My Guild’s 7 Year Anniversary – A Look Back

This past week, my guild turned 7 years old.  I have been the GM for all 7 years.  I find it amazing the friends and connections I have made over the years in this guild alone.  The community aspect of the guild was always something I cherished more than the boss kills.  Though I won’t lie, nothing is better than a boss kill with my guild.  The excitement I hear on our voice server, no matter what other sites say about content being too easy, my guild enjoys every moment, and I think that’s just one thing that makes my guild truly special.

When I started the guild in the original closed beta, I liked the idea of the end game, but never really looked ahead to it, or even planned for it, being that WoW was my true all in MMO.  I did play Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI, but neither really grabbed me and left me a bit disappointed.  In the Warcraft closed beta I met up with a then pally me and him had similar views and we in turn created the guild.  After a lot of issues with guild creation on day one, we finally got the guild up and running when Blizzard finally brought Dalaran back up.  Oh yeah did I mention that many of the folks we recruited in closed beta who came to Dalaran, only to have the server fail on day 2, jumped to other servers, so we definitely had an uphill battle.

But I digress, the guild I had a vision for it, to be casual, as when I started it I was still a single guy, I wanted to go out and party, meet people, I wanted to have a life outside of the game, so that is the audience I targeted.  We slowly grew, some folks left wanting more focus on raiding, which was understandable, many of our members in vanilla took a while to hit max level.  Also the struggle to get 40 raiders was a bit challenging, especially considering our value proposition among what was then a more hardcore MMO community.

Many folks doubted that we would make it.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts myself from time to time.  But through all the drama we encountered, from folks wanting to split off and form a more hardcore guild, people leaving upset at guild policies, the only bit of drama we never have really had is loot drama, which I am very thankful for, in fact I can count on 1 hand how many times we had loot drama.

We have never been a world or server first guild, what we have been is a community first guild.  We have seen members get married, graduate college, have kids, change jobs, experience tragedy.  However through it all our guild has rallied around its own.  Through tragedy and arguments we have come out on top time and time again.  Between all that we have beaten all the content that Blizzard has put in front of us, and we did it our way.

I would like to think that at least part of it was my vision and leadership, but I know its the hard work of my officer corps throughout the years and the great membership we have and will have that have truly allowed us to thrive for as long as we have.  We focus more on the person than the toon when we recruit.  We do not care about gear, gear is easy to get now, so we would rather have someone who fits in with our guild’s culture.

So over the years we have grown, spread into other games from console to other PC titles.  Our community has stuck together, we have thrived not as a Warcraft guild, but as a gaming community.  My guild has been a big part of my life for the past 7 years, they have shared a lot with me, and me with them.  I have enjoyed the past 7 years, and look forward to many more with my guild, and I look forward to meeting all our future members.

If you are interested in checking us out we are Phalanx of Nod on the Dalaran (US) server, Alliance side.