You all probably know that I spend a lot of my free time reading MMO blogs and participating in forum discussions. To remain up to date with what is happening in the industry and keep my creativity flowing on Epic Slant it is pretty much a necessity. I spend most of my time reading about MMO Design since Guild Leadership isn’t something widely discussed. Sometimes, however, I end up in random places reading random things and they give me “old gamer rage.”

Not too long ago I was asked some questions by Tesh about being a guild leader and it brought back some memories about why I got into it to begin with. At virtually the same time, I happened to fall into a whole group of posts about how hardcore raiders are the devil and only care about having better gear than everyone else. We were being characterized as nothing more than greedy, epeen waving alpha males. To be frank, it upset me. That characterization might be true of this generation of competitive raiders (and I’m not saying it is) but it certainly wasn’t true of the original one.

In my MMO career I have had the distinct honor of being a member of three different competitive raid guilds. I was also blessed with the opportunity to take the top office of Iniquity for just over two years. I can say with complete confidence that during those days it was never about the loot. We were never chasing “the carrot.” Loot was a reward, of course, but it was just (more…)