As most of you all know, currently my main MMO of choice is Guild Wars 2. It’s a great game, and I have a lot of fun playing it with the people I know. To be honest, even if I didn’t know anyone in the game, even though it wouldn’t be the same, I’d still have fun with it. The game has so much to offer that I just absolutely love playing it.

A while back, I ended up joining a guild on my home server (Tarnished Coast) that was very active when it came to role-playing, had over forty members (most of whom were active), and was not afraid to help people level, run dungeons, or even do some player-vs-player content. I mainly joined because I was encouraged by a certain individual who vouched for the coolness of this group of people, but I had no qualms with joining and, as it turned out, they were a nice bunch. They would hold special “story events” quite regularly, where one of the players acted as a Dungeon Master and told a fun story for everyone to take part in, and even if you could not make it to stuff like that, these people were always having fun talking in guild chat and were willing to just enjoy the game with you. Yet, things began to slow down over the holidays (understandably) and fewer and fewer people were regularly online as Thanksgiving passed and Christmas approached. Then, after 2013 had come into being, people were away from the game, citing the fact that they were going back to work (again, understandable), school, or whatever else.

This was fine with me for a while, but once January rolled into February and the situation was seemingly in decline, I wanted to know more. Well, the other night, one of my casual acquaintances in the guild mentioned that the leadership (most of them, anyway) had taken it upon themselves to just withdraw from the game, stating that they were now “waiting for Neverwinter Online to release.” On top of that, some of them had gone back to playing Champions Online or All Points Bulletin without so much as dropping a note in the guild menu in game. Obviously, they weren’t exactly waiting, but had also grown bored of the game. Yet, this bothered me for a few different reasons. First, it’s kind of strange to say that you are waiting for a game that isn’t going to come out until at least July of this year, if not later (Q3 was the last rough approximation I heard from the Alpha Newsletter). If you are “waiting” for that game, why not continue to spend time in GW2 with your friends there? Second, it’s kind of odd to say that you are waiting for something when you up and decide to just go and play something else. And then there’s the fact that not only did they just abandon ship with their community in GW2, but they didn’t even bother to designate someone as a leader so that they could keep the guild afloat for those who wanted to stay on.

In this case, unless we can somehow get in touch with these people outside the game and get them to either shut down the guild formally or designate a leader, I’ll just have to pack up shop and either make my own guild or join another community. In GW2, at least, this is a bit more transparent, because you can belong to up to five separate guilds – so if one guild goes kaput, it’s not the end of the world (or at least, it shouldn’t be). Then again, though, being able to join multiple guilds kind of does one of two things: it either decreases loyalty to any one guild, or you opt to represent one guild as your primary one and, by extension, your membership in the others is rather limited anyway.

So, yes, it does make me mad, but I will get over it. From what I have played of the alpha of Neverwinter Online (which I feel I can talk about now due to their open beta weekends), the game is good and will be enjoyable for anyone who enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons Online. There is a rich world and lots of fun game mechanics. Yet, still, it’s kind of crappy to just up and abandon a game that is out and is fun for one that isn’t even out yet!

Ah, well…   /endrant

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For other news, musings, podcasts, videos, and more, please also check out Jessica’s gaming site Allahweh’s Domain!