of a casual guild.

Lost Virtue is made up of a few very close friends, some of the greatest people you could ever meet, that enjoy each other’s company and that remember that the game is about fun. We laugh together, cry together, share in joys and sorrows. We’re about as close to old fashioned table-top gaming as you can get online. This means a guild with no drama (the one promise I have always made to my guild members) and a group of people that are eager to play together.

When I first began playing WoW with two people who were extraordinarily close to me, we decided to join a guild together. We searched names, read forums, met people and finally chose one. We were accepted together but in the early days we were there, some serious drama went down and it didn’t seem like a very good place to be. Working together and drawing on the aid of others, we decided to form Lost Virtue. We were small and happy for the most part but as time went on, it got a little lonely.

We had kept in contact with that other guild and asked if we could rejoin. Graciously we were allowed and we went back to hanging out with others. As months passed we spent time with these other people and some of them were really nice but others were… not so nice. There was a growing clique in the higher ranks. There was a pulling away from role play and focusing more on raiding. There seemed to be a growing idea that if you weren’t 60 you were unimportant.

That didn’t sit very well with me. But still I stuck around. I eventually was asked to step into an Officer position and I accepted. I had hoped I could be a good influence on the way the guild was developing.

I suppose the night of my promotion should have been a good indication that it wasn’t possible, however. You see, I was only level 46 at the time. There was a ceremony for the promotion, then afterwards everyone else took off to an instance… and I got left behind. I was told I was too low level. They were going to Lower Blackrock Spire and I would draw too much aggro. Either they didn’t realize or they simply didn’t care how much that hurt.

After that, things just sorta went downhill. One small group of people hunted together and I was repeatedly excluded. Even after I hit 60, I was ignored if I asked about going to an instance, or I would be told the group was already full. That I would have believed if it weren’t for the fact that when my husband would log in no less than 5 minutes later, he would get a whisper asking him to join them in the same instance I was just told they were “full” on.

Eventually you cut your losses. I did. I realized it was time to move on. I had just become “that damn role player” that annoyed everyone by insisting that all members of a guild should want to feel welcome. That if we were going to claim to be a role play guild that we should, in fact, engage in role play. That the officers and the guild leader had a responsibility to address issues of all members, no matter their level.

The Lost Virtue tag was still alive on an alt so I put it back on. At that time I was the only active member but I didn’t mind. I wore it proudly. Eventually my husband and friend joined me there and we were back together again. The friend left the game (I miss him still) but we had made other friends and they proudly put alts in Lost Virtue. And this is how it went for a while.

Many of our friends had mains in larger guilds or on the other side of the fence so we got alts. I didn’t mind. I’ve always seen Lost Virtue as a haven. A place to go and relax with friends. A place to feel warm and welcome. A place without drama or stress. This is the vision I try to keep for Lost Virtue to this day.

I can proudly say, I have never actively excluded someone because they were too low level. We have a stable full of alts of various levels in the guild so that no matter someone’s level, we try to spend time with them too. We have a reputation for taking people into an instance before they are technically high enough to be there. Why? We’re not going to snub our friend, our family member, just because of level. The minute the mechanics of the game allow them to step inside, we’re more than happy to drag them along.

We’re small and we’re not very well known on Feathermoon, but we have a good reputation with those who do know us. It’s because we have some of the best people in game. I work hard to give them a home, not just a guild. It isn’t about how fast you can level or what cool loot you can get. It certainly isn’t about what you can give to the guild, though our members are very generous with each other.

It is about inclusion. Not exclusion. It is about keeping it fun. It is about keeping away the drama that can ruin that fun. It is about giving them relaxation. Friendship. Love. Respect. It is about having a set of standards and sticking to them. It is about knowing when you should throw out what you’re “expected” to do or what you “should” do and doing what you want to do because its good, old-fashioned, silly fun.

It’s about laughter. Tears. Adrenaline. Silly clothes. Late nights and not enough sleep. Ribbons.

For me, Lost Virtue is a family. I try to do my best to keep my family happy. And they in turn help keep each other happy. For me, small is a good thing. Lost Virtue does very well as a small, quality guild.

Never could I ask for better friends. Kanammer, Ivrandor, Hugnir, Malanie, Amunsol, Ktickner, Nochturne, Benemus, Tahlian, Manjushri. You are all the best kind of people. I can’t tell you how cool it is that you’re in my guild. /hugs!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am and is filed under General.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.