Rhylith wrote:Thing is Dar, the only difference aside from the availability of end game content and a couple mildly annoying people that everyone ignores and has muted on vent anyways that you would have experienced from the guild merger was a different guild tag above your head. For the most part I still play almost entirely with VTers aside from raid nights. The invite was available to every single member of VT, so the decision not to merge was entirely yours. My friendships with the rest of the VTers, whether they're in nc or have moved on to other guilds, are still just as strong. VT is about the people, not the guild name. Everyone was having a hard time enjoying pug baron runs for the 50 billionth time, so we made a decision that would allow us to still see our friends yet be able to enjoy the end game content. I'm sorry that you didn't see it as a way to strengthen the gaming experience for all of VT, and instead freaked out at the change of guild tag.
By the way, in the time it took you to buff up for RvR and find a single fight without getting zerged down, we cleared molten core and killed the 40 or so horde outside too.
To some people, a guild tag means a lot. I understand both sides of the issue. Here is a well-written post from Cicero:
When DAoC was still pre-beta, a group of us from Everquest decided we'd move to DAoC. We picked out the realm we wanted to be in, and when server names were released, we picked our server.
When DAoC was released, we all came together and formed Jormungander just as soon as we were able to scrounge together the coins to register the guild. I, along with a few close friends, founded Jormungander under the dream and principles of friendship, camaraderie, and passing time together online. Not so much of a guild really, as an extended family, separated by geography, and with a genuine concern and respect for each other, and a desire to share time in each other's company.
Back in those days bersekers were so bad to play it's almost comical how frustrating it was. Warriors did more damage than 'zerkers, and could wear better armor to boot, without RRs or immunity timers, mezzes lasted until the folks decided to come along and kill you, and 'zerkers had no range capabilities for pulling -- whatsoever -- , so for experience, I had to literally just walk into a pack of enemies and hope I could kill one or two and save enough endurance to sprint away from the others before they killed me. Or find greens or blues and hope I could kill 4 or 5 of them on a full bar of endurance/health, and berserk, and endurance was critical to save because that's where bear-form came from in case things got really bad, so even styles were out.
I wouldn't play anything else though, because that was my name, and I wanted it, and I continually had faith that on "the next patch", Mythic was going to make things right. So, I decided to start weaponsmithing and just lay low until they fixed berserkers. So, I made weapons. First the handle, and I'd wait a full create-time for the handle, then the blade, and I'd wait a full create-time for the blade, then combine the two into a finished product, and I'd wait for that. Not those short, speedy wait times like they have today, with the fast skill gains to boot, no, it was LONG wait times, per step, and weaponsmithing had 3 steps per item. And I stood in Gna Faste and I crafted weapons. For 1140+ skill-points, I crafted weapons, for my guild, and for my realm.
To the point that that became a very real second job to me making weapons for my realm after I got home from work. People would send me emails, post to the message boards, post to VN boards, private tells, you name it - I always had a list of weapons to make, at 3 steps each from 91% - 100% quality, every afternoon, and folks all wanted 98-99s minimum. 99s were rare back then, but masterpieces were so rare no one even asked for them.
Then came some personal troubles in my life which ultimately led to my getting a divorce down the road, but which necessitated me stepping away from DAoC for a while. Unfortunately, Cicero was the realms only LGM weaponsmith and I felt an obligation to my realm to be there for them, so asked any guildies if they wanted to play Cic to keep him available to Midgard and look after folks, and Bloodfist, another longtime personal friend and guildie from EQ, and one of the co-founders of the guild, said he'd take care of it, so I gave my account to him to play for me while I was away, and I left Jormungander in the capable hands of Spehonfyr and Bronnko and slipped away.
And I was away for a long time, getting my life in order and getting things squared away at home. I got into some big projects at work that demanded a lot of time, and my personal life at home continued to deteriorate as my ex-wife and I headed inexoribly for divorce, which ultimately left me personally crushed at the loss of my son for several months thereafter. I still don't think I'll ever fully come to terms with seeing his bed empty 26/30 nights a month. But in my heart, I did not forget or leave Jormungander, or my friends there. Things just weren't to a point where I could play DAoC. It didn't help that my memories of the game were of a horribly broken berserker class in the early days of the realms.
Finally, I was at a point where I was able to come back to DAoC. Before coming though, I went back and played EQ for a time, then CoH, then Matrix Online, but it just wasn't the same without the people. By this time Bloodfist had been playing Cicero for a long time in my absence, and had built him to level 50, ML10, with lots of artifacts, and had several other level 50 characters on my old account as well, so I just quietly created a new account, with a new character of what I remembered used to be a fun class, and went from there. Blodsteinn was born, and I returned to Jormungander - and my friends.
Sure, when I came back Jormungander was down on membership, but all of DAoC is. Bronnko was becoming disheartened with the game, and the burden of carrying on the dream, when many others had given up or quietly moved on. I admire and respect him tremendously for what he did to keep the guild and the name going for so long with so little help, but I thank him, and Spehonfyr, and everyone else who kept the guild alive while I was away. At some points when my life was getting pretty low, it was a consolation to me that at least something had worked out like intended.
And even though I was away from the game for a while, I was never away from the players in spirit, or for a good length of time on the forums, but what I learned was that even though the forums are good, they're no substitute for being online and being able to share a virtual realm playing together. Geography can be a problem, but virtual worlds provide us with the companionship and camaraderie that our psyches long for in today's fast-paced world or going to work, then going home, with little time left over for visiting or socializing with others face to face.
When I returned to DAoC, the first time I saw Cicero -- was a tough moment. In some ways it was like my little boy was all grown up now, and I was glad that James was true to his word, and I was proud to see what he'd done, but it hurt that he had taken him out of Jormungander. I just felt like that was his home and where he should be.
As Cicero, I, along with a group of friends, founded Jormungander. And whether they're here now or not, I'm here. It was my dream, and my hope for why we ever moved to DAoC, and I just can't turn my back on that. It's also one of the few things I had to be proud of during some very bad times in my life, and the primary reason that I returned to DAoC.
I'll support you guys 100% in anything you do, and I'm looking forward to RvR, but to me <Jormungander> isn't just a guild tag, it's a personal committment, and I hope you guys don't think negatively of me for it. I'll be there for you with anything else you could ask of me.
