On a different server, I joined a crew that I was “dockpressed” into (a random invite, and I figured “sure, why not?”), and made a few friends, but eventually left due to some drama that I just didn’t care to witness and some personality conflicts. (I like it quiet and profanity free, but don’t see it as my place to tell others to shut up.) I then joined a crew of another forum friend with a similar mindset, and have been much happier.

It’s a small crew, mostly soloers and explorers, so we mostly just use the crew structure as another chat channel to banter and ask for help on occasion, and do our own thing wherever we are. There are a few other perks to the crew, like ship access and fast travel shortcuts and such, but I’d say that 90%+ of the time, we really are just a crew of soloists, at least as far as “playing the game” is concerned.

I’ve never joined a guild in any of the other MMOs that I’ve played. I’ve made my own crew on yet another PP server, and made my own guild in Guild Wars (just me, my wife and my RL friend), but that’s it. The GW guild I made is just to make playing with my wife or friend easier (it’s easier to get together when you’re in the same guild), and I use my PP crew for event planning for forum events. (The captain is Silveransom, my usual pirate, but every other pirate is either my alt or a friend’s alt, and all of them are dragon themed.)

I’ve toyed with joining BBB’s guild in WoW, just because he’s a good guy that I’d like to toss a joke at once in a while, but then, I’m not really playing WoW, either. So maybe you could say that I’ve joined his “blog guild” by linking to him and checking in now and then. That’s purely a social function, though. It would be in-game, too, since they are raiding endgame content, and I’d still just be puttering around doing my explorer thing, totally uninterested in visiting a raid more than once or twice for screenshots. I would contribute to crafting or harvesting raiding mats for those in the guild who *do* want to raid, if I were feeling generous (rather than selling them at the AH, I’d throw them at the guild to see if there were an internal use first), but really, the only reason I’d be in a WoW guild is because I like the people. I’d almost certainly not share the *gameplay* with them, just the game community. I play so differently, there’s really not any other reason for me to be in a guild.

That seems to be a major occurrence with guilds these days. A lot of what I call micro-guilds exist. You’ll find four to six players who don’t want to join another guild but also don’t really want to recruit . Sometimes they just throw out random invites and sometimes they don’t. You never know. It can be really difficult to find a quality guild.

@Ysharros

Indeed! I like the @name in Champions because you can’t hide from your rep!

From what I’ve read here and there over the years, that’s the sort of thing that causes lots of drama in raiding guilds. Then again, people coming and going (either revolving-dooring or absconding with a chunk of the membership) can cause drama in all types of guilds, even ultra-casual ones. Been there, done that. I’m very careful now how I manage my guild memberships, because I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression OR make commitments I can’t manage. I’ll admit, that stuff gets a lot easier as you get older (and more accustomed to managing multiple calls on your time/loyalty in RL).

You could very easily have aimed that at me during EQ1 and EQ2. You’d have been pretty close to dead on. I was never the rabid hate you sort but I would certainly feel upset and might mention it to you. Generally I’d be nice and say things like, “I’m glad you have fun with your alt. Just remember though that we need your main for raids and we need it on par with everyone else.” Being in another guild was simply against our rules. Especially in the days where strategies were secret.

These days I am a lazy achiever. I want and enjoy achieving but not at the expense of other things. I’m simply unwilling to lose a great person because they don’t want to raid. Sodality is about awesome people who win together. Not about taking whoever is necessary just to win.

I’m with Ysh that I don’t find it hard to be loyal to more than one guild but there may come a point where you feel that your time is promised to both so it works better if one of them is either much more casual or only needs you for specific in game events.

When I was a guild master I had a very different perspective – obv I wanted guildies to be happy but you’re always very aware that they’ll be off as soon as something more fun comes along.

My main gripe with the monomaniacal achiever outlook is that it sees no alternative to itself. This holds true outside MMOs as well, of course, but intolerance and narrow-mindedness gets me everywhere. (Not aiming this at you at all, btw — I have no idea what kind of an achiever you are. I meant more generic “achiever types,” especially the ones who take it to extremes.)