The end of an era...

My gaming life has been a long and enjoyable one. I started playing MMORPG's in 1998 during the Asheron's Call beta. At the time, I had a couple of friends that I wanted to get involved, so I turned them on to the open beta and we've been gaming together ever since.

In Asheron's Call, we created a guild called The Ometh Empire. The most industrious of us, and the one with the most disposable income, created and hosted a web site for the guild. After almost 2 years, we moved on. We met up again for Asheron's Call 2 and created The Ometh Dominion. Turbine and Microsoft ran AC2 into the ground, and we moved on again.

During our time in AC2, I took over the administration and ownership of our domain, ometh.com, an built a PostNuke site for the guild. I managed it until World of Warcraft came out and I turned the site back over to the original creator.

In World of Warcraft, he created the guild and things work going well until he decided to open up recruiting and expand the membership. All was relatively well until recently. At last look, the guild had near 240 accounts and 300 members (the difference being people with multiple characters in the guild). Now the drama begins. The "Old Guard", or the people who have been around since we started the game, are trying their best to keep the guild a family friendly place. No cursing in guild chat, no ninja-looting, etc. In reality though, people are acting without thinking and are way to quick to enforce the rule. Others aren't willing to enforce the rules as all. The guild isn't how I remember it being, nor is it what I recognize as familiar and enjoyable.

The drama deepens, however. I have some very close friends who weren't treated well when we were small. A couple of members were openly hostile and rude. Keep in mind that the friends that I'm talking about here could be trusted, by me, to care for my children if I died. In other words, they are close friends. I encouraged them to play this game so we could finally (they are Mac users) play together. They dropped the guild once over the first incident. Now, with the growth and the growing dissatisfaction with the guild leadership (of which I'm marginally a part), they left for good. I helped them create a new guild and all of my alts are there.

Here's my dilemna: I can't stand to log into my main right now because of the constant hassle. I don't want to stop playing him though. My partner in crime, when it comes to games, work and most other things, is in the same boat as I am. We're both fed up but don't want to drop our characters out of the guild for fear of the shake-up it would cause. The other 2 members of our inner circle are a bit flighty and have left or been absent before. We have held up the guild in the past during their absence. My fear is that our leaving will be the cause of the guilds collapse. I know it's irrational, but that's the problem. Do I leave and be able to play a character that I enjoy again, or do I leave it in and be annoyed when I log in with him?

Only time will tell.

( Oh, by the way, I'm considering the fact that I've just written a very long post about a game, while my previous post about my children and how to raise them wasn't long at all. I suppose that I know what the answer is to this small, gaming problem and I'm trying to rationalize it. It should be an easy decision. My kids and how to better raise them isn't as simple to me and I don't have a clear path to get there. More thought required there.... )