Lost In The Grind

Welcome friends, sit right back as I tell a tale of a little known guild called Zombie Squad…  As some of you might recall I have been a guild leader before over the span of my gaming career.  It can be a rewarding and very time consuming thing to do, but ultimately it can one of the most rewarding experiences in MMO’s if you have good friends and players to make your guild a success.

Forgive me if this story sounds familiar, I am starting from the beginning and working my way to the current status of affairs.

So, there I was, playing my little troll hunter on Ghostlands, I was making my way into the main entrance into Silvermoon City and I ran by a blood elf who sent me a whisper asking me a most peculiar question.  He said, “Hey, you want to be a guild master of my guild?”  I replied, “Why don’t you ask someone in your guild?”.  He replied, “Cause nobody is online and I am quitting the game.”  I said, “Uh, how many people are in it?”  He said, “38″.  I reply, “Hell, why not?”  Next thing you know, I am given the Zombie Squad and he leaves and goes offline…after a few seconds I open the guild pane and realize I am the only member…he lied to me, and at first I was pretty angry about it.

I took a few minutes to think about it and realized, well, the name is kind of funny, but at least I have been saved the hassle of getting people to sign the guild charter…and the fee involved with that…

Then after about 20 minutes I think, I don’t want to be a guild master right now…so I put it up in trade channel…giving away a guild master position…immediately I get 2 whispers…the first person to reply, Zappage, says she was in the guild before and the old guild master was a jerk and always mean to people…I said, well he is gone now and I don’t want to the responsibility of it.  So, she is given the lead and I was thinking of leaving, but thought twice about it and stayed, as second in charge.  We invited everyone who we could over the next week or so, randomly selecting folks without any thought of it…believe it or not, we reached a total of 100 members in this time.  It was pretty shocking how fast it had filled up…and we had all kinds of personalities, everyone from kids with attitudes, to adults, to mom’s and dad’s and the whole bunch…it was pretty exciting for a good while, but eventually I started to see the trend…since it seemed I had the highest level character in the guild, my troll shaman, he had the majority of the funds and I paid for the bank tab and would deposit into it, we had it setup so members could repair their armor courtesy of the guild bank, this was fine, but after a while the gold went from around 70 to down to 30 and hardly nobody was making deposits…also, shortly after this time Zappage had some family issues to deal with and gave the guild leader back to Drollam.  Still not ready to take on the job, I passed it onto the next highest level character in the guild, he seemed like a pretty level headed person, but he was very nervous about the job, while I was offline that same day he passed on the guild leader job to another character in the guild…

Well, now, this is the way the guild went on for about a month or so, eventually we had made some friends and a lot of the younger players had left the guild for whatever reason…But, still Drollam, my shaman is the only one giving into the guild bank as far as gold goes, by this time he is level 70 and the daily quests help out, but I am realizing that I can only give so much before I draw the line and say ENOUGH!

So, 2 days ago, while I am playing my young druid with my alliance family, I decide to create a new guild on Ghostlands, with the intention of inviting all the good friends I had made in Zombie Squad.  My friend, Gaiana and I discuss this for a bit and she comes up with the name, Soulbound.  It hits me and feels just right, so we switch over to our Horde characters and I send a message to one of the other officers and tell him and he is happy to join the new guild.

I go to create the guild and the name, Soulbound is already taken, so I go with, Soul Bound.  Still lacking enough people to sign the charter I advertise to pay 1g for signatures….it takes about an hour before we get it all done and so the new smaller, tight knit family known as Soul Bound is created on 9 Apr 08.

With advice from Dyasha I get the tabard designed, with funds from Drollams daily quest adventures I get the first bank tab.  Yesterday I came up with rank names and ran it by the guild last night and have that setup.  So far, our guild is small, but we are stronger because of the dedication I can feel in everyone.  The goal of the guild is to casually level and have fun helping each other in the game.  Pretty straight forward, minimal drama, everyone in the guild besides the few random folks who signed the guild charter are friends of someone in the guild.  I know there are those guilds out there with recruitment processes that are very hard to get through and I understand the reason for it.  The only requirement for our guild is that you are trustworthy and kind, not too much to ask, but then again, these seem to be qualities lacking in a  lot of people these days.

This ends the story of the birth and death of the Zombie Squad, as of yesterday I was told that the guild had disbanded after half of the players had left to join our new guild, basically leaving behind all the takers and the people who were actually giving to the guild are now going to be able to reap the rewards of their dedication.  I see only good things in the future for us…so bright, I got to wear shades!